Given that I have been a long time die hard fan of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, it seems only fitting that I initiate my blog with a few of my musings regarding the magical world.
After a long break from many things Harry Potter related during college, I happened across a post on Facebook that reminded me of Draco Malfoy's fairly distressful life. As a child and a young teen when I read all these books for the first time, my opinion of Draco Malfoy was less than stellar. He was a bully and an incredibly nasty guy. But, the first time that I gave Draco Malfoy's life a thought was when JKR described him by comparing him to Dudley Dursley who in comparison seemed like a "kind, thoughtful, and sensitive boy" in Chamber of Secrets [1]. I remember doing a double take at that as a nine year old. Surely, Draco Malfoy wasn't all that bad? I refused to accept that even while I myself was victimized by a bully!
And that is because Draco Malfoy was never a bully despite the fact that he was groomed to be one by his bully father who constantly modeled such abusive behavior. Jason Isaacs' portrayal of Lucius Malfoy was the key to such an insight into the rich, spoiled, and yet emotionally abused life of Draco Malfoy. How else was poor Draco supposed to learn the difference between good and evil when the very person a child is supposed to look to as a model is a materialistic, pure-blood supremacist who defines quality of life through wealth and the number of people into which he can instill fear? In an interview, Jason Isaacs stated that his primary goal as the character Lucius Malfoy was to "[try] to illustrate how you end up with a kid as messed up as Draco" which he managed quite well by cloaking himself in wealth and acquiring an arrogant and almost animalistic comportment in Chamber of Secrets [2]. It's this display of wealth and power that Draco witnessed as a child that worked wonders on changing peoples' minds in the favor of his father. And likely, that's all he had ever seen until he meets his fellow students at Hogwarts. His friends are people he has acquired by flaunting his wealth and his affiliation with his influential (bullying) father.
Naturally, he is baffled by the kind of friendship that the arch nemesis of his own creation shares with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He he recognizes that their friendship is not the kind of company he will ever acquire through wealth and bullying and it is enough to send him reeling with envy. Of course this is made obvious to him, the characters, and readers as a result of the handshake that Harry Potter so famously declines none too respectfully in favor of the young redheaded and freckled wizard who was raised in a household that was the polar opposite of his own in Philosopher's Stone.
Over the years, Draco Malfoy's encounters with Harry Potter become exponentially resentful, from trying to get him expelled by luring him out of his dormitory for a duel in Philosopher's Stone to attempting to get him killed by Sirius Black by scathingly advising him to apprehend the convicted criminal in Prisoner of Azkaban to finally one-upping him in Order of the Phoenix when he becomes prefect and later joining the Inquisitorial Squad and using his powers to lash out with pettiness against Harry Potter. And yet underneath all this, he was just an envious teenager with no real parental guidance, no real friends, and absolutely nothing for which to stand, all of which Harry Potter constantly had. (Yes, Harry's parents were dead, but he always had Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and of course Rubeus Hagrid and Albus Dumbledore as his mentor - that's six parental figures!)
Through all of this, his mother is always mysteriously absent from any sort of influence. The woman who in the end chooses her son over Voldemort is curiously missing from much Draco's life. How is it possible that Narcissa (Black) Malfoy possesses many of the fine qualities that JKR promotes throughout her entire work of fiction has such little influence over Draco's development? The only answer is yet again Lucius Malfoy whose power and influence keep her submissive, something that Draco observes over the years falsely giving him the impression that his father's abuse is an essential quality for survival rather than his mother's love. And out of ignorance he grew to be an abuser. And yet, his resolve is tested in Half-Blood Prince and he finds that he is not his father. He is more like his mother and actually possesses compassion against which he constantly wars thereby wearing him down to the point of tears. He does not attempt to face the man he is tasked with assassinating but instead decides to use very indirect approaches because he is certain that he cannot bring himself to be directly responsible for such an act. He is too human, too compassionate for that. Even with coaxing from his psychopathic aunt Bellatrix (Black) Lestrange his compassion thwarts objectivity.
By the end of what should have been his seventh year at Hogwarts, he is still only seventeen, a fact that we all tend to forget since we associate with Draco Malfoy the physiognomy of Tom Felton who was between 20 and 22 during the filming of Deathly Hallows. For those of you who do not have a keen eye for discerning the age of an individual, I invite you to think about how much people change during the ages of 17 and 20. I know I certainly did and I know all my friends did as well (some of whom began the unfortunate process of premature balding during college much like Tom Felton). That reflects quite a bit on how a person carries himself or herself. Think back to how much younger the cast of Harry Potter looked in Goblet of Fire when they were 17 or Prisoner of Azkaban when they were approximately 15. Anyway, the point is that that characters of the story and we as readers give Draco Malfoy a bad name because of the abusive bullying behavior he mimed during his younger teenage years. But the most important thing to keep in mind is the conscience he develops in his mid to late teens when most people (boys later than girls) develop greater powers of analysis and understanding of their identities.
His troubled youth set against a backdrop of dramatic social and political upheaval in the wizarding world was magnified because he was so closely affiliated with the Dark Lord and quite closely acquainted with a boy of his own age who stood against everything he had learned during his childhood. This was what became such an emotional abuse because his choices were the difference between life and death, love and hate.
So how abused was Draco Malfoy? Quite a bit, perhaps not physically, but emotionally by a father who expected him to be the top ranking student and best Quidditch player as he so expressed in sharp manner at Borgin and Brukes in Knockturn Alley in Chamber of Secrets in addition to supporting the Dark Lord eventually, whose punishment was an ice bucket of disappointment with which Draco would be doused - an emotional abuse that could only have worked on someone compassionate enough to love his abusive father enough to never want to disappoint him. Look no further than Sirius Black for example, who ran away from home instead of tolerating his family for another day, a family who also favored the Dark Lord's views.
References
[1] Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 3 The Burrow
[2] Interview with Jason Isaacs link: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/harry-potter-deathly-lucius-malfoy-jason-isaacs-draco-hero-tom-felton-movie/
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