[HPforGrownups] Re: Sorting and House System

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 173797

>
> Sneeboy2:
> The issue isn't really about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw; it's about
> Slytherin, the bad house, the one it's OK to hate. The Slytherins are
> presented in a uniformly unfavorable light; different degrees of
> "badness" exist among them, but they are all bad on some level. I had
> hoped the hat would be destroyed in the battle somehow, so that the
> school would be faced with the question of how to sort,


montims:

but the Slytherins don't hate each other, and I don't imagine the
Hufflepuffs hate them all that much.  It's just the old jock/geek,
mod/rocker, hippy/preppy, cowboy/indian, French/English, left wing/right
wing, etc etc, divide all over again.  Slytherins are the aristocrats who
like to hang together - they are proud of themselves and their traditions.
Gryffindors are proud of other aspects.  Yes, Slytherin has taken a huge
image fall due to LV, just as Germany did after Hitler, but it will recover
because it has equally good points (even while not recognised as such by
Gryffindors) and valuable WW citizens.

Sneeboy2:
> I agree it's an allegory for the real world, but the whole point of
> fictional allegory is to cause us to go back and look at the real
> world a little differently. I could see a young reader, at book's end,
> questioning whether a bully or mean teacher at school is really all
> bad. But I don't see much -- certainly not enough for my taste -- in
> the books that encourages us to look again at the group identities we
> use to define ourselves and ask whether there is a real basis for
> them, or whether they are mere cultural habit. Part of me suspects
> that in Britain the division into groups is more deeply ingrained, and
> that mounting a serious challenge to it would be considered foolhardy.
> Judging by JKR's statements in interviews about the characters' adult
> careers, she believes in political reform, but perhaps cultural reform
> seems like too much to hope for.


montims:
"the division into groups is more deeply ingrained" than what?  where?  I
have lived in England (in various places), Italy and America, in 2 states.
In each place certain people believed they were better than X (insert
relevant group) because of Y (insert relevant reason).  People (getting
biblical here): do please check out your own planks before commenting on
others' motes...


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