Disappointment Was: Deaths in DH WAS: Re: Dumbledore (but more Snape)

[prep0strus]

No: HPFGUIDX 177531

> zgirnius:
> I just don't understand. Yes, she absolutely did seem to show there 
> might be a human side to Slytherins! Which is why I was expecting it 
> to continue in DH. And guess what? I got buried under a veritable 
> avalanche of examples of the humanity of Slytherins. More, actually, 
> than I had expected. Draco to continue in his wish to be free of 
> Voldemort, check. Snape to be revealed in his full Lily/DDM! glory, 
> check. Sluggie to be at Hogwarts, and a good guy, check. That's what 
> I was expecting. 
> 

Prep0strus:

Like I said, it's all about what stands out and matters to you. I
mean, you've obviously seen the variety of responses people have had
to the novel, and the treatment of slytherins in particular - from
vindication believing they're good or redeemed, to vindication
believing they're evil and irredeemable, to disappointment to thinking
they're calvinisticly damned.  I get how you can see what you see, but
i don't see nearly enough to think slytherins are equal to other
people.  but i do see enough to feel cheated by how they were
represented. because i wanted more from them.

Draco's storyline to me was a huge disappointment, perhaps the biggest
in the novel.  His was the redemption story i was interested in - not
dudley, though i liked it, and not snape, which i didn't care about -
it all happened before the first book.  still, without a likable (for
me) slytherin, it still would have been a skewed universe.  but draco
simply appearing ambivalent and pointless wasn't enough for me.  it's
almost worse than descending into complete evil.  at least then i'd
feel he had any motivation at all. as it stands, i know people read it
as him not wanting to do evil, and rebelling against it, and caring
for his family and friends and all these wonderful things.  i get it.
but to me, it wasn't enough. i see him as lazy, cowardly, and still
nasty.  he is certainly not 'likeable'. and i don't think he was
actually 'good' either.

Snape, i've said I don't care about, and i don't. i assumed him to be
'good', and he was, but still mean, petty, and definitely not
likeable.  plus, as dumbledore's man he's only good by showing a
griffindor trait. which is fine with me, because unlike many, i think
the traits defined for slytherin ARE lesser. ambition is nice, but not
equal to intelligence, hard work, or courage, and ambition at all
costs, as defined for slytheirn, is evil.  cunning is the bastard
brother of intelligence, complete with negative connotation. and of
course, there's always the wonderful spector of pureblooded bigotry.

Slughorn was the disappointment of book 6.  a non-evil slytherin, to
be sure.  just a sycophantic, gluttonous, cowardly, discriminatory,
lump of a man.  he comes through a bit in 7 at the end, but not enough
to raise him to the level of the other heroes in the story.

zgirnius:
> But then I got the story of Regulus Black, too, and it, too, was all 
> about a Slytherin and his humanity. I mean, he could not bear that 
> his House Elf was tortured, and when he went back to retrieve the 
> Horcrux with Kreacher's help, he drank the goo himself, as he was not 
> going to do that to Kreacher again! He chose to die in secret, 
> without letting the story out, to protect the parents he loved from 
> the wrath of Voldemort. I loved it, and was totally not expecting it.

Prep0strus:
Regalus had a great story. seriously, very interesting, surprising,
cool.  of course, it's only when voldy treated something HE cared
about with disdain that caused him to rebel.  he was still a
pureblooded racist who had no problem allying himself with voldemorte
and performing horrible deeds to innocents before then.  is regalus
the incarnation of evil? no. is his sacrifice for kreacher one of the
most touching examples of friendship, especially with a non-human, in
the books? yes.  was he a good guy? probably not.


zgirnius:
> And also Narcissa, of course. Though I should have been expecting her 
> again, I suppose. She already showed her humanity in "Spinner's End", 
> when she disobeyed the Dark Lord's orders to  in an attempt to 
> protect her son. In DH, she was no longer attempting to arrange a 
> murder, she helped to keep Harry safe by lying to Voldemort that he 
> was dead.
> 

Prep0strus:
It's nice she loves her son.  Again, it doesn't make her any less of
an evil bigot.  I don't understand why someone having ANY good trait
makes them entirely good.  Evil people can love their families. 
Someone doesn't have to be devoid of anything good inside them to be
predominantly bad.  If her family weren't threatened, she'd still be
doing evil.  And, even the best case scenario, with no voldemorte, she
just gets to live with her husband and son... she's just a rich
racist.  That's slytherin.  not all slytherins are actively evil.  but
they're mostly reprehensible even when not being evil.

zgirnius:
> And did these people act against Slytherin traits to achieve this? 
> No, I would say. Draco did nothing openly against Voldemort - that 
> cunning we hear about. And a motivation for him was love of his 
> pureblooded family. The same is true of Narcissa. Regulus as well, 
> though I would say that a young man who decides to single-handedly 
> render the Dark Lord mortal, is showing some signs of ambition as 
> well.
> 

Prep0strus:
I don't know if i care about acting against their traits or not,
because i don't see them as remotely admirable.  i think they were
looking out for number 1 - very slytherin.  it's what they want, and
screw the rest of the world.  at the end, they don't believe in
equality, they don't undergo any redemption.  they make it through
with their own skins.  Except Regalus, whose noble sacrifice still
leaves him a pureblood supremicist ninny.

zgirnius:
> Sluggie? I think he had decided the Death Eaters were bad for 
> business long before the series started. 
> 

Prep0strus:
Yes, yes.  I get it.  But he's still a slimy person.  he's still
portrayed negatively. i'm not saying that every slytherin was totally
portrayed as demonspawn.  but he still leaves a bad taste in my mouth
- he's still negative.  and by the end, i can't think jkr wanted us to
think anything but that slytherins are negative, are less, than the
others.


> zgirnius:
> I can see the characters who have been *shown* to be real people that 
> way, regardless of House affiliation. The five Slytherins I list 
> above, and a number of characters from other Houses as well. The 
> others, are just names on paper with a few descriptions tossed in, 
> something I could say about students in all of the other houses as 
> well, because characters like Blaise Zabini, Romilda Vane, Anthony 
> Goldberg, and Hannah Abbot (to name random representatives of each 
> house) are essentially extras.
> 

Prep0strus:
And for me, by the end of this book, while we were given some
'interesting' characters, slytherin=bad.  slytherin means racism and
prejudice and cruelty.  and even the 'exceptions' cannot rise to the
level of acceptable behavior.  of all of them, exactly one was never
evil at some point.  slughorn is the best, the shining example of what
a slytherin who doesn't choose to be evil is.  And he's still a bigot
(a mild one, but a bigot nonetheless).  And he creates division
amongst students, dismissing those who can't do anything for him. 
He's predominantly a coward.  Snape, nasty, turned toward evil,
eventually redeemed... the nicest thing anyone ever says to him is
that he should have been in griffindor.  and whether or not narcissa
loves her son doesn't make her a better person in the world at large.
 draco i still have pretty much zero respect for (i know that's
primarily my own opinion, not shared by many, but there you go).  and
regalus... great story, but let's not forget what else he was, other
than a man who loved his elf.  he was a bigot and a terrorist.


Look, it's great people enjoyed these characters, and their
complexities.  but to see real equality over these books, i can't just
have a handful of characters who aren't entirely bad.  there should
have been some who were, you know, GOOD.  doesn't have to even be MAIN
characters - just ANY characters. ones who didn't become death eaters.
 ones who fought on the side of good because they believed in it. 
there should have been a slytherin that i might actually ever want to
interact with, and didn't leave me with a nasty taste in my mouth.

and to me, it seems clear jkr couldn't bring herself to give them
equality.  never could give them a song that didn't stress their
negatives at least as much as their so-called positives.  she couldn't
bear to have them participate in the battle on the good guys side. 
they weren't in the da, they didn't defend the castle.  all through
the books we're just shown that if somebody is doing something
rotten... well, 99% likely it's a slytherin.

and because of snape being on the good side, because of the apparent
inner turmoil in draco in hbp (again, huge letdown for me in dh),
because, holy cow!- slughorn wasn't a DE!!!, because well, they're
allowed in the school and dumbledore tries to treat them with respect
and the hat says there should be unity... well, i thought that
somehow, in some way, they were going to be represented as equals. 
and for me, at least, i just didn't get that.


my point in my last email was to say that i don't even think jkr saw
them as equals. some posters see something akin to what i do - that
they were in the books constantly put down as evil, and because of
this, the books actually show prejudice, show bigotry - TOWARDS
slytherin.  and it's my opinion that jkr meant slytherin to represent
bigotry and wrongheadedness, and that looking down on slytherin can't
be any more wrong than looking down racism itself.

i think for the most part she was clumsy. if she wanted them to be all
bad, she did fail at that. but if she wanted them to be equals,
characters with as much potential for good and for affection as those
from any other house... than she failed much more.

some posters really seem to like snape or draco, and that's fine. but
there isn't a single slytherin that i'd want to spend more than 30
seconds in the presence of.  i don't think putting a good, likable
slytherin in the story simply slipped her mind. if she wanted us to
have one, we would have. since we don't... we see in the story what we
see.  Your five characters do very little to make me think that
slytherin house should exist at all.  the world would be better off
without them.

~Adam(Prep0strus)