Justify our maraudering ideals…

Jul 31, 2008

Posted by: VoodooPadfoot - {WBM}

Uncategorized

Just stepping into the average Harry potter forum and finding a thread about the Marauders is all the proof you need that we have got extremley firm sterotypes over these for men even though we don’t know an exceptional lot about them. I know this might sound pedantic, but I really think that we obtained our stereotypes from unconfirmed sources, at first.

We started putting these predjudices out there back after Prisoner of Azkaban, the first time we ever really found out anything about this quartet of pranksters. But to be honest, we didn’t find out a great deal about their personality and yet to arrow down the predjudices into catorgries we had

James – Cocky, good at everything and a leader.
Sirius – Extrmeley Handsome (knows it), reckless and is a bit of a player.
Remus – Quiet, tries to stay out of trouble and is a worrier.
Peter – The ultimate idea of a sidekick, whiney and follows the others around beacause they’re popular.

Well that was an incredibly crass way of putting it, but you get the idea.
Now what I’m trying to work out is; Are these predjudices deserved? Or are they created and amplified through fanfiction, forums and what not? Now lets go through this in stages;

James “Prongs” Potter. We actually didn’t have many sterotypes for James untill the fifth book in Snape’s Worst Memory. However, if you listened to what Severus has had to say about Harry’s father throughout the whole series then you will find that there is indeed a lot of basis for predjudice. But is this justified?
In “Prisoner of Azkaban” we have Snape telling Harry that his Father was, “exceedingly arrogant … Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers.” Although many didn’t believe Severus at this point, because the whole story is told from Harry’s point of view, we decided to blow this of as more of Snape’s jelousy. However, at this point the rest of the Harry Potter fandom, who were more inclined to trust Snape (myself included), started to build up ideas about James that we never had before.
In his case I believe that they are to a certain extent, justified. They were justified at numerous occasions during “Order of the Phoenix”, by Lily, Severus, Remus and even Sirius. So in Prongs’s case I don’t think we’re all being sucked into an un-grounded predjudice. There is some truth in it, even if he did “deflate his head a bit” by his adulthood.

Sirius “Padfoot” Black. Well where do we begin? I think, this is a case of out old predjudices being created on nothing and then J.K. herself confirming them in later books or interviews. We started off, after Prisoner of Azkaban, invisioning him as this very handsome, reckles, young man who’s life was changed because of a terrible mistake but also because of his extreme Gryffindor attitude. He did something which really defined him on the day of his best friends’ death, not many people would decide to go and hunt down Peter without a second glance. This shows his recklessness and ideals of loyalty. When it comes to the fact that he’s handsome, we seem to have decided that he was a bit of a (to use the politically correct term) player. But to be honest, we’ve never really got any proof of him in this sense, he may have been a complete gentleman for all we know. OK, I’ll grant you the bikini clad muggle girl posters in his room in the Deathly Hallows, but how many people belived this before the seventh installment came out?… be honest!
So, what is the conclusion for Padfoot? Personally I feel that we have had these predjudice’s justified to a certain extent by J.K. herself, to do with his reckless behaviour and daring attitude. But when it comes to his “player” side, I think that we are being somewhat unfair to dear old Sirius, due to the fact that there are no actual accounts of this through any of the books or Jo herself!

Remus “Moony” Lupin. Well where do I begin? The thing is, although he himself claims to have been a little too scared to impose authority onto Sirius and James, Sirius claims that Moony had made them feel bad about themselves every now and again. But what does this do for our sterotypes? I think we’ve got the quiet, worried side down to a tee, but I’ve always seen a flaw here because he couldn’t have been to desperate to stay out of trouble otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed his friends to become Animagi to help him. I think he is one to seriously value friendship, a very loyal man, but would this loyalty go far enough to make him into a bit of a trouble maker? He always seems like the type of person who is independent of the group but at the same time really loves his friends. I think that he’s potentially an extremley good troublemaker, but he lets the others do most of the troublemaking and he’d come up with the ideas… and yet that my friend is an ungrounded assumption! We, in truth, have no proof of any form of trouble making he ever did, but we can suspect that he must of done some (being part of that group).

Where does this leave us? I feel that Remus and his assumptions are pretty much correct. In all cases he seems to be pretty firmly incased in these predjudices, not only as a Marauder, but in his adult life he is seen as a classic worrier. He was so worried for Tonks that he denied his feelings towards her for a whole year because he felt that he was too dangerous. He’s definatley not as reckless as Sirius but he’s always been loyal to his friends. So I think we’re correct in our assumptions when it comes to our favourite werewolf!

And finally, Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew. I have never seen a shred of evidence to see that can contradict our assumptions for this man! I am sorry if I am talking in a biased manner for this paragraph but it is really that i feel this strongly against this man. He was always the one to stick with “the biggest bully in the playground.” He isn’t loyal, clever or strong willed. I often question why he was put in Gryffindor but it always comes back to the fact that he is not shrewd, witty or loyal either; So really, I think the hat had a hard time Sorting him at all! But actually,for Wormtail (unlike the others) we had a lot of our assumptions formed after his school years. So perhaps at the age of eleven he had potential to be a very daring, chivalrous Gryffindor, but somthing turned him.

So my very short conclusion for the slippery Marauder, YES! Our assumptions are 100% justified, he had never shown us any form of redemption untill his last last moment or life. He was really only out to save his own skin but I feel that in that last moment he noticed what he’d done throughout his life, his gripped slackened and he was killed by his own mistakes.

Well isn’t that a delightful way to end a blog?! I hope that this was informative and entertaing (to some extent) and I hope you will comment on your own ideas of the Marauders, perhaps you’ve often had different assumptions for each of them, or perhaps I’ve just justified some of the ones you already had.

I hope your all having a superb 31st of July, Happy Birthday Harry and Jo!

Peace Out!





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