[HPforGrownups] Slytherin House: Was:Perspective and the Potterverse

[Sarah Tilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 38840

Pippin said:

>If you leave the author's chosen viewpoint and go poking  around
>backstage as it were,  you will find  the illusion spoiled. It is like
>looking at a backdrop up close. What seems realistically
>rendered from your seat in the audience is quite impressionistic
>from a few feet away. Try to re-create the Potterverse from
>another character's point of view and you confront the fact that
>much of Rowling's world is not realistically rendered after  all.
>Certainly the Slytherins are not.

Erm...if we are looking at this from Harry's perspective, then how exactly 
do we know that the Slytherins really are as awful as Harry sees them to be? 
At the beginning of the SS/PS, Harry sees Hermione as an insufferable 
know-it-all who's incredibly annoying to be around, but we learned more 
about her later on and find that she isn't as one-dimensional as she first 
appeared to Harry. With someone like Draco its simply going to take longer 
for Harry to realize his character depths, whatever those might be. Who's to 
say JKR wanted to leave Draco and the Slytherins flat?

...
He
>can't very well explain to them that they are part of a literary
>construct <g>.

No, but I'd pay to be in that class period ^_^

...

Pippin again:

Are they Slytherins
>because the Hat recognizes that at the age of eleven they are
>"criminally incurable"? OTOH, if they aren't hard cases, why  treat
>them as if they were?  I don't think  Rowling can show us
>Dumbledore or Hermione or anyone else trying to redeem  the
>Slytherins.

Erm...wait-a-minute...Since when has the defining classification of 
Slytherin been incurable evil? Ambition, cunning, ruthlessness...all traits 
that *could* lead to evil, certainly, but not evil in themselves. True, 
Voldemort was a Slytherin, but wasn't Peter Pettigrew a Gryffindor?
The only Slytherins we really see in action are Draco and his cronies, who 
are obnoxious to be sure but not what I'd call evil. There is an entire 
house of students there that we haven't seen.
Ambitious: yes. Ruthless: sure. Prone to temptation: naturally. But all 
headed down the long, sliding path to Death Eater-hood? I don't think so. 
Why would they keep such a house around, anyway? Give JKR the benefit of the 
doubt.

@_@
Headache!Sarah, who just finished AP Latin exam...


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