“With 472 points Slytherin House.”
The Slytherin philosophy is basically to be the best,
to be great --
that means working hard,
always thinking a few steps ahead of your opponent,
and being ruthless in your pursuit of excellence.
Because Slytherins are so obsessed
with proving themselves superior to others,
they can be guilty of arrogance and powerlust
“There is only power and those too weak to seek it.”
Slytherins are very often selfish or self-interested.
But on the positive side,
they show impressive mastery of their crafts.
And as much as the Harry Potter series maligns this house,
Slytherin at least is never overlooked
or insignificant-feeling,
unlike the other two supporting houses.
Slytherins are known for their supreme power,
importance and achievement.
“Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness,
no doubt about that.”
This drive to work hard and achieve greatness
is embodied in Slytherin’s most infamous member.
Tom Riddle a.k.a. Voldemort is undeniably terrible,
but he’s also very impressive --
he’s an orphan who became one of the most powerful wizards ever
thanks to talent, ambition, and dedication.
“I fashioned myself a new name,
a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak
when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world.”
The only reason Harry even has special skills
is that he has some of Voldemort in him.
“he transferred some of his powers to you
the night he gave you that scar”.
And it’s implied that Harry could have reached new heights
if he’d been sorted into Slytherin.
“You would have done well in Slytherin”.
Harry and Voldemort also share certain qualities
that Gryffindors and Slytherins have in common --
they’re both extremely driven
and they’ll do anything necessary to win their fight.
“You possess many of the qualities that Voldemort himself prizes:
determination, resourcefulness,
and if I may say so, a certain disregard for the rules”.
Slytherin’s colors are green and silver.
Unlike Gryffindor’s warm tones, these cool colors tell us
that Slytherins are cool, calculating, and controlled.
Slytherins are logical and analytical.
In the first Harry Potter book, the Sorting Hat tells us
that the house’s defining quality is single-minded resourcefulness:
“Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.”
So Slytherins are masters of strategy and long-term planning.
They apply themselves to their goals with rational, smart steps.
They think around and through problems,
rather than acting on their gut impulse like fiery red Gryffindors.
Slytherins are deeply ambitious.
Both green and silver -- thanks to their links to currencies --
evoke associations with money and greed,
and many Slytherins do value wealth and social status.
“My father can afford the best.”
Then there’s the idea of “being born with a silver spoon in your mouth”
or getting something “on a silver platter,”
so silver also speaks to the privilege
that many Slytherins are born into.
Green also brings to mind the phrase
“Green with envy”
and Draco certainly resents Harry
for all his fame and special attention.
“Famous Harry Potter.
Can’t even go into a bookshop without making the front page.”
We often think of silver as second place, less precious than gold,
and Slytherins feel like they’re always coming in second
after the Golden Gryffindors.
In our world, you wouldn't necessarily think
that Gryffindor’s tendency to act first and plan second
is all that admirable.
But somehow these reckless, spontaneous Gryffindors
are always coming out on top in the Harry Potter series.
It’s not like all Gryffindors are the most talented
or skilled people at Hogwarts
“He possesses no measurable talent, his arrogance rivals even that of his father's
and he seems to relish in his fame.”
A lot of the time,
Harry and his friends seem to get by on dumb luck.
“Last year, he really did fight off You-Know-Who in the flesh.”
“Look, it all sounds great when you say it like that,
but the truth is, most of that was just luck.”
In the Sorcerer’s Stone, when Dumbledore awards Gryffindor
last-minute points to hand them the House Cup,
this would feel like pretty blatant favoritism to the Slytherins
who have been working all year to win that cup and
have been leading in points.
And from this perspective,
couldn’t you start to get why Slytherins resent Gryffindors,
who seem to keep getting handed success
even though they don’t really apply themselves in an intelligent way?
We can even see the Slytherins’ sense of unfairness
in the starting premise of the story:
“How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent
was able to defeat the greatest wizard of all time?”
Voldemort exerts exceptional effort to become the greatest
wizard of his time, but a little baby beats him
and becomes a celebrity just for passively receiving
his parents’ love.
Slytherins’ house element is water.
And like liquids,
Slytherins are slippery, fluid and hard to pin down.
In astrology, water signs are considered to be intuitive,
emotional and sensitive.
Because they’re so hyper-aware and sensitive,
Slytherins are image-conscious.
They’re extremely concerned with how they’re perceived.
The water element may also connect to potions,
Snape’s subject of choice.
“I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science
and exact art that is potion-making.”
Potions is an understated art that’s all about the slow simmering
of carefully chosen ingredients.
“I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory and even
put a stopper in death.”
Purposeful, patient and precise is classic Slytherin.
Harry Potter may focus more on the negative associations,
but green, silver and water have a lot of positive connotations.
Silver, the metal, is malleable and adaptive,
and Slytherins are far more subtle in their thinking
than straightforward Gryffindors.
Green is associated with life, vitality, and nature.
And Slytherins have astonishing potential for growth, rebirth and renewal.
Just as water can take different forms,
Slytherins can change and transform -- as we can see in Snape
“He was the bravest man I’ve ever known.”
“Why didn't you tell her?
You knew it was me. You didn't say anything”
and even Narcissa, when she lies to Voldemort
that Harry is dead.
“Dead?” “Dead.”
Of all the houses, Slytherin is probably the one
most closely linked to its house animal, the snake.
“There's a reason the symbol of Slytherin house is a serpent.
Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth.”
Even their name sounds like the word “slither,”
as in “the snake slithered across the grass.”
In Western literature and culture, snakes are associated
with cunning, treachery and deception:
The serpent in Genesis tempts Eve to eat
from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
leading to the fall.
The serpent there represents Satan,
while the griffin of Gryffindor’s name has been associated with Christ.
So the story immediately paints Gryffindor and Slytherin
as good versus evil --
one literally has a Christ symbol in its name,
and the other’s name sounds like the movement of the animal
traditionally linked to the devil.
And the Harry Potter story mostly reinforces the Western idea
of the snake as devious and evil.
Voldemort himself looks snake-like
with his smooth, hairless head and slits for nostrils.
And Salazar Slytherin’s basilisk is a monstrous incarnation
of the house’s spirit --
which is why only Voldemort can control it
as heir to Slytherin.
“Parseltongue won’t save you now, Potter. It only obeys me”.
Voldemort’s snake, Nagini also embodies terrible violence.
But there’s also another snake we meet early on,
at the zoo in The Sorcerer’s Stone.
Harry understands that this unaggressive animal is just mistreated.
“He doesn't understand what it's like,
lying there day after day
watching people press their ugly faces in on you”.
In fact, he feels a sense of kinship with the snake.
“Do you miss your family? I see.
That's me as well. I never knew my parents either”.
So there’s a way in which the snakes of Slytherin
are misunderstood and villainized from the start.
Outside of Western culture, There are a lot more
Positive associations with the snake.
It’s often been linked to sexual desire and fertility,
the mysteries of reproduction.
In ancient Egypt the uraeus, or rearing cobra,
was a symbol of royalty and power.
That reminds us of Slytherin’s legacy
as a grand, important house.
Egyptians also saw the snake as life-giving --
just as Snape protects Harry for so many years.
“Don’t tell me now, that you’ve grown To care for the boy.”
snakes shed their skin, and the Slytherins we know best
reveal new sides to themselves,
symbolically shedding their skin in an act of rebirth.
So the snake is an animal of contradictions:
it represents deadliness and vengeance and life and renewal.
Its venom can be poison or medicine.
Ultimately the snake is a symbol of duality,
of both good and evil, and their interconnectedness.
And Slytherins have both darkness and the capacity for light inside of them.
The Slytherin common room Is in the Hogwarts dungeons
Underground, just as Slytherins are symbolically hidden away,
their true natures not immediately visible to the outside world.
The room is partly under the lake,
which puts Slytherins close to their element, water.
The underwater location visualizes that Slytherins aren’t afraid
to face the deeper, darker truths of human nature.
Some of them are interested in the Dark Arts.
The darkness and greenish light make the common room feel
a little eerie not entirely comfortable --
Echoing how Slytherins keep people at a distance.
The house ghost is the Bloody Baron,
not the most welcoming character.
In the books, we learn that he was in love with Helena Ravenclaw
but eventually stabbed her in a rage --
and when he realized what he’d done,
he turned the knife on himself.
So this tragic backstory captures a lot about who Slytherins are --
they have intense feelings that they don’t know
how to express in a healthy way, and this can be a fatal flaw.
But they often come to repent the error of their ways.
In the books, the Bloody Baron Chooses wears chains
to atone for his crime.
The house name comes from Salazar Slytherin,
one of the founders of Hogwarts.
“Three of the founders coexisted quite harmoniously.
One did not.”
“Three guesses who.”
Salazar is a Basque name meaning “old hall,”
so this connotes the impressive, long legacy of Slytherin.
The Slytherins’ fixation with their impressive past
might help explain their problematic history with bigotry.
Salazar Slytherin himself thought Hogwarts should be for purebloods only.
“Salazar Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students
ddmitted to Hogwarts.
He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families.
In other words, purebloods.
Unable to sway the others, he decided to leave the school.”
And this bias lives on in later Slytherins.
“Associating with Muggles.
And I thought your family could sink no lower”.
The pureblood issue in Harry Potter is an obvious analogy for racism.
“Her speciality was muggle studies.”
“It is Ms. Burgises belief That muggles are not so different from us.
She would, given her way, have us mate with them.”
The very prejudice Draco Malfoy has blond, typically Aryan looks,
so that creates a subconscious link between his racism against Muggle-borns
and the ethnic hatred directed at non-whites in our world.
“No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood.”
And the hate-driven, tyrannical behaviors
of Voldemort and Grindelwald make us think of Nazism
or other totalitarian, genocidal regimes.
“Your parents would be proud. Especially your filthy Muggle mother”.
In a tweet, J. K. Rowling said,
“Not all Slytherins think they're racially superior.
But all those who do are Slytherins.”
If we look deeper, the racism problem within Slytherin
reflects a larger insecurity and fear of change.
Salazar Slytherin couldn’t accept progress,
and families like the Malfoys are afraid of losing
their prominence and privilege.
They’re so preoccupied with the days when Voldemort was in power
because that’s when they were most influential and relevant
in their community.
And through this portrait, Rowling is making a larger statement
about where racism and bigotry come from --
anxiety about the future and the fear of losing one’s place in the
world.
Ironically, the pure-blood obsessed Voldemort is a half-blood himself --
so his racism is driven by self-loathing and daddy issues,
and perhaps Rowling is suggesting then that racism in general
is often fueled by some form of self-doubt or self-hatred.
“Surely you didn't think I was going to keep my filthy Muggle father's name?”
But this kind of behavior is generally learned --
it’s not that Slytherins are intrinsically bad;
it’s that many have been raised in a toxic environment.
Draco was brought up to believe that he’s better than others
due to his blood;
he’s been taught to value wealth and image.
He’s also watched his family routinely abuse their house elf, Dobby --
so of course having grown up this way He enters Hogwarts as a hateful boy.
But as we watch Draco become conflicted about his parents’ behavior
and learn how Snape protected Harry,
we see that Slytherins can overcome their backgrounds and conditioning.
A corrupt cultural environment doesn’t define
their inner nature and potential.
“Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater
and prior to Lord Voldemort's downfall, turned spy for us
at great personal risk.”
In our next video, we’re going to offer up
some arguments in defense of Slytherins,
and we’re gonna have a little fun sorting characters outside of Harry Potter
into this house.
Hi, guys.
Susannah and Debra here.
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