Slytherins: Race and Ambition
Apr. 1st, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI don't have a lot of time to put my thoughts down in a terribly coherent way, but I'd love to continue the discussion about Slytherins. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marlowe1 noted that Slytherins get outed for their racism in the later Harry books, but it is interesting to remember that Voldemort himself is a half-blood, who hated his Muggle father. Snape, the head of Slytherin House, is also a half-blood; he is, in point of fact, the Half-Blood Prince of the title of that book. (Harry, of course, is PURE blood. His mom was Muggle born, but she was a witch.)
While mostly pure bloods get sorted to Slytherin it's NOT a requirement. Harry, as we all remember, was nearly sorted into Slytherin (and speaks parseltongue for crying out loud), and comes around to the idea at the end that it would be okay if his own son were sorted there.
So what about Harry would have made him a good Slytherin, besides the ability to speak to snakes, do you think?
He's not terribly ambitious. I mean, I love Harry, but neither he nor Ron show a lot of apptitude for school work (until, perhaps, inspired by the non-Moody.) Even Neville, by the fourth year, has shown promise in herbology. And, of course, Draco is good at potions. What's Harry got? Quidditch. Dude is a JOCK. I would have hated him in high school.
Is it his tendency toward self-pity? His quickness to anger? His inability to follow even the simplest school rules? (As a Slytherin, frankly, I resent the implication of the first and second, but the third shows some promise. He can be pretty sneaky. Give that boy a Maurader's Map and he's good to go -- although that was an entirely Gryffindor product from the beginning.)
Harry is also a cheater. He cheats in potions class. I mean, straight-up. And he has no qualms whatsoever about using the morally ambiguous curses he finds in Snape's potion book on his enemies. He might favor the "Expelliarmus" spell, but is shown willing to use the Unforgivable Curses against Bellatrix afer she's killed Sirius.
What do y'all think?
(I need to take off. I'm supposed to pick up Shawn for her birthday celebration NOW.)
marlowe1 noted that Slytherins get outed for their racism in the later Harry books, but it is interesting to remember that Voldemort himself is a half-blood, who hated his Muggle father. Snape, the head of Slytherin House, is also a half-blood; he is, in point of fact, the Half-Blood Prince of the title of that book. (Harry, of course, is PURE blood. His mom was Muggle born, but she was a witch.)While mostly pure bloods get sorted to Slytherin it's NOT a requirement. Harry, as we all remember, was nearly sorted into Slytherin (and speaks parseltongue for crying out loud), and comes around to the idea at the end that it would be okay if his own son were sorted there.
So what about Harry would have made him a good Slytherin, besides the ability to speak to snakes, do you think?
He's not terribly ambitious. I mean, I love Harry, but neither he nor Ron show a lot of apptitude for school work (until, perhaps, inspired by the non-Moody.) Even Neville, by the fourth year, has shown promise in herbology. And, of course, Draco is good at potions. What's Harry got? Quidditch. Dude is a JOCK. I would have hated him in high school.
Is it his tendency toward self-pity? His quickness to anger? His inability to follow even the simplest school rules? (As a Slytherin, frankly, I resent the implication of the first and second, but the third shows some promise. He can be pretty sneaky. Give that boy a Maurader's Map and he's good to go -- although that was an entirely Gryffindor product from the beginning.)
Harry is also a cheater. He cheats in potions class. I mean, straight-up. And he has no qualms whatsoever about using the morally ambiguous curses he finds in Snape's potion book on his enemies. He might favor the "Expelliarmus" spell, but is shown willing to use the Unforgivable Curses against Bellatrix afer she's killed Sirius.
What do y'all think?
(I need to take off. I'm supposed to pick up Shawn for her birthday celebration NOW.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 08:28 pm (UTC)The first thing we learn about Harry in the first book, pretty much, is that he does well in school. He gets pretty good marks at Hogwarts, too. Potions is a great exception--he doesn't do the homework, he doesn't pay good attention in class, and he has a lot of trouble mastering the theory. When he finally cheats at Potions and does well, I understood this to mean that his personality clash with Snape was the big obstacle to learning from him. Because he learns so well from Snape's old book, we realize as readers that he and Snape could have been best pals. There's something exceptional about Potions because there's something exceptional about Snape's relationship with Harry. In Charms and Defense, Harry excels, and he also does OK in Transfiguration.
I think when JKR started the series, she made the house-personality connection a lot looser. You get Neville, who is loyal and likes the Hufflepuff advisor, Hermione, who is a bookworm, and Cho Chang, who is a Ravenclaw who is great at sports. JKR's lazy (IMHO) decision in the last book to have all the Slytherins support Voldemort kind of ruined that. Though Snape and Regulus Black were both in Slytherin, so maybe it's meant to stay a little complicated.