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Recent comments on racism in the Harry Potter world (wizards vs. muggles racism, that is), have gotten me thinking about one of my pet issues with Rowling’s work.
While I freely admit to being a lazy writer myself, I want the things I read to be complex and well-thought-out, and the history geek in me finds the Death Eaters a little unconvincing. Not because they’re sadistic and bigoted and trying to overthrow the ministry in favor of a crazed despot (sadly, that sort of thing has been known to actually happen), but because I’m never quite sure why they hate muggles or what’s in it for them.
Though the flashes of Tom Riddle and Snape’s backstories given in HBP demonstrate that there are economically disadvantaged and/or lower class Slytherins, the majority of the Death Eaters we see are wealthy men and women from the Wizarding equivalent of noble bloodlines. The sort of “good old boys” network that is generally more interested in preserving the status quo than in overturning it. Lucius Malfoy and his ilk already have social, political, and economic power, which makes their devotion to Voldemort’s goals curious. Why do the Malfoys, for example, want to help a madman take over the world when they’re already one of the families running it?
Granted, some of the Death Eaters are probably just sadists or practitioners of the Dark Arts who want a free rein to indulge their appetites, but they can’t all be Just Plain Evil for Evil’s Sake. Some of them have to have reasons beyond “mwahaha, tormenting muggles is fun.”
Rowling’s Death Eaters seem for the most part to be motivated by racial prejudice (with Voldemort as Hitler-analogue, wishing to subjugate muggles and raise wizards to the status of “master race”), but though it makes a certain sense to have wizards feel that they are superior to muggles (they, after, have magic, while muggles don’t), there doesn’t seem to be any solid explanation for why this sense of superiority has become angry, vengeful hatred. We know why Voldemort hates muggles, but we are never really given any evidence to show why a group of wizards who have practically no contact with them share his feelings.
I’m assuming from certain context markers—the KKK-like hoods worn by the Death eaters in the GOF movie, the lynch-mob-like “muggle-baiting,” the frequent references to miscegenation (ex: Draco calling Hermione “mudblood”), the decidedly British-Imperialist-vs.-Racially-Inferior-Native way that even the “good” wizards seem to view muggles (as quaint, helpless creatures who must be kept ignorant of all things magic for their own good)—that Voldemort and his followers are supposed to call to mind Krystallnacht and the Nuremburg Rallies and South African Apartheid and the KKK burning crosses in people’s lawns and George Wallace barring the door of the University of Alabama to keep the first black students from entering ("segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"), but the social and economic context just isn’t there (or, if it is, nobody ever mentions it to Harry).
I can’t speak for South Africa, never having studied it, but both Nazi Germany and the Post-Reconstruction South saw themselves as societies under threat, both from without and from within. Hitler’s propaganda machine convinced an impoverished and devastated German people that they had been deprived of their rightful place as masters of Europe, and that all of their problems (losing WWI, the shambles their economy was in, etc.) could be blamed on the Jews, who were alien and non-German and therefore could never be anything but a threat to the state, no matter how well they assimilated. The American South’s entire economy was based upon the exploitation of black laborers (and continued to be even after slavery was ended), and the continued existence of southern society and culture depended upon keeping blacks “in their place” (i.e. in the cotton fields). Racial equality meant the end of everything.
And, prior to the war, white planters had lived in terror of slave revolts (“My God, look what they did in Haiti!”), since, deep down, everybody knew that a handful of white overseers didn’t stand a chance if all of those hundreds of slaves with nothing to lose decided to rise up together and take over the plantation. The fact that it never happened didn’t keep the fear from being very real.
But the Death Eaters don’t seem to have any reason to fear muggles. Readers can choose to view the wizarding world as a society in hiding, keeping themselves separate from muggles out of fear of what those hoards of magic-less people will do if they ever discover them, but we’re never shown any real evidence of fear in the books. Wizards keep themselves hidden, but no one ever mentions any consequences of discovery beyond the risk of scaring or confusing muggles. At one point, Harry even writes an essay on how witch burnings were “completely ineffective.”
The fear of miscegenation and the thinning out of wizard bloodlines is brought up, the idea that halfbloods and especially muggleborns are somehow contaminated and lesser, but again, where is the broader evidence of that fear? Where are the tabloid news stories about muggles abusing their witch wives (oh, those brutal muggles—see why mixed marriages never work out? They’re simply Not Our Kind)? The depictions of muggle society as crime ridden and violent because, really, they just don’t know any better? The wizarding plays and novels where muggleborn characters are inevitably depicted as stereotyped villains (well, there is Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, but...)? Where are the laments that muggle culture is diluting and replacing the old wizarding traditions? The pseudoscientific articles claiming that the children of muggle/wizard marriages are more likely to be squibs?
I know it’s unrealistic of me to expect that kind of detail in a children’s book, especially since it’s from the perspective of a teenage boy who doesn’t notice things that don’t directly affect him, but I guess I’m spoiled by series like X-men, where the small population of people with special powers are the targets of hatred and fear from everybody else, and actually have a convincing motivation to lash out in retaliation. Or, y’know, I’m a self-centered American who wants to se my own cultural history referenced (Come on, wouldn’t the Death Eaters be way more sympathetic and this creepier if they were fighting for a Glorious Cause and saw themselves as heroes? Men of honor nobly defending their wimminfolk from them savage mudbloods?).
So, anyway, what is the Death Eater’s motivation, beyond sadism? It’s not economic, as wizards and muggles seem to have virtually no day-to-day contact. There doesn’t seem to be any great crisis in wizarding history that muggles are being blamed for. The Death Eaters aren’t a poorly educated working class seeking a scapegoat to take out their dissatisfaction on. If they’re a group of old-guard aristocrats gradually being displaced by a rising middle-class of newer wizarding families that have more ties to the muggle world, I’d like a bit more evidence of it. Thoughts?
While I freely admit to being a lazy writer myself, I want the things I read to be complex and well-thought-out, and the history geek in me finds the Death Eaters a little unconvincing. Not because they’re sadistic and bigoted and trying to overthrow the ministry in favor of a crazed despot (sadly, that sort of thing has been known to actually happen), but because I’m never quite sure why they hate muggles or what’s in it for them.
Though the flashes of Tom Riddle and Snape’s backstories given in HBP demonstrate that there are economically disadvantaged and/or lower class Slytherins, the majority of the Death Eaters we see are wealthy men and women from the Wizarding equivalent of noble bloodlines. The sort of “good old boys” network that is generally more interested in preserving the status quo than in overturning it. Lucius Malfoy and his ilk already have social, political, and economic power, which makes their devotion to Voldemort’s goals curious. Why do the Malfoys, for example, want to help a madman take over the world when they’re already one of the families running it?
Granted, some of the Death Eaters are probably just sadists or practitioners of the Dark Arts who want a free rein to indulge their appetites, but they can’t all be Just Plain Evil for Evil’s Sake. Some of them have to have reasons beyond “mwahaha, tormenting muggles is fun.”
Rowling’s Death Eaters seem for the most part to be motivated by racial prejudice (with Voldemort as Hitler-analogue, wishing to subjugate muggles and raise wizards to the status of “master race”), but though it makes a certain sense to have wizards feel that they are superior to muggles (they, after, have magic, while muggles don’t), there doesn’t seem to be any solid explanation for why this sense of superiority has become angry, vengeful hatred. We know why Voldemort hates muggles, but we are never really given any evidence to show why a group of wizards who have practically no contact with them share his feelings.
I’m assuming from certain context markers—the KKK-like hoods worn by the Death eaters in the GOF movie, the lynch-mob-like “muggle-baiting,” the frequent references to miscegenation (ex: Draco calling Hermione “mudblood”), the decidedly British-Imperialist-vs.-Racially-Inferior-Native way that even the “good” wizards seem to view muggles (as quaint, helpless creatures who must be kept ignorant of all things magic for their own good)—that Voldemort and his followers are supposed to call to mind Krystallnacht and the Nuremburg Rallies and South African Apartheid and the KKK burning crosses in people’s lawns and George Wallace barring the door of the University of Alabama to keep the first black students from entering ("segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"), but the social and economic context just isn’t there (or, if it is, nobody ever mentions it to Harry).
I can’t speak for South Africa, never having studied it, but both Nazi Germany and the Post-Reconstruction South saw themselves as societies under threat, both from without and from within. Hitler’s propaganda machine convinced an impoverished and devastated German people that they had been deprived of their rightful place as masters of Europe, and that all of their problems (losing WWI, the shambles their economy was in, etc.) could be blamed on the Jews, who were alien and non-German and therefore could never be anything but a threat to the state, no matter how well they assimilated. The American South’s entire economy was based upon the exploitation of black laborers (and continued to be even after slavery was ended), and the continued existence of southern society and culture depended upon keeping blacks “in their place” (i.e. in the cotton fields). Racial equality meant the end of everything.
And, prior to the war, white planters had lived in terror of slave revolts (“My God, look what they did in Haiti!”), since, deep down, everybody knew that a handful of white overseers didn’t stand a chance if all of those hundreds of slaves with nothing to lose decided to rise up together and take over the plantation. The fact that it never happened didn’t keep the fear from being very real.
But the Death Eaters don’t seem to have any reason to fear muggles. Readers can choose to view the wizarding world as a society in hiding, keeping themselves separate from muggles out of fear of what those hoards of magic-less people will do if they ever discover them, but we’re never shown any real evidence of fear in the books. Wizards keep themselves hidden, but no one ever mentions any consequences of discovery beyond the risk of scaring or confusing muggles. At one point, Harry even writes an essay on how witch burnings were “completely ineffective.”
The fear of miscegenation and the thinning out of wizard bloodlines is brought up, the idea that halfbloods and especially muggleborns are somehow contaminated and lesser, but again, where is the broader evidence of that fear? Where are the tabloid news stories about muggles abusing their witch wives (oh, those brutal muggles—see why mixed marriages never work out? They’re simply Not Our Kind)? The depictions of muggle society as crime ridden and violent because, really, they just don’t know any better? The wizarding plays and novels where muggleborn characters are inevitably depicted as stereotyped villains (well, there is Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, but...)? Where are the laments that muggle culture is diluting and replacing the old wizarding traditions? The pseudoscientific articles claiming that the children of muggle/wizard marriages are more likely to be squibs?
I know it’s unrealistic of me to expect that kind of detail in a children’s book, especially since it’s from the perspective of a teenage boy who doesn’t notice things that don’t directly affect him, but I guess I’m spoiled by series like X-men, where the small population of people with special powers are the targets of hatred and fear from everybody else, and actually have a convincing motivation to lash out in retaliation. Or, y’know, I’m a self-centered American who wants to se my own cultural history referenced (Come on, wouldn’t the Death Eaters be way more sympathetic and this creepier if they were fighting for a Glorious Cause and saw themselves as heroes? Men of honor nobly defending their wimminfolk from them savage mudbloods?).
So, anyway, what is the Death Eater’s motivation, beyond sadism? It’s not economic, as wizards and muggles seem to have virtually no day-to-day contact. There doesn’t seem to be any great crisis in wizarding history that muggles are being blamed for. The Death Eaters aren’t a poorly educated working class seeking a scapegoat to take out their dissatisfaction on. If they’re a group of old-guard aristocrats gradually being displaced by a rising middle-class of newer wizarding families that have more ties to the muggle world, I’d like a bit more evidence of it. Thoughts?
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The wizarding world only makes sense to me, in many ways, in terms of small-group dynamics.
And see? Totally Death Eaters. q-: