Disappointment Was: Deaths in DH WAS: Re: Dumbledore (but more Snape)

[julie]

No: HPFGUIDX 177558



> Prep0strus:
> 
<snip>
> 
> Draco's storyline to me was a huge disappointment, perhaps the 
biggest
> in the novel.  His was the redemption story i was interested in - 
not
> dudley, though i liked it, and not snape, which i didn't care 
about -
> it all happened before the first book.  still, without a likable 
(for
> me) slytherin, it still would have been a skewed universe.  but 
draco
> simply appearing ambivalent and pointless wasn't enough for me.  
it's
> almost worse than descending into complete evil.  at least then i'd
> feel he had any motivation at all. as it stands, i know people read 
it
> as him not wanting to do evil, and rebelling against it, and caring
> for his family and friends and all these wonderful things.  i get 
it.
> but to me, it wasn't enough. i see him as lazy, cowardly, and still
> nasty.  he is certainly not 'likeable'. and i don't think he was
> actually 'good' either.

Julie:
I do see your point of view. Draco's story is one of the better
examples to me of how canon leaves open several avenues of 
development, including the one that happened, and whether we
each like how the story developed in DH or didn't like it, 
neither view is conflicted by canon (i.e., neither view reflects
that recently popularized term "wish fulfillment). I sit in
the middle on a lot of issues and this is one of them. I too
wanted to see Draco to recognize the evil inherent in his 
pureblood ideology and turn unequivocally to the "good" side.
But there was really nothing in the canon depiction of Draco
that pointed to this result as the likely one. In fact there
is much against it.

In HBP we saw that family was the most important thing to 
Draco, and he was willing to at least try to kill Dumbledore
to save them, even after he knew he didn't have the heart/guts
for killing. (And whether you think his inability to kill is
a lack of heart or a lack of guts or some combination of both
is another of those unprovable points of personal interpretation.)

In DH, what I saw in Draco was exactly what we saw in HBP, fear
of Voldemort's power to hurt his family, a lack of true desire
to torture or kill (or to watch such things), and an ambivalence
to act based on his constant mental juggling of how far he can
avoid doing things he dislikes while not further endangering
his parents through his actions/inactions. So he is willing to
go to a certain length not to reveal the Trio's true identities,
so far as he can go without it becoming clear he is lying to
Voldemort who may well take it out on Lucius and Narcissa. In
the same vein, he is with Crabbe and Goyle, apparently willing
to turn Harry in to Voldemort to save his parents lives. And
note two facts here: It is Crabbe who tells Harry they are 
there to take him to Voldemort, while Malfoy almost immediately
tries to shift the focus to obtaining the diadem, which he
assumes is also important to Voldemort, presumably important
enough that he can use it to at least temporarily divert 
Voldemort's attention from his parents and himself. At no time
does Draco actually state that any intent on his part to take
Harry to Voldemort, though he is clearly with someone who has
every intention of doing so. In fact, it's quite unclear whose
idea it was initially to pursue Harry, especially once Crabbe 
reminds Draco that he and his family are on the outs with 
Voldemort thus Crabbe doesn't have to listen to Draco anymore.

Of course it all goes awry, as it so often does with Draco.
And Draco shows again his primary motivation--loyalty to those
he cares about-by risking his own life to save his friends 
Goyle and even the bloodthirsty and insulting Crabbe. 

My point is that Draco is actually very much in the same
character in HBP that he was in DH, as far as I can see.
Which doesn't mean he *couldn't* have grown more if the 
plot had moved along in a different manner as many fans 
envisioned (Draco forced to hide out and a Snape who'd
always been acting on principle influencing him to change
his views and allegiances, Lucius turning out to be as 
unloving and even abusive as he might have been given the
lack of direct canon on Draco's home life, etc). But with 
Draco and his parents kept close to Voldemort while being
in ill-favor with him throughout the books rather limited
other options. 

Which all goes to say that I saw Draco's journey differently
than you did, and I didn't see Draco as lazy or lacking in
motivation or even as truly cowardly (despite moments of such
that were for me mitigated by his concern for his family).
Nor did I see his journey as pointless. And while like all of
us I would have liked to see a Draco more like the one I 
imagined before the release of DH, on this issue JKR did not
in any way forshadow such a Draco. We didn't all get what we
wanted with Draco, but she didn't cheat him, IMO.

Prep0strus:
> Snape, i've said I don't care about, and i don't. i assumed him to 
be
> 'good', and he was, but still mean, petty, and definitely not
> likeable.  plus, as dumbledore's man he's only good by showing a
> griffindor trait. which is fine with me, because unlike many, i 
think
> the traits defined for slytherin ARE lesser. ambition is nice, but 
not
> equal to intelligence, hard work, or courage, and ambition at all
> costs, as defined for slytheirn, is evil.  cunning is the bastard
> brother of intelligence, complete with negative connotation. and of
> course, there's always the wonderful spector of pureblooded bigotry.
> 
> Slughorn was the disappointment of book 6.  a non-evil slytherin, to
> be sure.  just a sycophantic, gluttonous, cowardly, discriminatory,
> lump of a man.  he comes through a bit in 7 at the end, but not 
enough
> to raise him to the level of the other heroes in the story.

Julie:
It's too bad you don't care about Snape's story, because he
did get what you wanted to see in Draco, a change of heart.
(Yes, I hear the screams of protest now...down, I say! ;-)
We see a character who allowed himself to be drawn in by the
crowd around him, who ignored his one good friend and finally
lost her so he could belong, who took on the Pureblood cause 
willingly (though his relationship with his wife-battering 
Muggle father at least gives us a sympathetic explanation for
the ease with which he could reject Muggles and Muggleborns
for Wizards and Purebloods). We also see a character who loved
enough to reject that Pureblood ideology and the torture and
killing that went with it, first for his love of one woman,
but after years of association with the "Good" side who did
in fact adopt the very ethics and ideology of those he'd 
joined initially for the single purpose of making up his 
unwitting betrayal of Lily by protecting her son.

Hey, Snape is still a mean, bitter man who mistreats
children on one level, but who protects them on another
level (the dichotomy is significant), who saves those he
can regardless of whether that saving in any way serves
his initial purpose of protecting Harry for Lily--saving
Lupin's life doesn't, mitigating the punishment of Ginny,
Neville and Luna doesn't, even continuing with Dumbledore's
plan to defeat Voldemort doesn't once he finds out that
Harry must die to accomplish that defeat. Yet, Snape still
plows forward, doing what is right over what is easy, even
over what would satisfy his heartfelt atonement to Lily 
(keeping her son alive and safe). It can only be because
he has had a change of heart, and a change in moral values.

> 
> zgirnius:
> > But then I got the story of Regulus Black, too, and it, too, was 
all 
> > about a Slytherin and his humanity. I mean, he could not bear 
that 
> > his House Elf was tortured, and when he went back to retrieve the 
> > Horcrux with Kreacher's help, he drank the goo himself, as he was 
not 
> > going to do that to Kreacher again! He chose to die in secret, 
> > without letting the story out, to protect the parents he loved 
from 
> > the wrath of Voldemort. I loved it, and was totally not expecting 
it.
> 
> Prep0strus:
> Regalus had a great story. seriously, very interesting, surprising,
> cool.  of course, it's only when voldy treated something HE cared
> about with disdain that caused him to rebel.  he was still a
> pureblooded racist who had no problem allying himself with 
voldemorte
> and performing horrible deeds to innocents before then.  is regalus
> the incarnation of evil? no. is his sacrifice for kreacher one of 
the
> most touching examples of friendship, especially with a non-human, 
in
> the books? yes.  was he a good guy? probably not.

Julie:
But doesn't all change start that way, small and personal?
No bigot suddenly jumps up and says, "Hey, I was wrong, so
now I've done a complete about face! I love those (whoever
he/she previously despised)." Small and personal is EXACTLY how
Snape started out, doing it all for Lily, the woman he had
betrayed and Voldemort had mistreated (if you can call 
murder such). He only cared about that one thing, atoning to
Lily. But eventually he cared about saving those he could,
whoever they were and whether he liked or loathed them. He
adopted new principles. But it didn't happen immediately,
and it didn't happen without some event upsetting his own
narrow belief system, and I don't think it ever does.

> zgirnius:
> > And also Narcissa, of course. Though I should have been expecting 
her 
> > again, I suppose. She already showed her humanity in "Spinner's 
End", 
> > when she disobeyed the Dark Lord's orders to  in an attempt to 
> > protect her son. In DH, she was no longer attempting to arrange a 
> > murder, she helped to keep Harry safe by lying to Voldemort that 
he 
> > was dead.
> > 
> 
> Prep0strus:
> It's nice she loves her son.  Again, it doesn't make her any less of
> an evil bigot.  I don't understand why someone having ANY good trait
> makes them entirely good.  Evil people can love their families. 
> Someone doesn't have to be devoid of anything good inside them to be
> predominantly bad.  If her family weren't threatened, she'd still be
> doing evil.  And, even the best case scenario, with no voldemorte, 
she
> just gets to live with her husband and son... she's just a rich
> racist.  That's slytherin.  not all slytherins are actively evil.  
but
> they're mostly reprehensible even when not being evil.

Julie:
Here I agree with you. But again, it *is* a start. Narcissa
comes to see the real, vicious and uncaring Voldemort, the
promoter of Pureblood supremacy, which does at least some
damage to the whole concept when she considers what it did
to her family. That doesn't mean she's going to do a complete
about face either. And in reality, JKR did fail here in my
opinion, giving us not a hint of how relations stood between
Purebloods and the rest of the WW in the epilogue. 

As for being reprehensible without being evil, you probably
know my feelings about that. No eleven year old child can
be reprehensible let alone evil, though he could be heading
that way if those skewed values continue to be actively 
encouraged or even simply not *discouraged* by the adults
around him. 

<snip>

Prep0strus:
> there isn't a single slytherin that i'd want to spend more than 30
> seconds in the presence of.  i don't think putting a good, likable
> slytherin in the story simply slipped her mind. if she wanted us to
> have one, we would have. since we don't... we see in the story what 
we
> see.  Your five characters do very little to make me think that
> slytherin house should exist at all.  the world would be better off
> without them.

Julie:
Ouch! (See above). Really, we can see Slytherin House as an
allegory for evil, as I think you once suggested. But then it
is rather pointless to debate the relative worth of the 
individual characters at all. And since we are doing that, 
and treating them as real people (you don't want to spend
30 seconds with any of them--at least the ones we've met),
then we can't just dismiss by saying the world is better off
without them. Unless we want to support a WW version of
Minority Report, where instead of sorting the undesirable
quarter of students into Slytherin House they are sorted 
right into the Juvenile version of Azkaban, or perhaps to
the feed factory where they are rendered harmless by being
turned into green squares of food for the hippogriffs and
thestrals...

Still, I agree that there shouldn't be a Slytherin House.
Children who have already been indoctrinated with bigotry
and the worst values should be sorted with those who have
the best values, not with more of the worst! At least then
they'd have an honest chance to experience a different 
way, and to absorb better values. 

Julie, who would have been happy to see the Sorting Hat
destroyed, and Hogwarts nineteen years later filled with
unsorted students, and teachers who cared about the welfare
of EVERY child, not just the ones in their own "house."