[HPforGrownups] Re: Dark Book - Draco - Calvinism

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 177328

Mus:
Slytherin, from the founder who
put the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets to devour Muggle-borns on
down, are bad. Regulus repents and dies, and is only a cipher
anyway, and Slughorn is less evil than venal, but the message is
clear. The other "Good Slytherin" is a horrible error, of whom more
below.

Debbie:
While there are definitely elements of the depiction of Slytherins in HP
that raise my hackles, having followed these threads quietly for some months
now, I have to say that I still can't wrap my arms around the notion that
the Slytherins were bad from the get-go, as opposed to having been co-opted
by Voldemort.  Admittedly, their pureblood ethos made them ripe for
stealing, but I can't buy that they were all bad.

What about Theodore Nott?  His father is a DE and we've never seen him even
hanging out with the other Slyths.

And what about Phineas Nigellus Black?  I rather like the guy, and the worst
thing Sirius can say about him is that he was the "least popular Headmaster
Hogwarts ever had."  Headmasters aren't elected by popular vote of the
students, and they're not in office to do the students' will.  I'll bet he
was unpopular. He didn't take any guff from the students, didn't let them
"be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own --"
but this is a far from evil thing to do.  There's no evidence that he didn't
support Dumbledore's agenda 100%.  (His reluctance to be awakened when
Arthur is injured in OOP has everything to do, IMO, with the fact that he
has to deal with runaway Sirius than with any Slytherin-ish agenda.

I believe the evidence supports the conclusion that Slytherin's anti-muggle
bias made Riddle's takeover easier, but that there were plenty of good
Slyths before Riddle used it as a recruiting device.

Mus:
As has been explored on this board in some detail, the
Gryffindors do a lot of morally suspect acts, but we're led to cheer
them.

Debbie:
I see this in part as a POV issue.  Harry is the protagonist, and we
know his cause is right; even if we didn't think Voldemort was a psychopath,
he's gone way too far and must be stopped.  We're undoubtedly meant to read
the books with his own blinders on.

I actually do have a problem with some of the things the Gryffindors have
done throughout the series, but that concern is largely divorced from my
opinion of the Slytherins because many of the incidents (the pig's tail,
ton-tongue toffees, *sneak* pimples) don't involve Slytherins at all and
some of the ones that do involve Slytherins involve other houses (the hexing
of Draco in OOP).

Mus:
Using Unforgiveable Curses, tricking
goblins, identity theft, the use of dark magic and so on by the White
Hats seems to be the assertion that they are under no obligation to
behave in a certain manner, specifically one that differentiates them
from the Black Hats. It's also interesting, in a sociological sense,
that antinomianism seems to be a charge to lay against one's
opponents, rather than a position to which to adhere.

Debbie:
I thought Harry got his comeuppance from Griphook when he took the sword and
shouted "Thieves, thieves!"  In spite of the stakes for Our Heroes, I was
pleased with Griphook's actions.  As for the identity theft, I tend to write
some of this off as justifiable tactics in wartime.  The Trio are more like
secret agents than regular law enforcement, so the rules of engagement would
seem to be those of spying rather than the usual code of conduct.

Mus:
The sorting of children at the age of eleven into houses, and the
subsequent repeated identification of one of those houses as
inherently bad is predestination. When a character does something
that is undeniably good, then we are expressly told, not that some
Slytherins was capable of great love, bravery and sacrifice, but that
he was in the wrong house to begin with. In other words, Slytherins
are predestined to be bad, but the Hat sometimes makes a mistake.
That's a truly extraordinary message.

Debbie:
The Hat says it never makes a mistake, and Snape didn't want to be in
Gryffindor anyway.  Perhaps Snape could have been a Gryffindor, but he would
not have been.  And in an earlier era, he would not have been a DE in
training, either.  Dumbledore's remark that perhaps they sort too
soon showed his own pro-Gryffindor bias, in addition to the knowledge of
Voldemort's influence on the Slytherins of his generation.  It did not show
that the Hat was wrong; in fact, without Snape's cunning, Dumbledore could
not have succeeded in his agenda.

In any event, as Dumbledore's background demonstrates, there were plenty of
Dark Arts conspiracies outside of Slytherin that could have pulled Snape
in.  In fact, by the time we read Dumbledore's comment, we know that
Dumbledore is not the epitome of goodness, but rather a flawed human
being who came dangeously close to becoming a Dark Lord himself, without any
Slytherin influence.  What saved him was a family tragedy, not anything to
do with his House.

Nevertheless, in spite of Slytherin being poison to Snape's generation,
Voldemort's house, Snape was redeemed, which undermines the theory that
Slytherins are inherently evil.  They are no more evil than Gryffindors,
although I acknowledge that Snape's generation had more temptations than
most.

Mus:
My problem arises when the message that the
sorting gives, that Dumbledore gives us when he talks of being sorted
too soon, is in direct and canon contrast with what the author has
told us is the central point of the moral arc - that our choices make
us what we are. In other words, we're shown predestination, and
we're told individual choice. We're told individual choice and we're
handed a villain who had none from the womb.

Debbie:
Actually, Dumbledore said that our choices *show* who we really are.  And if
I'm reading Wynnleaf correctly, that *is* essentially Calvinist doctrine.
We will know the elect by the nature of their actions and not by their
affiliations.  There is no reason to assume that a fully redeemed Snape
cannot be one of the elect, or that Cormac MacLaggen, for example, must be
one because he is a Gryffindor.

Harry is a member of the elect because when push comes to shove, he chooses
-- over and over again -- to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
Voldemort, I think, presents the essential dilemma of Calvinist philosophy.
He is a creature without the gifts -- most particularly of empathy -- that
would allow him to become the elect, yet my understanding is that he is held
responsible for failing to make the choices that would show him to be one of
the elect.  But the reason he must be stopped is not because he is not one
of the elect; it's because he's too dangerous to society as a whole.  And
those who make league with him -- in this case, much of Slytherin house --
must be stopped, too.  Unless, of course, they repent and betray the doer of
evil.  I take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the Malfoys, who
were up to their eyeballs in Voldemort's tea party, went unpunished because
of what they did, or did not do, in the final battle.

Mus:
I don't think the Hallows
have any real significance - the Cloak remains a plot device for
allowing our hero to get into places he wouldn't otherwise be able
to, the Stone is irrelevant, and only the Wand has any real
importance). When Dumbledore said that choice makes us who we are,
he was lying: the Hat decides who we are.

Debbie:
This reply is mostly off the topic, but the Stone is quite relevant.  Harry
once again demonstrates his own purity of heart ( I suppose you could
say that he justifies his status as one of the elect despite his manifold
sins) by his use of the Stone.  Unlike past users, and in contrast to his
own desire -- emphasized throughout the series -- for his dead family, he
does not use the Stone to keep what he has lost.  He summons the dead, but
only to draw the courage on a walk to his own death.  Once he reaches that
point, he lets go and faces death on his own.  Even more importantly, at
King's Cross he chooses to return to life and ultimately decides to leave
the Stone in the Forbidden Forest.  Like the Philosopher's Stone, Harry is a
worthy master of this Stone because he does not use it for his own
happiness, but uses it for the benefit of all.

Mus:
I'm struggling to come up with any good examples of a character with
a changed heart. Dumbledore might seem a candidate, but then he
tells us that his apparent goodness was weakness (and I'm inclined to
believe him). Percy or Regulus, perhaps, but they are both too
secondary (and the the narrative function of the latter really seems
only to have been there to get the locket out of the cave). Malfoy's
heart doesn't change: he's still an arrogant little toerag, just an
arrogant little toerag who wasn't really up to the task and whose
power base was removed. His "curt nod" is an expression of
submission.

Debbie:
I would argue that a change in heart and a change in personality are not the
same thing.  Draco unquestionably had a change in heart, or he would have
behaved very differently throughout DH, even if he still showed a bit of
arrogance in the RoR ("That's my wand you're holding, Potter") is vintage
Malfoy.  He's still Draco Malfoy, or else I would charge JKR with giving him
a personality transplant.

 I read the epilogue as subtly underlining the change in Draco.  We can
debate the degree of Draco's character development, and whether it was
sufficient to satisfy ourselves, but it's clear from the epilogue that Draco
is no longer emulating his father.  Lucius would have walked over to Harry
and Ron and begun baiting them with nasty comments, as he did to Arthur
Weasley at Flourish and Blotts in CoS.  Draco used to do the same thing
whenever he saw the Trio.  Not anymore; he gives them a nod.

Mus:
The sad answer seems to be that it's an ill-thought-out mess. And as
Le Guin said, rather a mean-spirited one. Do I think that she was
consciously writing an antinomian text? Absolutely not. But I don't
think that she ever decided what the parameters of her imagined moral
universe were, and in a series which is expressly about the battle
between good and evil, that is a crucial and lethal flaw.

Debbie:
I agree that JKR's desire to mete out karmic justice to wrongdoers has
elements of antinomianism, as well as mean-spiritedness.  I agree with
Ursula LeGuin on this point.  But as I don't find these elements to be
particularly connected to an Evil!Slytherin, I find that I can understand
the Good vs. Evil message in spite of the antinomian noise in the
background.  I do appreciate that it may be difficult for others to do so.

Debbie
who also appreciates Wynnleaf's elucidation of the principles of Calvinism


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