Salazar & Slytherin - Quality of Qualities.

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 121990


Alla wrote:
"Sorry for beating the same horse over and over again, but I just want
to understand. We don't see any other Slytherins doing ANYTHING yet 
(basically) - we don't see them doing anything GOOD or anything truly
 NASTY.

They only exist in the story as extras, so far, IMO only. Croud, which
form house Slytherin.

Since we don't see them acting either positively or negatively, why 
are you so sure that Draco and Pansy are the extremes and not typical?"

Del replies:
Keep beating the horse :-) I *think* I got it this time.

Why am I so sure Draco and Pansy are the extremes and not typical?
Well, mainly because nobody else is *visible*. This ties in with what
I said about the adult Slytherins we know : I believe we see them
because they are extremists. Similarly, I believe Draco and Pansy are
so visible because they are extremists, and that anyone else who would
be as nasty as those two would also be as visible as they are.

This happened in OoP for example : the IQ gave an opportunity for the
nastier Slytherins to express themselves. But only a fraction of
Slytherin House composed the IQ : the other Slytherins remained
invisible and neutral, even though they were given a golden
opportunity to express any nastiness they had, which to me indicates
that many of them simply *are* not as nasty as Draco and the IQ.

Am I making sense?

Alla wrote:
"And actually, as nameless croud, Slytherins do not act very nicely -
 Nora couple days ago gave the example of Slytherins not stopping
Draco when he insults Hermione, we also talked about Quidditch and
even though you said yesterday that basically nobody plays nice in
Quidditch, I am thinking more about fairness and I would say that 
Gryffindor ( and two other houses) play much more fair than Slytherin
 does."

Del replies:
In both cases, it's the Slytherin Quidditch team we're talking about :
7 kids out of a whole House. And not just any 7 kids either : it takes
some specific traits to enter the Slytherin Quidditch team, like
physical strength and the will to use it in any way possible to help
the team win. The Slytherin Quidditch team has apparently been
composed mainly of big brutes for several years, Draco being the
exception. So I sure wouldn't expect much of *them*.

There *is* an example of the whole Slytherin House going nasty : it's
the "Weasley is our king" song. But I would take this more as an
example of group mentality and House support during sports than
anything else. Too many nice RL people turn into savages when
supporting their favourite team. And the adult wizards didn't do much
better at the QWC.

Alla wrote:
"You don't see Slytherin offering  the remach, because the Seeker of 
the other team was hurt, for example."

Del replies:
No, but I don't see the Gryffindors or the Ravenclaws doing it either.
The way I read it, JKR wanted to make a point that Cedric was
*exceptionally* fair-minded.

Alla wrote:
"Are you saying that typical Slytherin has only those traits of
character Sorting Hat names?"

Del replies:
Yes. What I was trying to explain is that the typical Slytherin is a
mythical beast, just like the typical Gryffindor, the typical
Hufflepuff and the typical Ravenclaw. They don't exist, none of them.
Which is why I cannot equate Draco to the typical Slytherin. When
talking about "the Gryffindors" I won't use any of the Gryffindors I
know as the typical example of a Gryffindor, and I won't use Draco or
any of the Slytherins we know as an archetype when talking of "the
Slytherins". The *only* archetypes we could use fairly IMO would be
the simplistic beings described by the Hat. But they don't exist, so
we're left to deal with real people who are never completely
representative of their Houses.

Alla wrote:
"You make the positive reference, because you don't see other
Slytherin croud acting negatively. TO ME and to me only it is more
logical to make a negative reference based on those characters JKR
already introduced in the story.

I don't think I can infer that other Slytherins  are much better than
 Draco, because I don't see any of them. To me it would be to think
the best of those people, because I WANT them to be better than Draco
and Pansy, but this is not MY story :o), this is JKR's story and
unless I SEE good Slytherins, I am uncapable of thinking that they
exist only because I would like them to."

Del replies:
But that goes both ways :-) You think they don't exist because JKR
didn't write them, I think they exist because JKR didn't say they
don't exist.

Take the famous problem of the number of students in Harry's class. We
still don't know if Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Hermione,
Lavender and Parvati are the only Gryffindors in Harry's year.
Sometimes it seems like they are because they are the only ones we
ever hear about, but sometimes it seems like they definitely aren't
(Harry had *30* classmates listening to him arguing with Umbridge in
DADA in OoP???). Whichever way we go, there's something JKR isn't
telling us.

Another example is Theo Nott. Harry had been having classes with him
for *4 years* before OoP and the narrator had never even mentioned
him, and Harry didn't know his name??

Obviously, Harry's world is in no way restricted to what JKR tells us
about it. So as long as she doesn't clearly say : "there aren't any
nicer Slytherins, they are all like Draco", I will keep imagining that
they are there, because it wouldn't make any sense for me if they
didn't exist : it wouldn't be real. (And if JKR does say that they
don't exist, I hope she'll give a better explanation than just
"they're all rotten").

Del