Goblet of Fire, Chapter 9: Playing the Blame Game
It’s a sign of the times that I blindly assumed I’d have internet access during my recent trip to New Orleans. I was staying in a Sheraton, for goodness sake! But my Macbook had a fundamental issue with connected to the wireless that was supposedly in my room. So I gave up and went out to explore New Orleans instead and I can report that: 1) Bourbon Street is crazy, 2) New Orleans has some of the best food I’ve ever tasted, and 3) Sheraton lobbies smell funny.
Now I’m back, ready for some more Goblet of Fire re-reading awesomeness.
If you look closely, you can find Jack Sparrow!
When last we spoke about GoF, the trio and assorted Weasleys were enjoying the Quidditch World Cup and Amos Diggory was being a jerkface (that’s a technical term). That brings us to Chapter 9: The Dark Mark, where we get the distinct impression that the Ministry is going to do everything in its power to give the impression everything is happy and safe in wizardland, even if that means lying through their teeth.
The Dark Mark appears above the Quidditch campsite and several muggles are tortured by rebel-rousing Death Eaters, and who do Barty Crouch and Amos Diggory try to blame? Three fourth years and a house elf.
First of all, if ever there were three wizards who had absolutely and utterly no reason to send up the Dark Mark, it would be Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Ron is related to multiple Ministry employees, Hermione is muggle-born, and oh yeah, Harry’s parents were killed by Voldy. That leaves Winky, a house elf so loyal, she faces her fear of heights to sit in Barty Crouch’s box seat at the World Cup, not to mention she couldn’t possibly have the skill or know-how to cast such a difficult spell.
What seems more likely to you: three kids with absolutely no motivation sent up the Dark Mark, or the spell was cast by a house elf with no capability to do so?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Denial: it’s not just a river in Egypt.
You have to love how incompetent everyone at the Ministry seems to be – at least everyone in positions of great power. As Ron would put it, the Ministry is just a “load of duffers”.
I think all of this just goes to show JKR’s opinion of political leaders xD But more seriously, I think that the Ministry kind of has a point in all of this. I mean, yeah it’s not exactly ideal to lie to your country, but if it prevents the entire society from dissolving into absolute chaos? Ehhh…yeah that’s not SUCH a horrible idea. I think they might have had good intentions, or else were just trying to repress their worries that Voldemort really was coming back. Either that or they really are just idiots.
Well, it is basically what our government here in Britain did during World War One, spreading propaganda and covering up disastrous episodes of military incompetence so young men would keep signing up and everyone would hae faith in the government. It almost worked.
Let’s be honest, it’s what EVERY government does. (today’s dose of pessimism brought to you by “Politics”)
Good point. It would be interesting (though I’m not doing it, because it would also be incredibly time consuming) to go through the entire series and pick out the British historical influences. It’s easy to look at it from an American perspective, but it’s not an American series (though we seem to be in denial over here about that).
There’s an interesting essay by George orwell talking about kids stories from 1940′s England here:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys
Some of the bits he quotes from the magazines sound very similar to the whole Hogwarts atmosphere.
In my experience, bureaucracies are not brilliant decision-makers. And that’s all the MoM is, a big, bloated bureaucracy. With really cool headquarters, I’ll grant you. But yeah, as an entity, a load of duffers.
Still, how does that make sense, if you have to have the highest NEWTs to work for them? Does every brilliant student settle into comfortable apathy once they’ve got their government position? Hmm, I think Lauren’s comment about JKR’s feelings may be pretty spot-on!
What is even more incredible is that on the first read-through, I actually didn’t suspect that either Amos Diggory or Barty Crouch, Sr. either had ulterior motives or were complete fools.
I never really liked Barty, but I gave Amos the benefit of the doubt. NOT ANY MORE!
Occupy the Ministry!
Haha! Could you imagine?
completely unrelated, but I have to share this (if you haven’t seen it already!) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4BLVznuWnU