Dark Book - Draco - Calvinism

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 177343

 
> lizzyben:
> 
> That's what I wonder about. If Gryffindors are really supposed to be 
> the "noble & good", why is it OK for them to to bad things? How can 
> they be the good guys w/o showing goodness of heart? But sometimes 
> it seems like JKR sees the characters very differently than we do - 
> i.e. Hermione was totally justified in scarring Marietta, HBP!Ginny 
> is funny & compassionate even though she hexes everyone, etc. So it 
> seems like there's a big disconnect between what JKR is intending to 
> portray & what really comes across. 

Pippin:
If  everyone got a comeuppance every time they did something
wrong, Voldemort's career would have been a lot shorter. The
poetic justice of the Potterverse is clearly not a vending machine: put
a bad deed in, get a comeuppance out. It's more like a slot machine:
the more bad deeds you put in, the more likely you are to reap a
comeuppance eventually, so you'd do best not to play at all, but
better to quit before you've lost anything important. 

If Hermione thought she was totally justified in what she did
to Marietta, if the Twins thought they were totally justified in what
they did to Montague, they wouldn't have needed to
keep it a secret from anyone who could rightfully punish them. They 
were proud of it, but after all it took years for Sirius to grow to 
the point where he was not proud of how he had treated Snape.  

JKR justifying her artistic decision is not the same as
JKR justifying her character's actions. But any society which
depends on bonds of mutual trust and obligation is going to
see treachery as a threat not to the individual but to the
fabric of society itself. Even without scars, Marietta
would not find it easy to ever gain the trust of anyone who
knew what she'd done, and in a society that depends on
trust she would be crippled.  The scars are a way to
visualize that. 
 
Lizzyben:
> I do think that JKR believes that Harry, Hermione, Ron & the Gryfs 
> have greater goodness of heart, & that they make better choices and 
> take better actions. This was brought home in the Hogwarts scene 
> where more Gryfs chose to stay than any other House, etc. 


Pippin:
I don't think we have to explore the thickets of Christian sectarianism
or the history of heresy to understand why JKR is not a multi-culturist.
Old-fashioned religious leftism explains it perfectly well, IMO.

If  you believe that there is a moral imperative to create a more 
just  society,  then you can't believe something like "every society is 
equally just in its own way." There wouldn't be much point in
working for social justice in that case. 


 IMO, the Slytherins depict a subculture which evolved in 
such a way that progress towards social justice is not  
recognized as a greater good. 

That doesn't make the Slytherins evil, but it does make them more
vulnerable to someone like Voldemort who wants to pervert social
institutions to his own ends. IMO, the Gryffindors do not have
greater goodness of heart -- that would make it impossible to 
explain the behavior of Peter Pettigrew. 

What the Gryffs have is a tradition that makes choosing the path of
fairness and justice and forgiveness seem desirable even when 
they know it will be harder.  But it doesn't come to them by
magic, they had to be taught.  The Trio is told constantly that
people  are not supposed to treat others cruelly or unfairly.
They are given second chances.

The Slytherins, for various reasons, are not getting the same
message, and tend to reject it anyway, not because they're
evil but because it's unfamiliar. It should have been unfamiliar
to  Harry too, (although the cartoons Dudley watches all the 
time would have their influence) but we are told that Harry is 
unusual. 

If JKR were trying to promote Calvinism, I'd expect to see subtle
and not-so-subtle hints in that direction. I don't.
However, the Order have names associated with the Fabian
Society.  *Fabian* Prewiit, *Kingsley* Shacklebolt, *Emmeline* Vance
and Sturgis *Podmore*.  

The Fabians believed that meaningful change could only come 
about gradually and by peaceful means. We see what happens
when the good guys resort to force. The ugliness of war engulfs
them and makes them endanger the things they are fighting for. 
It's necessary to show us that to make us understand why
they wouldn't go to war for social change, but only for survival.


Lizzyben:
But then DD says that Harry's choice to 
> join a certain group (Gryfs) proves that he is better than the 
> Slytherins.

Pippin:
Um, no. He said it made Harry very different from Tom Riddle. 
Harry is worried that the Hat wanted him in Slytherin because
it saw him as Dark Wizard material and Harry did not want to be 
associated with the Dark Arts. We know that Tom Riddle did. 

But we don't know whether all Slytherins want to be associated 
with the Dark Arts, in fact at one point Harry wonders whether 
a first year knows that Slytherin House has produced more 
Dark Wizards than any other. Later we learn that when the
Hat was created there was no strife between the founders,
so Slytherin cannot have been a dark wizard then, if a dark
wizard is someone who profits by spreading enmity and
discord. 

It seems that according to Dumbledore's criteria we can't 
judge everyone by what House they're in, because, for one thing, 
we don't know whether it's their choice we're judging, or the Hat's.

As he says, it matters not how you are born, but what you
grow to be. I don't see why the same would not apply to how
you are sorted. People can't change everything about themselves,
they don't get to choose their instincts or their native abilities,
but one thing that they *can* change is their minds. 
 
Which, in the Potterverse, can mean their souls.

Lizzyben:, 
and stirred it all together into a rancid mess. 
 

Pippin:
Anything can be made into a rancid mess if you read it subversively.
Seeing Harry as Christ is pretty subversive when the author says he
isn't a saint, IMO.

He is at best a human attempting something like what JKR
sees as Christ's example, and often falling short as humans do. 

Pippin