![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Harry Potter and the Moral Ambiguity of the Cruciatus Curse
So LJ imploded from a power loss. God knows when or if this entry will make it onto its gasping servers.
Reading DH has made me feel better about my crackfic. The themes and underpinning morality of Danse Macabre, for instance, are tame next to the idea of a venerated wizard grooming an 11-year-old boy for sacrifice under the auspices of friendship and guidance. Rebecca might have been morally ambiguous at best and wrong at worst when she dragged Lessing off for a little midnight justice, but she made no bones about her intentions. She looked Lessing in the eye and told him she was going to hurt him because she wanted to, and because it would feel good. No funny business about the greater good here.
A lot of HPers got itchy-drawered about Harry casting Unforgivables, but in truth, it was just another illustration that even the noblest and best people exist in shades of grey. At the beginning of the book, Harry is idealistic enough to refuse to use a Stunning Spell on Stan Shunpike because he's afraid Stan will tumble from his broom. Never mind that Stan is trying to abduct him.
It's Lupin-normally gentle, quiet Lupin, who tells him that he must learn to meet violence with equal violence, and though Harry, bless him, is initially repulsed, by book's end, he accepts this as true. Hence, his lack of compunction in using the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow in "The Lost Diadem."
Now, it can be rightfully argued that his choice to use Cruciatus was excessive, but by that point, Harry had slipped into the fight or die mentality so common in war, and frankly, Harry likely held up Amycus as a reflection of everything he despised about Voldemort and his Death Eaters. In essence, he was punishing the symbol as well as the man and, I suspect, internally redressing his inability to act on the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore was murdered. He was getting revenge under the umbrella protection of wartime violence.
It was wrong, yes, but the very fact that Harry suffered a moral lapse humanized him more than all the EMO ANGSTING ever could. He was a good enough human being to offer himself up for his friends and the Wizarding world, and yet he still succumbed to human weakness, to hatred for its own sake. It wasn't a permanent lapse, as was shown by his mundane choice of spell in the showdown with Voldemort. It was, quite simply, a beautiful grace note of moral ambiguity in a character who heretofore had been presented as The Boy Who Could Do No Wrong. It might well have been his final transition into adulthood.
Previously, Harry had believed that only bad people did bad things, and from OOTP onward, he'd learned that this was untrue. His sainted father could be a berk, and Dumbledore, that paragon of truth, often lied by omission. By DH and the Ministry, he understands that sometimes good people do the wrong things-sometimes for the right reasons, and sometimes just because they can. Xenophilius Lovegood is an example of the former; Harry zapping Amycus is one of the latter.
And let's face it: the latter was pretty damn satisfying, and I'd bet most of the folks chirping, "That was very wrong, very wrong, indeed, Harry," cheered before they readjusted their treasured Caps of Propriety. I know I did.
The fans howling about the OOCness of that act and the Message it sends missed the point of the series, IMO, which was to slowly reveal the moral ambiguity of human existence while preserving the ideas of goodness and justice and self-sacrifice. Harry might have been wearing the white hat, but that is not to say that there were not a few stains in the fabric.
The notions of moral ambiguity presented within the framework of DH will serve as a solid backdrop against which I can examine and play with the question of whether it is a moral failing to occasionally hate they whom you love the most, or if a coexistence of the two emotions is possible.
For instance, would it be possible for Rebecca to hate Flack for sending her away so he can fulfill his sworn duty, and yet love him and long for him at the same time? Is it possible to say, "I love you" in a scream and "I hate you" in a kiss?
Reading DH has made me feel better about my crackfic. The themes and underpinning morality of Danse Macabre, for instance, are tame next to the idea of a venerated wizard grooming an 11-year-old boy for sacrifice under the auspices of friendship and guidance. Rebecca might have been morally ambiguous at best and wrong at worst when she dragged Lessing off for a little midnight justice, but she made no bones about her intentions. She looked Lessing in the eye and told him she was going to hurt him because she wanted to, and because it would feel good. No funny business about the greater good here.
A lot of HPers got itchy-drawered about Harry casting Unforgivables, but in truth, it was just another illustration that even the noblest and best people exist in shades of grey. At the beginning of the book, Harry is idealistic enough to refuse to use a Stunning Spell on Stan Shunpike because he's afraid Stan will tumble from his broom. Never mind that Stan is trying to abduct him.
It's Lupin-normally gentle, quiet Lupin, who tells him that he must learn to meet violence with equal violence, and though Harry, bless him, is initially repulsed, by book's end, he accepts this as true. Hence, his lack of compunction in using the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow in "The Lost Diadem."
Now, it can be rightfully argued that his choice to use Cruciatus was excessive, but by that point, Harry had slipped into the fight or die mentality so common in war, and frankly, Harry likely held up Amycus as a reflection of everything he despised about Voldemort and his Death Eaters. In essence, he was punishing the symbol as well as the man and, I suspect, internally redressing his inability to act on the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore was murdered. He was getting revenge under the umbrella protection of wartime violence.
It was wrong, yes, but the very fact that Harry suffered a moral lapse humanized him more than all the EMO ANGSTING ever could. He was a good enough human being to offer himself up for his friends and the Wizarding world, and yet he still succumbed to human weakness, to hatred for its own sake. It wasn't a permanent lapse, as was shown by his mundane choice of spell in the showdown with Voldemort. It was, quite simply, a beautiful grace note of moral ambiguity in a character who heretofore had been presented as The Boy Who Could Do No Wrong. It might well have been his final transition into adulthood.
Previously, Harry had believed that only bad people did bad things, and from OOTP onward, he'd learned that this was untrue. His sainted father could be a berk, and Dumbledore, that paragon of truth, often lied by omission. By DH and the Ministry, he understands that sometimes good people do the wrong things-sometimes for the right reasons, and sometimes just because they can. Xenophilius Lovegood is an example of the former; Harry zapping Amycus is one of the latter.
And let's face it: the latter was pretty damn satisfying, and I'd bet most of the folks chirping, "That was very wrong, very wrong, indeed, Harry," cheered before they readjusted their treasured Caps of Propriety. I know I did.
The fans howling about the OOCness of that act and the Message it sends missed the point of the series, IMO, which was to slowly reveal the moral ambiguity of human existence while preserving the ideas of goodness and justice and self-sacrifice. Harry might have been wearing the white hat, but that is not to say that there were not a few stains in the fabric.
The notions of moral ambiguity presented within the framework of DH will serve as a solid backdrop against which I can examine and play with the question of whether it is a moral failing to occasionally hate they whom you love the most, or if a coexistence of the two emotions is possible.
For instance, would it be possible for Rebecca to hate Flack for sending her away so he can fulfill his sworn duty, and yet love him and long for him at the same time? Is it possible to say, "I love you" in a scream and "I hate you" in a kiss?