The Houses again (was Re: DH as Christian Allegory

[Ricky & LeAnn]

No: HPFGUIDX 173544

< Julie:
You may be right, but where the real negativity comes in is from the other
Houses. They all hate Slytherins. They boo whenever anyone is sorted into
Slytherin. Slytherin is deliberately portrayed as the outcast house (which I
supposed made it a good fit for Snape!). To students in the other Houses,
just being Slytherin means you are undesirable, bad, "other.">

Anders:

Slytherins are the ones who thought they were superior to the other houses,
not the other way around. They were booed because of the superior attitude
they showed toward members of the other houses. As they were written in the
books, they brought the dislike of others onto their own heads, but they
were written as being so arrogant, they didn't care what the "inferiors"
thought of them and probably assumed everyone else was jealous of them.

< Julie:
Here is my problem. WHY, WHY, WHY
would you put eleven year old CHILDREN into a House that has been corrupted,
that is "fertile ground" for bringing out the very worst in qualities they 
*already*
so strongly possess? For me it's not about the qualities themselves, which
as
you say can be used for good or bad, but that Slytherin House is 
allowed--nay,
actively encouraged by its rejection and isolation from the other Houses,
and
by the fact that its very existence in its acknowledged "corrupted" state 
continues without an iota of interference--to pound these corrupted ideals
into the minds of CHILDREN.

So for me it's not Slytherin House per se, but what it has *become* that is 
the
problem, though the real bigger problem is that no one, from the Headmaster
and teachers at Hogwarts, to all the other "good" people in the WW, have not

a
single compunction about dumping these kids into the "Death Eaters in 
Training"
house.>

Anders:

For one thing, aside from the Order, no one admitted that the Death Eaters
and Voldy still existed. Lucius, Fudge, and company would never have allowed
DD to disband Slytherin House. The most DD could do was carefully watch the
students for signs of dark arts dabbling, as he saw in Tom and Draco.  He
tried to prevent the "pounding into their heads of corrupted ideas" but he
and the other teachers couldn't always overcome what they were taught at
home. If someone had been able to disband Slytherin house, then those
students would likely have transferred to Durmstrang, where they didn't have
DD overseeing their training.

DD may also have believed that the other students will have to face people
like Slytherins in the adult world, and they would be better prepared for
that after having learned to live with them at Hogwarts. That's the only
reason why I can see DD would have allowed the free rein given to Snape to
favor Slytherin students over the others, although McGonagall and others did
their fair share of showing favoritism to Harry and other Gryffindors on
occasion.

For the theme of the book, I think Jo used those in Slytherin to show that
we all have freedom of choice in our actions regardless of our innate
qualities. It's not who we are born that matters, - even if we are born with
Death Eaters as parents, or have the Slytherin qualities which give us
perhaps more potential for bad choices than the other houses, we aren't
locked into pursuing a dark path. Those same qualities of ambition and
cunning would give Slytherins potential to be successful businessmen,
politicians, etc. It still comes back down to the choices we make. I assume
there were many Slytherins whose parents weren't Death Eaters, - those who
were are merely the only ones we saw in the story. 

It would be interesting to see how Jo characterizes Slytherin House members
after this book. 

Anders