The House System was Re: Chapter Discussion: Goblet of Fire Ch. 4: Back

[sigurd at eclipse.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 191489

Dear Pippin

I admit my mistake on Slughorn at the end. I re-read that chapter last night. As to your contention that "according to Professor Binns in CoS, the Four Founders were "the greatest witches and wizards of their age." may be true, but while things may have started out that way they did not end that way and that is really what counts. Slytherin himself  was the first to break the common bond insisting only to teach purebloods.

My use of "plumbers and tradesmen" was  a metaphor for how the English upper classes see the rest. Don't feel slighted, it's the way the American upper class sees the rest of society also. Remember there is much talk in Philosophers stone of Hufflepuffs being "duffers" or low talent under-achievers. Second, while I am willing to grant a concession that English prep schools may divide people with the best of intentions, what actually comes down the pipe (as in the original bond between the four wizards) is pretty much  the "not our kind dear" -- social segregation and stratification along socio-economic lines.

Pippin:
"JKR puts people from all classes and walks of life in each of the Houses, and shows us that, within their Houses at least, they all get along. That's the positive side of the House system. Though we could wish that this nice harmony would spread about at Hogwarts, it's the inter-House rivalry that makes it possible."

Otto:
Makes what possible? Quidditch? That's the only thing that it seems to make possible and that is itself a source of division.

Pippin:
"Hogwarts did not achieve as much House Unity as many of us hoped, but it was still enough to defeat Voldemort. If they hadn't experienced within their own Houses that such cooperation is possible, would they have succeeded at all?"

Otto:
Most definitely. I think that had they simply made one big class the unity would have been there. As such they were constantly mobilized against an INTERNAL enemy (the other houses) and completely left at sea when an EXTERNAL enemy arose. No army in the world that I know of purposely pits itself against itself. By the way, this whole "house folderol" was tried by American management in the 1980's or 1990's and divided whole plants and offices up into four teams to encourage inter-team rivalry to excel and be more productive. It included team luncheons, action committees, project groups where the team got together to try and increase profitability and productivity. They called it various things, action teams, quality circles, etc., and in every case bar none it was a complete and utter failure. People launched into it with zeal and enthusiasm only to find that any meaningful changes were frustrated by upper management who continued a policy of NIH (not invented here) and that eventually real objectives (like developing better clientele, selling more aggressively, making quality adjustments and efficiencies in the plants) were taken out of their ken and they were reduced to deciding what was the color highlighter of the week. It was eventually discovered that the only improvement upper management (the faculty) wanted was for everyone to work more hours without pay. Even that would have worked had people been given real projects to work on, but it was evident after a few years that any real change was not desired by the management/faculty because it would have meant that they too had to fall in line and their day would not be as easy.

I found this quite ridiculous when I first became involved in it back in the 1980's for it was simply nothing more than an old resurrected idea that lad long before knocked on its head and thrown into a hurried grave by no less a people than the Soviets. It was in fact, a resurrected Stakhanovism. Named after a mine worker who pledged to mine three times his quota of coal, he went on to break record after record and become the darling of the Soviet system in the 1920's, but This "Storming" of the Labor front (to use Bolshevik terminology) while it made good press and made the Politburo pleased with itself, disguised massive destruction to the economic system as it created huge bottlenecks, and dissociations of labor (other miners had to be taken away from their drills to brace up the mine and haul away the ore which prevented them from working their own seams so that the gross output from Staknovich mine actually FELL. When other miners could not match Stakhanovich's effort (because they were hauling away ore or bracking up ceilings, they were shot.

All through these management follies I had to bite my tongue because I found almost EXACTLY the same vocabulary in the modern management manual as was in the 1930 Agitprop brochures. "Storm brigades of workers" became "focused management teams," and people talked in both in pseudo military terms of "fronts" "offensives" and victories and defeats.

No, sorry, any sort of system that breaks up an entity and sets parts of it against itself is doomed to failure. You have provided a divided and subordinate and immediate loyalty in front of an ultimate and higher one. We have the example in front of us and to deny what is demonstrated for a fairy tale is madness.

Pippin:
"First, it was Phineas Nigellus, not Slughorn, who said, "And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part. Let our contribution not be forgotten!" A small point, but important because Phineas has no reason to call attention to Slytherin's part if it wasn't largely a noble one, and nothing personal at stake if Slytherin's reputation rises."

Otto:
You're arguing from the "fallacy of poverty", or "If you don't give me this premise- I've got nothing." The point is that people can trumpet their contribution to the skies on the most insubstantial claim- viz the French resistance in WWII, or the German conspiracies against Hitler to name the most cogent. You're assuming that Phineas was a person even capable of truth or objectivity- which, being a Slytherin, is debatable. You are assuming simply, that he would not lie, which when we're talking about Slytherin, seems to be a positive virtue for code of conduct among these people. It's like saying when all the other guys were at the front "I was keeping the files straight for the graves registration service back at HQ). Please note that in all of the dead that Rowling names at the end there is not one Slytherin. That's a fact and sympathy for Slytherin can't deny it. So exactly what was their contribution. No blood seems to have been shed.

Pippin:
"And it does rise, enough that nineteen years later young James knows he will get in trouble if he uses "Slytherin" as a slur, and Harry is able to say that if Al becomes a Slytherin it will make no difference to the family. But Harry also tells Albus that the hat takes a persons choice into account and assures him he will not be a Slytherin. Harry and Draco aren't friends, but  apparently they've realized they're better off not being enemies."

Otto:
Really! I think they're still bitter enemies and if Harry doesn't think that the nod is anything but false bon-homme then Harry's a fool. Draco and Pansy will never forget the humiliation their families suffered, and they'd have his chitlins on a platter if they could. From EVERYTHING Rowling has said none of the Malfroy's knows anything about contrition or forgiveness. I doubt they can even spell it.

Besides, there is one thing we do not know. We do not know what changes and how the houses were constituted nineteen years down the line. It is perhaps possible that Slytherin was entirely reformed after the debacle.

Pippin:
Al of course is still  worried that being Sorted to Slytherin means there is something dreadfully wrong with you -- but Harry understands that it's nothing that isn't wrong with everyone. Voldemort was able to subvert the entire Ministry, not just Slytherin House.

Otto:
Really he was able to subvert the ENTIRE ministry? He subverted Arthur Weasley? He apparently was in the end not able to subvert Percy Weasley who joined the right side. There were certainly many others who Rowling did not name.

Pippin:
"As we can see from recent events, institutional corruption doesn't consist of everyone doing unspeakable acts. It consists of a few people doing unspeakable acts, while everyone else pretends, like Percy Weasley, that nothing really bad is happening."

Otto:
Ok, that's the point of Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil" and Philliph Hallie's "Cruelty" and of course the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments. But so what? Eichman "protested he was only following orders" and that he only scheduled trains, but that didn't save him from the hangman- nor did it save the mason who built the crematoria at Auschwitz even though he killed not a single person. That's the problem with authority.

Pippin:
"Although *we* don't know what part was played by the rest of the Slytherins in the final battle, we can assume that the characters do. And whatever it was, it was enough to change Harry's opinion, not to mention McGonagall's. Does it make sense that Slughorn's entire House deserted en masse,  but he himself was trusted to lead an army back to Hogwarts and fight side by side against Voldemort with Shacklebolt and Minerva herself?

Otto:
Of course it does. We allied with Stalin in World War Two, a person who outdid Hitler three times over in killing his own people, but we were up against a wall and were willing to take help from wherever it came.  One can argue from your point of view on this that when it comes to saving ones skin turning ones coat is ridiculously easy. But more-- Army of who?

Pippin:
"Isn't it more likely that Minerva realized that she'd given in to a moment of paranoid hysteria, and Slughorn, who had never been a Voldemort supporter, wasn't going to become one now?

Otto:
I can't imagine after reading about Minerva through the whole book her name ever being connected with "paranoid hysteria."

Pippin:
"Was it reasonable concern or paranoid hysteria that made Harry's friends draw their wands on their classmates, including eleven year old kids, because of a one remark made by a frightened teenage girl?"

Otto:
No it was not. it was neither reasonable concern or paranoid hysteria but long and painful experience with the attitude, behaviour and pronouncement of Slytherin, their bullying, arrogance, chating, and treachery. When those three houses rose almost as one with nary a dissenter among them, they KNEW where the real enemy was. They were as paranoid hysterical as the Jews were in 1945 toward the Nazis.

Pippin:
"Rowling does not tell us, at least in the book itself. In an interview she said that the Slytherin students come back with Slughorn. That pleased no one, of course -- people who wanted to like the Slytherins felt cheated of their big scene, while those who didn't like them felt free not to believe her. It was maddening."

Otto:
I could be cynical here and say she is catering to sales of people who know they have Slytherin traits and want to be like them, but don't want to stand with them and take the blame.

Pippin:
"What she did was leave  the reader in Harry's position as it was when he tried to determine whether Dumbledore was making the right decisions about Snape."

Otto:
Sorry don't buy this at all. It would completely fracture the entire book where she was destroying the veracity of her own words.

Pippin:
"Harry's intuition told him Snape could not be trusted, though by OOP, Harry was wise enough to realize that this was mostly because he hated Snape. But Dumbledore claimed to know, for reasons that he was not willing to share with Harry, that Snape had genuinely come back to the Hogwarts side, and was now no more a Death Eater than Dumbledore himself."

Otto:
I disagree. It's not Harry's intiution that tells him Snape cannot be trusted, it was Snape's obvious conduct and attitude toward Harry and his Deeds. Dumbledore had advised Harry to be less harsh on Snape and Harry Manfully attempted to do so but it is illogical to assume that (unless a person is a complete masochist) that he have love and trust the person who treats him horribly. This phenomenon is not unknown-- they call it battered wives syndrome) but it is a mental pathology, not a reasonable position. Besides let us remember that Snape does what he does NOT because he hates or repudiates Voldemort, but because Voldemort kills the object of his unrequited love. His reasons are therefore, entirely personal and entirely Slytherin, and not at all embracing anything beyond pure egoism.  He turns his coat because his love is destroyed, not because a mother is cruelly murdered. Lilly's fate affects him only because it is something he wishes is taken away. Harry, and Ron, and many others are affected by the simple fact that a human's life is unjustly taken away. That is, the crime is a crime sui-generis, of itself, not because of how it affects the self. Sorry- Snape is a professional traitor. He was a traitor to Hogwarts when he turned to Voldemort. He was a traitor to Voldemort when the latter killed Lily, and after Voldemort was destroyed he would have turned again.  Were I Dumbledore the man would be too dangerous to let live after the final victory. He would have become the new Voldemort.

Pippin:
"It's easy to override your intuition when it's contradicted by obvious facts. The tricky thing, the thing which is right rather than easy, is to doubt your intuition when the facts are obscure."

Otto:
Then you are saying that nothing can be known, and worse, what are facts? If we cannot believe our eyes and ears or logic, then what can we believe? We are neither telepathic or some linked mind. We cannot know each others thoughts. Harry could know Voldemort's and vice versa, but not Snape's. The only logic for Snape's actions was that Snape knew that if he had tipped his(Snape's) inner heart to Harry, certainly Voldemort would have known that Snape was a traitor, and therefore we can understand Snape's obvious antipathy and cruelty to Harry. It was part of the game of espionage. But at the same time that does not mean that Harry for no reason should doubt the evidence of his eyes and feelings. We cannot blame Harry for taking offense at treatment he does not know the reason or cause for. "Prick us-- do we not bleed? Insult us and will we not take revenge " Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.

Remember YOU as the reader know far more than Harry, Snape, Voldemort etc. YOU know the whole story therefore YOU may see the logic, but Harry doesn't therefore YOUR recommendations as to what Harry can or cannot, should or should not is immaterial. For YOU are in no way able to effect the action in the book.  That's the tragedy of human existence, which it seems, is shared by the Magics as well. We are creatures limited by our senses and impressions.

You can go on if you wish, but in the end I really do not see how Slytherin can be exonerated in the slightest way. They will have to bear the guilt of their actions until crack of doom.


Otto