[HPforGrownups] Re:Back to Slytherin House - Choosing

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 176173

>
> Jen:  Yet apparently he wasn't meant to be tempted by evil but
> protected by love.  He doesn't want to be sorted into the same house
> as a boy who reminds him of the guy who bullied him his whole life or
> the man who murdered his parents.  Harry rejected Slytherin before he
> ever put the hat on his head or heard a Sorting song talking about
> qualities of Slytherin.


montims:
interesting point - all the members of this thread who are upset by the
Sorting Hat: if Hogwarts were divided into its 4 houses - criteria for
belonging to each having been set by the founders 1000 years ago, based on
the students' personalities - however there was no Hat and instead all the
students came for an open day, met the Head of the Houses and exemplary
students from each, asked and were asked questions, etc, and ended up in the
same houses that the Hat would have sorted them into, based on character and
comfort zone, would that also have been wrong?  (This was more or less what
happens when I went to my Grammar school, although it was also based on
11-plus results, and similar to what happens to students going up to
University, choosing what college to go to...)

I think the Hat just shortcuts that procedure.  How often do we see students
who are unhappy with the Hat's choice, or who are shunned by their
housemates or Head of House as being different?

bboyminn: Is this the easy default choice for our fated
Calvinistic Hero? No, I don't think so. Clearly Harry's
choice bring him misery, a misery he dearly wants to
escape, but always the call of Right overrides his
desire to escape the misery and stress he constantly
faces.

I think this is at the core of the story. I think all
of the moral sub-lessons spring from this one greater
lesson. At some point, in issues large and small,
we must choose between what is Right and what is Easy.
If that is not a strong and positive moral lesson, then
I don't know what is. And I find it impossible to
believe that anyone, real or fictional, doesn't struggle
against immense easy safe inertia in order to bring
themselves to action in the name of Right.

I think that is the great moral dilemma of the day. Do
we sit back and leave the salvation of earth, on every
front, to others, or do we, figuratively, pick up the
sword and allows ourselves to be moved to action?

Harry... who isn't always right, but who is always a
man of Right Action.

montims:
I agree totally, and this was the thing that stirred me after I first reread
the book (not after I first read it, because then I just felt drained...).
As well as the Trio's efforts, Neville really comes to the fore, and is
inspirational.  I applauded Molly leaping in like a tigress.  People didn't
like my suggestion of using this "righteous anger" to combat real life
injustice, but I can't understand how people who get so exercised by the
iniquities of the fictional world, and its possible parallels with Naziism
or the much more historical (is this correct?) Antebellum South of America,
and the dastardly use of Unforgivables, will not use that horror and
indignation and vigour to condemn Real Life iniquities - torture and
genocide, oppression, capital crimes, slavery (of people, not fictional
house elves), etc, etc...


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