The Sorting Hat (Was: The permanent problem with Slytherin House)

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 99587

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Silverthorne"
<silverthorne.dragon at v...> wrote:

Book 1:
'...Or perhaps in Slytherin, You'll make your real friends
Those Cunning folk use any means, to achieve their ends....'

Book 4:
'Shrewd Slytherin from fen...(snip)
And power-hungry Slytherin
Loved those of great ambition....

Book 5:
> > 'Said Slytherin, "We'll just teach those whose ancestry is purest...
> > For instance, Slytherin
> > Took only pure-blood wizards
> > Of great cunning, just like him...'
>
>
> Silverthorne:
>
> *Small rant and a bit of disillusionment*
>
> Now that I've had *that* rude little awakening...I have to say that I
> honestly *do* believe JKR is shooting herself in the foot--if we're to
> believe that this *is* one of the absolute criteria the Hat is using for
> Slytherin...that means she really *has* set up the House, as a
whole, to be
> 'evil'...no wonder she doesn't understand fans identifyng with it--they
> bought into her whole 'Looks aren't everything' thing and applied it
even to
> the House that it should not be applied to, if we're following the hats
> (her) rules.
>
> What happened to "The Label isn't Everything?" Everyone but Slyth
house is
> permitted that excuse, I guess....

Annemehr:
A lot (or most? yes, probably most) of what I'm going to say has been
brought up on this
thread already, but I don't think it's quite been gathered together
into one post about what JKR's intentions may be.

First of all, I think that the following quotes are indeed JKR's voice:

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are
identical and our hearts are open." --Dumbledore, GoF ch. 37

"Though condemned I am to split you Still I worry that it's wrong,..."
--The Sorting Hat's New Song, OoP ch. 11

It must have been quite deliberate on her part to put so many of the
"nasty" characters, and most of the DEs & sons whose House we know of
into Slytherin. But why?

I think what she did was not merely to label people to make easy
targets, but
to show the *injustice* and *consequences* that labelling people can
cause.

Looking at the Sorting Hat quotes at the very top of the post, we see
that Salazar Slytherin's criteria included folks who would use *any*
means to achieve their ends and those whose blood is purest, as well
as the more neutral search for those of great ambition.

In other words, SSlytherin's ideals for his House included a tendency
to choose children with very similar character flaws.

I believe (and would guess that JKR intends) that the 11-year-olds who
are sorted into each House have very similar *amounts* of character
flaws. The thing that really makes the difference, though, are that
in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, those flaws are likely to be
very randomly distributed among their students. However, in
Slytherin, though the first years are as a group *no more* flawed than
their counterparts, there is likely to be an unusually high
concentration of children who would tend to believe that the ends
justifies the means and/or that having been raised in the WW or having
purer blood is inherently "better."

This means that SSlytherin's choice of students is going to have very
real consequences to the students even of today. For example, in any
one Gryffindor dorm, you may get an ambitious student, a lazy one, and
one who is neither of those but a bit of a bully. They are all
different, and with luck may tend to moderate each other's faults.
But in Slytherin, where the faults that exist will tend to be more
similar, they will feed an reinforce each other. Not only that, but
there is the absence of Muggleborns who may have acted as a
counterbalance, the "us against them" mentality that's engendered, and
the likelihood that a Slytherinly way of thinking and acting has by
now become an actual tradition of the house to be passed down to the
new members.

The causes of the situation, then, are these:

1)The Founders made the decision to sort their new schools students by
their own preferred criteria (something that, as has been pointed out,
can have advantages and disadvantages).

2)Salazar Slytherin's criteria result in at least the tendency for his
house, and his alone, to have students with similar character flaws.

3)Members of a group who share many of the same faults will tend to
have those faults reinforced and strengthened.

How can JKR justify doing this, when one of her themes is supposed to
be the importance of personal choices?

Well, first of all, no matter how important "choice" is, no one is
going to be able to order their life by their own choices. No, things
are going to happen *to* you, and those things will have major
consequences in your life. The importance of choice is in how you
deal with what happens to you. And, by the way, what happens to you
is not going to be "fair." It's not *fair* if you're sorted into the
one house that's going to feed your faults and make life difficult for
you.

Secondly, this whole House situation is the direct consequence of the
Founders' *choice* to sort the students, and of SS's *choice* in
criteria for his. Your personal choices, then, may have profound
consequences in the lives of any number of people, and it would be
well to remember that.

Third, and I am not sure whether this will be explored in the books,
but it is not actually possible to judge between two people based on
their actions. As an example, take two adolescents from Europe during
World War II. Suppose they have roughly equal characters -- both
about the same mixture of flaws and virtues -- but one is Rom (a
gypsy), and the other is German. The Rom winds up in a concentration
camp, and before he's killed, he does something generous (like share
his food) for his little brother whom he loves. The German, who also
loves his little brother, ends up taken into the Hitler Youth and ends
up doing terrible things. One *looks* good and the other evil, but if
their places had been switched the outcome may have been the same.
Who agrees that if Dudley had been brought up by someone like
McGonagall, he would have turned out much different?

I'm not sure what JKR means to do with Slytherin in the future. I
think Harry will indeed have reason to rethink his early judgments. I
think JKR's scenario of the perniciousness of labelling people and of
the dangers of group mentality is a valid point for her to bring up,
even though it's more subtle than having "fair" Houses where each
student is more likely to be judged on his or her own merits.

I also think that some of her dismay at people identifying with
Slytherin may stem from being worried that they are actually happy
with the status quo. If she wants to make a point about the way
Slytherin is sorted, people will miss it if they don't think
anything's wrong to begin with. She may also not realise how much
some Slytherin fans may be rooting for the "underdog," which is
exactly what those students are in a very real sense.

By the way, this is not to let Draco off the hook. True, he is at a
disadvantage in that both at home and at school his faults have been
encouraged. His choice, if he ever makes it, to be "good" will
necessarily be much harder than your average Hufflepuff's choice. He
may not actually be at heart any more evil to begin with than many
others who look much better. Still, the choice is ultimately his to make.

Annemehr
who spent so much time pondering this that it's going up anyway, even
if everyone else has moved on  ;)