[HPforGrownups] Re: The Sorting Hat (Was: The permanent problem with Slytherin House)

[Silverthorne]

No: HPFGUIDX 99477

Potioncat:
Wait, hold on!  OK, Salazar and Lucius are pureblood bigots.  But 
the Weasley's are purebloods and they aren't bigots.  And I do think 
Percy would have done well in Slytherin. Being pureblood doesn't 
make you "evil."  The hat says cunning purebloods, not cunning 
pureblood bigots...and we know the hat doesn't always follow the 
pureblood  rule.

Silverthorne:
No, it doesn't, but since the subject IIRC, was that there was canon in the Sorting Hat song to support the idea that Salazar *was* a bigot (and therefor the House probably was too, since that was a require,ment--being pure blooded, I mean), that's what set me off--it's very easy to read it that way, and with all the other 'clues' JKR throws around about the memebrs of Slyth house on the whole being unsavory, this little bit that I had forgotten sort of knocked me on my side. 

I no more believe now that all Slyths are evil than I did *before* I found the quotes for SSS's question--but Damn, JKR is making it very hard to believe that that isn't what she's getting at...and quite frankly, it torques me a bit because she's already pulled the distraction and false info bit so many times on so many other things. For once, the straight forward, 'No, all Slyths are not evil, even though Salazar *preferred* Pure Blooded (and clever, ambitious, cunning) students...' would have been much nicer. Not everything in a well-written mystery novel needs to be or should be mutable right up to the last minute...

Potioncat:
Everything Jo's written and said makes Slytherin look evil.  But it 
goes against what she seems to believe in general about good and 
evil and choices.  Who, other than Harry, was given a choice?

And if you look at Sirius (this is difficult, because the hat 
doesn't always make sense) Was he in Gryffindor because he 
was "good" or because he was brave but wasn't cunning or ambitious?  
(Well, actually, he was cunning, to trick Severus into the tunnel.) 
OK, this paragraph isn't the strongest of arguments...But you get my 
point.


Silverthorne:
Yes, I do get the point--I was simply reacting to the very strong possibility that JKR presented for the case against the House and everyone in it thanks to that song and all the rumors and comments made by other characters...it's one thing to throw a little ambiguity in, but she's all but screaming "They Have no choice but to be evil!!" (or at least bigoted against those not of pure-blood ancestry). Although being Pure Blooded is no more 'bad' than being mixed, this insistance on it is bad--both for the gene pool, and for anyone whose brought up to believe in it--its another bit of prejudice which will only seperate everyone further apart, and quite honesty for the dumbest of reasons. If you want to throw science into the mix for about two seconds, and if Wizards are really just humans with genetic differences, then we're all related at the molecular level anyway thanks to 'Eve' (the scientific one from africa)....

So....pureblood is pretty much a useless label anyway. We all share that chromosome--how much more pure can you get????

Potioncat...who wonders how she became a Slytherin defender? 


Silverthorne:
Probably the same way I ended up being a Snape defender after reading book four--you sat down and looked at every side instead of just your favorite one...;)

Anne/Silverthorne
(Done with rant now that she's slept, had coffee, and fixed the flat *Again within the period of three days* that her roomie out to her while she was typing the original post...)

Now where's my meds....?

From: "potioncat" <willsonkmom at msn.com>
Date: 2004/05/26 Wed AM 06:26:52 CDT
To: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: The Sorting Hat (Was: The permanent problem with Slytherin House)



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