Slytherin as villains / Ender vs. Harry SPOILERS for Ender's Game

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 178969

> Betsy Hp:
> Ah.  So we'll just ignore the fact that we learned this apparently 
> false fact while Harry was in Voldemort's head and feeling his 
> emotions?  I'm afraid I find this idea... weak. <g>  

Pippin:
That's a clever argument.  But we have loads of canon for Harry
being unable to detect that Voldemort is lying when he's
in Voldie's mind. Especially that bit where he thinks he's seeing 
Sirius being tortured at the MoM. If Voldemort is using
occlumency so that Lucius won't detect that he's lying, will
Harry be aware of it? I don't think so. 

Betsy Hp:

I'd also think that if the  Slytherin's joining Voldemort was such an out
of character move,  Harry would have mentioned it to Ron and Hermione.  
He doesn't.

Pippin:
Of course not! It fits exactly with Harry's idea of what those slimy Slytherins
are capable of, just as many people were quite ready to believe that those 
slimy Muggleborns stole their magic from wizards. I didn't see Muggleborn
students protesting their expulsion. They  left. Hermione said lots of them 
went into hiding. Does that make them bad guys too?

The Slytherins were turned out just as the Muggleborns were before them.
I suppose that "load of duffers" in Hufflepuff  would have been next, or 
maybe the amoral Ravenclaws. "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest 
treasure" -- can't you see what a dangerous philosophy that is? <g> 
You know how it goes..." First they came for the trade unionists but I did 
not speak up" etc.


> Betsy Hp:
> Harry not hearing a lie, and Harry not being shocked at the news.  
> Seriously, JKR doesn't like Slytherin.  They're her bad guy house.  
> Why are you fighting this? (I'm curious about it actually.  Because 
> it's odd to have people who didn't care much for Slytherin suddenly 
> (IMO) fighting up stream to show their support for them all of a 
> sudden.)

Pippin:
I'm fighting it because I think  to see Slytherin strictly as the bad guy 
house and criticize JKR for it is to miss much of the beauty and 
cleverness of her books, and the more I delve into it, the more I 
appreciate her artistry. 

For me, the saga is like the gag about Aberforth's goats; it works
on several different levels. You can see Slytherins as purely bad guys,
just like you can think Aberforth was just making curly horns,
or you can appreciate that there's another dimension. 

If you see the four houses as a metaphor for the personality then
you can say that Slytherin is the inner bad guy that we want to deny but 
that has to be accepted. On that basis, yes, Slytherin is the bad house,
and Harry telling Al he can choose Slytherin over Gryffindor says, yes,
you have bad impulses but you don't have to choose to listen to them.

But that makes all the depth placed in Slytherin characters a mistake.
It's not a problem for the naive reader who never notices the depth
in the first place. But I think if you notice the depth, you're supposed
to notice also that you can look at the houses in another way. 

You can see the four houses as a metaphor for competing subcultures, 
and Slytherin as the tempting target of an unjust bias. Their culture
is presented as morally inferior to the Gryffindors. I'm not arguing
otherwise. But canon shows they believe in it because they were 
brought up to, not because they themselves are morally inferior 
beings. 

I agree that JKR does want us to see that courage is a superior 
virtue, and that Gryffindor was the only founder who believed this. 
She also wants us to see that pureblood superiority was a bad idea,
and that Salazar Slytherin was  responsible for it. 

But the founders lived a thousand years before, and just as Salazar 
Slytherin's views about Muggleborns have (unfortunately) made their way 
into the WW as a whole, so have Gryffindor's views about courage. The
Hat makes its choices as it always has, which is both blessing
and curse, but the pool of students it's choosing from is different.

You don't have to have a Gryffindor education to learn that
courage is a virtue, and you don't have to be from a Slytherin
family to have absorbed the idea that the wizardborn "get" wizarding
ways better than Muggleborns do. Ron says he never knew that
all this pureblood stuff started with Slytherin! 

When Slughorn says he's not prejudiced, that shows his views are
mainstream. Fudge is mainstream, he wouldn't dare adopt
a view that isn't. When Dumbledore says that Fudge puts too
much emphasis on so-called purity of blood, and he always
has, he, Dumbledore, is the radical. 

I've always shown support for Snape, and thought that Slytherin's
evil was exaggerated. But I don't think it's entirely imaginary either.
JKR is not a blanket multi-culturalist. When an institution encourages
bigotry, that's bad, and Slytherin House had a tradition of looking
down on Muggleborns.  But it's a tradition, not an inborn trait.
People learn it, and what is learned can be unlearned, albeit with
difficulty. When JKR said that the pureblood influence had been
"diluted" I think she meant that "proper wizard feeling" is no longer
an important part of the Slytherin identity.

The Hat can yammer on about it, but if nobody believes it, what
can it do? People can ignore what the Hat says about purebloods
being best or courage setting Gryffindors apart just like they can 
ignore the Hat's pleas for unity.


> Betsy Hp:
> Ooh, sorry Pippin, the Hat disagrees. <g>  Courage is a *Gryffindor* 
> value.  That's Gryffindor.  The house Snape was *almost* good enough 
> for in the end. <rbg>

Pippin:
Courage was a Gryffindor value when the Hat was made, but it's not
any more. Luna and Cedric are proof of that. So is Snape. The
hat is the voice of the past. 

> > >>Pippin:
> > Erm... Do you have any experience with kids? They'll say
> > anything to be provoking. "James, give it a rest!" is Ginny's
> > reaction.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> And they know how far to push.  I'm betting James doesn't run around 
> saying "fuck". 

Pippin:
I'm betting he does. And gets his mouth scurgified for it too. He's
testing his boundaries, and his parents are walking a fine line.
Reacting will reinforce James's attempts to get their 
attention this way and may encourage the behavior more than
ignoring it would. 

Plus, if they leap in to defend Albus, that will make Albus look
weak. 

Betsy Hp:
 He also emphasizes that he was only saying Al "might" 
> get into Slytherin.  So to me it's not the negativeness about 
> Slytherin that's pissed off his mom, it's James saying that Al will 
> end up there.  ("I only said *might*!" reminds James. <g>)

Pippin:
Ginny's pissed off because this is supposed to be a happy family
occasion and James is being disruptive. Al is the center of attention,
it's *his* big day, and older sib James doesn't like that. So he says
whatever he hopes will upset things, then takes refuge in claiming 
that he's only telling the truth. 

Harry finally intervenes, first to say that thestrals aren't scary, 
they're gentle creatures, then  that if Slytherin got Al it would
get  an excellent student. If it were nonsense that Al could be
a Slytherin, and this was the view that Harry wanted Al to have,
or that JKR wanted us to have, Harry could have said so then. 

Why are you resisting this interpretation so strongly? Not that
you need to answer, I'm just curious. 

I agree that there's a lot of ugliness in the WW, I don't agree that
JKR is unaware of it. She simply didn't give her heroes the power
or the goodness to erase it all in one swell foop. They made things 
better for two house-elves (Dobby got to die free instead of as a 
slave of the Malfoys, Kreacher was cured of his depression though 
not of his slave mentality.)  They didn't free every house elf.

They banished Voldemort for good, they didn't manage to save
his soul.

They helped Kingsley, who believes that every life is worth the same 
and every life is worth saving, survive to become Minister of Magic.
They didn't exterminate all the dementors or recall the giants from exile 
or get the anti-werewolf legislation repealed.  

Harry realized that he had terribly misjudged the man he called a 
coward and a murderer, and he made sure everyone knew it. 
He didn't save Snape's life. 


Harry saved the Sorting Hat and brought a Slytherin family back to
Hogwarts.  He  couldn't make everyone forget what Slytherin House
had stood for.  Slytherin still has a bad reputation, just as, for example,  
America (speaking as an American here)  has some reputation for 
racism. But that doesn't mean that racist beliefs are as popular as they 
ever were, or that Americans were ever morally inferior by nature for
having had them.
  
> > >>Pippin:
> > Where's the evidence that Regulus wanted to be a bad kid?
> > Slughorn doesn't want bad kids in his club, for one thing.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Since a keystone for being bad is being a bigot in this series, I'd 
> say the evidence was all over his home, and from his brother's 
> mouth. 

Pippin:
Harry didn't want to be a bad kid, but he was bigoted against
Snape. He didn't mean to be bigoted, he thought the things he
believed about Snape were really true. Regulus probably believed
the things that he heard about Muggleborns were true, despite
the fact that he was going to school with them, just as Harry
believed his ideas about Snape were true despite that we, with
our god's eye view of the Potterverse, could see differently. 

Believing the best of our friends and the worst of our enemies isn't
just Slytherin nature. It's *human* nature. 


> > >>zgirnius:
> > He should have told all assembled at the end of the book "Hey,     
> > Folks! Slytherins are people too, they are motivated by love and   
> > fear and a desire to belong and succeed just like us!"? I would    
> > think especially the adults present would not have found this a    
> > shocking revelation.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Well, JKR sure would have. <g>  Especially that "succeed" bit.  
> Remember, ambition is bad and Harry's goodness comes from the fact 
> that he doesn't fuss too much about succeeding or not.  And that's 
> where Dumbledore fell.

Pippin:
Harry's desire to succeed at his quest is not shown as a bad thing. It's
okay to go all out for the greater good, you just have to be sure that
you know what the greater good really *is*.  But that can be very hard
to see, especially with the limited experience of a high school student.
If even the great Albus Dumbledore could be confused on that point,
surely the Slytherins of Harry's day can be forgiven?

Harry's decision to give up the elder wand comes immediately after
he has told Ron and Hermione everything he saw in the pensieve. His
mistake about Snape is  implied as the reason he knows he'll never be 
wise enough to use the wand as Dumbledore did. And he was mistaken
about Snape partly because he was mistaken about Slytherin House
as a whole. 

Betsy Hp
> I'm sorry, but I just cannot get past the fact that when the big 
> battle came Slytherin left and joined the enemy.  And when the big 
> battle finished, the Malfoys sat by themselves.  And nineteen years 
> later a Gryffindor boy could tease his brother about the possibility 
> he "might" end up in Slytherin.  Harry never made that speech because 
> in his world, it's just not true.

Pippin:
He never made that speech because it would have ruined the houses
as a metaphor for the personality and made them just about competing
cultures. This way they're both. Presumably adults have succeeded in
integrating their personalities, and aren't reading HP for reassurance that
their personalities can be integrated :)  while kids will never notice how
complex the Slytherin characters are.

Plus it would have sounded preachy, and it wouldn't have convinced anybody
but the people who believe it already. What good is preaching to the
choir?

Pippin