One out of control student can disrupt a whole classroom, sure. But Slytherin aren’t misbehaved in that sense, they love protocol, appearance, propriety – as long as it serves their ambition. More like Skull and Bones than students throwing spitballs. And Slytherin ARE in the same classroooms, they are divided up for all the other activities.
In any case, fully 1/4 of the kids go into Slytherin. My guess is that being in a toxic environment is self-reinforcing, and if the structure wasn’t there, majority of those kids wouldn’t have such screwed up ideas.
Ok, way too serious of an analysis for Harry Potter.
The idea is that your house will help you achieve your goals by giving you a peer group of like-minded individuals. Being ambitious and wanting to push your magical powers to the limit does not necessarily == evil. I think the idea is more that Voldemort was a bit of a poison pill on the Slytherin house by making evil the route to take for ambition and the pursuit of power. I don’t think it’s intended to be the gulag of assholes.
Uhm… Didn’t the House Slytherin founder leave the school because of his disagreement over mudbloods, and didn’t he even build a secret chamber with a killer basilisk in it to await the day of purging?
Rowling gives all kinds of justification for House Slytherin in her books, but at the end of the day it’s all spurious because she doesn’t really provide any examples of how having House Slytherin around helps anything.
Telefrog – definitely worth pointing out, but the Chamber was also considered more myth than reality until Harry’s 2nd year.
It’s also worth pointing out that Hogwart’s has a board of governors, and you bet your ass there are a fair # of Slytherins (besides Malfoy) on the board, and if the vote ever came up to say “hey, your house is a bunch of assholes, we’re thinking of doing away with it,” it would suffer very serious opposition.
Another good point. This is just another example of the clever writing Rowlling was able achieve. All the last minute spells and charms that are so convenient to move the plot along work because she has first done such a compelling job making the world realistically complex.
I never really understood why Slytherin was around either. Doesn’t Ron point out that every bad witch or wizard has come from there early on? Why the hell would you want to keep them around? So that you’re not surprised later when they turn out to be bad? Is there a “Who Will Be The Next Big Bad” pool that the Ministry of Magic puts out each year on incoming Slytherin students?
Someone already mentioned that it was all right in book 1 when everything was pretty simply good or bad. But I found it really tiring by book 7 that it didn’t matter, you were still just a bad egg if you got put in that House. A little bit of redemption for at least a couple of them would have been nice.
But god. The fucking woods. The movie cuts it down and it’s still not enough. Let this be a warning to you if you ever become a famous author: For the love of god keep your fucking editor.
When [Harry’s son, Albus Severus] was worried that he may be sorted into Slytherin, Harry responded that Albus was named after two headmasters, one of whom was a Slytherin and who was “probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
ha, ha, ha. I want to buy you a (butter) beer, Ponygirl!
Uh, well, yeah I was kind of not spelling that out because of spoilers for people who haven’t read the last book and (obviously) not seen the last movie.
Yeah, he does. I think Rowling tries to justify Slytherin’s existence with characters like Slughorn, who are grasping and ambitious without being full-on evil. She doesn’t do a great job of it, but so much else in her universe works that I just let it slide.
