Realistic Resolutions - WAS: Slytherins come back

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180720

> a_svirn:
> Even worse, I got the impression that there was some sort of low-
> level resistance at the Ministry. I mean, why would offices of the 
> top officials suddenly start to "rain" all over the place? And for 
> Arthur to know the counter-jinx, I suppose he needed to know the 
jinx 
> in the first place, did he? 

Magpie:
I mentioned that recently too--that was exactly the impression I 
got. In the end it seemed like everybody just knew they weren't the 
hero of the story or something. 


> a_svirn:
> But if they realise all that, why on earth would they even want to 
be 
> in Slytherin? Or, for that matter, why the WW would want to put up 
> with Slytherin House? Slytherin is all about purebloodism and 
> Realpolitik, remove both and there would be nothing left.  It is 
one 
> thing to forgive or redeem, or whatever the members of, say, SS 
who 
> saw errors of their ways at last, but no one in their right mind 
> would want to *reform* SS. So I'd say that Rowling set up a 
problem 
> that has no resolution. 

Magpie:
I frankly got the impression she didn't want a resolution. I admit I 
thought that it was going to go that Draco, as the current 
generation, was going to take the next step after Snape and Regulus. 
Regulus realized he was wrong, but had to die for it. Snape also 
realized he was wrong too late and so had to spend his life trying 
to fix things (this turned out to not be true the way I thought it 
was). Draco, I thought, would be the person who made the mistake, 
realized the mistake, but would, partly due to the sacrifices of 
those other Slytherins, get the chance to have a real life with his 
new knowledge. That would be the sign we needed that racists can 
change their beliefs and learn better. Slytherin didn't have to be 
the house it was.

Only it then became clear JKR wasn't at all interested in really 
ever showing racists changing their beliefs. When thse Slytherins 
had changes of heart it wasn't about that. The heart of the thing 
was the people they loved being threatened each time, with no 
dawning enlightenment about racism. Sure their racism might have 
become more distasteful to them because it reminded them of 
Voldemort, but the central issue of their loved ones wasn't all 
about leading them to that idea. (Snape has one unmistakably anti-
racist line in "don't use that word," but the word's most personal 
meaning for him is connected to his loss of Lily. Any bigger 
understanding is left to the reader to make up--it's plausible but 
not necessary.)

Meanwhile Slytherin House is, as you say here, identified more and 
more with this ideology, so it becomes more clear that if you 
actually became a better person, you wouldn't be a Slytherin. There 
is no place for them to evolve to, no "other Slytherin" for them to 
return to or rediscover.

I really just got the feeling that the author didn't want that kind 
of resolution--perhaps to her it didn't even feel like a resolution. 
The resolutions of the characters, for me, wound up feeling stingy 
and artificial, like she'd created characters that seemed to 
naturally develop in a more meaningful way and then were stuffed 
back into a less satisfying box because they aren't supposed to have 
that capability. It really was all about Harry's heroic development, 
and that development was not about them in the end.

This just gets validated for me when JKR does interviews and is so 
imo incoherent about just what Slytherin is and why it exists and 
what its function is. The book's statement on them is pretty uniform 
and bad, and this is only counteracted in interviews with wishy weak 
protests about how they're "not all bad" and more of what sounds 
like vague backpeddling, like saying it's "harsh" to condemn 11 year 
olds by Sorting them. Only the Sorting Hat is never wrong, and 
besides, how can one be condemned by a Hat that's just telling you 
what's inside you? It's like she's acknowledging that being in 
Slytherin is a condemnation but then not being totally honest about 
what that says because it always leads to the kind of resolution 
she's avoiding. 

In the end the founder's story was repeated--Slytherin was always a 
champion of Pureblood supremacy and bloodlines, even if he was 
always also about ambition and cunning (so he's a racist with a 
desire to promote his chosen group even in underhanded ways). He was 
a founder--we don't know why. Perhaps Gryffindor, too, was temporary 
blinded by his gift for magic. Then he left, and that brought about 
peace. That seemed to be just the way JKR wanted it and still does. 
Slytherin still brings the other 3 houses together, it's still the 
half-house, the one that is part of the school but not part of the 
school. There's actually no call on Slytherin whatsoever to change--
they are what they are. So we're left with the question asked here: 
why are they suffered to remain? To me it seems like the answer to 
that question is found in the psychology of the WW and the author. 
It's comforting to somebody to have this house in the form that it 
exists, periodically gaining power and then symbolically brought low-
-but never healed or destroyed. 

Remember, the question of "why is there a Slytherin?" is only one 
outside the books. It's one JKR gets asked in interviews and she's 
yet to really have an answer for it at all. The WW doesn't seem to 
question it's existance at all and enjoy having it just the way it 
is. 

-m