Salazar, Slytherins and Bigotry

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 179934

> Betsy Hp:
> Also, readers can focus in on specific stuff that floats their 
boats.

Mike:
You betcha Betsy. The waters under my boat are asking me to focus on 
motivations, for the present.


>*****************

> Betsy Hp:
> I think that Gryffindor and Slytherin were great friends while
> Slytherin was a bigot points to the, in the end, non-issue of that
> aspect of Slytherin

Mike:
We know so little about the founders. Therefore this post will be 
heavy on speculation.

Do you really think Godric Gryffindor befriended Salazar Slytherin 
for reasons of expediency? That Godric said, 'Hey, this guy is good. 
We should get him onboard for this school thing. So he's a bigot, so 
what? We can work around that.' This is not the type of character I 
would ascribe to the premier icon in the Potterverse, that had the 
followers of his credo enthralled. I'm sure that his character was 
supposed to be better than that.

We don't know what the world was like in the 10th century 
Potterverse. Was there anti-magical bigotry? IOW, was there a real 
reason for Salazar to fear Muggleborn wizards? Were there Muggleborns 
that denied their own wizardness and instead sought to eradicate the 
magical from the world? I'm thinking of someone like Cypher from the 
Matrix movies. Someone that knew there was a different world, but 
wanted to deny it so badly that they actually sided with their 
erstwhile enemy to remove a cause of discomfort in their own lives. I 
can also picture an Elmer Gantry-type leader of the anti-wizard 
movement, knowing how suseptible people of that age were to 
charismatic leaders. (Hah, like we're so different today!)

My speculation here is that something changed in the world of the 
founders that impelled them to start a school. They may have been the 
four greatest witches and wizards of their age, but it seems logical 
that something motivated them to start Hogwarts besides just 
altruistic reasons. Why gather all the magical children in one 
school, why not leave them to their smaller schools that surely 
existed, or their informal education from travelling tutors?

So maybe Salazar's anti-Muggleborn philosophy was rooted in real fear 
of what was happening in the world around them. Maybe that was a part 
of the reason for Godric, Helga, Rowena and Salazar started Hogwarts. 
And while we're on them all, I would think that Helga would have been 
the most veheminently opposed to any anti-Muggleborn dictum. She was 
the one that would (paraphrasing here) 'take the lot and treat them 
all the same.' My guess, if the rift started over Muggleborns - and 
we have no way of knowing that it did - that it started between Helga 
and Salazar.

Now some will say, 'What about the Chamber of Secrets?' I have a 
number of thoughts on this that evolved out of conversations here on 
HPfGU. 

Let's start with who made it. Huh? Whaddaya mean, Salazar made it of 
course! Hold your horses, do we really know that? As Steve has tried 
to point out on a number of occasions with the whole Deathly Hallows 
story, there's the legend and then there's the real story. Death 
didn't make the Hallows, three talented brothers made them.

[Short Aside: The real invisibility cloak didn't hide one from Death, 
it was just this really well made cloak that didn't wear out like the 
others did. It didn't even hide Harry from Moody's magical eye, much 
less hide Ignotus from Death.]

Are we so sure that the Chamber was really around in the beginning? 
Was Myrtle's second floor loo, the entrance, even around? Back when 
the school started, populations were so much smaller, both wizard and 
Muggle. Would they really have built such a vast castle to house and 
teach what was probably a couple dozen kids or so?

Who makes a statue of themself with a mouth as the opening for the 
inner sanctum of a Basilisk? Yeah, I know, a real egotist. But then a 
real egotist would have a different place to have the giant snake 
emerge from than his mouth. <wink> Actually, to me, it seems quite 
plausible that a Slytherin heir or heirs built the Chamber as a 
misguided monument to their patriarch. They would have started the 
legends, because they had been conditioned to believe that Salazar 
was anti-Muggleborn and that the Chamber was a fitting tribute to his 
vision. The progression of the family line to the Gaunts, lends 
credence to the idea that Salazar's heirs were both extravagent and 
extreme.

Let's say that Salazar *did* build the Chamber himself, and stocked 
it with a Basilisk. I don't have a Fantastic Beasts book, how long 
are Basilisks suppose to live? Anyway, why a Basilisk? Where does it 
say that a Basilisk is the right weapon for one of his heirs to use 
against Muggleborns? If Ron had looked into the Basilisk's eyes, 
wouldn't it kill him? 

The point is, Salazar may have had a fight with the other three 
founders, built the chamber and left the school in a huff. I have no 
idea why he would install a Basilisk, but the whole idea that he did 
so for an eventual heir to rid the school of Muggleborns reeks of 
legend, not Salazar's true mindset. Salazar may have had a mistrust 
of Muggleborns, may have actually hated them and didn't want them in 
his school, but the Chamber of Secrets does not come across as a 
direct off-shoot of that hatred, for me. Since a Basilisk's sight or 
poison would kill Muggleborns, half-bloods, or pure-bloods equally as 
well.

So what am I trying to say? That Salazar's opinion may not have been 
singular with regards to Muggleborns. That there could have been a 
pervasive attitude of the times that fostered a fear of Muggles and 
Muggleborns. That legend superceded reality when it came to Slalzar's 
CoS. Basilisks aren't only Mudblood killers. Legend conflated the CoS 
with Salazar's perceived pure-bloodism.



> a_svirn:
> I think it *is* about pure-blood mania, though. The great
> showdown  between Harry and Voldemort is about "mastering Death",
> yes. But the controversy between Slytherin and the other houses,
> is about this pure-blood thing.


Mike:
Someone get the smelling salts, cuz this one is going to knock Betsy 
over. I agree with Betsy! This whole fight wasn't over pure-bloodism.

Voldemort was never about pure-bloods. How could he be, he wasn't one 
and he was the greatest wizard ever, just ask him. In the first book 
Quirrell told us who Voldemort was; "There is no good and evil, there 
is only power, and those too weak to seek it..." <PS/SS p. 291, US> 
There is no room for pure-bloodism in that equation. 

Voldemort used pure-blood mania as a red herring for his followers. 
How many DEs could he have recruited had he actually told them, 'this 
is all about power for *me*, and you all are just a bunch of toadies 
to be used and abused at my whim'? He had to give them a cause other 
than himself to fight for. Later, after they were inducted into the 
club, he would demand obsequious acquiescence to his personage. If we 
are to equate LV with Hitler, re the whole Nazi motif, Hitler 
demanded his followers to pledge obedience to *him* not to the 
fatherland.



> Betsy Hp:
> I mean, I doubt the Sorting Hat's song will have changed much when
> it comes time to define the houses.  Slytherin will still be the
> house of the ambitious, cunning and bigoted.  Of course, as it
> was during most (if not all) of Harry's time at Hogwarts, the
> Slytherins won't be allowed to let their bigotry run *rampant*.
> But it will still be a defining characteristic.  After all,
> there's nothing in DH to suggest that would ever change.  It
> certainly wasn't part of Harry's "quest".

Mike:
Keep them smelling salts handy, for the most part I agree again. 
Ambition and Cunning are characteristics that the Sorting Hat looks 
for. Bigotry is not. It is a learned trait that seems endemic to the 
type of families that favor the Slytherin credo. Young Slytherins 
learn it at their father's knee. They are possessed of their own 
superiority before they put the Hat on. 

We all know that the hat takes one's preferences into account. It 
must have for Crabbe and Goyle, since I see a distinct lack of 
cunning in either, though there may have been ambition in Crabbe. But 
I rather doubt that young Severus entered Hogwarts as a bigot. The 
House seems to have fomented that trait within him, and he seems to 
have curtailed that attituded in his later years. (Although it still 
surfaces when dealing with his life-long enemies, ::cough, Lupin, 
cough::). 

That Slytherin House is the Home of the Bigot, I have no problem 
with. Somebody had to be the bad guys in the story, and they had to 
have some bad traits or what's the point? There had to be a reason 
that the bad guys fell in with the bad overlord-wannabe. Voldemort 
hooked them with this pure-blood bigotry ruse.

And Betsy is also right about it not being on Harry's to-do list to 
wipe out bigotry. <hell, I'm on a role with agreeing with Betsy. ;)> 
Harry was on a quest to cut off one head of the Hydra. Snape's DADA 
openning remarks told us there were other heads waiting in the wings. 
Hopefully, Harry managed to get the most deadly head, and that 
another more deadly won't grow back in it's place.

But bigotry wasn't one of the heads, imo. Bigotry is not conquered, 
it is learned away. Killing a bigot does not kill bigotry. Teaching a 
bigot may reform him/her and thereby teach others of his/her ilk. 
Maybe Draco, with his bad experiences under the thumb of Voldemort, 
will have come to understand that pure-bloodism led him into that 
morass. So maybe he will have changed his tune when it came to 
teaching Scorpius what credos are worth following. That is where I 
garner hope for the future of the WW. Not from what Harry learned 
during his quest, from what Draco learned during his time in 
purgatory.

Mike