However, all that aside, one aspect of the fourth book that I appreciated more this time around was the character of Barty Crouch Jr. I almost entirely missed his presence the last time I read the book—mostly because though I knew he wasn’t the real Moody I couldn’t help but think of him that way—and this time around, I found him fascinating in his many-layered ambiguity, and the subtle but fascinating contradictions that J.K. Rowling creates in his character. After closing the fourth book, having realized that this was true, I immediately went running for the internet, assuming that Junior (as he’s so nicknamed) would be just as thoroughly dissected as any of Rowling’s other delightfully ambiguous characters: there are entire websites and books devoted to the issue of Snape’s loyalties, and nearly that much material about Dumbledore; even the seemingly straightforward Peter Pettigrew is the source of much debate… And yet, there is almost nothing out there trying to figure out the problems that Junior presents for readers, problems that are never fully resolved.
On the surface, J.K. Rowling plays one of her classic ploys in getting us to think one thing about a character only to learn another. The first mention of Crouch Jr. comes when Sirius is talking about Azkaban; his account of hearing the boy cry for his parents before he “fell silent in the end… except when [he] screamed in his sleep,” is absolutely chilling. In light of Sirius’s assessment about Crouch Sr., it seems pretty clear that Junior only ended up in Azkaban because his father didn’t want to be associated with anyone who had ever had anything to do with accusations of Death Eater activity, regardless of guilt or innocence. The first time we see Crouch Jr. as himself, he is about to be handed over to the dementors by his apathetic father; he is portrayed as a pathetic and sympathetic figure, in contrast to the coldly unapologetic Lestranges. Even as Harry is watching the almost angelic-seeming figure of the boy barely older than himself with blonde hair and childlike freckles, we are reminded that he died less than a year later. Although Rowling never provides any proof one way or another, and in fact never has Harry reach a definitive conclusion, it is largely assumed from this sequence that Crouch Jr. is innocent, that like Sirius he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he died a terrible death to preserve his father’s reputation. Crouch Sr. is unquestionably heartless at that point, and Crouch Jr. is, like Sirius, a victim of his father’s coldness.
“Moody,” like Crouch Jr., seems a pretty clear-cut character as well. Although again nothing is ever definitively stated about his personality, we see that he is an effective teacher that uses his field experience to his advantage when giving his students instruction in how to protect themselves. He takes personal time to get to know each of his students, as shown through his talking alone with both Neville and Harry, and he is familiar with the backgrounds and personalities of the people he teaches. Harry stops short of calling “Moody” a better teacher than Lupin was, but he does not hesitate to heap praise on “Moody’s” teaching abilities. One really gets the sense that the students learn a lot about defense and protection from “Moody’s” classes; even if he seems a little gruff sometimes, a lot of what he is teaching is sound principles, and plus, Dumbledore trusts him, and if you can’t trust Dumbledore you can’t trust anyone… Right?
Then comes the end of Goblet of Fire. All is revealed, the masks come off, and suddenly everything that happened earlier on. It is only in rereading the fourth book that it becomes apparent that all is not quite what it seems. Was Crouch Jr. really in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was initially convicted, and it was only after he went crazy in Azkaban that he joined Lord Voldemort? Was he really just a victim of politics who chose to follow Voldemort to escape his abusive father? When, exactly, did Crouch Jr. become a Death Eater—before what happened to the Longbottoms, or only after when he was confronted with the choice of joining or refusing the Dark Lord himself? Why did “Moody” teach the students so well, going so far as to teach Harry an ability (throwing off the Imperius) that later helped him escape Voldemort, and comforting Neville after class though he is the reason Neville is so disturbed by the Cruciartus Curse in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to play to everyone’s expectations and pass himself off as slightly insane? How does Crouch Sr. really feel about his son? Most importantly, perhaps, what does J.K. Rowling want us to think about the character?
Interestingly, no one I’ve ever encountered has ever made all that much attempt to resolve these problems with the enigma that is Crouch Jr. Most people just go the route of assuming that he is absolutely evil and that is the end of the story. Though there are a small handful of people that pay more attention to Crouch Sr., even he gets ignored a lot, despite the fascinating mystery presented by both Barty Crouches.
Now, understand that this is the place where I enter the land of speculation and half-baked theory and I may just be farting out cheese cauldrons or whatever Dumbledore’s saying is, BUT… I don’t necessarily think that Crouch Jr. is supposed to be a villain, so much as a victim of circumstance.
The rather convenient device of veritaserum allows us to take everything that Jr. says in his final confession as absolute truth. Therefore, I wanted to comment on a few things he did say rather than the things that he did not. For instance, Jr. starts his story by explaining how he got out of Azkaban—not how he got in there. He does not confess to the torturing of Alice and Frank Longbottom, even though he has no reason not to, and he does not say that he was actually a Death Eater before he was put in prison. Could it be that Harry’s (and Sirirus’s) and our initial impressions were correct, and Jr. really was only handed over to the dementors to keep Daddy’s reputation intact? After getting out of prison, of course Jr. did several things that were thoroughly evil, including setting up Cedric Diggory to be killed and using unforgivable curses on the Triwizard champions, but all of that was only after he had spent almost a year in a place that, by all accounts of anyone worth listening to, makes even the nicest people crazy. So, in my opinion, that leaves us open to the possibility that Jr. wasn’t an evil person until he spent all that time sitting around reliving his absolute worst memories while being driven slowly insane, on top of being told by everyone up to and including his own parents that he was worth less than dirt… Well, it’d be enough to turn anyone into a Death Eater, to say the least. (Except Sirius Black, of course, but even he is hardly a paradigm of rational sanity by the time he escapes.)
Even so, Jr. never says that he was a Death Eater. He never says he was evil at all, and he never confesses to doing anything more than being a little nutty (again, we wonder why)… until Voldemort himself popped up at the Crouches’ front door. Now, it is one thing to be a part of the yay-Voldy parade from the distance, as Peter Pettigrew proves, and it is another thing entirely to be willing to kill or die for his cause. The choice between one and the other is pretty much taken away when an admittedly casual follower is suddenly confronted by the man himself, in the not-quite flesh. What might very well have been teenage rebellion up until that point (again, speculation here) was rapidly forced into the land of with-us-or-against-us. All of a sudden Jr. was being asked to give up his identity and possibly his life to serve Voldemort. Quite a different kettle of fish for a man who was (unlike the Lestranges) not willing to do to prison for the cause a decade before. And yet he goes along, whether out of fear for his life or desire to escape his father.
And then there is the issue of Crouch Sr. Again, the strong initial impression is negative: we see him punishing Winky for what is apparently a tiny infraction with excessive force, and then learn from Sirius that he is a ruthless self-serving bureaucrat that doesn’t let minutiae like family bonds or human emotions to get in the way of his career. Later after his death we start to feel some pity for him, and realize that there was (of course) more going on in the scene with Winky than there initially seemed to be… And yet, several troubling details remain. Most specifically, there is the fact that not only is this man responsible for the destruction of Sirius Black’s entire life while Peter Pettigrew walked free and was eventually able to bring back Voldemort, but this man kept his own son locked inside under the Imperious Curse for almost a decade. Maybe Crouch Sr. risked everything (and gave up his wife) to get Crouch Jr. out of prison, but what was waiting for Jr. on the other side doesn’t sound as though it was much better. Again, it appears that, ironically, the apparently false initial impression of the character might not have been so false after all: Crouch Jr. was entirely the victim of Crouch Sr.’s ruthlessness and lack of feeling, just not in the way that many people thought.
It casts a new light on the only murder that Jr. ever admits to. Perhaps Crouch Jr. wasn’t just exercising ruthlessness to get an unneeded person out of the way (seems to run in the family) when he killed his father. Perhaps Crouch Sr.’s killing was an act of justice by his most damaged victim. After all, if it had been, say, Sirius who had killed Crouch Sr., the reader might not have automatically exonerated him from all blame, but at least would have been sympathetic and admitted that the man had it coming. All things considered, Jr. had a lot more justifiable reason to off Daddy Dearest than even Sirius did. So why should that be considered a sign of his being evil? Isn’t that a sign that he is, terrifyingly, human?
So, when offered the chance to escape his abusive home life, and given the alternative of being killed instead, Jr. chose to follow Voldemort and get him back into power. Not much of a choice at all, as a matter of fact. Jr. went with Pettigrew, captured Moody, impersonated him… And then went on to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts to a whole bunch of young future aurors. If Crouch Jr. really was the soul of evil that everyone makes him out to be, then why go through the trouble of creating effective lesson plans and impressing on everyone so well the ideas that later helped them? Jr. could easily play up Moody’s apparent madness or even the fact that an ex-auror has probably never taught a thing in his life before, used any number of excuses to get away with teaching the students the bare minimum, or even nothing at all, or even misdirection. After all, Lockhart and Quirrell already got away with doing that exact thing, and for some reason no mid-semester review ever looked too hard at either of them. So why on earth would he bother to teach his students so many spells and techniques that they later used to defend themselves—against Death Eaters? Voldemort’s plan might have succeeded if not for the fact that Harry had been trained in how to throw off the Imperious Curse by Crouch Jr. himself.
Significantly, this is the only lesson that we ever see in detail: the one where Jr. demonstrates that he has no problems casting the Unforgivable Curses—on spiders. And that, even if he feigns compassion for the child of his victims (or were they?) he nonetheless succeeds in cheering up and even befriending Neville Longbottom. Another place where a half-hearted effort or even no effort at all would have slid under the radar without commentary from anyone, and yet he went the extra mile to be a good teacher. Why? Could it be that he actually feels bad for what happened to the Longbottoms? Could that have to do with the fact that he was a bystander and not a perpetrator? However, it is the Imperious Curse that Jr. uses on his students, and the Imperious Curse that he teaches at least Harry to throw off. The exact same curse that was used on Jr. himself for all those years. It could very well be that his motivation here is not any grand plan for Voldemort’s rise or Harry’s downfall, but rather a simple, very human, desire not to see anyone else used the way that he was.
The rest of Jr.’s story remains something of a mystery, because he never gets the chance to make any further confessions. Very literally, the government comes swooping in to suck out his soul. This is the final act of destruction from the alleged “good guys” that brings about the end of a boy caught in the middle of an intensely personal war. Anything further that Jr. might have been able to tell readers is lost to the ages, because he has nothing more that can be said. Thus this respected family comes to the same ugly end as many of the other respected families in the novels: all its members either dead or worse than.
Crouch Jr.’s eventual fate supports the idea that our ultimate feelings about the character are supposed to be somewhat ambiguous. Though the idea of the dementor’s kiss is referenced repeatedly in the last five books, and is generally agreed on by characters and readers alike to be one of the most terrifying fates imaginable, Crouch Jr. is, significantly, the only character that we ever actually see receive this punishment. Harry has been questioning the policies of the Ministry of Magic more or less since the second book, and this presents one of the biggest and stickiest conundrums of the whole series: does anyone actually, really deserve what the dementors do to a person? The first mention of the dementor’s kiss is in the third book, when Professor Lupin explains to Harry what is under a dementor’s hood; when he points out that this is what will happen to Sirius if he is caught, Harry’s immediate response is that he deserves it. Lupin questions whether this is so, and as it turns out he is right to do so, because of course Sirius has never done anything to merit having his soul sucked out, and yet no one would have ever known this if Sirius had been apprehended and punished as the law dictated. Even when it is revealed that the true perpetrator is Peter Pettigrew, the question of the dementor’s kiss is not resolved, because Pettigrew is a weak, pitiful villain to Black’s menacing mastermind figure, and Harry considers it to be “not worth it” to kill Pettigrew.
Peter Pettigrew even dies saving the life of the boy he twice set up to be killed, in the seventh book. That would not have been possible if he had been punished as he allegedly deserved, with insanity in Azkaban or soullessness after the kiss; he would have had no chance at redemption. So if the man who killed two of his closest friends and twelve bystanders and condemned another friend to a lifetime in Hell doesn’t deserve the dementor’s kiss or a life sentence in Azkaban… Who does? Bellatrix Lestrange would seem to be the obvious candidate for this; Dante would probably appreciate the idea of punishing a the people who tortured Aurors into insanity with a lifetime of being tortured into insanity, and yet Harry’s initial reaction upon seeing Bellatrix in person for the first time is that she is almost as “ravaged” by Azkaban as Sirius is. It is interesting to note the use of the word “ravaged;” it is used in the fifth book to describe the effects of dementors on both Sirius and Bellatrix and in the seventh book to describe Lucius Malfoy after only a few months in Azkaban; the word suggests that a violation, some sort of desecrating act, has occurred, and the victims of this still bear the damages. Characters in the whole series—at least, sympathetic characters—all seem to have the same reaction to dementors, one of disgust.
I surprised myself with the number of times that I mentioned Sirius Black when writing this little blurt, and I think that that fact deserves mentioning. Maybe it’s just more wild conjecture on my part, but I now wonder whether Jr. is intended to be a parallel for Sirius. Both are victims of Crouch Sr.’s ruthlessness, both are admittedly imbalanced by their time in Azkaban, and before the fifth book they were the only two people ever known to have escaped the dementors once sentenced there. All that, taken in light of the fact that Sirius didn’t commit the crime he was imprisoned for, but was rather in the wrong place at the wrong time and was never given a change to explain himself… I’d say it lends some weight to the theory that the Lestranges acted alone in what they did to the Longbottoms, and Jr. was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The other person that I think Jr. may parallel is Harry himself. There are no shortage of characters that come from less-than-loving homes in the novels; one need only look at the parallels between Harry and Sirius to find this (sometime I’ll have to create another blog post about the extent to which Harry is more Sirius’s heir, and to a lesser extent Remus’s, than he ever will be James’s…). Nonetheless, the specific language used in the books reinforces his parallel. When Harry witnesses Jr.’s trial, he describes Jr. as “a boy a few years older than himself,” showing that Harry feels a connection to this boy. Later, in the fifth book, Harry thinks back to Jr.’s trial during his own hearing for misuse of magic. Jr., like Voldemort, is a sort of warning tale for Harry: he was raised in an unloving home, and he responded by becoming every bit as bad as the people who raised him, whereas Harry overcomes his upbringing to become a loving person.
I can’t say for sure whether J.K. Rowling intended Crouch Jr. to be a sadistically evil murderer or an innocent victim of circumstance. One aspect of her novels that is so fascinating is the fact that they are filled with riddles and ambiguities that will leave scholars (and bloggers) scratching their heads for years to come. That said, I want to be the first one to throw this idea out there because to my surprise no one else has done it yet: I do think that this particular ambiguity is entirely deliberate, and that the possibility, no matter how slim, that Jr. was innocent is intended to reinforce the theme that runs throughout the books: that the innocent are always the first victims of war. Harry has to find the balance within his character between his desire to prove himself to the world and seek revenge against the man who destroyed his life and his desire to be a good kid who just wants to get by in the world. I propose that both Barty Crouches lost their innocence to the war, but that though their crimes are heinous, they were victims before they were ever perpetrators. Crouch Jr. especially is supposed to be a sacrifice of war: first his sanity, then his innocence, and finally his soul were stripped away by the government that in some regards became no better than that which it was fighting.
Bug
