Scapegoating Slytherin (was:Punishing Draco (was:Re: Snape, Hagrid and Animals)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 143976

 Betsy Hp:
 > See, I think the Slytherins are seen as the "bad" house *within 
the
 > Potterverse*,

I'm surprised that nobody's yet brought up the role that the 
psychological symbolism is playing in this-- you only need a passing 
knowledge of Jung (who was such an influence on the dreaded Joseph 
Campbell!), to identify Slytherin with the unintegrated Shadow-side. 
JKR nearly says as much in the Leaky interview:

"Well, the deeper answer, the non-flippant answer, would be that you
have to embrace all of a person, you have to take them with their 
flaws, and everyone's got them. It's the same way with the student 
body. If only they could achieve perfect unity, you would have an 
absolute unstoppable force, and I suppose it's that craving for 
unity and wholeness that means that they keep that quarter of the 
school that maybe does not encapsulate the most generous and noble 
qualities, in the hope, in the very Dumbledore-esque hope that they 
will achieve union, and they will achieve harmony. Harmony is the 
word."

Compare to Jung:

"Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less 
good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a 
shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious 
life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, 
one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly 
in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected 
to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from 
consciousness, it never gets corrected."
"Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion:
West and East. P.131

Freud seems like a bigger influence (I say this not least because of 
the whacking big book saying Freud JKR has on her bookshelf), but 
Rowling's worked out a mightly meticulous symbolic structure to the 
series and the Shadow theme is an awfully big one IMO.  You could 
write a whole book on the subject and you'd need a better essayist 
than me to sound really clever about it.  But I think there's three 
major elements carrying Shadow imagery in the series and their 
functions are different.  First obviously if Voldemort, who is pure 
inhuman or pre-human selfishness, fear, and hatred, but who 
nevertheless is profoundly spiritually connected to the Hero.  In 
Book V Vmort is explicity identified with Harry's primitive emotions 
iirc.  I suppose at some point Harry will merge with Voldemort in 
some esoteric sequence featuring ancient magic and V-mort will 
vanish in the process, rather like the end of "Wizard of Earthsea";  
in any case Harry's realization that this primitive evil is part of 
him in some way is pretty well set up and I'd be astonished if he 
wasn't a Horcrux, because it's such a neat solution to the 
connection.

The second Shadow-figure is Snape, who is so closely identified with 
repression that he actually teaches it as a subject, Occlumeny;  
wearing black and lurking in Shadows and having untellable secrets 
and buried guilts and so on are his job description, poor fellow.  
Harry has to 'merge' with Snape as another Shadow-figure, this one 
personal as opposed to primal, thankfully this can merely take the 
form of the catharsis scene we've all been waiting for, where the 
past secrets are brought to light and Snape is released from his 
prison of repression and Harry can move into a healthy relationship 
with his dark opposite.  Regarding the whole apology thing, I think 
it may happen as part of a dam-busting psychic event;  in general 
I'm dying to see Snape just LOSE it, so I'm really looking forward 
to that!

So anyways the subject that started this was Slytherin House, that 
is the Shadow side of the wider society;  they are the repository of 
all the negative traits and live in a dungeon and are excluded from 
the community of the rest of the school.  This is where JKR, IMO, 
runs into a bit of trouble because the symbolic role of Slytherin, 
which necessitates them actually being full of negative, ugly, nasty 
things, is colliding uncomfortably with the surface role of being a 
bunch of kids sorted in there at age 11.  The whole idea of dividing 
up little kids like that struck me as so horrifying and pernicious I 
just couldn't get my head around the easy acceptance of it;  happily 
in OoP the Hat has told us that this is a BAD thing and I dare say 
the series will end with the dissolution of this system.  Like with 
the voldemort-shadow, the Hat being a Horcrux seems like an obvious 
solution for a climax and resolution of this division.  The social 
crisis within Hogwarts, which is the social world that the Hero will 
bring the benefit of his personal integration to, can thus start to 
be resolved.  Which brings me to the last bit of this thread:

Betsy:
>I think it's rather telling that when the Sorting Hat tells us of
>the trouble that brewed up between the Founders, Slytherin does not
>receive the blame. All four fought amongst each other until
>Slytherin finally left. And his leaving weakened Hogwarts as a
>whole.

I tried to figure out a Tarot structure for HP once, but gave up, 
because I couldn't make Slytherin fit in-- it seemed clearly watery, 
but the Cups tend to have positive associations of love and 
happiness. The Swords are the ugly, conflict cards, but as the air 
suit they didn't seem to work at all in opposition to Gryffindor the 
Fire/Wands suit.  In the Leaky interview JKR set it straight: she 
did indeed want the Houses to correspond to the elements. Slytherin 
is the water/Cups house of emotion. Far from being the cool, 
rational House, we see Slytherins freaking out, bursting into tears, 
roiling with repressed rage, and so on. 

It makes sense now for the Cups to be a negative sign in the books, 
because the whole point is that the emotional world of Hogwarts is 
out of balance. The love aspect of the Cups is blocked. The image of 
a blocked pipe keeps coming to me-- I really think she's going to go 
back in the next book all the way to the Founders, to clear up what 
caused the conflict in the first place. I don't think it's a 
coincidence that the Slytherin exile is so closely connected to the 
bathrooms overflowing in CoS.  And I don't see how the books can end 
without some sort of bringing to light of this repressed past of the 
Founders and their initial split.  I think it's significant that 
there's a contradiction between the 'official' history of the split, 
as laid out by Binns in CoS, and the new version the Sorting Hat 
gives in it's song in OoP.  Part of the point of the integration of 
the Shadow side is the acknowledgement of how close the behaviour 
of 'those' people is to 'us', a mirror of how our consciously 
constructed thoughts are rationalized versions of the selfish drives 
of the Shadow side, which is why it's so important to bring them to 
light.  This dynamic that's laid out really clearly in JKR's 
acknowledged favorite children's book, "The Little White Horse", 
where the heroine is told a simple story of the ancient enmity 
between the 'sun' kingdom and the 'moon' kingdom;  in the end the 
real story is much more complicated one of mutual selfishness and 
misunderstanding.  

Sorry, I seem to have wandered around a lot in this post!  It's a 
really big subject obviously, but I just wanted to highlight this 
element.  Um... can't think of a way to wrap it up with a bang so 
I'll just sign off,

-- Sydney, long-winded one.