You have such interesting posts, and how you do it I know not.
Thanks! Because seriously, when I write this stuff I think maybe I'm just strange for devoting so much time and energy to it. Which might be true, but I do always hope it's interesting to anybody who takes the time to read it!
I must confess that when I first read PS/SS I felt good when Dumbledore stole the House Cup from the Slytherins. That tells somethign about me that I'm not proud of.
Well, the book does set it up as a good thing, and I think when I first read it it seemed fairly harmless. Had there been no further HP books I probably would still think of it that way. But seeing how much anger continued to build over the years, and how the favoritism became such a big thing that could have tragic consequences, it started to be more sinister. When the Slytherins are possibly at risk for becoming DEs, and there's the example of Snape walking the school, Dumbledore's methods of ignoring the Slytherins' behavior except to occasionally make it clear he doesn't like them anymore than anyone else starts to seem like a serious mistake, like he's trying to make them DEs, or that their futures don't matter at all. It's not that someone can blame someone else for choosing to be a DE, but if I worked at the school I think I'd feel some responsibility if I saw all this happening and did nothing.
Part of the reason I resented the Slytherins at first and liked the Gryffindors unconditionally is perhaps that I've never really learned to read critically. That wasn't taught to us at school, and I really did take the narrator at face value.
That's really fascinating! And I do think that discussing canon on boards and things like that is probably a great way to learn to read critically. It makes you have to learn to look at canon for what is a fact and what is coming through an unreliable narrator. You have to think about why you've drawn a certain conclusion, and then you can sometimes see how the author's made you do that. Plus hearing other people's interpretations makes you see it's not as straightforward as it always seems when you first read it yourself!
Many people confuse 'understanding' and 'excusing'. I understand why Snape might behave the way he does, but I still don't accept his behaviour. (And although this is off-topic your point (was it yours?) about Snape being the only one who has had to make a conscious moral choice is really a good one.)
Yup, that's me! That's what I love about Snape--he's the not-nice person who seems to be suffering for making a moral choice. To me this makes him much more interesting than other characters who were either raised to believe the right things so never had to question it, or those who were even forced into the right side by circumstance. Sometimes when you look at the more vicious good guys, like Pensieve James (and the other Pensieve Marauders) and the Twins it starts to seem like they're not really heroes, but bullies who just happen to have been born into a time when their bad behavior can be channeled into something productive. History is probably full of such people.
I'm afraid that the HP books will end with the 'light' side winning and punishing the 'bad' people, only because they were at the different side of a civil war (and that really happens in real life, happened at least in Finland after the civil war in 1918-1919, I think),
Yes! That's just what I fear too because the situation you describe is so common. Look at how the need to punish Germany so absolutely after WW1 contributed to WW2. It seems like Slytherin's always been some kind of scapegoat since the founder left--and by that I don't mean to make them out as big victims since obviously they hate the other houses just as much and before Harry got to the school they appeared to be dominant in terms of winning Quidditch and the house cup. But the fact that Hagrid says so casually that there was never a bad wizard that didn't come out of Slytherin says to me that they have been saddled with the "bad" image. Meanwhile bad behavior can get overlooked in other houses (Gryffindor especially) as just boys having fun.
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Date: 2004-03-11 09:33 am (UTC)Thanks! Because seriously, when I write this stuff I think maybe I'm just strange for devoting so much time and energy to it. Which might be true, but I do always hope it's interesting to anybody who takes the time to read it!
I must confess that when I first read PS/SS I felt good when Dumbledore stole the House Cup from the Slytherins. That tells somethign about me that I'm not proud of.
Well, the book does set it up as a good thing, and I think when I first read it it seemed fairly harmless. Had there been no further HP books I probably would still think of it that way. But seeing how much anger continued to build over the years, and how the favoritism became such a big thing that could have tragic consequences, it started to be more sinister. When the Slytherins are possibly at risk for becoming DEs, and there's the example of Snape walking the school, Dumbledore's methods of ignoring the Slytherins' behavior except to occasionally make it clear he doesn't like them anymore than anyone else starts to seem like a serious mistake, like he's trying to make them DEs, or that their futures don't matter at all. It's not that someone can blame someone else for choosing to be a DE, but if I worked at the school I think I'd feel some responsibility if I saw all this happening and did nothing.
Part of the reason I resented the Slytherins at first and liked the Gryffindors unconditionally is perhaps that I've never really learned to read critically. That wasn't taught to us at school, and I really did take the narrator at face value.
That's really fascinating! And I do think that discussing canon on boards and things like that is probably a great way to learn to read critically. It makes you have to learn to look at canon for what is a fact and what is coming through an unreliable narrator. You have to think about why you've drawn a certain conclusion, and then you can sometimes see how the author's made you do that. Plus hearing other people's interpretations makes you see it's not as straightforward as it always seems when you first read it yourself!
Many people confuse 'understanding' and 'excusing'. I understand why Snape might behave the way he does, but I still don't accept his behaviour. (And although this is off-topic your point (was it yours?) about Snape being the only one who has had to make a conscious moral choice is really a good one.)
Yup, that's me! That's what I love about Snape--he's the not-nice person who seems to be suffering for making a moral choice. To me this makes him much more interesting than other characters who were either raised to believe the right things so never had to question it, or those who were even forced into the right side by circumstance. Sometimes when you look at the more vicious good guys, like Pensieve James (and the other Pensieve Marauders) and the Twins it starts to seem like they're not really heroes, but bullies who just happen to have been born into a time when their bad behavior can be channeled into something productive. History is probably full of such people.
I'm afraid that the HP books will end with the 'light' side winning and punishing the 'bad' people, only because they were at the different side of a civil war (and that really happens in real life, happened at least in Finland after the civil war in 1918-1919, I think),
Yes! That's just what I fear too because the situation you describe is so common. Look at how the need to punish Germany so absolutely after WW1 contributed to WW2. It seems like Slytherin's always been some kind of scapegoat since the founder left--and by that I don't mean to make them out as big victims since obviously they hate the other houses just as much and before Harry got to the school they appeared to be dominant in terms of winning Quidditch and the house cup. But the fact that Hagrid says so casually that there was never a bad wizard that didn't come out of Slytherin says to me that they have been saddled with the "bad" image. Meanwhile bad behavior can get overlooked in other houses (Gryffindor especially) as just boys having fun.