InsaneJournal

Dumbledore's Morality: Innate or Learned?
Oh JKR. With every interview you give, my frustration with the HP universe as it stands post-DH grows. Generally I try to avoid reading about the interviews as much as is possible with discussions springing up all over the place. But I couldn't quite pass by the most recent one.

I have to admit that one of the few things that struck me as realistic when I read DH was that Dumbledore obviously wasn't born a paragon of virtue. By the end of his Hogwarts career he was arrogant and somewhat selfish and was well on his way to abusing his power, as those with real power realistically tend to do. He was a product of his childhood. That rung true with me, because in the nature vs nurture challenge I come down pretty strong on the latter side. I don't believe that people are born good or bad. Morality, as I understand it, is learned. It follows, then, that Dumbledore's morality was something that he grew into, not something that was simply ingrained as part of his character.

My reading of DH would suggest that Dumbledore's plans to take over the world (cue dramatic music) came from a mixture of his own self-importance and his views of Muggles as learned through his childhood experiences (particularly, Ariana's run in with the Muggles and the terrible consequences that followed). Ariana's death and the fallout of that is the tragedy that forces him to reassess himself and the world. He restructures his morality based on his newfound maturity and his realisation that his the path toward the 'greater good' would hurt more than the nameless faceless Muggles.

JKR obviously disagrees. According to her most recent interview, Dumbledore was innately a good man and merely 'flirted' with ideas of racial domination because he fell in love. That, according to JKR, made him lose his moral compass. Ariana's death served only to give Grindelwald an opportunity to break Dumbledore's heart, thus allowing him to be restored to righteousness. Thus, Dumbledore - despite being a teenage boy of just seventeen - had an already established set of morals and was only temporarily led off the ethical path by the dark sheep Grindelwald.

More power him, then, since I know of very few people who have the same set of morals at age seventeen as they have at, say, age fifty. My personal experience is that generally the final years of teenagedom (post-seventeen, usually) are the years in which people change the most, including morally. Since my experience of that age is mostly of females, it might be even later for males, who as we all know have been shown to mature slightly later. Dumbledore, it would seem, went through no such age when he had to decide for himself what rules he would live by. Instead, his rules were pre-established and he only went through an age in which he as a character didn't need to take any responsibility whatsoever for not following those rules (for, of course, it was all Grindelwald's and love's fault). While I'm all for the believe that a seventeen year old boy could be ruled by his lower brain (you know the one) to the point that he'd drop logic and perhaps even his own morals, I'm still uncertain where those morals came from in the first place.

If not upon reaching adulthood, when, I must ask, did Dumbledore actually adopt his supposedly innate morals? Was it while he was at school surrounded by teenage boys - who generally care little for rules - and adults who propped him up on a pedestal due to his intelligence? Or was it when he was growing up with a father who had been put in prison for doing what must have seemed to Dumbledore to be 'right' and a mother who clearly cared more for maintaining his damaged sister than she did for teaching him right and wrong? Or perhaps Dumbledore came out of the womb with an established system of ethics imprinted in his mind?

And who would have taught him a positive view of Muggles? I'm sure very few people could argue with any great success against the idea that most of what we learn comes from our parents or guardians, whether it be by them telling us or by observation or by other means. At a young age (as children and adolescents) people tend to either follow their parents' views or actively rebel against them. Even Harry, who is nothing like his relatives, only grew up with opposite views to them because he was not accepted by them and so rebelled in his own way; he may well have been very much like Dudley had the Dursleys taken him in as one of their own. It seems logical to assume that Dumbledore's household was about as pro-Muggle as the Dursleys were pro-wizards. Perhaps then his teachers and schoolmates instilled a better opinion of Muggles into him. I find that doubtful, since I'm fairly certain canon suggests that it was Dumbledore himself that revolutionised Hogwarts so that it was more openly accepting of Muggleborns and half-bloods.

It simply seems more logical that upon meeting Grindelwald he was already looking down upon Muggles. It's more likely that Dumbledore found in Grindelwald a kindred spirit of sorts than that Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald despite their differences and then simply fell in line with his beliefs. Love can overcome many things, yes, but I feel sure that had Dumbledore morally objected to Grindelwald's views (which he clearly took no pains to hide, even at school), then he would not have fallen in love with him, at least not in less than three months. Genocidal tendencies are a fairly large hurdle to overcome in a relationship, after all.

But let's assume JKR's position for argument's sake: say Dumbledore's love did lead to his plans to dominate the Muggles and not the other way around. By asserting that Dumbledore's morals were innate and were merely temporarily disgarded due to his love for Grindelwald, JKR has reduced what might have been an example of the complexities of morality and maturity, and also the varying impacts of tragedy (in the form of Ariana's death) down to her usual line that everything has to be about love.

As a further example of this same tendency, consider how Harry walks willingly to his death in DH. That should have been a defining moment that was riddled with indecision, and so the eventual decision to sacrifice himself should have signalled his movement into maturity. Instead, Harry decides to die without a thought because he's been told it's necessary in order to save the world. His love for his friends won't let him put them in any more danger, so his 'death' is a passive experience that is complex plot-wise when it should be complex by way of emotion and character-building. Harry doesn't grow, but rather putts on just as he was. The death serves no purpose except to allow Harry to kill Voldemort (which is also passive). By taking away the responsibility and letting 'love' be the decision-maker, JKR overlooks the very depth that her readers are looking for.

Similarly, by continuing to explain her books in interviews, JKR succeeds not in creating a more plot-enriched universe, but rather simplifies the universe where really it would be far better (and far less embarrassing on her part, sometimes) to leave things open to interpretation, as books should be. This over-explaining, it must be assumed, is the inevitable outcome of a series of books becoming such a huge phenomenon; people ask questions and JKR feels compelled to give an answer now that there are no more secrets to hide. It must be tough to be in the position where you might have to answer any random question at any moment, I'll grant you, but there are some things that I think she should be able to decide in advance aren't to be heavily elaborated upon. After all, she used to refuse to give a straight answer to loads of questions pre-DH. What's stopping her from answering somewhat cryptically now?

The Harry Potter books may technically be classed as children's books, but that doesn't mean that all the themes should have to boil down to an idea simplistic enough for a primary school child to understand. JKR has always been reasonably good at writing layers into her books, so that children and adults alike can enjoy the books equally, for people of different maturity levels analyse the underlying issues differently. In all but cancelling out those layers after the fact, JKR isn't doing her story any favours.

Some things are just better left unsaid.