The good Slytherin (mild TBAY)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 131637

 
> Neri wrote:
> "Umm, I guess you have a perfectly reasonable and innocent reason why
> old Sally sneaked a XXXXX classified monster into a school? "
> 
> Del replies:
> Go ask Hagrid. He does that all the time. He even deliberately puts
> his monsters in contact with the kids, which Slytherin didn't do.
> 

Neri:
You still didn't give any explanation. In Hagrid's case the
explanation is obvious: he was a stupid and lonely 13 yrs old kid.
Moreover, Hagrid's baby monster complex is painted as a rather amusing
flaw in a person who is otherwise good and kind, but Salazar's
basilisk fits right there with his pureblood mania, his monumental
self-portrait and his noble heir, as corroborated by multiple canon
sources such as the Sorting Hat, Binns, Dumbledore and Riddle.  

> Neri wrote:
> "In the HP saga, if you're half giant or a werewolf or the son of Dark
> wizards or whatever, you are supposed to show in some way that you
> aren't bound by your unfortunate ancestry."
> 
> Del replies:
> <snip> If anything, one of the main rules that JKR has alluded to
is: "judge
> people individually, not according to who their family or friends are,
> or whatever particular trait they have".
> 

Neri:
I agree about the family part, less so about the friends. We are
mainly supposed to judge people by their choices and actions, which we
can't do if the author tells us nothing about them. I already wrote
(the part you snipped) that I'm perfectly willing to reconsider
Theodore's SNAKE grade with additional data, and in any case he wasn't
my point. I wasn't judging an individual here. I was judging an
institution, Slytherin House, by the many things we were told about
many of its members. 

>  Del:
> * Baddock, Malcolm (1994 - 2001)
> * Bletchley, Miles
> * Bole (1989 - 1995)
> * Davis, Tracey (witch) (1991-1998) (HPM)
> * Derrick (1989 - 1995)
> * Greengrass, Daphne (1991 - 1998) (HPM, OP31)
> * Higgs, Terence
> * Pritchard, Graham (1994 - 2001)
> * Pucey, Adrian (c.1989 - 1996 or 1997)
> * Warrington, C. (1989? - 1996)
> * Zabini, Blaise (1991 - 1998)
> 
> Miles Bletchley, Bole, and Warrington might be construed as being
> not-too-nice. But the others are total unknowns.
> 
> Looks like this might screw up your statistics a bit...
> 

Neri:
As you say, we know almost nothing about them, and the little we do
know isn't nice. But why do you need to bother with them at all? The
1000 years period that my statistics covers must include many
thousands of Slytherins who were never mentioned by name, and maybe
they were all saints. That would screw up the statistics even worse.
But this is fiction, and JKR can't tell us about all these people. She
needs to paint a reliable picture of a whole world by showing us a
relatively small number of details and people. JKR chose which
Slytherins to show us, and she chose to describe nearly all of them as
baddies. 

Moreover, JKR chose to show us that the values of Slytherin House, the
ends-over-means and the pureblood prejudice, are the very things that
the good guys are fighting against. JKR shows us the evil overlord as
the boy who was a prefect in Slytherin house. She seems to draw a
direct line from all those petty Quidditch fouls to the Slytherin
official ideology of "using any means to achieve their ends", and from
there it's not very far to "there's no good and evil, only power and
those too weak to seek it". The deeds of the individuals, in all the
different levels of evil, mesh perfectly with the ideology of the house. 


> Del replies:
> Maybe it's you who've been doing some lousy reading, because I
> personally have NO problem imagining that Slytherin House is in no way
> the block of prejudice, hatred and treachery that some paint it here.
> 

Neri:
Well, my lousy reading is based on 20 Slytherins on which we have lots
of canon, from diverse sources over 5 books. On what is your
imagination based? 

> I see INDIVIDUALS in Slytherin. I don't see a House. All the
> Slytherins are individuals, just like all the Gryffindors, all the
> Ravenclaws, and all the Hufflepuffs are individuals. Expecting less
> diversity in Slytherin than in any of the other 3 Houses is very lousy
> reading IMO.
> 

Neri:
Slytherin House can be viewed as a mere collection of individuals, but
it can also be viewed as an institution with a 1000 years old
celebrated tradition, or even as an abstract concept representing a
way of life that a person might choose to embrace or to reject. And
JKR indeed describes Slytherin house as such in several key places in
the series. 

> Neri wrote: 
> "But perhaps the worst news for the House-Slytherin-Isn't-Evil fans
> are that JKR (like Voldemort) is now in dire need of evil recruits."
> 
> Del replies:
> Draco will possibly bring his gang to LV, just like his father did.
> But we know of very few people in Slytherin outside Lucius's gang who
> became DEs, so there is no reason to believe that many outside of
> Draco's gang will become DEs this time around.
> 

Neri:
The number of the DEs is limited. Of course not all Slytherins will
become DEs. But Voldemort (and the story) also need supporters who
aren't DEs, and almost all Slytherins in canon, even those who aren't
DEs, demonstrate that they would gladly support people like Umbridge.
 
But I noticed you didn't address my point at all, so may I ask you,
who will the war be fought against? Who will be Voldemort's soldiers
and supporters? 


> And may I remind you that the current Slytherin Head-of-House is
> anti-LV, and that the one DE who helped LV come back to life is a
> Gryffindor?
> 

Neri:
They're both rare exceptions to their houses, and they both seem to
change their ways *despite* their house's ideology, not because of it.
Snape and Wormtail show that people have free will and can act against
the institutions they belong to. But do they also show that the
institutions don't exist or that they aren't important? 

  
> Neri wrote:
> "JKR has been showing us that the roots of evil start at home and at
> school, and that evil is created by people and their values, not by
> demons and monsters. Surely this is what Slytherin house was invented
> for?"
> 
> Del replies:
> Writing the Potterverse rules again, are you? Who are you to say why
> Slytherin House was invented? Maybe it was invented so kids would
> learn, through Harry, that we shouldn't take anybody else's word as to
> who our enemy is, and that we shouldn't condemn anyone just because
> they happen to be related to an enemy?

Neri:
Noble sentiments (to quote one notable Slytherin <g>). But when you
write children's books (to quote the Author now) you need to be
ruthless. In order to make your important point above in a convincing
and dramatic way, JKR first need to have a *real* enemy. And the more
believable, well-developed, numerous and evil the enemy, the more
dramatic will be the realization that some of it aren't really enemies. 


Neri