Slytherin's Reputation was Re: CHAPDISC: DH, EPILOGUE

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 185629

Magpie:
It's a pretty weak maybe since they don't come back. After all, it's
not like Minerva accuses them all of being DEs and sends them to LV.
She just gets them out of the school before the battle starts. She
does that with some students she considers innocent too. It's a
precaution to not have any of them there and according to the words
on the page the battle was won without their help.

Alla:

Well, I cannot agree that battle was won without their help 
necessarily, but the reason I brought up Minerva's actions is not to 
say that I judge her one bit, because I describe her actions exactly 
as you did.

And yes, I would much rather her being more cautious than not 
cautious enough when a representative of House Slytherin just 
attempted to send Harry to Voldemort and none of her classmates said 
no. I am glad that she did what she did, but if I am glad what she 
did, it does not mean that JKR necessarily wants us to agree, no?

I mean, it could be much harder to kick out Pantsy and her supporters 
only, but theoretically she could do that too, no?

Pippin:
<SNIP>
The book is much more
concerned with Harry's feelings about Dumbledore. Harry spends a lot
of time trying to sort out how much of what he'd always believed
about him was true, and how much was propaganda and stereotypes. I
don't think I've heard many readers claim that this struggle was
poorly written. <SNIP>

Alla:

Personally I thought this struggle was amazingly well written, but 
see next paragraph of yours that I quote below makes me wonder again, 
what if anything this has to do with Slytherins' situation.

Pippin:
<SNIP>
I think she wanted us to learn, not through Harry's attempt to make
sense of the Slytherins but through our own. The process would have to
be the same one that Harry went through with Dumbledore, deciding how
much of what we think about Slytherin is true, and how much we have
derived from propaganda and stereotypes. Of course JKR created the
propaganda and referenced the stereotypes, but that doesn't mean, IMO,
that she wanted us to swallow them whole.

Alla:

I suppose this is again argument by analogy? But how do you even 
analogizing what Harry learned and struggle with about Dumbledore and 
that this is what JKR meant us to do with Slytherins?

Propaganda, lies about Slytherins? What lies? Yes, we learned that 
they just as everybody else could be brave and could not support 
Voldemort, but where is pulling of the rug?

I mean, there is pulling of the rug with Snape of course, but with 
Slytherins in general? I am fully willing to accept the possibility 
that they come back as a secondary minor point, but I mean, I am just 
not sure how your analogy supposed to work here.

Pippin:
<SNIP>
It's just how I read it. Just because JKR gives the reader reasons to
*feel* that the Slytherins are all bad, or mostly bad, doesn't mean
that is how she wants the reader to *think.* <SNIP>

Alla:

Ah, now that I agree with – intellectual v emotional reading, sure. 
But well, if she did not want me to feel empathy with the characters, 
does that really mean that she wanted to redeem them?

Because sure on the intellectual level I know they are not all bad. I 
just do not know Pippin. I can totally see the possibility of your 
reading, of the many layers of the book, etc. But I can also see the 
reading where house of Slytherin is a house of evil that needs to be 
drastically redone and there are some brave people there too, but it 
does not change that the house is bad.

I mean, really, it is just, I do not know, sometimes I think that to 
arrive at your reading one has to make too many assumptions, too many 
jumps from the page and I wonder if that was really JKR's intent.

Pippin:
<SNIP>
For example, Regulus doesn't count because he's not a current student.
Draco doesn't count because he didn't renounce blood-ism. Slughorn
doesn't count because he's snobbish. Narcissa doesn't count because
she was selfish. Andromeda doesn't count because Harry never
explicitly thinks of her as a Slytherin. Snape doesn't count because
he might have been a Gryffindor if he'd been sorted later in life. (So
might many others.)

And yet they all risked their lives to defy Voldemort and they all
helped to save innocent lives. If they'd done as much against the
Nazis, IMO they'd have memorials at Vad Yashem.

Alla:

Heh, totally agree.