[HPforGrownups] Re: Of Sorting and Snape

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 175938

lizzyben:

IMO, it would do a lot of good. In "the ones who walk from omelas,"
the young people don't free the suffering baby, either. They can't
mend the harm, can't ease it's pain, can't even offer a kind word.
But they do weep for their own helplessness, & the story says that
this gives them more compassion for the sufferings of others, & more
appreciation for the beauty & love in their own lives. The
compassion is helpless, but it isn't wasted. Compare that w/"King's
Cross", where Harry actually feels *less* compassion & empathy over
time, where he learns to tune out & ignore the other's pain...
that's a weird message.

Debbie:
It's a uniquely Dumbledorean message.  The flayed baby cannot be helped, so
turn away and save the world instead.  This is the same Dumbledore who
chastised himself in OOP because he had allowed himself to care about Harry
-- "the flaw in my brilliant plan" for Harry to be slaughtered like a pig.

But Dumbledore is wrong.  Not that the baby cannot be helped; the first step
to helping an alcoholic is for the alcoholic to understand that he has a
problem and wants to cure it.  The baby may be beyond help, but it has made
its own grave

Dumbledore is wrong because Harry does not defeat Voldemort because of his
saving-people thing.  He defeats Voldemort because Narcissa loves her son,
because Snape loved Lily, because Lily loved Harry, etc.

So, I don't think this is the message of the books.

lizzyben:

Yes, that is tragic. In many ways, I think Snape, Merope & Riddle
are the real faces of abandoned or damaged children. Harry is the
fantasy - someone who lives w/neglect for eleven years & comes out
of the experience w/o any real problems. That's not very realistic,
IMO. But this just makes the sorting system at Hogwarts even
weirder - so the damaged children get sorted Slytherin & good
riddance? At eleven years old, it's too late for any of them?

Debbie:
We've been having this debate about Slytherin house on this list since at
least 2002.  As I see it, the system has always been broken because Salazar
Slytherin's ideology ("We'll teach just those Whose ancestry is purest")
corrupted the sorting process from the beginning. However, it wasn't until
after Riddle's time that Slytherin became a Death Eater boot camp, so I
still hold to the theory that all Slytherins were damned at age 11.

I do often think that JKR has trouble separating ambition and cunning from
megalomania, and bravery from good deeds (which are hardly synonymous, as
Dumbledore could tell us).

lizzyben:
It's funny, cause "Revenge is sweet - and it works!" was one of my
suggested themes for the series at large. Readers are totally
encouraged to cheer & laugh when the "good guys" exact revenge on
their enemies. We're supposed to get a sense of satisfaction when DD
bullies the Dursleys, or Fred & George bully Montague. And we're
also supposed to hate Snape because he's this AWFUL PERSON who's
always trying to bully people & get revenge! In some ways, Snape
becomes our scapegoat as well.

Debbie:
JKR does love comeuppance, doesn't she?  I've said this before, but
sometimes I don't think JKR understands how well she's drawn her
characters.  I think we're supposed to believe that James and Sirius are all
in good fun because, unlike Snape, they don't use Dark Magic.  But I'd bet
big bucks that JKR has never been a target of bullies, in part because in
her worldview, you fight back and exact eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

But she also likes Harry, who (despite Dumbledore's exhortations in HBP for
Harry to avenge the deaths of his parents by killing Voldemort) isn't the
vengeful sort.  He's a save-the-world sort who uses Expelliarmus in all
life-threatening duels.   JKR has created at least one character who is
better than she.

Even more, Harry executes the perfect karmic justice -- he allows Voldemort
to destroy himself.

> Pippin:
> How can there be a final resolution to the problem of evil? What
kind of
> resolution is tricking the bad guy into using the wrong wand?
Well, what
> kind is throwing a magic ring into a volcano or killing a dragon
or blowing
> up a space station? Ursula LeGuin said the people who dislike
the unreal
> resolutions to evil in fantasy are the ones who think there is a
solution to evil
> in real life. :)

lizzyben:
I've been thinking about this, and it seems like the difference is
in the way evil is characterized. In LOTR & other fantasy epics,
evil is seen as some external force, some supernatural being. And
there's no way to end that force. But in HP, evil is very human - LV
isn't a demon, but a disturbed human being. And he's mostly just a
symptom of a totally corrupt society. So, defeating LV doesn't solve
anything at all, and doesn't address or resolve the real evils in
that society. Which, you know, might be realistic. But do people
really read fantasy to see realistic, unsatisfying resolutions to
problems?

Debbie:
I don't read the books as fantasy, despite the fantasy setting.  The
characters are too human.  Harry defeated one face of evil, but there are
many evils left to combat against.  Just like the defeat of Hitler didn't
bring about an end to anti-Semitism, anti-gay laws, etc.  Perhaps this is
why I was relatively satisfied with the ending; I was not expecting more
from Slytherin, and in fact, I expected much less than what we got.  The
epilogue passes the torch to a new generation (such original phrasing, ugh)
to carry on the work Harry began by making the WW safe for muggleborns.
There is still no house unity but the next generation appears open to new
ideas.

This seems like a simple, straightforward message of hope, though I agree
that there are discordant notes that obscure it.

lizzyben:
And I have to agree w/Magpie about the "cleaning" of the Black
house. The imagery of that isn't so much in how great Slytherins
are, but how nice their stuff is once the taint of the unclean
people has been removed. Man, why didn't I see where this was headed
in OOTP? The house "waging war" & fighting to maintain its own
identity while the new, better group attempted to eradicate any sign
of the former group... ugh. Yeah, bad image.

Debbie:
I don't quite see the metaphor that others see, either, but it's not the
taint of the unclean people being removed, it's the taint of Dark Magic
anti-Muggleborn fever that was a legacy from Salazar himself.  Many traces
of the former occupants remain.

Debbie
who wonders if she liked DH better than others only because her expectations
were so much lower


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