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

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 173998

> 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>)

and Goddlefrood wrote in:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/173930

> I disagree that it is entirely a matter of choice to which House one 
> is sorted. There is also, as with several real world schools in the 
> benighted isles, an element of tradition at play. The Black family, 
> as one example, were universally sorted into Slytherin House until 
> Sirius broke that trend and the implication of that, at least the 
> one I took from the sorting system, was that there were traditional 
> houses for certain families. <snip>

Neri:
I certainly agree with both of you that it wasn't just a matter of
choice of 11 yrs old kids (although the 11 yrs old Sirius showed that
it *was* possible to break the tradition, and Regulus showed it was
possible to renounce it after being sorted). But of course, most of
those 11 yrs old kids have been indoctrinated by their parents in a
racist ideology. My question (upthread) was why wouldn't the *parents*
renounce it after they saw where it brought them and the WW in two
Voldy wars. Why wouldn't them educate their children to choose
differently? Or can't they renounce it because it's "traditional"?
That would be equivalent to hypothetical Germans refusing to renounce
racism after WWII on account of it being a family tradition. 

Instead, the solution that JKR came up with was to "dilute" Slytherin.
This strikes me as roughly analogous to the Allies keeping the Nazi
party in Germany after the war, but trying to soften its ideology. You
know, keep the flags with the swastika (why not? After all it was
originally a benign Buddhist symbol) but put a few Jewish and Black
kids in the Hitlerjugend. Well, this method might actually work,
especially if it JKR herself writing it in her book <g>, but even she
wasn't able to realistically pretend that only 19 years after the war
nobody would have anything against the swastika anymore. Anyway, what
personally disturbs me is those Slytherin parents that won't renounce
Slytherin on account of it being a family tradition. Why would they do
such a thing to their own children?  


> Goddlefrood:
> Some time before Deathly Hallows' release there was a speculation 
> somewhere, whether here or elsewhere I can't remember now, that 
> basically set out how Tom Riddle had subverted Slytherin House 
> from under Uncle Horace's control. While Slughorn has some 
> prejudice towards muggle-borns it was a level of prejudice that 
> was not overly likely to lead to the mass production of dark 
> and dangerous wizards. Once Tom Riddle's brand of prejudice began 
> to infiltrate the house of Slytherin then this situation changed 
> quite rapidly and for more than half a century thereafter Slytherins 
> were seen as almost universally evil and likely to join Voldemort's 
> band of merry warriors at the drop of a hat.

Neri:
It's a nice speculation, only JKR doesn't support it in DH more than
she does the rest of the series. Phineas Nigellus was a Slytherin
Headmaster before Riddle's time, and he uses the mudblood word without
even thinking about it. Or was his portrait infiltrated too? The
Sorting Hat is our sole source from the founders' days, and it tells
us that old Salazar wanted to teach only those "who's ancestry was
purest". Or was the Sorting Hat infiltrated too? Lets face it, the
official position of the series is that Salazar left an XXXXX class
monster in a secret room at Hogwarts so that his heir can release it
and "purge" the school. I don't see why someone would want that kind
of family tradition, unless someone still likes to believe that his
"pure" blood makes him better than the mudbloods. 


Neri