Does JKR sees ambition as a flaw?

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 99629

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:

Alla:
> I read on the other list I belong to the speculation that 
> JKR considers the ambition to be a greatest flaw in person.
> 
> Could someone give me any ideas why. I alsor ead somewhere, maybe 
> even on this lists that for many Brits ambition is not considered 
to 
> be a virtue. Is it true?

Geoff:
I think we consider it alright if it is kept in context. The problem 
is when ambition takes over to the exclusion of everything else - 
which is not a trait confined to us here in Britain.

In my teaching career, I came across a couple of colleagues who were 
determined to get to the top by hook or by crook and, quite frankly, 
alienated many friends and colleagues on their way up. There was one 
who went off to be a headmaster in another local school. We had, at 
one point run against each other for a post in our own school. Some 
while later, I put in a request for application forms for a job at 
his place and received a personal letter back in which he told how 
hard he had worked to get the job he now had and implying that, 
because I didn't spend all my time chatting up the people who were 
involved in the decision-making process, I was a no-hoper in that 
area. Needless to say, I didn't proceed any further with the 
application! But that is the sort of ambition which I think JKR is 
objecting to and which is perhaps more noticeable in Slyterin, the 
climbing over other people regardlessly to reach the top.

After all, Flanders and Swann put it, when speaking in particular of 
the English, that we are "clever and modest and misunderstood"
:-)