I guess my own bottom line on Slughorn -- and I could be totally wrong -- is that he's a kind of misleader or distractor as we sort through JKR's moral puzzles. There's a temptation to dislike him for the prejudices he pays lip-service to, and to overlook his practical decency. At the same time, there's an interesting twist because I think we're still meant to see the inadequacy of "mere decency" to the evil of Death Eaters -- he misses the threat presented by Tom Riddle (though in fairness, Dumbledore did, too) and you get the sense that his aversion to DE's is mainly about finding them vulgar and creepy. I don't mean to make a moral hero of him, but if he's a villain it's a very subtle concept of villainy, and maybe more about his weaknesses than his prejudices.
I think that given the history of the word in that world (different from a racial slur in ours) its use seems to almost always be directed not at the Muggle-born but at the Pure-bloods with them who understand what it means and feel it more keenly
This makes me wonder, now if what Snape said to Lily wasn't also a way of saying "you're not all that -- you're no better than me, and these Purebloods know it!" Or is that over-reading?
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Date: 2007-06-26 10:06 pm (UTC)[. . . continued]
I guess my own bottom line on Slughorn -- and I could be totally wrong -- is that he's a kind of misleader or distractor as we sort through JKR's moral puzzles. There's a temptation to dislike him for the prejudices he pays lip-service to, and to overlook his practical decency. At the same time, there's an interesting twist because I think we're still meant to see the inadequacy of "mere decency" to the evil of Death Eaters -- he misses the threat presented by Tom Riddle (though in fairness, Dumbledore did, too) and you get the sense that his aversion to DE's is mainly about finding them vulgar and creepy. I don't mean to make a moral hero of him, but if he's a villain it's a very subtle concept of villainy, and maybe more about his weaknesses than his prejudices.
I think that given the history of the word in that world (different from a racial slur in ours) its use seems to almost always be directed not at the Muggle-born but at the Pure-bloods with them who understand what it means and feel it more keenly
This makes me wonder, now if what Snape said to Lily wasn't also a way of saying "you're not all that -- you're no better than me, and these Purebloods know it!" Or is that over-reading?