sistermagpie | The Screwtape Twins

I was just reading

narcissam's thread on When Character Hate Goes Bad and this side topic came up that seems like an interesting thing to get other people's opinions on.

It comes out of the common conversation about the twins' antics, beginning with:

Might they be people who go too far on the other side, a la Crouch, Sr.? Maybe, but they really aren't that serious about anything. Nor will they ever be consciously evil--they're careless and thoughtless, and have an occasionally cruel streak, but they aren't out trying to destroy things and hurt people.

And is followed up by another poster with:

I've seen the argument about F&G being as or more evil than Voldemort before, and I just turned away shaking my head. Thanks for spelling it out; and word on the rest of what you said too.

Now, frankly I'm not so sure the twins aren't that serious about anything--I think at times they are. I don't think they'd ever be consciously evil, but then...not many people are motivated by the urge to be consciously evil. I also in general always think it's silly to compare one character to another in general in this way--like by saying Fred and George are "more evil" than Voldemort, as if evil is something we can really measure that way, and being more or less evil than another person has any bearing on who you are. People can do damage all sorts of ways besides setting out to cause damage. But I'm not really thinking here on how Fred and George will ultimately be used in the series, though. I'm not sure how they will be. When Harry is revolted by his father and Sirius' treatment of Snape he says he had thought they were like Fred and George, indicated *he* sees a big difference between them, but that line could just as easily be signaling to us that they are alike in a negative way (perhaps Fred and George won't get the wake-up call James did, for instance).

The question I thought was interesting, though, was how much one's motivation would matter in this kind of situation, especially to the victim? In general I do think motivation is important--very much so. But you get into a sticky area with motivation when it comes to things like jokes, because what's the motivation, exactly? It's not really accurate to say the twins aren't intentionally hurting people because often they are intentionally hurting people, they're just dong it out of something other than personal malice. In the series, for instance, Fred and George have intentionally caused people to break out in boils, given somebody something to choke them, thrown hexes at them (in fact, twice from behind, I think), and caused one person long-term brain damage. They've also just made people feel silly, stuck a firecracker in a salamander, whacked a puffskein with a bat (iirc), and given somebody arachnophobia.

What I said on the other thread was this:

What does it mean to say they're not out to destroy things and hurt people? I mean, sometimes they are out to do hurt or destroy and even when they're not, if you were hurt by someone would you really feel better about it if they were just kidding around rather than intentionally trying to hurt you? Because I'm not sure I would. That might just add a layer of humiliation to it as well. It's a really awful feeling to have someone do something that hurts or humiliates you, or destroys something you care about, and then feel pressured to laugh at it because otherwise you don't have a sense of humor. At least with a mean bully you might get some sympathy. With the joker bully you have to hear how he's a great guy!

Like I said, I'm thinking of this more in real world terms, but Fred and George maybe make a good jumping off point, because it seems like sometimes people are dismissive of readers who have a truly negative reaction to them, thinking those readers just don't "get it" when in fact they maybe do get it and just can't help but identify with the person who's the butt of their pranks.

This subject probably wouldn't be complete without C.S.Lewis' thoughts on the subject, from The Screwtape Letters. Happily,

pharnabazus was nice enough to quote the exact passage today in another thread, so I can just cut and paste it:

"The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their "sense of humour" so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour"."

Pranks are often very important in stories where characters were at school together in just this way. Pranksters often wind up getting stalked and terrorized by victims of their funny jokes. Nero Wolfe dealt with the aftermath in "The League of Frightened Gentlemen." HP has already dealt with it with Sirius' Prank on Sirius. HP appears to have given us a prank with an even more serious result with Montague, but it's not really addressed.

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In addition to the mental anguish, I think the twins really *have* begun to cause damage beyond reasonable wizarding standards. Most injuries can be fixed in a matter of minutes; Harry's bones were regrown in less than a night, and McGonagall recovered from four stunners (near deadly, based on the reactions) in less than a week. Yet F&G shoved a classmate into a vanishing cabinet for no real reason (and not as a joke, either) and weeks later, he still had brain damage. Additionally, with the ton-tongue toffee, they essentially poisoned a Muggle as all the wizards were leaving the area -- it was entirely luck that Dudley happened to eat the candy before Arthur had left. Magical medicine can't do a whole lot to help someone when there are no wizards in the area, and as far as we know, the Ministry wasn't alerted (as w/Marge), so who knows how long it would have been for Dudley to get help. If they didn't realize this would be a problem, I have a hard time cutting them slack for it.

Yet F&G shoved a classmate into a vanishing cabinet for no real reason (and not as a joke, either) and weeks later, he still had brain damage.
He did? Man...I'm gona have to read OoTP again. As far as I remember he was only stuck in a toilet.

As for th TTT incident as much as I love Aurthur I can't help but place more blame on him for the incident that the twins. As their father he is well aware what they are capable of and ether should have made sure they did not bring anything dangerous with them (As Molly had apparently attempted.) or not let them go.
I think the main thing that keeps me from getting upset at anyone in the books is that ultimately they are not in control of their own actions. If anyone needs a good talking to about F&G behavior it JK her self ;)

HRH watch Montague's parents coming into the school because he's still "confused and disoriented," and apparently under Madame Pomfrey's care. As far as I can tell, this is three to four weeks *after* he was found stuck in the toilet.

To their rather strong discredit, HRH have a conversation in which they decide not to tell Madame Pomfrey what happened, even if it might help her cure him, and considering the possibility that he might never recover. The reasons for *not* telling her include, "Course not, he'll recover" (said indifferently), "More trouble for Umbridge," and "He shouldn't have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor." The books' pranksters certainly don't have a monopoly on casual cruelty among the "good guys." I agree that the Wizarding World's standards of cruelty are different (as argued in various points in this thread), but that hardly lets them off the hook.

I agree with your last comment, but then, where's the fun in that? I assure you, I get far nastier with fictional characters than real people. It's safer, for one thing. As for the TTT incident, Arthur should have that awareness and forethought, yes, but he doesn't (an entirely different set of flaws). Fred and George are 16, plenty old enough to be responsible for their own actions.

It's interesting...as I have been rereading OotP I've been making note of how pain in general is presented because it seems at times like "good" characters feel real pain while other characters don't. For instance, we've talked about how pain is less noticed in the WW, but boy, you certainly are made to feel the pain in Harry's hand after his detentions, aren't you? Hermione's even waiting with Murtlap--and later Harry wants to recommend it to Lee. McGonagall being hit with four stunners seems very violent and our pov characters seem frankly horrified by it, but elsewhere people can be hit with many more hexes at once and it's no big deal.

On the Hogwarts Express in particular.

Heh.

I'm not sure the ballots are all in on the Montegue incident. There is just something altogether too fishy about the extremely *convenient* timing of his reapearance, and the all-too convenient disorientation he is showing when he did return. I am going to be very closely watching for additional suggestions in the text of HBP that might contribute to this particular puzzle when it gets turned loose. And right at the moment I suspect there may be a 50% chance that i am going to find some, too.

(My reasoning on this matter can be found in the essay entitled The Pensieve Gambit over on Red Hen. Additional observations related to that essay can be found in Maline F's North Tower essay on Losing Control over at Mugglenet.com.

http://www.redhen-publications.com/Potterverse.html )

As to the Dudley Dursley incident. No one seems to point out that this is NOT the first time Dudley has been gratuitously attacked magically by wizards who didn't like him. The pig's tail that Hagrid gave him was never reported to the authorities (good thing for Hagrid!) and was removed surgically by a Muggle doctor.

I've discussed my issues with the pigtail incident at length in a variety of threads on Hagrid; as it's not intended a joke, it didn't seem quite relevant here. It's hardly surprising that the Dursleys hate magic and everything associated with it at this point, is it? Of course, their hatred goes much further back, but with all the parallels, it seems reasonable that Petunia was (at least) once the victim of some terribly funny prank by MWPP -- or Lily (teacups and frog spawn, anyone?). Insert standard disclaimer that this doesn't in any way excuse their treatment of Harry, blah blah blah, still horrible, blah blah, responsible for their own actions, too.

I hope to get a chance to read the essay later, but quickly, what on earth is convenient about his disorientation? Just the fact that it gets Snape out of the room? Because I have a hard time seeing that whole incident as a plot device, when there are dozens of less nasty possibilities.

My reading of the Occlumency business is that the whole Pensieve sequence was a set-up. Snape set it up to give himself a good reason to throw Harry out and not be expected to teach him.

He set up the possibility of that particular escape clause up from the beginning of the whole business, but so long as Harry was completely hopeless at it he didn't see any reason to push the issue. And besides, he was probably very happy to have the boy at his mercy.

But once he broke through Shape's shield -- and after rereading the scene where that happened with a bit more attention I am NOT convinced that it was *Harry* who broke through that shield -- then he had to go. Rowling burries us in minutia between that scene and the next Occlumency lesson, so that it isn't clear how much time passed between them, but I am beginning to suspect that it was indeed the very *next* lesson, and it was certainly the first one after Dumbledore was out of the way.

If I am right, then the memories in the Pensieve that evening were *not* the same ones that had been in it all the evenings before, and if Malfoy hadn't shown up so conveniently with the news of Montegue's reappearance, Snape would have found some other way of being called out of the room before the lesson got well underway.

But I am *really* suspicious about that oh-so-convenient reappearance. And I also suspect an Obliviate.

The Screwtape Twins

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