Professor Julian Womble (28:52)
Is Quirrell a good Ravenclaw? About 31% of us said yes. About 42% of us said no. And about 27% of us said, don't know. Someone wrote, he's inquisitive, sure, but so inquisitive he ended up with a guy on the back of his head. That's not wisdom. That's wild. Someone else wrote the plan he used to try to get to the stone. Lazy, like, troll in the dungeon. That's your master plan. This is what's so fascinating. And I think that, you know, I know that many of us are Ravenclaws, and so I knew this question might ruffle some feathers. I do think, though, that this is kind of the downside of, like, one's pursuit of knowledge sometimes, right? And I think that when we take on the adage knowledge is power, I think that sometimes that can feel very abstract. And I think that other times we can. We can experience that idea and say, like, yeah, knowing things means that you can make, like, informed decisions that are better than if you didn't have the knowledge. But I think that for some people, knowing certain things is actually power, right? Like, I want to know, you know, how it is that you survived the Killing Curse when no one else should, because that means that there's a chance that I could do it, too. And I don't think that the pursuit of that knowledge, even though it feels silly or weird or stupid or whatever, I don't think that that disqualifies him from being a good Ravenclaw. I think that it complicates the understanding of how we understand what it is to be a good Ravenclaw, right? And it makes me think of Helena Ravenclaw, because we know she runs off with the diadem partially because she was envious of her mother and she wanted to kind of know what it was to be like her. And so she takes this, you know, thing that's supposed to Increase you know what you know. And I think that sometimes knowledge can be dangerous and it makes me think about like, and sometimes knowledge can be dangerous and sometimes knowledge can be painted as dangerous even when it isn't. But when it, as it pertains to Quirrell, I think that, you know, his desire to explore the world and figure things out, I think that's reasonable. But there's clearly something that Voldemort was able to tap into and exploit. And I think that sometimes knowledge can be a thing that leads to a downfall. Because knowing something doesn't always mean you know better. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna say that again, mostly for me, like, knowing something doesn't always mean you know better. It doesn't mean you know better than to not do that. It doesn't mean that you know better than to not trust that. And so like, there are instances where I think that, you know, we can easily see how and why ravenclaws may fall prey to some of this. And we talked a little bit about this with Luna, right, And that like, her brand of knowledge and wisdom also lends itself to be easily manipulated, right? Like, and I remember making the, the claim we could see Luna being someone who would end up in a cult or run one herself, honestly, right? Because she believes certain things that are simply not true and that leads to dangerous outcomes. It reminds me of in Deathly Hallows when Hermione tells Xenophilius that's an A Rumpenhorn. And he's like, it is not. It's a whatever, whatever, whatever. And like, his desire to believe that was true meant that he had this really, really dangerous thing in his home. And I think that sometimes knowledge and awareness and wisdom are all great things, but they are not above corruption. If the foundation on which they are being built is not solid, they are easily, they easily slip away. And so when we think about like, what it means to be a good Ravenclaw, right? Like the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is great and it's kind of the trademark for a lot of Ravenclaws. And I'm sure that many Ravenclaws will write in the post episode chat and will correct me on this and, you know, I welcome it. There's a couple that I'm thinking about explicitly and I'm hopeful that you all will chime in. But I think, I think he's, I think he is a good ravenclaw. I think that what happens though is that if you are not careful, your pursuit of knowledge can lead you to make some really bad choices and. Or to be manipulated in ways that you are too unaware to see because you're so thirsty for what you need to know. Because the pursuit of knowledge is not always the pursuit of facts. The pursuit of knowledge, of knowing things. There are a lot of things that one can know, you know, whether the truth is among them is unclear. That's a quote from Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows Part 1. Spoken like a true politician. Anyways, I've watched this movie too many times. That's not the point. The fact is, though, that sometimes people want to know things, but they don't want to know facts. And we are living in a time, and I think this is global, but I'll own it for the United States, where lots of people know lots of things, but the truth is rarely among them for some of these people. And when presented with the truth, they deny it. And we could say, well, that's stupid or they're not wise, but I don't know that. Like wisdom, it's hard to be able to capture exactly what it is that defines a good Ravenclaw. Is it the pursuit of wisdom? Is it the pursuit of knowledge? Is it the pursuit of truth? Whose truth? Is it the pursuit of facts? What Facts, Right. Like, when you're operating in such an intellectual and cerebral space, there's a lot of nuance and a lot of, like, wiggle room as to what that looks like. Which then means that you can be someone who has a lot of capacity for knowledge and truth. That can easily be warped. And it can be warped either because you're too stringent or you're not stringent enough. And we have characters in these texts that kind of give us both sides of that spectrum. So that when we think about whether or not Quirrel is a good Ravenclaw, I think his pursuit of knowledge and wanting to know more things makes him a good Ravenclaw. I do think, though, that without the proper safeguards and awareness of, you know, what evils lie in the forest, you're easily manipulated because Voldemort can promise you knowledge. He can promise you things, right? Like he can promise you information. And that is, I think that makes you, or makes a person more susceptible to his manipulation. And so I think he is a good Ravenclaw, and I think he's a good Ravenclaw to his detriment. Is Quirrell a good half blood? About 9% of us said yes, about 53% of us said no, and about 38% of us said don't Know, someone wrote, I mean, since Voldemort was literally inside him, was he technically a half blood for a bit? What are the logistics here? Plot, twist, semantics, you know, when we just talked about the pursuit of information. And I actually don't even want to know how those logistics work. The notion of Voldemort being inside him, that takes us to a different place. And this is a family friendly podcast, so we're not gonna get into that. I'm sure there's a podcast somewhere. I mean, well, I'm sure there is a podcast. I also am sure there's a fanfic somewhere. You know, I think this is an interesting question, and obviously we have to keep it within the theme. I think this is one of these moments where we just don't have a good sense of who Quirrell is as a person. We don't have a sense of kind of what his background is canonically. Post canonically, we don't really know. Right. And so I think for this question, we don't have a sense of it. Now, I think again, if we were to kind of extrapolate out from what we do know from the canonical text, right. That, well, this isn't canonical. The Internet has told us that he was teaching Muggle studies before he went on his quest and then came back and then was teaching Defense against the Dark Arts. But I think that that's not clear to us how true that is. There's no kind of information that helps explain that. And so when we think about the two ways that we've thought about good half bloods, the first being our more idealized version of someone who is building a bridge between the Muggle and the magical world, we get no sense of that from him. And also, and then when we think about the second one, someone who's willing to prop up the system and maintain pure blood supremacy, I mean, I think attaching yourself to someone who is very well known to be a pure blood supremacist and buying into whatever propaganda he gives, and the notion that there's no good or evil, just power, tells us a very specific story, because again, the soil has to be fertile for seeds of that nature to take root. And I'm like, were you just sitting in the forest talking to Voldemort? Like, what was going on? But either way, right? Like, there has to have been something inside of him that said. Yeah, and I think that there's something to be said about, you know, one's desire to get ahead and again, what people are willing to forego and we don't know the composition of his half bloodedness if he just has two half blood parents, if he has a muggle parent and a magical parent or yeah, we don't know. So this question is a bit harder to answer for him because we simply just have no sense of like what is true for him. And we don't really get to see him or know him that well until we're really watching him. Shanann. And Shanann again, you know, and so this is a harder question, I think for me I would have to say don't know for this I think, although I would say that with the caveat of like you attaching yourself to a known pure blood supremacist in pursuit of power tells us a story about at least where your ideology was sitting before. Because there's no way that you just stumble upon Voldemort and say, hey, I think you have something good to say and I'm willing to listen to it, you disembodied disaster. Because like, no, that doesn't make any sense. And so I think if we just take into account the allure of Voldemort, there's something to be said about how we understand, you know, what his half bloodedness meant to him. And maybe they connected on the grounds of being half bloods. Who's to say? Maybe that's conjecture. But I do think that if you are willing to align yourself with a known pure blood supremacist, like terrorist cult leader, something is not quite right. And so to the extent then that we think about the kind of more realistic definition of what it means to be a good half blood by way of upholding the system of pure blood supremacy, by trying to assist in bringing Voldemort back, you are contributing to that system. Which would then mean that by that definition you are a good half blood. So maybe that's the answer, but we don't really have a lot and that's, you know, me basing it on my own conjecture. So take that as you will. Is Quirrel a good teacher? 10% of us said yes, 61% of us said no, and 29% of us said don't know. Someone wrote he's not respected, he doesn't model and he straight up curses students. Next. Listen, the people were bringing the sass in these comments. Someone else wrote, bad teacher, can't remember him teaching Harry anything. Also, maybe don't set trolls loose in the building. You know, this is tricky because we don't actually get a sense of who he is in the classroom. Although I think that Harry mentions a lot of the fact that, like, Quirrel spends a lot of the time teaching the class but seems to be, like, afraid of everything. Which, knowing what we know, right, knowing that Voldemort is on his, you know, the back of his head and that this is all an act, I feel like he's too committed to the bit. Like, I feel like he's overplaying his hand. And so he can't be a good teacher because he's too busy trying to be a good henchman, right? Like, he can't actually teach them anything because he's pretending that he's, like, so afraid of everything. And that's so fascinating to me because I'm like, so you said I would sooner sacrifice my job because, like, who's gonna need it when Voldemort comes back once we get our hands on the stone, you know? And so, yeah, I don't. I think, yeah, he doesn't get the respect of the students, which is one thing. But when we think about the instances where Harry does mention Quirrell being a teacher in any capacity he says things along the lines of, like, he's seemingly afraid of, you know, talking about vampires. And all he does is, like, he seems afraid to run across one again. And it's like. But he's actually not, right? Like, he's just trying to pretend. Which is so crazy because then when you think about and you juxtapose, you know, how committed to the bit Barty Crouch Jr. Was it's like, honestly, that's not even a good excuse because he actually taught them it was bad. It was torturous. But they learned. Harry learned how to fight off the imperious curse. So it's like, you can be committed to the bit, you can be committed to Voldemort, and you can still be a good teacher. And so the fact that Quirrell isn't is, you know, Voldemort's not an excuse in this case because we have another person who admittedly did not have Voldemort attached to the back of his head, but he was kind of deranged and was not only cosplaying a teacher, but cosplaying an ex Auror who was unhinged and also still teaching the students as that person. Like, that is the real deal. That's the kind of commitment to the character that I'm looking for. Whatever the heck Quirrell is giving, it's not giving that. And I think that. I think that everyone is right insofar of being like, he's not a good teacher. I had to go back into the text because I was like, I know that they described it. And so this is what is said in chapter eight, the Potson's Master in Sorcerer Philosopher's Stone. The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense against the Dark Arts. But Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie. But they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnegan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather. For another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban. And the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went. So the class wasn't giving and everyone was expecting something. Now, admittedly, that passage comes from, like, the first couple of weeks, but at the end of the day, he's not effective. And again, and now I'm questioning everything. Cause I'm like, so why are you. Is it all a lie? Is this stammering and the stuttering and is that all a lie? Like, are you faking it? Because, like, now that I'm revisiting this, I'm like, if you're cosplaying this well and not being effective, that's crazy. And like, we know that Barty Cross Jr. Was mentally elsewhere after having been under the imperious curse for so long. So now I'm asking questions because I'm like, and I want us to talk about this in the post episode chat. Do we think that this was all fake, the stuttering and the handshaking and all of these things? Or was it that he was legitimately terrified, even more so perhaps because he had Voldemort on the back of his head? And now that I say those words out loud, can you imagine trying to teach a class with the Dark Lord on your head? And, like, the anxiety of what it would have been like to have something like that? Like, that you're hiding in a castle with Dumbledore, with Snape, who's already suspecting you with all of these people. And like, you're so freaked out about the prospect, like, what happens if the turban falls off on accident? Like, what do you do then? I don't know that I could effectively teach if I had Voldemort on the back of my head. Honestly, for true. Like, I don't know that I could do it. I mean, least of all Defense against the Dark Arts. But, like, I would be so freaked out because, like, you can feel this man on the back of your head and you want me to teach kids about anything. I couldn't do it. I know that I completely changed my tune very quickly. And I'm not editing this to make it smoother because I need you all to get my thought process, okay? Because maybe you'll also change your mind. And maybe we won't say he was a good teacher. Maybe the answer is even more so now that he was a bad teacher, but now at least we have a little bit of context as to why. Yeah, you got Voldemort on the back of your head and you're teaching these classes with this fool now. Honestly, I would have been pissed because I would have been like, now you're really good at magic, Voldemort. You could at least give me some tips. You know what I mean? You could at least help me out a little bit. But I digress. This changes my perspective. I still think he's a bad teacher, but for the reasons that have nothing to do with his inability to cosplay correctly and everything to do with the fact that he had Voldemort on the back of his head. And there's no way that I could effectively teach children when I have the Dark Lord literally siphoning my life force so that he can sustain some sort of corporeal form while being a parasite on my body. Like, when you say it like that, his bad teaching, his stuttering, all of it makes much more sense. Is Quirrell a victim? About 39% of us said yes, about 42% of us said no, and about 19% of us said, don't know. I knew this question was going to be a little bit chaotic when I posted it online. People were like, what? I can't believe that this many people are, like, not are saying that he is. Someone wrote, there's a strong element of personality possession here. We don't know how much of what we saw was truly him. Someone else wrote, he might have started curious, maybe even well intentioned, but he opened the door and. And Voldemort just walked through. This is. We're back. We're back to the question of, like, how Much of what he does is him. And how much of what he does is Voldemort? I am not. Again, and this is obviously getting repetitive at this point but I just want to keep driving home the point. I think that 100% of what we see him do is him. And I think the reason why I'm of this, of the mind that this is a thing is because like in the underground cavern where the little mirror of Erised is not so little but where the mirror of Erised is he literally has to give commands to Quirrel. He has to say like, get the boy or use the boy or. And he. And Quirrel's like, master, you're not strong enough. And he's like, I have strength enough for this. I don't think Voldemort was in the position to be able to control Quirrel. Like he could again, manipulate him, make suggestions but Quirrell had to be the one to go and drink the unicorn blood, right? Like Voldemort was the one who was like, go get the stone, right? Like he couldn't like take over his body. I don't think he had the strength enough. So when we think about, you know, the choices that were made, yes, Voldemort was on him but Voldemort wasn't like puppet mastering him. Not physically at least. Mentally, definitely, Emotionally, probably. But Quirrell is making these decisions like Quirrell is making these choices and saying, yes, I will do this. Yes, Master. These are the choices that I will make for you. And in that same way, right? Like, that's just why I don't want to use the language of possession because I think that, and I think even Voldemort uses it. But at that point we hadn't really seen what it was like to be possessed. But when we meet Ginny and we get to see that she is not in control of her body, she's not in control of her functions like Tom Riddle, vis a vis. The diary is taking over her body and her mind and her memory to the point where she doesn't remember what's going on. That's not happening for Quirrell. Coral is being told to do something and he is doing it like any of the other Death Eaters that we know. The only difference is that Voldemort is on his body. So I'm not willing to take away kind of his agency and autonomy in this. And so I think that everything that we see him do is him. It's a choice that Quirrell makes and he does it in pursuit of getting Voldemort back to power for the sake of him getting back to power or not back to power, but for him getting power. And so when I think about whether or not I think Quirrell is the victim, I don't. He made his choices and he made them with the full knowledge of, like, what was going on. And Voldemort was not powerful enough to assert himself. He could punish Quirrell. We don't know how exactly he did that. But even then, I mean, you were whimpering. He wasn't, you know, perform the Cruciatus Curse on you. He couldn't. He didn't have that kind of magic. He was literally just trying to stay alive. That's why he had you out here drinking that unicorn blood. So we're talking about someone who you could have vanquished off of you if you wanted because he was not strong enough to do much else. And you didn't. You made a decision. You made a choice. And I think, I am not willing to take that away from Corll. And so as a result, I'm like, no, you weren't a victim, you were a fool. And just like this person wrote, he might have started off curious and well intentioned, but he opened the door. And that's the thing, he opened it. He opened it. And like, yeah, he might have been manipulated. Obviously he was. But he opened it and kept it open. Because at any point he probably could have gotten rid of Voldemort because Voldemort did not have the kind of strength. And they literally said that. That's in the text. Master, you are not strong enough. I'm strong enough for this. That's Voldemort actively admitting that there are things that are beyond the scope of his ability because of the state that he is in. And so Quirrell could have been like, I'm not doing this. And he still did it. And so I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't think he's a victim. I think he's an idiot. And I think he made a choice that is foolish. I think he made a choice that he kept deluding himself into thinking that he was gonna be able to get something out of it, and with absolutely no return. And again, I'm like, I just. You must have believed that Voldemort was so incredible because there's no way that I'm looking at this person who literally needs to attach themselves to me to stay alive. This person who is saying that I have to go and drink unicorn blood. This person who is making me do their bidding because they can't do it themselves. And thinking, you're the key to my power. You're the key to getting me to where I need to be. Like, there's no way my brain does that leap unless I am in it to win it myself. And, like, I'm fully bought in to the belief that this is the greatest wizard ever. And so I need to, like, really, you know, buck up and shut up and just do what he says so that I can get what I want. That's the only way that that works. And so, no, he's not a victim. As far as I'm concerned, he is a fool.
