Danger in designating an "Other" / Slytherins / DH as Christian Allegory

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 173967

> >>Neri:
> your analogy perhaps isn't very accurate. Being a Slytherin is not
> like being a German. No one is born a Slytherin, they choose to    
> become one.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
No analogy will be perfect because JKR did not write an allegory.  
However, I take issue with an eleven year old being *old* enough to 
make that sort of political "choice".  So for most kids, it's what 
house their parents prefer.  Just like a child has no say as to what 
country he's born into. Which means that IMO, the analogy is accurate 
enough.  (It's how I see DH anyway.  Obviously others can and do 
disagree. <g>)

> >>Neri, who also dislike Dumbledore browbeating Snape to kill him, 
> but notes that Snape didn't seem to require that much browbeating.

Betsy Hp:
Of *course* he didn't.  Snape is a Slytherin so his soul is suspect.  
We know that from age, gosh was it nine?, he spoke highly of 
Slytherin.  In some ways you can't judge Slytherins like normal 
people.  They're a tad more animalistic than the average person.  
They're more suited to murder.  Really, they just need a good 
Gryffindor to take care of them.  Keep them on the straight and 
narrow.

> >> Betsy Hp:
> > If that were true a few Slytherins would have stayed for the big 
> > battle at the end of DH.  They didn't.  They are less worthy than
> > all  the other houses.

> >>Pippin:
> Whoa! JKR doesn't give us the reason none of them were in the fight.
> Why assume that it's because they're unworthy? There are emotional
> ties between the Slytherins and the DE's that Voldemort could have
> used to great effect.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Yes, because it was all the Slytherin children who had Death Eater 
parents.  Because Slytherins have lesser souls and are more easily 
corrupted by evil.  The Slytherin flag was not hanging in the Room of 
Requirement.  That tells everything we need to know right there.

> >>Pippin:
> The story can be read on different levels. You could see the
> Slytherins as a metaphor for the selfish side of humanity and the
> Gryffindors as a metaphor for the good, and you can think about how
> selfishness always defeats itself. We all have a selfish part that
> needs to be reminded of this.

Betsy Hp:
Exactly.  Slytherins are lesser than.  They're more selfish than 
Gryffindors, more easily corrupted, not to be trusted (unless they're 
suitably servile).  

Which, if this were a Roald Dahl book (who wrote inhuman human 
characters very well indeed) would work for me. But you don't show me 
a suffering child and then expect me to believe their suffering is 
less meaningful than another child's because they're evil because the 
author says so.  I've heard that sort of rhetoric before.  It never 
leads to a good place, IMO.  (I'm thinking of Draco's agony in HBP 
that didn't go anywhere in DH.)

> >>Pippin:
> But I think JKR makes it very clear that a problem arises when this
> kind of thinking escapes from storyland and you dehumanize real    
> people by seeing them as symbols or metaphors. That's what the      
> golden fountain was all about, IMO.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
And the green and silver ties apparently.  Which means, JKR was 
actually rather contradictory, IMO.  Though I do agree she'd be 
horrified if children went looking for RL Slytherins.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/173930
> >>Goodlefrood:
> <snip>
> It was certainly the case in post war Europe that a strong element
> of mistrust remained between the vicotrs and the vanquished and to
> some extent this mistrust lingers today. The classic example of the
> continuity of the stereotypical dislike between the English and the
> Germans was the Fawlty Towers episode entitled "The Germans". That
> took matters to a comical extreme, but the underlying attitude was
> there, and Fawlty Towers was not until over thirty years after the
> end of the second world war.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Ooh, that is interesting.  My dad said something similar when I 
lamented about DH to him.  I wonder if my growing up in New York City 
where people come from all sorts of backgrounds is part of the reason 
I found the book so abhorrent?  You kind of *have* to develop a 
certain amount of tolerence for different religions, countries and 
cultures when your grade-school classroom is like a miniature U.N. 


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/173929
> >>lizzyben:
> > Yeah, me too. All the imagery of the pure good Gryfindors vs. the
> > impure evil Slytherins set off every type of alarm bell in my     
> > head. Because once you start talking about "pure" & "impure"     
> > people, it gets all kinds of ugly.

> >>Irene:
> Her own answers to the "Which house you'd be sorted into?" only     
> reinforce this impression. It's usually "I'd like to be in         
> Gryffindor, but I can only hope I'd be deemed worthy". She always   
> uses the "worthy" word in this connection.

Betsy Hp:
Oh, I think DH itself makes perfectly clear that there are the "pure" 
and "impure", the "worthy" and the "unworthy".  And I agree with 
lizzyben that it makes a waste of HBP.  (Gosh, there were so many 
plot-lines dropped between that book and DH.)  Frankly, I didn't see 
the reason for books 2-6.  A leap from PS/SS and DH would have worked 
quite well.  There'd have only been a need for a few more character 
introductions.

I also loved the quote from Salman Rushdie.  He's absolutely right 
about the need for "a little less cleanliness; a little more dirt."   
The world is more beautiful when people deal with the frictions of 
cultural differences and learn to get along. (Like a good, healthy, 
vibrant city.)  When Slytherin and Gryffindor stand side by side, 
rather than forcing Slytherin to wallow at Gryffindor's feet.

It's unfortunate, but I could see one of Hitler's propagandists 
making great hay with DH.  "You see blessed, Germans?  You are 
Gryffindor -- good and golden -- and it's the evil Slytherns (read 
Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.) keeping you down, making your 
beloved mother beg in the street! etc., etc., etc."  Gosh, they could 
even do the old, "Yes we'll have to do some ugly things to win this 
war, throw a Crucio or two, but we are German, we're the 
Gryffindors!  We are right and therefore we must do whatever it takes 
to win this battle and restore our pure and worthy race to its 
rightful place."

Oh, and I'd say the DA would make a wonderful segue into how cool it 
is to be a member of "Hitler's Youth".  Complete with the defying of 
parents and maiming of "traitors". 

I've finally concluded that JKR didn't actually *mean* for all of 
that to come out in her books.  (I was quite honestly worried there 
for a few days.)  But she made the mistake of humanizing her 
Slytherins.  When she tried to force them back into the "every evil 
stereotype under the sun" box, it didn't work quite right.  At least, 
not for me.

Betsy Hp