In Defense of Salazar Slytherin

[darrin_burnett]

No: HPFGUIDX 40930

Treyvan wrote:

<snipped the thoughtful bias stuff>

> 	Now that you understand my bias, I would like to propose that
> Salazar Slytherin might not be the insane and evil monster that
> everyone seems to think he is. 

OK, before I start responding point by point, let me say that I do 
not agree with all of this, but it does go a long way toward 
answering one of the questions I've had about the books.

Namely, why does Hogwarts continue putting up with the Slytherins? 
If, as you say, the evil Slytherin is a fairly recent phenomena -- 
beginning with the rise of Voldemort -- that explains a lot of that.

My understanding of the Sorting Hat is that it was created by Godric 
Gryffindor so that when all the Four Founders were gone, their 
essences would still pick students worthy of their houses. 

My further understanding is that until the Sorting Hat was created, 
the founders themselves picked the students. Who picked Slytherins 
after Salazar left?

If Slytherin left just a few years after Hogwarts was founded, why 
would Double-G and the others bother with trying to maintain his 
house? Why not just close it down or replace it with another line?

The disagreement between GG and SS was so strong that Slytherin left, 
and the strong impression -- though not supported by fact -- is that 
he never came back. Given the lifespan of wizards, it is not 
unreasonable to think that the other three lived decades, if not at 
least a century, past the founding of Hogwarts. 

But GG and the others took pains to make sure the Slytherin house 
would continue to exist?

This tells me that Salazar is indeed not evil, or else the others 
would have cut his house out. Maybe they hoped he'd come back. 

Or maybe he WAS evil, and some kind of magical contract kept the 
other three from throwing his kids out.

OK, my prelude is done.

Treyvan wrote:

It is commonly
> believed that Slytherin left because of an argument with Gryffindor:
> Slytherin did not want children with muggle parents to come to
> Hogwarts, Gryffindor wanted to teach anyone with the ability to
> learn.  We know that there is a chamber hidden in Hogwarts that can
> be only opened by a Parsel-mouth, inside which Tom Marvolo Riddle
> found a Basilisk. 
> 
>We also know, from Professor Binns, that Slytherin did not want
>muggle-borns attending Hogwarts because he felt they were
>"untrustworthy."(CS 9) No other reason is given by the
>"reliable historical sources." He did not believe, as the
>Malfoys and presumably Voldemort do, that muggle-borns were less
>powerful or incapable of learning. Just that they were
>"untrustworthy." It seems hypocritical of Slytherin to call
>them that, considering he prefers students who have a "certain
>disregard for rules." I think Slytherin didn't trust
>muggle-borns to keep the location and existence of the school secret.


I'm not sure Slytherin would have been alone in this belief. In CoS, 
we learn from Ron that somewhere in history, wizards had to start 
marrying Muggles to keep their kind from dying out. Perhaps in the 
time of Hogwarts' founding, only very far-sighted wizards -- such as 
a Godric Gryffndor -- would have seen this day coming. GG was able to 
convince Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, but Salazar refused to believe it.

Let us look at the muggle-born/pure blood debate for what it is - 
racism. Malfoy and his ilk are pretty obviously in the minority, just 
as scumbags like the KKK and other white supremacists are now in the 
minority.

But about 200 years ago, the KKK's sentiments were much more common. 
People that believed blacks were worthy to be free, indeed, were 
human beings, were in the extreme minority.

It was less than 50 years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 
blacks were entitled to go to school with whites.

My point? Maybe Gryffndor and his liberal attitudes toward muggle-
borns was in the minority back when the school was founded. And maybe 
Slytherin was not so much an evil person as just someone who didn't 
see the need, nor did he have the stomach, to go against what 
everyone believed.

His "untrustworthy" reason, under my theory, could be taken as an 
excuse. The United States did not wish to have blacks fighting wars 
because leaders believed "they won't fight for us." A brave regiment 
in the Civil War proved otherwise, but it wasn't until the Korean 
War, nearly 100 years later, than the military was intergrated.

Maybe Salazar is using "unstrustworthy" or "give away the position of 
Hogwarts" as an excuse.


> After all, the castle was built as a safe haven, away from the eyes
> of muggles. Revealing any information about Hogwarts to the muggle
> parents of witches and wizards put the school and all the students 
in
> jeopardy. The four founders might have been the best wizards of 
their
> time, but I doubt very much they could have held off a muggle army.
> And the Flame Freezing Charm that protected witches and wizards in
> the time of Wendolin the Weird might not have been developed yet.
> Even if it had, the younger students at Hogwarts certainly
> wouldn't have mastered it yet.
> 


I don't know. We do not know if Hogwarts has been stormed by any 
Inquisition-types over the centuries. We know it's hexed to look like 
a ruin to Muggle eyes. Again, I see this as an excuse by SS. 


> 	Let's apply Slytherin's actions to a slightly different set
> of circumstances. It is January 30th, 1938, five years after Hitler
> was appointed chancellor, ten months before Kristallnacht. German
> schools have begun teaching concepts of genetic purity and of a
> German master race. Hitler's youth programs encourage children
> and teenagers to spy on their friends, looking for signs they are 
not
> as loyal to the Third Reich as they should be. Jews are hated and
> feared by Germans who believed Hitler's rhetoric. Four leading
> members of the Jewish community establish a secret school called
> Schweinwarzen (that's German for Hogwarts) as a place where
> Jewish children can learn away from the ignorance and distrust 
spread
> by the Nazi party. One of the founders, Gryffintür, believes that
> the school should teach children of Jewish and Nazi parents alike, 
in
> the hopes that by spreading knowledge, the children of Nazis will be
> unable to remain ignorant and intolerant. Another of the four
> founders, Slitherinnen, thinks that it is dangerous to teach 
children
> with Nazi parents, thinking they might betray the existence and
> location of Schweinwarzen. Gryffintür is an idealist, doing what
> he thinks is right. Slitherinnen is a pragmatist; he thinks that the
> potential risk of letting non-Jewish students into the school
> outweighs the benefits of taking them in. The other two founders
> support Gryffintür, and Slitherinnen leaves the school, taking his
> family with him, and flees Germany. Are Slitherinnen's actions
> evil? I don't think so. However, had he opposed teaching
> non-Jewish students because he thought that everyone else was
> inferior and were unworthy of being taught, then the same actions
> would have been evil. 
> 

To accept this parallel, one has to first accept that the Muggles 
were an active danger to wizards on par with the Germans' threat to 
the Jews. I find that difficult to accept, to say the least.

One must try to imagine a scenario where the Jews had methods of 
literally not being able to be seen, to hide in plain sight, which is 
what Hogwarts does. To try to create such a school without that 
ability is foolishness itself.

One must imagine the Jews having a communication network that was 
innocuous to Germans -- just as owls are to Muggles. Again, to try to 
reach out to Nazi children without such a thing is idiotic.

One must accept that there are physical characteristics about wizards 
that would tip Muggles off to their magical capabilities. The 
Germans, remember, were targeting non-Aryan races. How would Muggles 
know who was a wizard and who was not?

Simply put, though I think you're right that the wizards probably 
could not have held off an army -- at least not do so and protect the 
students at the same time -- they were certainly better prepared than 
a 1930s Jewish school would have been.

Say we accept all this, that the Final Solution is on par with 
something the Muggles were planning for Wizards. 

Spy networks and diversionary tactics can do some of the same thing 
as the magical shroud and the owl post does, but in the end, we're 
talking about magic vs. muggle tactics. The Wizards were not in the 
same danger the Jews would have been.

Under that scenario, yes, Gryffindor was the reckless dreamer and 
Slytherin was the correct pragmatist, but I do not accept the 
parallel. 


<snip stuff about the Chamber>
I do believe that you are right, Voldemort probably made more out of 
the Chamber than SS ever thought about.

 
>  	So, what should we believe? Was Slytherin a bigot or was he a
> pragmatist? Did Slytherin intend to kill with the basilisk he left 
in
> his chamber, or was he simply careless? Was Slytherin evil and 
insane
> or was he just ambitious? I don't think we have enough facts to
> be certain. Is it unbelievable that Salazar Slytherin could have 
been
> a hero, not a villain? Yes, certainly. It is as unbelievable as a
> baby defeating a powerful Dark Lord at the age of one. It is as
> unbelievable as a twelve-year-old defeating a thousand year old 
snake
> with a bird, a sword, and a hat. It is as unbelievable as Ron's
> rat being an unregistered animagus traitor. It is as unbelievable as
> thinking anything in a Harry Potter book is exactly as it appears.  
> 


I believe Slytherin was a bigot, but was only going along with the 
majority view of the time. The basilisk could have been left out of 
spite for Gryffndor.

But I don't believe he was evil in the eyes of his three peers, 
because -- barring a magical contract that would have stopped them -- 
they didn't take any pains to get rid of his line.

And if they didn't think he was evil, then OK. But at the very least, 
his beliefs have been corrupted and twisted into something a lot 
worse.

Darrin
-- Good stuff. This is a fun debate