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(continued from part four)
Five
"My mother saved me."
"Crouch had been serving the forces of evil his entire life," Elkins states, from up high on her pale hobby horse. "He really was Ever So Evil, you know."
Eileen says nothing for a long time. She rearranges the little paper cups on her CRAB CUSTARD table, casts a despairing look over to the long line which has ow formed at Cindy's Rookwood thong booth, and then ducks down beneath her folding table. After a few moments of rummaging around through a small cardboard box down there, she straightens, red magic marker in one hand. She clambers up onto the table and reaching up, adds a phrase to the CRAB CUSTARD banner hanging above her display.
"C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D," the banner now reads. "So exciting it'll make your eyes bulge! More Dark Sexiness than even Augustus Rookwood! Try some today!"
She hops down, somewhat out of breath, and glares at Elkins.
"I'm beginning to see why you liked Brutus so much," she says. "The other Brutus, I mean. Brutus Jr. The one with a taste for parricide. And for stabbing. This is...this is just a character assassination!"
"Character assassination?" Elkins thinks about this for a moment, then smiles. "Character assassination," she repeats. "Heh. Oh. Oh, Eileen. I am only getting started. I did tell you that I hadn't even begun to touch on Mr. Crouch's iniquities, didn't I? Trust me. I have only just begun." Her lips draw back in a snarl. "I have not yet made my peace with Mr. Crouch."
"Yes," says Eileen, in a tight little voice. "Well. We all know what your bias is, don't we. But I can't believe that you actually just...just thematically hedgehogged poor Barty Crouch Sr. Have you no pity, Elkins?"
Elkins tilts her head to one side and peers down at Eileen over the tops of her spectacles.
"You told me that you wanted me to attack Crouch Sr." she reminds her. "You said that you liked nothing better. You claimed that you found it exciting. You explained that you were suckled on controversy. And you insisted that you really did want to hear me out on this subject."
"I really did say that all of that," Eileen agrees glumly. "Didn't I."
"Yes. You did."
"Can I take it back?" Eileen asks, without much hope.
"No. But if you like, we can take a short breather from Crouch's iniquities. A little break, perhaps, Eileen? A little pause?" Elkins grins wolfishly. "How about we talk about Mrs. Crouch for a while instead?"
"Mrs. Crouch?" Eileen scowls. "Oh, I don't like that Mrs. Crouch. I don't like her at all."
"I know that you don't. Would you care to explain why?"
"Well, I think my problem is that she put unbearable pressure on her husband to do something that was totally wrong. I can't forgive her that. Crouch Sr. made all his other horrible mistakes of his own volition, but she forced him into that one."
"Did she really?"
"Yes! He couldn't refuse her last request. Because he was a man of honour, Elkins. Just like you've said yourself, even if you are trying to recant that now. Wizards take last requests very seriously. The text establishes that through Harry's last actions in the graveyard. It shows us there that good people, decent people, do not deny last requests. And people with True Wizarding Pride certainly don't. They honour them. No matter what."
"Hmmmm." Elkins thinks about this. "You know, you may have a point there?"
"Of course I have a point there! Mrs. Crouch left her husband no choice. And that's precisely why I dislike her so. Let's just say that I don't like dying characters who impose last commands on their loved ones."
"No," agrees Elkins. "That really isn't fair play, is it? Ugly coercive behavior, that. Mrs. Crouch really does seem to have been a nasty passive-aggressive piece of goods. Especially if it's true that the wizarding world holds the honoring of last requests as an important part of its ethos. That would make it very coercive behavior indeed, wouldn't it? Why, it would be almost as bad as placing disobedient family members under the Imperius Curse! Or casting over-enthusiastic memory charms on your subordinates!"
"Or keeping the man that you're impersonating under the Imperius Curse and locked half-freezing in a trunk while you interrogate him for seven months?" demands Eileen angrily. "Or torturing two people into a state of irrevocable insanity?"
"Well," says Elkins, laughing. "Quite a bit less severe than that, I'd say. But similarly coercive, yes. Seems to have run in the family, doesn't it? Definitely unacceptable behavior. Although I have to say that I do find it rather more sympathetic for someone to engage in that sort of behavior in order to save a human life than I do for someone to engage in it just to protect himself from exposure as a law-breaker. Or to gratify his lust for dominion by seeking to bend his rebellious son to his will. Or to facilitate the return of Voldemort, for that matter," she adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Well, I still don't like Mrs. Crouch," Eileen says stubbornly. "She used unfair tactics to force her husband into doing something that he really didn't want to do...in the name of love. It sickens me somehow, even if she was brave to die in Azkaban like that, and did sacrifice herself for her son."
"Even if she was brave to die in Azkaban like that," Elkins repeats slowly. "And did sacrifice herself for her son." She smiles and shakes her head.
"What?"
"Coercive behavior," says Elkins. "Unbearable pressure. Something that no one with Proper Wizarding Pride could ever refuse. Not ever. Not under any circumstances. No matter what. She left him no choice. She forced his hand. She made him do it." She sighs. "Eileen," she says. "You don't really believe that story, do you?"
"What?"
"The 'last favor' story. Do you really believe it?"
"Man, these Rookwood thongs really move," announces Cindy, returning to the CRAB CUSTARD table with a smug smile on her face and a considerable quantity of galleons jingling in her pockets. She lowers herself into one of the wooden benches lining the promenade and puts her feet up. "I'm completely out. What is Elkins saying now?"
"She's trying to claim that Barty Crouch didn't really save his son from prison to honour his wife's dying request," Eileen tells her. "So typical. Elkins just doesn't want to give poor Barty a pass on a single one of his fatal errors, is what I'm thinking."
"Well, really, Eileen," says Elkins. "Have you ever paused to consider the source of that story?"
"Its source? You mean the canon?"
"No, I mean its source within the canon. Where does this idea that Crouch only saved his son to honor his wife's dying request come from in the first place? Where does it originate? How do we know that it really happened that way?"
"Well, we know it because..." Eileen begins, then stops. "Oh," she says. "Oh."
"Yes?"
Eileen closes her eyes. "We know it," she says slowly. "Because his son says so."
"Yes," says Elkins. "We know it because his son says so."
She reaches into her satchel, pulls out her own copy of _GoF,_ opens it to the right page, and begins to read:
'My mother saved me. She knew she was dying. She persuaded my father to rescue me as a last favor to her. He loved her as he had never loved me. He agreed.'
She slams the book shut.
"That," she says. "Is our only evidence for this notion that Crouch saved his son's life only because his wife put unbearable psychological pressure on him to convince him to do so. That's it. All of it. How much credence do we give it?"
"Well," says Cindy thoughtfully. "Crouch Jr. did say it under the influence of the veritaserum. And Winky was right there when he said it, too, and she didn't contradict him."
"Crouch Jr. also implies that his father never really loved him under the influence of the veritaserum," Elkins points out. "And Winky doesn't contradict him when he says that, either. Yet we don't generally believe him when he says that, do we?"
"Oh, but look," objects Eileen. "These two statements aren't really at all the same thing. Whether or not Crouch really loved his son is a matter of opinion. But that he saved his son because his wife made it her dying request is a statement of fact."
"Is it?" Elkins thinks about this for a moment. "But how would young Crouch have known it?" she asks.
"What?"
"How would he have known it? How could young Crouch possibly have known anything about the precise nature of his parents' deliberations over whether or not to save him from Azkaban? It's not as if he was privy to those conversations. He was in prison at the time. Dying. Really, anything that Crouch Jr. says about his father's reasons for saving his life has to be one of two things, doesn't it? Either it's hearsay, something that someone told him directly, or it's extrapolation from hearsay. Speculation. Deduction."
"I guess so," says Eileen dubiously. "But—"
"And honestly, it seems far more likely to be the latter to me. After all, who would have told him such a thing? Who told him that his father was only persuaded to agree to a plan to save him from prison as a last favor to his dying mother? Can you imagine his father telling him that? 'Just so you know, boy, I would have happily left you to rot in Azkaban, if only your sainted mother hadn't forced my hand with that blasted dying request of hers.' I really can't see that. Can you?"
"Well..."
"And I certainly can't imagine Winky telling him such a thing. Not unless we're willing to propose an Ever So Evil Winky, one who wants to make sure that young Crouch keeps on hating his father just as much as he possibly can."
"That Ever So Evil Winky just keeps looking better and better," mutters Cindy.
"I know," agrees Elkins. "It's just awful, isn't it? But unless we want to accept either ESE Winky or a rather stunningly brutal elder Crouch, I think that we're left with extrapolation. Extrapolation, speculation, deduction. None of which is precisely immune from bias."
"Yes, we've noticed that," says Eileen, with a pointed look at Elkins' hobby horse.
"Are you saying that Crouch Jr. was deluded?" demands Cindy.
"Deluded?" Elkins considers the question. She toys absently with her horse's mane, then looks down and begins plaiting it carefully into small tight braids. "I think," she says slowly, "that it has got to be very easy to play Good Parent/Bad Parent when one of your parents isn't even around to piss you off anymore, while the other one is holding you prisoner by means of an Unforgivable Curse. I think," she says, "that it has got to be even easier to play that game when one of your parents died in your place in Azkaban, while the other one first publicly denounced you and then, while you were screaming and struggling and pleading for mercy while being dragged off by the dementors, exhorted you at the top of his lungs to go and rot there. I think," says Elkins. "That it is appallingly easy to idolize and to romanticize a dead parent under any circumstances. But when that parent actually died in your stead?"
Elkins shakes her head. "I don't think that Crouch Jr. had to be deluded to believe what he believed," she says. "I just think that he had to be human. We already know that he thought that his father didn't love him very much. We already know that he loved his mother."
"I'm not sure if Crouch Jr. ever really loved anyone," says Eileen.
"No?" Elkins raises an eyebrow. "Well, if you don't want to ascribe to him even enough humanity to assume that he loved his mother, you still must concede that he was highly emotionally dependent on her. Sirius heard him screaming out for her in his cell in Azkaban, and there was no one he could have been hoping to manipulate by doing that. There was no one around to hear him. No one who could have helped him, at any rate. No one who cared. I doubt that he was trying to manipulate the dementors by doing that. So I think that we have to accept that there, at least, he was not acting. That was genuine. That was for real."
Eileen thinks about this for a moment, then exhales irritably. "Oh, I just hate your Crouch Jr. apologetics, Elkins," she complains. "You know, now I'm feeling sorry for the evil little brat?"
"As well you should," Elkins tells her, smiling slightly. "As well you should. Have you ever wondered how they broke the news to him, by the way?"
"The news?"
"Of his mother's death. He was dying when his father carted him out of Azkaban. That was the only reason that his parents were allowed to visit him in the first place: it was a death bed visit. Sirius saw him leaving while disguised as his mother, and he says that Crouch was 'half-carrying' him out of there. I very much doubt that he was in any condition to understand what was going on. He was probably only vaguely aware of what was happening at the time. So who explained it to him? How do you explain to a very sick young man who has just been nursed back from the very brink of death that his mother has died in his place in Azkaban, and that his father never claimed her body but instead left her there to be buried on the prison grounds by dementors?"
"I very much doubt that he cared about that," says Eileen coldly.
"No? Oh, I really wouldn't be so sure about that. There's something else that we might deduce from Cedric's last request in the graveyard, you know. We might deduce from it that proper burial is important to wizards. We learn about the disposition of Mrs. Crouch's body three times over the course of this novel. Really, she gets a lot more to do as a corpse than she does as a human being. Sirius tells us about her burial, and then Crouch Jr. mentions it not just once in the course of his interrogation, but twice. He tells Dumbledore that his mother was buried at Azkaban, bearing his appearance and his identity, and then later on, he specifies that her grave is empty. It's utterly redundant information, that. It's not necessary plot exposition for the reader, and it isn't information that Crouch Jr. needs to provide in order to satisfy the strictures of his interrogation either. It isn't directly responsive to Dumbledore's question. He's already explained that his mother was buried at Azkaban. He's already explained that his father 'staged' her funeral. Really, the fact her grave is a cenotaph is sort of a no-brainer, isn't it? It's the default assumption. It goes without saying. Yet he doesn't allow it to go without saying. Instead, he says it. Why?"
"Because he has to," says Cindy. "He's under the influence of the veritaserum, and..."
But Elkins is shaking her head slowly back and forth.
"It doesn't seem to work that way," she says. "No matter what Harry might have feared when Snape threatened him with the veritaserum, it doesn't seem to make people babble at random. Crouch Jr's testimony isn't incoherent. He really doesn't digress all that much in the veritaserum scene at all. Just about everything that he says is either directly responsive to a question he's been asked, or it is plot exposition for the reader's benefit. When he does volunteer extraneous information, it speaks to his character, to his motivations. When he does digress, it is always on a topic that has some strong emotional resonance for him."
Elkins pulls a thin red ribbon out of one pocket and begins threading it into one of the braids of her horse's mane.
"Haven't you ever wondered," she asks, "why Crouch Jr. went to all the trouble to turn his father's body into a bone and then bury it in Hagrid's garden, rather than just, say, transfiguring it to dust? Young Crouch's sense of justice was twisted. It was bent. It was warped utterly out of proportion. But there wasn't anything stunted about it. If anything, it was overdeveloped. Overdeveloped, and very badly broken. I'd say that he cared a great deal about what became of his mother's body. I think that he cared enormously about that."
"I think that he was just a twisted little psycho," Cindy says.
"Well." Elkins shrugs. "The two are hardly mutually exclusive. But all right. Let's leave aside the question of how Crouch Jr. might have felt about his father leaving his mother to be buried on prison grounds by Dark creatures under the identity of a notorious and publicly loathed convicted criminal. Let's get back on topic. Somebody had to tell young Crouch about his mother's death. Either Winky did it, or his father did. And I just keep thinking...well, how would you go about explaining something like that to a very sick teenager? Especially if he hadn't yet started shooting his mouth off about wanting to run off to restore his fallen master to power? If you didn't know yet that he was Ever So Evil? If you thought that he might actually be repentent, or at least redeemable? Seriously. How would you?"
"Well," says Eileen slowly. "I guess that all depends. Am I Winky, or am I Barty Crouch Sr.?"
"An excellent question. I'm sure that Winky would have tried to soften the blow a whole lot more. But whoever it was, I imagine that they would have emphasized the following factors."
Elkins holds up her hand and begins ticking them off on her fingers.
"Your mother really wanted to do this for you," she says. "She did it willingly. It was her idea. She absolutely insisted upon it. It was the very last thing that she wanted to do on this earth..."
"All of which was true," says Cindy.
"All of which was certainly true. But all of which, taken together, still doesn't quite add up to the story that Crouch Jr. implies: that his father had been dead-set against the idea, that his ailing mother had forced his father's hand, that she had only prevailed on her husband to relent by placing upon him the unbearable onus of a last request. It doesn't quite add up that way. But I can certainly see how if I had been Crouch Jr, then I might have come up with just that as my final answer when I sat down to do the math. Especially given what we see elsewhere of his rationalizations when it comes to his father."
"His rationalizations?" repeats Cindy, frowning.
"Yes. Have you ever taken a really close look at Crouch Jr's own account of his rescue from Azkaban? It's actually quite interesting. Look."
Elkins reaches down into her satchel of Crouch Jr. Apologetics. After a bit of rummaging, she pulls out a rather thick binder, with the words "Sympathy For The Devil: Veritaserum, A Close Reading" written across the top.
"This is young Crouch's own account of his rescue from Azkaban," she says. "With Winky's interjections and the intrusions of the narrative voice left out. It's all part of his response to the first question that Dumbledore puts to him formally: 'How did you escape from Azkaban?' Listen." She opens the binder to a marked page and begins to read:
'They came to visit me. They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my mother's hairs. She took a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my hairs. We took on each other's appearance....The dementors are blind. They sensed one healthy, one dying person entering Azkaban. They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving it. My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors....My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban. She was careful to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end. She was buried under my name and bearing my appearance. Everyone believed her to be me.'
Elkins closes the binder.
"That's Crouch Jr's own account of how he was rescued from Azkaban," she says. "Do you notice anything unusual about it?"
"His father," Eileen whispers. "Where's his poor father? His father is barely even there."
"No. He really isn't, is he? Crouch Jr. doesn't even make his father the subject of his sentences when he can avoid it. He denies his father even the grammatical role of active agent. The subject of his sentences is almost always either 'my mother' or the ever-so-evasive 'they.' 'They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my mother's hairs.' Yes? Well, who did? Who actually handed him the potion to drink? What do you think, Eileen?"
"His father," says Eileen. "His father did."
Elkins nods. "If he can really remember that event at all," she says. "If he's not just going by what he was told about it later, then I'd be willing to bet that it was his father who handed it to him. If it had been his mother, then he would have said so. He can't actually lie under the veritaserum, though, so instead he uses that evasive parental plural. There is only one place in his entire account of his rescue from prison where Crouch Jr. allows his father to be the subject of the sentence. 'My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors.' He doesn't deny his father the role of active agent in that sentence, but he does smear him with that rather dubious verb. 'Smuggled.' It's as if he wants to taint his father's involvement as much as possible, to imbue it with criminal associations. His mother is the one who 'saved' him. His father just 'smuggled' him.
"And have you ever paused to consider what the very first sentence of Crouch Jr's confession is? The very first thing that he says under interrogation?"
"'Yes,'" says Cindy.
Elkins waits.
"No," explains Cindy. "I mean, that's the first thing that he says under interrogation. Dumbledore asks him if he can hear him. And he answers: 'Yes.'"
"Oh, for..." Elkins closes her eyes. "Work with me here, can't you? After that! The first thing that he says after that!"
"Oh, sorry," says Cindy innocently. "I guess I misunderstood."
Eileen giggles.
Elkins glares at both of them. "Dumbledore asks him," she says through gritted teeth. "How he came to be there. How he escaped from Azkaban. And the very first thing that he says, his very first sentence in response is: 'My mother saved me.' Don't you find that telling? If his affect weren't so deadened, one might even be tempted to call it defensive. How did you come to be here? 'My mother saved me.' His entire opening paragraph, in fact:
'My mother saved me. She knew she was dying. She persuaded my father to rescue me as a last favor to her. He loved her as he had never loved me. He agreed.'
"It all seems very much of a piece to me. Those concepts all go together: my mother was the one who saved me, my mother pressured my father into rescuing me, my father never really loved me. They are a conceptual whole. Taken together, they form a coherent emotional argument."
"A coherent emotional argument?"
"Yes. And what that argument says is: 'I didn't owe my father a damned thing.'"
Eileen nods slowly. "I've never believed Barty Jr. when he says that his father didn't love him," she says. "It seems to me like the sort of thing any immature teenager might say."
"Yes. Well, that whole dying request story strikes me in very much the same way, honestly. It seems like exactly the sort of spin that an adolescent in young Crouch's position would have put on what he had very likely been told about his mother's death. It's very romantic. It's very dramatic. It casts his mother as an absolute saint, and his father as a bit of an ogre. And it does something else as well. Something very important."
"It absolves him from gratitude," says Cindy.
"Yep. That's precisely what it does. Especially if we assume that wizards really do take last requests very seriously. If last requests can't be refused, then what does young Crouch really owe to his father for saving his life, anyway? Nothing, that's what. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. He owes it all to his mother. Who, conveniently enough, is dead and therefore in no position to place any demands on him."
"Convenient, that."
"Oh, it's very convenient. Particularly when you consider one last thing." Elkins takes a deep breath. "By the time that he is speaking under the veritaserum," she says. "Crouch Jr. has become a parricide. And while we're only guessing that wizards might have a strong belief in last requests, and while we're only guessing that they might have strong feelings about proper burial, there is something that we know that they believe in."
She waits.
"We know that they believe in life debts," says Eileen.
"Yes. We know that they believe in life debts. Awkward things, life debts."
"Don't children owe their parents a life debt as a matter of simple default?" asks Cindy.
"Awkward things," Elkins says again. "Life debts."
This time, with narrative feeling.
She sighs and presses the heels of her palms hard against her eyes.
"Crouch Jr. implies that his father only saved him because his mother prevailed upon him to do so," she says. "He says it under veritaserum, which means that it must be his truth. But his truth is not necessarily the same thing as his father's truth. And I can think of far too many reasons why it would have been his truth. And far too few ways that he could possibly have known it for sure.
"I'm somewhat reminded, in fact," she adds, "of that painting that you linked to, Eileen." She removes her hands from her eyes and glances over to Eileen. "In your Crouch as Tragic Hero post? The URL that Porphyria sent you? The one that you proposed as the Crouch family portrait?"
Eileen nods. "Jacques-Louis David," she says. "The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons."
"Yes, that's the one. Brutus' wife is featured in that painting, isn't she? She's there with her two daughters, on the right hand side, the very brightest part of the canvas. She's bathed in light. The viewer's eye is naturally drawn to her first; it just can't help but be. But she's not really the subject of the painting at all, is she? The subject of the painting is really her husband. Who is harder to see. Slower to catch the attention of the viewer. Obscured in the shadows.
"But Brutus is the real subject of that painting," concludes Elkins. "Not his wife. I don't think that saving his son from Azkaban was only Crouch's wife's error. I think that it was also his own. I think that in the end, Crouch saved his son because he wanted to."
*******************
Elkins
(who prefers The Death of Marat)
***************************************************
REFERENCES:
"This time, with narrative feeling"
In some branches of reader response criticism, 'narrative feeling' is the term used to describe those emotional reactions to the text which derive from the reader's engagement with the text's narrative, or story-telling, elements. The most common example is a reader's sense of personal identification with a fictional character.
This post is continued from part four. It is mainly a response to messages 45402 ("Crouch Sr as Tragic Hero") and 45693 ("Crouch and Winky"), but also cites or references messages 43326, 43447, 44636, 46923, and 46935.
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on December 7, 2002 6:44 PM
1 comment (link leads to main site)
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