Regarding Sirius Black
Mar. 9th, 2004 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpf"A man's got to be given a chance to turn himself around. Problem is... how do you get a man to look at himself? Especially a man who's lived like an island, like he's the only man on Earth, for so long?"
(Carla Speed McNeil: Finder pt.1: Sin-Eater)
Welcome to NiSAP.
We are the Non-idealising Sirius Apologist Party. We think Sirius Black (of Harry Potter fame, or infamy, depending on your position towards the books, I suppose) needs defending both from his fans and from his detractors. He needs defending from his fans because, more often than not, they idealise him beyond recognition. He needs defending from his detractors because they exaggerate his flaws and fail to see extenuating circumstances. Unfortunately we have only one member, so we will stop using the plural now.
- What the heck are you smoking, Hmpf?
Nothing. I'm just suffering from severe sleep deprivation, and a lot of stress. Who are you and what are you doing in my LJ?
- I'm you. I'm just using the second person to express your idea of potential reader's concerns.
Oh great. More pronoun confusion. Well, let's get on with this, then.
Sirius Black. Asshole, near-psychopath, or Count of Monte Christo of the wizarding world?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ballyharnon yesterday posted a very astute analysis here. One of the points she made was that Sirius is fascinating as a character, but would be someone she'd hate to meet in Real Life. Bally's analysis is pretty spot-on, and she's entitled to disliking-Sirius-as-a-person-while-finding-him-fascinating-as-a-character, of course – especially since she writes a wonderful Sirius. *g* However, I still think Sirius deserves a little bit more credit than he gets there.
So, what can we say against Sirius?
He is arrogant and cruel. Yes, but not indiscriminately so. We have no evidence of him being horrible on a regular basis to anyone but Snape and Kreecher (or whatever his name was), really. They may not deserve it (although we still do not really know what happened between Snape and Sirius – I'm not saying that Sirius' behaviour was *right*, but it may have been a bit better motivated than we know so far), but at least Sirius concentrates his nastiness on one person (well, or two) instead of being nasty to everybody. Not that that makes it *okay*, mind you – but it shows that he is not really, well, indiscriminately a jerk, you know.
He's reckless. Oh yes, definitely – to the point of plain stupidity. I can't argue with that. (And this is where I would put the so-called 'Prank' – I do not really believe it was a premeditated murder attempt; not that I believe Sirius incapable of that, but I think that if he had really intended to get Snape killed, he would'nt have used Remus as the murder weapon.) It's reckless stupidity that got him killed, as well.
He is self-centered. This one is hard to debate, because we really do not know much about him in relation to other people other than the Marauders and Snape before Azkaban. I think it's safe to assume that if his behaviour in the Snape pensieve scene was truly representative of his entire younger years, he would not have become a member of the Order. He must have been capable of better behaviour and 'nobler' feelings. So, I prefer to think that he wasn't always as incapable of 'seeing' other people as he is now. If he was, it's hard to see how he could make friends at all.
Lastly, he fails to see Harry as Harry and desperately wants to see him as James, to the point of endangering Harry by suggesting James-like behaviour to him. Well, he's spent twelve years under the most awful conditions obsessing about James's death – what would you expect him to feel when suddenly being confronted with the spitting image of his friend? I do believe that he cares about Harry, and I do not think that he consciously tries to model Harry on James. It's an unconscious reaction he can't help. I think that if he had had a chance to spend more time with Harry, under better conditions, he would probably, after a while, have corrected his image of him.
So, yes, Sirius is a jerk pretty often. However, blaming him for being a jerk in volumes 3 through 5 (and he's more of a jerk in #5 than in the previous ones, really – and for fairly understandable reasons) is a bit like blaming an autist for being bad with people. He's had a frelling horrible life, and he's nowhere *near* a normal mental state.
We don't know what growing up in the Black family was like, but I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a very loving environment. I'd be willing to bet he was pretty messed up already when he came to Hogwarts. People who aren't messed up usually don't turn into bullies. That does not absolve him, of course, but it makes him understandable, to a degree. Maybe he got straightened out a bit under the influence of Dumbledore and co, eventually, maybe not.
Anyway, he was apparently thought 'good' enough for the Order – I'd say that goes a long way to indicate that he probably had a few positive character traits besides all the awful ones, even as a young man. One of them was certainly loyalty to those he loved. Also, he chose the 'right' side in the conflict, something that his brother who presumably had a pretty similar background, didn't. That means that even if he has catastrophic lapses of reason, he does, theoretically, have a pretty good idea of 'good' and 'evil'. What he's not so good with is realising that there are infinite nuances in that spectrum.
We don't know what the years immediately after school did to him; what we do know is that pretty soon, he lost his best friend through the betrayal of one of his other two 'best' friends. And then, of course, Azkaban 'happened'. And that's one Hell of a thing, in quite a literal sense, to happen to anybody. Especially to someone who was probably far from done growing up.
But, but, but, you say, he was a total jerk as a boy, already! Yes, I say, he was. Many people are horrible in their teens. Again, that does not absolve him – I was a mobbing victim in school, so my sympathies are firmly with Snape in all the Marauders incidents. However, very often, bullies do grow up into nice people. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt until they're grown up. Don't ask me why or how, but many people who were absolutely horrible to me in school grew up into nice, responsible adults. Some even apologised. Very few people are ever completely lost, I think. And certainly being a bully at school does not make you a psychopath. Not even being a bully who almost accidentally murdered a class mate does that. Some kids do terrible things in school, but grow out of it. Sirius might have grown out of it, eventually. Maybe he even did, to some degree, we don't really know.
But he got sent to Azkaban, and Azkaban is not an environment that is conducive to healthy psychological development. Azkaban pretty much froze him in a late-adolescent state, psychologically. The thing he hung onto, the only thing he *could* hang onto, was his hatred and thirst for revenge. Which is, I suppose, psychologically sound, in a way, because in a situation like Azkaban you would need something pretty solid to ground you, so as not to go mad completely. (Of course, you go mad anyway, but maybe a little less. Or maybe you just stay a bit more functional.) This is of course only speculation, as a situation like Azkaban is not really comparable with anything in this world. In that respect, I guess, it's a lot like trying to understand what Frodo went through bearing the Ring. Or John, having to deal with Harvey. Frodo has his love for the Shire to sustain him (and is broken anyway), and John anchors himself with his love for Aeryn and his wormhole obsession (and is very nearly broken. Or maybe *is* broken. Haven't quite made my mind up on that, yet.) Unfortunately, Sirius doesn't have any positive emotion that is stronger than his hatred of Peter. Which is the nature of Azkaban, really – even if he had, say, love that was strong enough, or any other positive emotion, it would be drained away by the Dementors. (Ugh. Azkaban is a truly nasty concept. It's emotional sadism times ten. JKR scares me a bit. Well, actually, she scares me a lot. *g*)
So, anyway, Sirius has to focus on this one strong emotion to sustain himself, and his mind structures itself accordingly, to the point where it becomes impossible for him to see anything in a more differentiated way. Compassion, understanding for other people, other viewpoints, all the 'softer' feelings become luxuries he can't afford (if he ever had them to any noticeable degree at all. As I said, he wasn't done growing up, and some of those only come with age to some people.) Again, I think that is actually not a psychologically 'sick' way of reacting, at all. It's normal human behaviour under extreme duress. In situations of existential threat, stopping to care about anything and anyone else is a survival trait. It is, maybe, even more normal for a man who is also a dog – extreme duress can reduce us to a very basic state; how much easier would it be to reduce a man who already has a 'doggish side' to that? A dog has no use for ambiguity. It has two categories to understand the world – friend, and foe. Well, three categories, I guess, if you include packmate, which is a more extreme form of friend. It either likes you – and if you're a packmate it will love you unconditionally and protect you - or it hates you. If it hates you, it growls; if you annoy – or frighten - it too much, it bites.
I think that Sirius is, despite the Shrieking Shack Incident, despite his continued hatred of Snape, basically, a Good Person. (Or maybe more appropriately, a Good Dog. *g*) A good person with an extremely bad temper; reckless, shortsighted, and stubborn. Tragically unable to see other viewpoints. None of these characteristics, annoying as they are, make him a bad person. Flawed, yes, but not bad. And, to me, they don't even make him unlikeable. He is very much a tragic character in the traditional sense. Compelled by his own idiosyncratic system of beliefs to act in highly idiosyncratic ways that will seem stupid to most everyone else. Most truly tragic characters have that ability to make you want to scream at them 'But why are you behaving so stupidly, you idiot?!' most of the time. Ever read a classic tragedy? Don't, if you're easily annoyed. *g*
I would probably be scared to meet him in RL. I wouldn't know what to *do* with him, how to treat him. He is so messed up, I would feel like walking on eggs around him. But I don't think I would hate or dislike him. I would, maybe, have disliked him if I had met him in his younger years, because having a terrible childhood does not really give you the right to go around bullying people. However, as an adult, I would pity him, because he never got a chance to go beyond all that shit. I think I would have a lot of pity for a real Sirius Black. I certainly have a lot of pity for him as a fictitious character.
And, well, maybe I'm in denial, but I don't think – in a psychological sense, that is – that he was completely lost. Oh, I do believe he's dead/gone, and I don't really want him brought back. But I believe that, had he lived, he might, just *might* have changed. Healed. Looked at himself, to quote Jaeger from 'Finder', and recognised what he had become... It would probably have taken a long time – significant psychological change for the better always does - but I really don't think that he was beyond, err, redemption. Or whatever you want to call it. We only got to see him shell shocked, pretty much. But people do recover from that, sometimes.
I think what I really like about reading and writing angst fic is not so much the angst itself but the idea that you can work through it. Come out the other side, alive and... well, maybe not well, but at least *better*. I think there's something of myself in there. I was never traumatized as badly as most of my 'heroes', but I did have to struggle, and I came out the other side, alive and... better. And I know that the 'scars' don't really go away, but you get better at living with them. And now I come off sounding all melodramatic when really I had a pretty average childhood. I mean, who in fandom wasn't mobbed in school? It wasn't as terrible as I just made it sound. But it doesn't really *have* to be very terrible to mess you up. Kids are messed up easily. Being mobbed for only a few years can make you believe you're a terrible person, deep down, for a long time. - Or maybe growing up simply is traumatic to everyone. Either way, that feeling of realising that, yeah, you *are* pretty messed up, but it's still better to just *deal* with it than simply to give up, that is something that is pretty central for me. And I hate that Sirius never got the chance to get to the point where he could even *start* to deal with 'it'. And I guess that's why I'm now writing an AU - 'cause, even if it's only in a fic, I want to give him that chance. Mind you, don't expect a happy ending from me – that's not the way my mind works. But I'd like to end on a tentative note of hope that there may be healing.
BTW: nice, appropriate quote above, isn't it? Although Jaeger is speaking about a *real* psychopath there – Brigham Grosvenor has a real history of years of terrorising his wife and three kids that goes way beyond anything Sirius ever did – and he shows every sign of doing it again, when confronted with his family after a few years in prison. I'd argue that Brigham probably *is* beyond saving.
Go read 'Finder', everybody. Loads of fascinatingly cracked and semi-cracked characters.
(Carla Speed McNeil: Finder pt.1: Sin-Eater)
Welcome to NiSAP.
We are the Non-idealising Sirius Apologist Party. We think Sirius Black (of Harry Potter fame, or infamy, depending on your position towards the books, I suppose) needs defending both from his fans and from his detractors. He needs defending from his fans because, more often than not, they idealise him beyond recognition. He needs defending from his detractors because they exaggerate his flaws and fail to see extenuating circumstances. Unfortunately we have only one member, so we will stop using the plural now.
- What the heck are you smoking, Hmpf?
Nothing. I'm just suffering from severe sleep deprivation, and a lot of stress. Who are you and what are you doing in my LJ?
- I'm you. I'm just using the second person to express your idea of potential reader's concerns.
Oh great. More pronoun confusion. Well, let's get on with this, then.
Sirius Black. Asshole, near-psychopath, or Count of Monte Christo of the wizarding world?
ballyharnon yesterday posted a very astute analysis here. One of the points she made was that Sirius is fascinating as a character, but would be someone she'd hate to meet in Real Life. Bally's analysis is pretty spot-on, and she's entitled to disliking-Sirius-as-a-person-while-finding-him-fascinating-as-a-character, of course – especially since she writes a wonderful Sirius. *g* However, I still think Sirius deserves a little bit more credit than he gets there.So, what can we say against Sirius?
He is arrogant and cruel. Yes, but not indiscriminately so. We have no evidence of him being horrible on a regular basis to anyone but Snape and Kreecher (or whatever his name was), really. They may not deserve it (although we still do not really know what happened between Snape and Sirius – I'm not saying that Sirius' behaviour was *right*, but it may have been a bit better motivated than we know so far), but at least Sirius concentrates his nastiness on one person (well, or two) instead of being nasty to everybody. Not that that makes it *okay*, mind you – but it shows that he is not really, well, indiscriminately a jerk, you know.
He's reckless. Oh yes, definitely – to the point of plain stupidity. I can't argue with that. (And this is where I would put the so-called 'Prank' – I do not really believe it was a premeditated murder attempt; not that I believe Sirius incapable of that, but I think that if he had really intended to get Snape killed, he would'nt have used Remus as the murder weapon.) It's reckless stupidity that got him killed, as well.
He is self-centered. This one is hard to debate, because we really do not know much about him in relation to other people other than the Marauders and Snape before Azkaban. I think it's safe to assume that if his behaviour in the Snape pensieve scene was truly representative of his entire younger years, he would not have become a member of the Order. He must have been capable of better behaviour and 'nobler' feelings. So, I prefer to think that he wasn't always as incapable of 'seeing' other people as he is now. If he was, it's hard to see how he could make friends at all.
Lastly, he fails to see Harry as Harry and desperately wants to see him as James, to the point of endangering Harry by suggesting James-like behaviour to him. Well, he's spent twelve years under the most awful conditions obsessing about James's death – what would you expect him to feel when suddenly being confronted with the spitting image of his friend? I do believe that he cares about Harry, and I do not think that he consciously tries to model Harry on James. It's an unconscious reaction he can't help. I think that if he had had a chance to spend more time with Harry, under better conditions, he would probably, after a while, have corrected his image of him.
So, yes, Sirius is a jerk pretty often. However, blaming him for being a jerk in volumes 3 through 5 (and he's more of a jerk in #5 than in the previous ones, really – and for fairly understandable reasons) is a bit like blaming an autist for being bad with people. He's had a frelling horrible life, and he's nowhere *near* a normal mental state.
We don't know what growing up in the Black family was like, but I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a very loving environment. I'd be willing to bet he was pretty messed up already when he came to Hogwarts. People who aren't messed up usually don't turn into bullies. That does not absolve him, of course, but it makes him understandable, to a degree. Maybe he got straightened out a bit under the influence of Dumbledore and co, eventually, maybe not.
Anyway, he was apparently thought 'good' enough for the Order – I'd say that goes a long way to indicate that he probably had a few positive character traits besides all the awful ones, even as a young man. One of them was certainly loyalty to those he loved. Also, he chose the 'right' side in the conflict, something that his brother who presumably had a pretty similar background, didn't. That means that even if he has catastrophic lapses of reason, he does, theoretically, have a pretty good idea of 'good' and 'evil'. What he's not so good with is realising that there are infinite nuances in that spectrum.
We don't know what the years immediately after school did to him; what we do know is that pretty soon, he lost his best friend through the betrayal of one of his other two 'best' friends. And then, of course, Azkaban 'happened'. And that's one Hell of a thing, in quite a literal sense, to happen to anybody. Especially to someone who was probably far from done growing up.
But, but, but, you say, he was a total jerk as a boy, already! Yes, I say, he was. Many people are horrible in their teens. Again, that does not absolve him – I was a mobbing victim in school, so my sympathies are firmly with Snape in all the Marauders incidents. However, very often, bullies do grow up into nice people. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt until they're grown up. Don't ask me why or how, but many people who were absolutely horrible to me in school grew up into nice, responsible adults. Some even apologised. Very few people are ever completely lost, I think. And certainly being a bully at school does not make you a psychopath. Not even being a bully who almost accidentally murdered a class mate does that. Some kids do terrible things in school, but grow out of it. Sirius might have grown out of it, eventually. Maybe he even did, to some degree, we don't really know.
But he got sent to Azkaban, and Azkaban is not an environment that is conducive to healthy psychological development. Azkaban pretty much froze him in a late-adolescent state, psychologically. The thing he hung onto, the only thing he *could* hang onto, was his hatred and thirst for revenge. Which is, I suppose, psychologically sound, in a way, because in a situation like Azkaban you would need something pretty solid to ground you, so as not to go mad completely. (Of course, you go mad anyway, but maybe a little less. Or maybe you just stay a bit more functional.) This is of course only speculation, as a situation like Azkaban is not really comparable with anything in this world. In that respect, I guess, it's a lot like trying to understand what Frodo went through bearing the Ring. Or John, having to deal with Harvey. Frodo has his love for the Shire to sustain him (and is broken anyway), and John anchors himself with his love for Aeryn and his wormhole obsession (and is very nearly broken. Or maybe *is* broken. Haven't quite made my mind up on that, yet.) Unfortunately, Sirius doesn't have any positive emotion that is stronger than his hatred of Peter. Which is the nature of Azkaban, really – even if he had, say, love that was strong enough, or any other positive emotion, it would be drained away by the Dementors. (Ugh. Azkaban is a truly nasty concept. It's emotional sadism times ten. JKR scares me a bit. Well, actually, she scares me a lot. *g*)
So, anyway, Sirius has to focus on this one strong emotion to sustain himself, and his mind structures itself accordingly, to the point where it becomes impossible for him to see anything in a more differentiated way. Compassion, understanding for other people, other viewpoints, all the 'softer' feelings become luxuries he can't afford (if he ever had them to any noticeable degree at all. As I said, he wasn't done growing up, and some of those only come with age to some people.) Again, I think that is actually not a psychologically 'sick' way of reacting, at all. It's normal human behaviour under extreme duress. In situations of existential threat, stopping to care about anything and anyone else is a survival trait. It is, maybe, even more normal for a man who is also a dog – extreme duress can reduce us to a very basic state; how much easier would it be to reduce a man who already has a 'doggish side' to that? A dog has no use for ambiguity. It has two categories to understand the world – friend, and foe. Well, three categories, I guess, if you include packmate, which is a more extreme form of friend. It either likes you – and if you're a packmate it will love you unconditionally and protect you - or it hates you. If it hates you, it growls; if you annoy – or frighten - it too much, it bites.
I think that Sirius is, despite the Shrieking Shack Incident, despite his continued hatred of Snape, basically, a Good Person. (Or maybe more appropriately, a Good Dog. *g*) A good person with an extremely bad temper; reckless, shortsighted, and stubborn. Tragically unable to see other viewpoints. None of these characteristics, annoying as they are, make him a bad person. Flawed, yes, but not bad. And, to me, they don't even make him unlikeable. He is very much a tragic character in the traditional sense. Compelled by his own idiosyncratic system of beliefs to act in highly idiosyncratic ways that will seem stupid to most everyone else. Most truly tragic characters have that ability to make you want to scream at them 'But why are you behaving so stupidly, you idiot?!' most of the time. Ever read a classic tragedy? Don't, if you're easily annoyed. *g*
I would probably be scared to meet him in RL. I wouldn't know what to *do* with him, how to treat him. He is so messed up, I would feel like walking on eggs around him. But I don't think I would hate or dislike him. I would, maybe, have disliked him if I had met him in his younger years, because having a terrible childhood does not really give you the right to go around bullying people. However, as an adult, I would pity him, because he never got a chance to go beyond all that shit. I think I would have a lot of pity for a real Sirius Black. I certainly have a lot of pity for him as a fictitious character.
And, well, maybe I'm in denial, but I don't think – in a psychological sense, that is – that he was completely lost. Oh, I do believe he's dead/gone, and I don't really want him brought back. But I believe that, had he lived, he might, just *might* have changed. Healed. Looked at himself, to quote Jaeger from 'Finder', and recognised what he had become... It would probably have taken a long time – significant psychological change for the better always does - but I really don't think that he was beyond, err, redemption. Or whatever you want to call it. We only got to see him shell shocked, pretty much. But people do recover from that, sometimes.
I think what I really like about reading and writing angst fic is not so much the angst itself but the idea that you can work through it. Come out the other side, alive and... well, maybe not well, but at least *better*. I think there's something of myself in there. I was never traumatized as badly as most of my 'heroes', but I did have to struggle, and I came out the other side, alive and... better. And I know that the 'scars' don't really go away, but you get better at living with them. And now I come off sounding all melodramatic when really I had a pretty average childhood. I mean, who in fandom wasn't mobbed in school? It wasn't as terrible as I just made it sound. But it doesn't really *have* to be very terrible to mess you up. Kids are messed up easily. Being mobbed for only a few years can make you believe you're a terrible person, deep down, for a long time. - Or maybe growing up simply is traumatic to everyone. Either way, that feeling of realising that, yeah, you *are* pretty messed up, but it's still better to just *deal* with it than simply to give up, that is something that is pretty central for me. And I hate that Sirius never got the chance to get to the point where he could even *start* to deal with 'it'. And I guess that's why I'm now writing an AU - 'cause, even if it's only in a fic, I want to give him that chance. Mind you, don't expect a happy ending from me – that's not the way my mind works. But I'd like to end on a tentative note of hope that there may be healing.
BTW: nice, appropriate quote above, isn't it? Although Jaeger is speaking about a *real* psychopath there – Brigham Grosvenor has a real history of years of terrorising his wife and three kids that goes way beyond anything Sirius ever did – and he shows every sign of doing it again, when confronted with his family after a few years in prison. I'd argue that Brigham probably *is* beyond saving.
Go read 'Finder', everybody. Loads of fascinatingly cracked and semi-cracked characters.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Finder
Date: 2004-03-13 06:37 am (UTC)Re: Finder
Date: 2004-03-13 09:27 am (UTC)Sure! We can exchange our comic newbie squees of discovery! ;-)
Hey... I've read all of Finder now - well, all but the latest, running story arc because I want to wait for the trade paperback of that, which I hope will be out sometime later this year - and I can now speak about the whole series (before, my raves were based only on about half of it)... And it's frelling great. I'll probably do a detailed post about it once my self-imposed radio silence is over. (Technically, I shouldn't be posting this, but it would have been a bit impolite not to reply to your friending question, methinks!)