OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Porphyria, in response to my "Where are the Weaklings and Patsies?" query, wrote:

That's a good question, but I guess my reply would be, where do you draw the line between weak and unwilling?

That's an excellent question! There's certainly a continuum there, even in the real world. And as someone (Judy, I think it was?) pointed out some time ago, the entire question of personal volition is even more complicated for wizards in the Potterverse, where there are things like Imperius and Fidelius and the mental side-effects of Transfiguration to contend with.

And then there are also...well, genre conventions. In real life, for example, revealing secrets under torture is essentially a blameless act. Torture subverts personal volition—that's its purpose—so people can't really be held responsible for their behavior under its influence. Even members of certain branches of the military, who receive special training in resisting interrogation, are not really expected to hold up to it very well at all; those who do show a native facility with resistance (and yes, there are such people) are generally not considered so much "heroic" as they are seen to be possessed of an unusual and somewhat freakish talent.

In most types of genre fiction, on the other hand, virtuous people resist interrogation. They just do. It's a convention of the genre: Good Guys Don't Crack. So the question of personal volition is complicated even further in the world of HP by the extent to which the world might operate under the laws of genre convention, rather than those of real life.

This is an issue that touches directly on my question of a week or so ago, as to why Pettigrew might have chosen to go for that muggle-blasting-fake-my-own-death-and-frame-Sirius stunt, rather than simply claiming that the DEs had somehow figured out that he was the Potters' Secret Keeper and then wrested the secret from him by means of magical or physical coercion.

I argued that the latter plan seemed far more sensible to me, and it would have had the added bonus of placing him under Dumbldeore's protection in case the other DEs came after him for betraying Voldemort to his doom.

In response, Marina wrote:

Did he know that Volemort was down for the count? At the time, everyone pretty much thought that V was invincible, so Peter probably thought that the disappearance was just a temporary setback, and that V would be back any moment, kicking more butt. In which case worming his was back into the good guys' graces would've been a really bad move.

But...but...but...But he was a spy in the first place, wasn't he? He was a mole: he'd been passing on information from the inside. So surely 'in the good guys' graces' would be precisely where Voldemort would expect for him to be? I mean, that was a very important part of his job.

Really, worming his way back into the good guys' graces would seem like a no-lose strategy to me. If Voldie never returns, he gets pity and protection from the good guys, and if Voldie does return...well, he's just been carrying on doing his job like a loyal little DE. Win-win.

But (and this is the big "but") it's a strategy that only makes sense if one makes certain assumptions about how the Fidelius Charm works—and specifically, about what is meant by the phrase "chooses to divulge it." (It all depends on what "chooses" means.) What degree of volition is required for the SK's information to count as "freely" divulged? Could it be divulged under torture? Under Imperius? Under Veritaserum? How does the Fidelius Charm itself answer the question of at what point personal volition is negated by coercion?

This is a question that puzzles me because on the one hand, the only reason I can imagine for Pettigrew not utilizing the "they found out and came after me, and I just couldn't keep it from them" strategy would be that the information hidden by the Fidelius Charm can't be wrested from the secret keeper by force. If this is the case, then the fact that the others consider Pettigrew to be both magically weak and physically delicate is irrelevant: he still wouldn't be able to get away with claiming magical or physical coercion as a defense.

But on the other hand, if this is the case then I confess myself puzzled by the decision to try to bluff the enemy by switching secret-keepers in the first place. "They'd never suspect we'd use a weakling like Peter" would seem to imply that the Fidelius Charm is no proof against extreme forms of coercion, that the Secret Keeper can indeed be forced to reveal his secret through torture or Imperio or Veritaserum or whatever forms of magical mind-reading might exist.

In which case I'm left once more wondering why Pettigrew didn't choose the far wiser strategy of claiming that this was what had happened to him.

Cindy wrote:

I can only think of two reasons why Peter wouldn't try this. First, it could simply be that he is dedicated to the Dark Lord, as Sirius suggests in the Shrieking Shack. Peter was just biding his time, waiting for a chance to help his master, so being a rat for 12 years would probably provide a better vantage point than Azkaban.

But if the Fidelius Charm can be broken by torture or Imperius or Veritaserum or magical mind-reading or whatever else, then why on earth would he wind up in Azkaban? On what charges? Being Overpowered By a Bunch of DE Thugs? He could share a cell with the Longbottoms, perhaps?

Nope. That explanation just doesn't cut it. If Pettigrew had claimed coercion, then he would have been perceived as a victim (always a role he enjoys), not as a criminal, and he would have wound up far better positioned to wait for a chance to help his master than he did as a pet rat.

Once again, I'm left with the conclusion that the only reason that Pettigrew could possibly have chosen the strategy he did was that he knew full well that Sirius Black's "nasty temper"—or maniacally homicidal tendencies, depending on how you look at it—would have caused him to be blasted to smithereens on the street in spite of the fact that this would have been a monstrously unjust and indeed psychopathic response on Sirius' part.

So there.

<Elkins nods with supreme satisfaction, takes a long drag on her cigarette, and then blinks, frowning>

Although actually...

::long sigh::

Yeah, okay. Okay, Cindy. Fine. Never mind. I just realized. Sirius really would have been perfectly justified in blasting Pettigrew into a faint red mist had he tried out my strategy after the Potters' deaths, and you want to know why?

No, not because Pettigrew's a coward and a weakling, nor because Sirius would have thought that he ought to have been able to stand up to any degree of coercion, nor because the Secret Keeper's resolve can't be broken by magic or force. None of that.

No. No, Sirius would have been utterly justified in blasting Pettigrew on the street for the simple reason that Pettigrew is a terrible liar.

And no, I don't mean 'terrible' as in 'incorrigible.' I mean 'terrible' as in 'he's just no damn good at it.'

He never would have been able to pull off my strategy successfully because the man can't lie his way out of a paper bag. It would have been pathetically obvious that he was making it all up, and Sirius would have blasted him.

::exasperated sigh::

You know, I really do have very little patience with pathological liars who aren't even any good at it? God, I hate that. That just annoys the hell out of me. What's wrong with Peter, anyway?

It's just depressing. I really do find myself wanting to believe that Pettigrew was once a competent liar, and that maybe it was just all those years spent in rat form that dulled his edge or something, because otherwise I really do find myself wondering about Sirius and the Potters. They went an entire year without realizing who the spy really was? When it was Pettigrew? The worst liar in the entire Potterverse? The man whose tells are visible from a hundred yards away?

I mean, it just kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Back to Porphyria:

Peter sure seems to me to act more on fear than conviction; he seems really disgusted with what he's doing and living in constant fear that he'll be axed once his usefulness is over. Do we know the dark mark on his arm indicates that he's truly a willing DE, or is that just another thing he got browbeaten into?

"But they would have killed me if I hadn't agreed to enter into a binding magical compact with Voldemort and swear my undying loyalty to him! I was browbeaten into it! I didn't really want to!"

No. To my mind, that's willing. Weak, yes, to be sure, and if the browbeating was severe then rather sad as well, but come on! There are lines beyond which you just cannot venture while still claiming to be "unwilling." Once you're bearing the magically-binding token of your oath of eternal loyalty to the age's Great Dark Wizard, then I'd say that Checkpoint Charlie isn't even in your range of sight anymore: you've already gone miles past that line.

Then, much of this depends on how one interprets the status of the DEs and the nature of their compact with Voldemort. I don't really believe that there can be truly "unwilling" Death Eaters.

For one thing, the DEs would seem to be Voldemort's elite followers, not fellow-travellers. Whenever people talk about the dark days of V's original reign, the impression given is that he had a lot of supporters—people didn't know who to trust, they were fearful of talking to strange wizards, anyone could turn out to be the enemy, and so forth. But there are only thirty some-odd DEs in the graveyard scene. Even allowing for attrition due to imprisonment and death (not to mention cowardice and treachery), that number is just too small to represent all of Voldemort's original supporters. I'd say the DEs are an elite group.

Also, the Dark Mark would seem to represent a rather serious relationship: it's not exactly like bearing the Nike Swoosh on your ankle. It's not just a tattoo; it's a form of magical binding. It is intrinsically connected to Voldemort's state of being (it grows more visible as he approaches recorporation). It's linked to all of the other Dark Marks (Voldemort can use Peter's to activate all of them, and Snape claims that part of its original function was to serve as a means of identification and recognition between Death Eaters). Through it, Voldemort can summon his DEs to his side over great distance without giving them any explicit directions to his location. And when he's accusing them of infidelity in the graveyard, he reminds them that they once "swore eternal loyalty" to him.

That all sounds like serious ritual magic to me. While canon never actually makes it explicit, I think it's pretty strongly implied that the Dark Mark represents a compact, one that is both personal and binding, and one that really could not be entered into "involuntarily."

Also, Avery seems like a coward—maybe he's really evil but just hyper.

Oh, Porphyria! Surely you meant to say "he's not really evil, but just hyper," didn't you? I certainly hope so, because otherwise we may need to have words. You know how I feel about Avery. ;-)

So far it seems like only Lucius and Mrs. Lestrange stick with Voldemort because they feel they have a stake in what he's doing.

And I'm not altogether certain about Lucius. Yes, I'm sure that he and Voldemort do share certain agenda. But still. Lucius doesn't seem at all happy to see the Dark Lord back in action, and IMO there's more to that then simple fear of punishment. I definitely get the impression that there's a reason so few of the DEs went out looking for Voldemort the way the Lestranges did. I think that by the end there, he'd grown so completely mad and erratic and bwah-hah-hah villainish that all but the very nuttiest of his followers (Crouch, Lestranges...) were more than a little relieved to see him go.

Does anyone but me wonder if Rita Skeeter will wind up delivering information to Voldemort—wittingly or unwittingly? She's be a good candidate for some Imperius duty.

You think she really needs Imperius? Rita's on the make. I would think that she'd be so easy to manipulate by the usual means that there'd be no real need for mind-control.

Did JKR ever say something in an interview about trying to paint some characters in shades of gray, or depict degress of evil, or words to that effect?

Not that I recall. There was an interview in which she responded to the suggestion that GoF might have been a tad too dark for her audience with the response that she saw no point in writing about Evil unless one were willing to portray it as truly bad, which is where that "JKR has said that she wants to show Evil as bad" line that gets cited so often around here comes from. But I'm damned if I can remember the source—probably someone else will know.

I do remember that in its original context, it came across as a considerably less trite statement than it usually does when cited here. ("No! You mean to say that evil is...is bad? But surely you can't really mean that! Say it isn't SO!")

::rolls eyes::

"Evil is bad."

::snort::

Sheesh.

—Elkins