I do not believe they were an unrelentingly evil house. The books are all from Harry's viewpoint, and almost straight away he is being told things against them by people who are already prejudiced, such as Hagrid, Ron etc. They are only kids after all. If people are going to treat them like they are monsters, it's only natural that they lash back to protect themselves. And there are other examples, like the Weasley twins bullying Slytherin first years. It wasn't only the Slytherins who were capable of being mean, and first years probably hadn't done anything to the Weasleys except for being Slytherins.
And no one would do anything, because they're 'only Slytherins' after all. They deserve it. It's a sort of hate begets hate thing.
And for kids coming from Pureblood families, muggle-borns aren't so much people to be despised as people to be feared because they are a threat to their way of life. Each muggle-born witch or wizard is a step closer to the whole world discovering the wizarding world. If you take what happened during the burning times...well, it's all well and good talking about Wendolyn the Weird who liked to get herself burnt at the stake, but as soon as any human realized that most witches and wizards are rather helpless without their wands...all they'd have to do is take their wands away and that would be that.
And instead of people understanding where the prejudice is coming from and working to overcome it, they resort to name calling and name calling during childhood ends up as full blown war once they are outside Hogwarts and in the real world.
I'm not saying that the war is not caused by people like Voldemort wanting power, I just mean that it isn't the only thing causing people to fight.
Even the blatant favouritism shown by the teachers is hard on them. Take the first year..the Slytherins won the House Cup, they're kids, overjoyed they brought honour to their house and won something, and then at the last second, with their decorations already up, it's taken away from them. By a margin of around 5 points, which is given to someone who is not at all good at schoolwork or at contributing much to the school at all. (ie Neville). It wasn't a case of how many points Harry etc deserved, they were given just enough to win. And couldn't Dumbledore have given out the points before the feast, so as not to deal them such a blow?
Gah, sorry for the long comment. I've thought too much about this it seems.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zaluzianskya and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
skylark_photos
no subject
Date: 2006-04-08 09:03 pm (UTC)And no one would do anything, because they're 'only Slytherins' after all. They deserve it. It's a sort of hate begets hate thing.
And for kids coming from Pureblood families, muggle-borns aren't so much people to be despised as people to be feared because they are a threat to their way of life. Each muggle-born witch or wizard is a step closer to the whole world discovering the wizarding world. If you take what happened during the burning times...well, it's all well and good talking about Wendolyn the Weird who liked to get herself burnt at the stake, but as soon as any human realized that most witches and wizards are rather helpless without their wands...all they'd have to do is take their wands away and that would be that.
And instead of people understanding where the prejudice is coming from and working to overcome it, they resort to name calling and name calling during childhood ends up as full blown war once they are outside Hogwarts and in the real world.
I'm not saying that the war is not caused by people like Voldemort wanting power, I just mean that it isn't the only thing causing people to fight.
Even the blatant favouritism shown by the teachers is hard on them. Take the first year..the Slytherins won the House Cup, they're kids, overjoyed they brought honour to their house and won something, and then at the last second, with their decorations already up, it's taken away from them. By a margin of around 5 points, which is given to someone who is not at all good at schoolwork or at contributing much to the school at all. (ie Neville). It wasn't a case of how many points Harry etc deserved, they were given just enough to win. And couldn't Dumbledore have given out the points before the feast, so as not to deal them such a blow?
Gah, sorry for the long comment. I've thought too much about this it seems.