Good Person turned Evil / Marietta / Chapter 14

[Catlady (Rita Prince]

No: HPFGUIDX 188577

Alla wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188539>:

<< I do not believe that a person who became a traitor for example would have become one if he did not have it in him. I do not believe that a person who became a member of the gang of murderers and torturers would have become one if the person did not want to. >>

I do not agree with you. I consider myself more of a headline reader than a news junkie, and still I have been presented with many, many examples of what people are willing to do when in fear of death. 

One young man turned himself in to the Hague Tribunal and pled guilty to crimes against humanity because he had been a member of a Bosnian Serb militia unit that captured a village and brought all the residents to a central point and then the leader ordered them to shoot all the prisoners. This young man protested and the leader told him, his choice was to follow orders or he could join the prisoners and also be shot. 

Doesn't that remind you of the child soldiers kidnapped and enslaved by so many (mostly private) armies in Africa? Except that any of them who objected to killing civilians would have been killed without being offered a choice -- the adult would have ordered the other children to kill him or her, and any child who objected to killing a comrade would also have been killed... a traumatic and memorable lesson in obedience.

Steve winterfell wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188551>:

<< Marietta for example was influenced to some degree by her mother's position at the MOM, and her mother's support of Umbridge's policies, but that didn't excuse her for betraying her schoolmates. >>

Everyone was so angry at Percy because he gave his allegiance to the legal government and the people whom he believed to be telling the truth at the cost of breaking up with his family. Everyone talked like being loyal to one's family was a moral duty. Then they condemned Marietta for being loyal to her family.

I consider that to be the third of three parallels. The first is the young man who turns traitor to the side he joined in the civil war and betrays his friends to their deaths at the hands of his new side. Peter and Severus.

The second is the House Elf who disobeys and conspires against his legal owner, instead serving a human of his own choice who is an enemy of his legal owner. Dobby and Kreachur.

By the way, WHY wasn't he named Kreachy? ALL the other House Elves in canon have names ending with Y, even Hokey in the Pensieve. (Perhaps Herself chose that name to show that she thinks the Y convention is hokey?)

Aussie Hagrid discussed PS/Ss Chapter 14 in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188561>:

<< 7. If you knew your plans for Norbert were leaked to Malfoy, how would you have avoided trouble? >>

Not left the Invisibility Cloak back on the Astronomy Tower.