Lack of re-examination (was:Re: Secrets (Long) OLD POST REPOST)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186557

> Betsy_Hp 
> > But as far as Harry not re-examining so that I'd be forced to, I'm not made squirmy about it on *my* account.  It's Harry that I'm bothered about.  Yes, I *do* expect him to have a "wow I should have known" moment.  Because he gleefully watched an adult mistreat a schoolboy. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Sorry, but where is this gleefulness in canon? *Ron* is gleeful. Hermione is indignant. The narrator doesn't tell us how Harry felt. It's certainly easy to imagine that he felt gleeful, but in that case we can imagine his later chagrin as well. More likely he didn't know how he felt, except intensely curious about "Moody".

Carol responds:
We do see the adult McGonagall expressing outrage, stating that they don't use Transfiguration to punish students. (I'm guessing that the staff don't use magic of any kind to punish students--unless they're Umbridge or the Carrows.) But, of course, Harry, who dislikes Draco Malfoy and thinks that "Moody" is a paranoid, half-crazy old Auror, doesn't pick up on the hint that "Moody" is a sinister and dangerous person. If he hates the Malfoys, he must be on the good side. It's masterful misdirection. And Harry isn't given time to rethink it. By the time he realizes who "Moody" really is, Barty Jr. has committed much more serious offenses directly involving Harry, including sending him to the graveyard to be murdered. He doesn't look back and say, "I should have known that "Moody" was no good or an imposter because he turned Draco Malfoy into a ferret and bounced him or because he used Imperius on the students and enjoyed Crucioing that spider despite the effect on Neville. No one expects sensitivity from a tough, half-crazy old ex-Auror who's (supposedly) teaching them how to fight Dark Wizards. And he "kindly" takes Neville into his office afterward to lend him a Herbology book. It's brilliant misdirection (and brilliant acting on Barty Jr.'s part). The characters won't rethink it, but a lot of readers will. I immediately disliked "Moody" because of his methods, including helping Harry to cheat on the tasks, but it never occurred to me that he was a DE in disguise trying to kill Harry or that he put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire. It was only when I went back to understand how I could have been fooled that I recognized the actions that had made me uncomfortable (and which the narrator seemed to approve of or be indifferent to) as hints that the character was evil.

At any rate, I understand exactly how Betsy feels, especially since I so strongly disapproved of "Moody" even when I thought that he was a good guy. But I agree with Pippin that the reader, at least the alert reader, is supposed to reread GoF from a new perspective. I also think it's best that we *don't* have Harry or the narrator going back over events and reevaluating them. It's really much more satisfactory to do it ourselves, whether we're adults or intelligent children, who really can figure more things out for themselves than many adults give them credit for.

> > Betsy Hp:
> > But I *did* pick up on this.  It was kind of red-banner as far as I was concerned. That's what makes me squirmy.  Not that Harry missed small things, he missed *massive* things.  At least as per me.  *I* thought about the implications of Neville being alone in the classroom with the man who tortured his parents to madness at a time when he was emotionally vulnerable.  I thought about it, and thought about it, and the books never dealt with it at all.  In fact they go the opposite way and have one of Neville's classmates praise that DE in front of him.
> 
> 
> Pippin:
> I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. Yes, Neville was manipulated in a very ugly way. But Harry and the readers certainly find out how that feels when Harry thinks that Dumbledore betrayed him. It's  far more immediate to explore the issue that way than to have Harry speculate about Neville's feelings. <snip>

Carol responds:
I think that Betsy (correct me if I'm wrong, and, BTW, good to see you back!) is responding specifically to GoF. *Hermione* picks up on Neville's feelings and asks "Moody" to stop Crucioing the spider because of its effect on Neville, but Harry moments later sees his first Avada Kedavra, the spell that killed his parents, and can be excused, I think, from not being aware of Neville's feelings when he's preoccupied with his own. But the hints are there for the reader to pick up on--there's something at best cold and indifferent and at worst sinister about this "Moody" character. (I used to think that Dumbledore should have gotten the idea that "Moody" was an imposter when he asked Dumbledore's permission to use the Unforgiveable Curses on the students, including fourth years. I suppose Dumbledore thought that desperate times called for desperate measures, particularly with regard to Harry's education, but I still wonder whether the real Moody would have felt the same way. To me, it was another sign that something was wrong, but, then, Crouch had authorized the Aurors to use the Unforgiveables against DEs, so maybe the Ministry had authorized using them on students--not the same as teaching the kids to use the spells, but I still don't like it and I'm afraid that JKR would disagree with me.)

At any rate, I've already explained why I don't think Harry reacts to "Moody's" methods. It's also interesting that the narrator slips out of Harry's perspective to note that Harry isn't the only one lying awake the night after that lesson. So is Neville--a hint that he found it very disturbing, regardless of "Moody's" intentions. (He's not aware, of course, that the man who tortured that spider was one of the four who Crucio'd his parents into insanity. I can't recall whether he ever finds out.)

Pippin:
> As for Harry's classmates, the official line in OOP is that the fake Moody was a maniac who *thought* he was taking orders from Voldemort. It's not clear that anyone but the Trio even knows who the imposter really was, much less that he was a genuine DE and had a history with Neville.  
> 
> Dean isn't being deliberately tactless by remarking on Fake!Moody's skill as a teacher, he's just ignorant, and part of that ignorance is Neville's own choice.

Carol responds:

Good point. We do know that Neville never talks about his parents and is embarrassed when HRH encounter him in the closed ward at St. Mungo's. We can be pretty sure that Dean has no idea that "Moody" helped torture the Longbottoms into insanity. But maybe Neville's lack of reaction is because he doesn't know it, either.

As for Harry, he doesn't seem to have any hard feelings for Barty Jr., oddly enough. He's aware (in HBP) of the irony that the idea of becoming an Auror was first suggested to him by a DE in disguise, but he still likes the idea. And quite possibly, he found "Moody's" lessons useful despite the fact that "Moody" never expected him to survive to put them to use. He doesn't blame "Moody" or even Wormtail for Cedric's death. He places all the blame, rightly or wrongly, on Voldemort. Maybe it's because Barty Jr. is soul-sucked before his eyes, having received the worst possible punishment for his crimes, so Harry, IIRC, hardly thinks about him (except when he first encounters the real Moody).

Pippin: 
> We might notice that despite whatever admiration he retained for fake Moody's methods, Harry doesn't put the DA under the Imperius curse to show them how to resist it.  

Carol:
I don't know whether he retained any admiration for "Moody's" methods. I think he may have found them useful for himself, certainly in comparison with Umbridge, but at that point (the DA meeting), he's still never performed or even attempted an Unforgiveable Curse himself. He doesn't attempt his first Crucio until after Bellatrix kills Sirius Black, and his first rather feeble Imperius (followed by a stronger one) doesn't occur until DH (after he's of age, if that makes a difference, and after the DEs have taken over the MoM). I don't think that Harry had, to use Snape's words, either "the nerve or the ability" to cast an Imperius at that point, and he would not have attempted it, in any case, because it was illegal. Even though Harry didn't approve of the Ministry, especially as represented by Umbridge, I doubt that he would have considered using an Unforgiveable Curse at that time, especially on his friends, not because he was rejecting "Moody's" methods but because he still recalled Black's fierce disapproval of Crouch Sr.'s authorization of those curses by Aurors. And, of course, he didn't know how to perform one. (What if something went wrong?) Best to teach them tried-and-true spells like Expelliarmus and Stupefy and Protego.
 
> Betsy_Hp 
> > I will say, I don't recall Harry ever struggling with his own moral awareness.  *That's* what I was missing. 
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> But that's an adult thing, and Harry's status as an adult is deliberately ambiguous. It's pointed out that in real world Britain a seventeen year old  is legally a child -- an innocent. 
> 
>  JKR writes the story so that innocents who identify with Harry  can continue to do so, while adults can recognize that Harry couldn't  make the decisions he makes as an adult without knowing that moral failures are a part of being human and that everyone shares some responsibility for the existence of evil in the world. <snip>

Carol responds:
Good point. HP isn't an Aesop's fable in which the moral (if any) is openly stated. The books are open to interpretation, and different readers will identify different themes (or none) and arrive at different conclusions about the morality depicted in the books. If Harry arrived at the "right" conclusions himself, the readers would have no reason to think for themselves. Besides, Harry still has to be wrong about a few things, including the desire for revenge and just possibly the use of Unforgiveable Curses, even after he reaches seventeen so that he can finally grow up and make the right decisions regarding Hallows vs. Horcruxes, Snape, self-sacrifice, the Elder Wand and whatever else I may be forgetting near the end of the book. It's a Bildungsroman, among other things, and Harry can't grow up if he hasn't made mistakes as the result of his immaturity before he arrives at what some of the English Romantics would have labeled Wisdom. 

Pippin:

> Percy is made to admit he was a ministry-loving git, and what's the point? Fred, who thought it was so important to get that straight, is dead moments later. <snip>
> 
Carol:
You make their reconciliation and their moment of brotherly affection together, which to me is poignantly ironic, seem pointless. I think it *does* matter, if only to Percy, that Fred died having forgiven him and welcomed him back into the family. Percy's grief at watching his brother die laughing at *his* joke and being unable to save him is nothing compared with the grief and guilt he would have felt if he hadn't returned and been forgiven (it would be like Mrs. Weasley fearing that the Twins would die when her last words to them were scolding them for not destroying the WWWs in their pockets only worse).  And Fred died happy. It's ironic, certainly, but not pointless. At least, not to me.
 
Carol, now wondering exactly what cover story Dumbledore told the students about the "maniac" who taught DADA in fourth year