Harry's Crucio - Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 183748

> > Steve: 
> > Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
> > I said I understood his actions under the circumstances.
> > <snip>
> > I said that Harry's action were both wrong and bad,
> > but I also said that I understood them. Things can still 
> > be wrong yet justified /under the circumstances/.

Mike:
Yes, Harry was pissed off, he'd been through alot in this book let 
alone everything that's come before. And yes, he knows that Carrow 
has been teaching and using Crucio on students, really torturing. So 
this was a loss of moralistic control, a flair of temper, and an act 
of revenge all rolled into a two second burst of anger.

Though others have tried to compare this with Star Wars and Luke, I'd 
like to offer a different comparison. Steve, you've equated this to a 
military action, so I'd like to compare this scene with "The Flight 
of the Intruder" by Steven Coonts. It's the story of an A-6 pilot 
flying off a carrier during Vietnam. 

This guy has his RIO killed sitting right next to him in the plane 
during another mindless mission bombing trees while all the juicy 
targets in Hanoi remain *off-limits*. He decides to take his revenge. 
With his new RIO, he plans and pulls of a bombing of Communist party 
HQ in downtown Hanoi. IOW, to hell with using a standard spell, he 
pulled out his Crucio, in violation of the ROE.

He got back to the ship and got called on the carpet in front of the 
captain. The captain said he understood this pilots frustration, then 
asked him a most pointed question. What if the captain, the man in 
charge of a floating arsenal that is an aircraft carrier, decided he 
wanted his revenge too? In the Potterverse, that would make him the 
equivalent of Crouch Sr authorizing his Aurors the use of the 
Unforgivables. Or worse, Voldemort ordering his DEs to commence with 
their death and destruction.

The pilot got his lesson, but did Harry? Where was Harry's captain 
explaining what this would mean writ large? Well,... actually, 
Harry's captain saw the whole thing, and all she said was, "that was 
very -- very gallant of you --" <p.594> So, what was the lesson 
Harry learned?




> Magpie:
> I actually think another problem with the way it's set up is that 
> it always comes down to just looking at the nature of House Elves. 
> Elves' feelings never seem to matter except when it comes to them 
> liking to be slaves, apparently, as if Wizards are doing them a 
> favor even when we see elves suffering in their servitude.

Mike:
Elves' feelings never seem to matter? I think the feelings of all 
three of the elves we got to know best matter a lot. They matter on 
this list, if that's what you're referring to. We have been debating 
them and their brethren for some time.

As for the *other* times, when they are suffering in their servitude, 
that's when it matters most. When Dobby suffers under the Malfoys we 
root for him to get out from under that situation. We think that's 
the right thing, *for him*. 

But Winky suffers because she's NOT in the servitude of the Crouches. 
What are we supposed to be thinking about that? Do her feelings not 
count because she *wants* to be enslaved? Or is it just Kreacher's 
feelings that count? And note, Kreacher doesn't want to be free 
either, he just wants a different master. Doesn't this take the 
matter of servitude out of the equation? If we're talking about the 
feelings of the elves, they all choose servitude, even Dobby, even 
after he's been freed.

If you mean does the Trio concern themselves with elves feelings, 
they all seem to care about Dobby and Winky. And at least Hermione 
kept trying to badger Sirius about Kreacher. Even in HBP, Hermione's 
words about elves came back to Harry on several occasions. And 
Hermione showed tearful empathy for Kreacher during "Kreacher's 
Tale". 

I also think it's unfair to call Hermione shallow for her changing 
her position on elves. SPEW was all well and good during GoF, when 
there was no Voldemort threat (that they knew of). But after 
Voldemort's resurrection, there were more important things going on 
than her worrying about the plight of elves. 

And still, she didn't drop them completely. Like I said, she tried to 
improve Kreacher's lot with Sirius. She was appalled when she thought 
maybe Harry had told Dobby and Kreacher they couldn't sleep. It seems 
to me that Hermione had pretty much given up on elf freedom by the 
end of GoF. From then on, she spoke not of freeing the elves but of 
improving conditions. 


> Magpie:
> I do think it's a sort of tricky idea, because elves always
> "like being slaves" even when we see ones that don't.

Mike:
*One*, not "one's". We see one elf that didn't want to be a slave. 
And almost his entire motivation seems to be to be rid of the 
Malfoys. He still wants to serve, he even refers to Dumbledore as his 
new master.

You know, if Dobby hadn't called himself a slave in CoS, I don't 
think it ever would have occurred to me to call these creatures as 
such. That's not the way they were written, IMO. They may be bound to 
serve the masters of their house (in the brick and mortar sense), 
their servitude seems to be more abstract than a hard and fast rule. 
We get plenty of examples of them working around their masters wishes 
when they don't like their masters. In that sense, they were written 
to be like some elves of folklore, not as slaves, IMO again.

I don't put any stock in JKR's interviews. There is nothing in canon 
that makes me think of human slavery when I see the House Elves. So 
that leaves JKR's interviews, wherein she drew the parallels to human 
bondage. I think JKR fancied herself as making all these noble 
statements, when she really didn't write her books any way like that. 
It's wishful thinking and self-delusion on her part, methinks. But 
then, I also didn't picture Dumbledore as gay. Just because she did 
doesn't mean she wrote him that way for us to discern. And just 
because she thought she was making a comment on human slavery with 
the elves condition, I didn't see her write that. 

Mike