Symbols and reality (was Not Slytherin, not Slytherin)

[David <dfrankiswork@netscape.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51315

Derannimer wrote:

> 
> JKR hasn't marked the Slyths as bad just to prop up a shallow
> dualism--she's setting up the central conflict of the series:
> Muggle-lovers vs. Muggle-haters. Inclusion vs. Elitism. Acceptance
> vs. Genocide. Love vs. Bigotry.
> 
> Now me:
> 
> Yes, and that's exactly the problem I have with her portrayal of 
the 
> Why is there *such* a one-to-one correspondence between ambition 
and 
> evil in the books? 

Well it may be partly a British thing.  We really don't like 
ambitious people here.  Dicentra has already pointed out the two 
kinds of ambition: for a goal and for yourself.  We don't really 
approve of either type.  The first are unrealistic visionaries who 
bring trouble on us all (You mean you think this Gandhi guy was a 
good thing?) and the second are on the make.  

> This is one of the biggest problems I have with the story: the 
> conflation of the school rivalries and the larger struggle. *Why* 
is 
> it that all the Bad Guys are coming out of *one House in a 
boarding 
> school?* The one house, moreover, that Harry most wants to beat at 
> Quidditch?
> 
> I don't know; usually I enjoy the way the genres in the books 
> interact, but the Boarding School/ Fight Against Evil concurrences 
I 
> find problematic. The Gryff/Slyth rivalries tend to reduce and 
> *shrink* the broader conflict, for me. 

I think this touches the heart of the argument over the pointgiving 
at the end of PS.  If you see the Slytherins as people caught up in 
the struggles of the Wizarding World, then it doesn't make a lot of 
sense.  If you see them as symbolic opponents of the heroes, then a 
symbolic trampling down (GOF train stomp?) is required to make the 
hero's victory complete.

The symbolic story requires, IMO, a scene in which the common people 
can see the victory of good over evil ritually enacted.  The 
Slytherins are acting a part in a play in which evil very nearly 
triumphs (Voldemort almost gets the stone; the very banners of the 
enemy are in the heart of the stronghold of the good) but at the 
last possible moment good triumphs through wit and bravery.

What makes the story awkward for the reader, IMO, is that we are 
also encouraged to think of the Slytherins as people with human 
failings and potential for development.  For that to work completely 
here, they have to be *told* that they are only actors, and that is 
a bit weird, since it is their whole being as characters in the 
story that forms the show for the spectator.

Imagine being told that you are destined to fulfil some unpleasant 
role in life in order to illustrate a lesson.  What good will that 
lesson do you?  Not a lot.

I think this ambiguity between the symbolic and the realistic (is 
that the right word?) is relevant to other forms of discomfort 
expressed on the list.  Are the Dursleys symbols of abandonment and 
displacement, or are they people?  Is Hagrid a representative of 
damage and rehabilitation, or is he actually supposed to try to use 
professionally effective teaching methods?  Is Dumbledore a vicar of 
divine attributes, or a master plotter?  Is butterbeer a symbol of 
ruin or a wonderful practical solution to the problem of giving 
children the pleasure of alcohol without its bad effects?  Is magic 
an open display of the range of hidden issues that confront us as 
people or is it actually supposed to work consistently in the 
Potterverse?

David