Slughorn "clearly good"?

[prep0strus]

No: HPFGUIDX 137804

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Wood, Susan" <swood at c...> 
wrote:
 
> 
> I'm interested in your reading of Slughorn as 'clearly a 'good' 
person'.
> I agree that he is not nice and not fair, but I don't see what 
evidence
> there is that he is a good person. 
> 

Right after I made that post, I regretted the phrase 'clearly good'. 
(though it is fun to have spawned a topic of conversation) Not that 
much can be considered 'clear', and good is simply too vague.  My 
impression, however, is that Slughorn is, 'not evil', which is not 
equivelent to good.  Even that could be vague... Umbridge might be 
considered 'not evil' if evil is only defined by Voldemort & the 
Death Eaters.  I would consider Slughorn 'unpleasant', but that 
doesn't seem strong enough for Umbridge...  one of the things that 
makes the books more interesting as we go along is this murkiness - 
the shades of grey present in the characters.

I believe Slughorn to be a self important, elitest tool.  I think he 
is someone who I really wouldn't like in real life, and would strive 
to stay away from.  However, I don't see evil in him, or any desire 
to help out Death Eaters or their ilk.  They have a differnet goal 
than him.  He wants to have ties to everyone important, to feel 
important by making them more powerful and connected, him the center 
of a giant web of the influential.  He doesn't care about your race 
or bloodedness or gender - he cares about how powerful you are and 
what connections you have or could make.  He doesn't want to kill the 
weak or control the world through dictatorship - just get warm fuzzy 
feelings from his own importance. (IMO)

I managed to be even more imprecise when I used the word 'good' again 
to say I wanted to see a truly good slytherin.  What I really want is 
to see a Slytherin I can like.  I've already given up on finding 
consistency in the houses, so I'd like to just see some evidence of 
why they should exist at all.  Why Godric, Helga, and Rowena 
wouldn't've just started a 3 house school.  We have some Slytherin 
students - who are unpleasant, and at least intrigued by evil.  We 
have Snape, the topic of discussion of 4/5 posts on where he stands - 
but no one can really say he isn't an unpleasant person.  And 
finally, we have Slughorn, who yI could almost like, even with his 
flaws. I mean, a lazy, cowardly wizard who likes the finer things in 
life and having connections?  Not TOO terrible.  But then we see the 
almost brutal way he dismisses those who are not worthy in his eyes.  
We see his elitism, and I then feel like he's a character whose flaws 
as a person outway his simple 'not evilness'.

JKR seems to be saying we've met pretty much all the major 
characters.  If that's true, I don't see how there will ever be a 
Slytherin who I will be able to like and root for.  In a world that 
contains so much grey, I don't know why this has to be so black and 
white.  We've met unpleasant Gryffindors and Ravenclaws and 
Hufflepuffs.  There must be a pleasant Slytherin.  Or purge the 
school of them!!!

I do agree with Marianne S., who (I think it was her) gave a great 
list of how he serves the story.  I think he's an interesting 
character who has added and will continue to add to the story.  I 
think I'm just still irritated by my inability to understand what JKR 
is trying to do with her house system and what she's trying to say 
about the people in each house.

~Prep0strus