Head, Heart and House
I remember thinking -- upon listening to my HBP recording the second time -- that this should have been a clue to Harry that Slughorn was to be the potions master rather than the DADA teacher. In some ways, the sorting process predetermines the destinies of witches and wizards with a kind of visionary precision. Do students have any say in the matter? In a very good essay over at The Leaky Cauldron, Emily Bytheway points out that a neo-Marxist would probably say "no". (HT: Felicity who sent me this link 7 weeks ago.) She follows the thinking of a Marxist named Louis Althusser who she claims would, as a neo-Marxist, see the Sorting Hat as an "Ideological State Apparatus" for the ordering of a society, such as the wizarding world. Inside the Head - The Instant Slytherins We know the sorting hat "sees inside your head" and we've heard the hat sing to everyone and speak individually to Harry. We also heard a little about something the hat said to Hermione -- more on that later. The hat, which refers to itself as a "thinking cap" in the first song in Philosopher's Stone, is almost preoccupied with thought. It's words to Harry are very memorable "It's all here in your head. Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness." The hat makes a snappy decision for Draco Malfoy in book 1 and also, we learn in HBP, Tom Riddle is immediately placed into Slytherin as soon as the hat touches his head. The intellect seems to be "read" in these cases and most others. Ravenclaws are clever, Hufflepuffs are duller, more simple-minded, Slytherins are cunning. All of these traits of the intellect. Sorting based on these traits is almost passive in contrast to the long conversation with Harry which I'll address. Heart, Free Will and Gryffindor House Free will, or choice, is merely an illusion to folks with a Marxist ideology like Altusser, at least when it comes to falling into place via a state apparatus. The author of this essay, using his logic, states that Hermione doesn't really choose Gryffindor, her "self-image" does because she's read that they're the best house. Sirius Black's sorting is an "aberration" which determines his destiny, citing his decision to run away from home since he no longer belongs with the others in his family (Slytherins). This is the opposite of how I would see the sorting. Admittedly, I'm not a Marxist, I'm a Catholic Christian, and most Christians believe in free will. Without the ability to make choices, we have no way to chooses good and avoid evil nor to love God and neighbor. We see the heart as the seat of the will, just as the head is the part most associated with the intellect. The heart is also seen as the source and symbol of courage. The Italian word for courage is coraggio, stemming from the Latin root cor- meaning "heart". Courage is the primary trait ascribed to those in Gryffindor house. Some Gryffindors, such as the Weasleys, are sorted into the House of the Red Lion in a very similar "automated" way. They belong just like Riddle, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle belonged in Slytherin. But I think it's notable to take a look at three students who ended up in Gryffindor whom the books suggest might have ended up elsewhere. Harry. First our hero. Harry a Slytherin? Harry is completed unsure of what to expect. He's even more than a little worried that he's going to be "unsortable" and plopped back on the train bound for the mundane Muggle world of the Dursley's. But he knows one thing and that's that he doesn't want to be a Slytherin. Voldemort was one and he doesn't want to end up like that. It must have taken much courage to say "No!" in the face of the "Ideological State Apparatus" of the Sorting Hat, thinking that there was this alternative of no house. When the hat reads this thought which comes from the heart "Better be Gryffindor!!" is the response. Neville. Next in the series (and I can't think of whether this is in book 1 or 2) Neville makes a remark about "I should be in Hufflepuff," when he is having particular trouble with schoolwork or remembering passwords. Neville is also best in Herbology -- the study of the "fruit of the earth" -- associated with Hufflepuff in the books. But courage is proven to be his primary trait in standing up to his friends when he believes they are doing wrong in Philosopher's Stone and his defiance of Bellatrix Lestrange in OotP. True, we don't see an explicit choice for Gryffindor in the sorting process as we do with Harry, but we can imagine that living and breathing may be acts of courage for the poor kid raised by his Grandmother whose Uncle threw him out the window to see if he was a wizard! What's my point? I'm throwing this out there hoping Merlin can weigh in and expand, but my conclusion is this. Hogwarts students that present a dilemma for the hat seem to end up in Gryffindor. They are struggling for identity itself which is a courage-building exercise. Hermione, the Muggle-born determined to be the best student, Harry, the orphaned hero determined at all costs not to fall to the dark side and Neville, the bumbling nerd for whom even simple tasks presents a challenge -- all in Gryffindor together. These students seemed to have been placed owing in a greater way to the courage they exhibit from the heart, not the thoughts or preoccupations of the mind. This is important if Gryffindor is indeed destined to be the unifying house for all 4 houses especially through Harry. If their are elements of all the 3 others within Gryffindor, this makes them a kind of microcosm. There is a bit of "Gryffindor evangelism", if you will, in OotP when the Gryffindor students dominate the D.A. and seem to be the most comfortable with it. Luna Lovegood is the only non-Gryffindor student who exhibits any real lasting connection with Gryffindor; Miss Lovegood's persona, however, presents enough information as well as questions for another whole post, and I'm coming off an overlong hiatus -- please bear with me! |
Comments on "Head, Heart and House"
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Nancy C. Brown said ... (November 20, 2006 4:10 PM)
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Merlin said ... (November 20, 2006 4:29 PM)
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Merlin said ... (November 20, 2006 4:33 PM)
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Pauli said ... (November 20, 2006 4:45 PM)
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Nancy C. Brown said ... (November 20, 2006 8:31 PM)
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Pauli said ... (November 20, 2006 9:23 PM)
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Anonymous said ... (December 15, 2006 9:03 PM)
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post a commentWelcome back, good to read these thoughts about sorting. I think you have given us something very interesting to think about: the makeup and character of the Griffindor students.
Thanks for the post.
Taking Granger's "new" approach, which isn't really new for him (and I should clarify here that by adding that caveat what I saying in NOT "oh he's saying he's come up with somehting new but really he hasn't" ... I emphasize new for him meaning a little different than his standard presentation) of examining both the premodern/medieval side and the post-modern side (which, as I said, isn't new for him in the sense of "changing his tune" ... just that he hadn't focused on the PoMo side before the way he is now and had stuck mainly to the pre-modern) ... there is a lot of good stuff in this idea.
I think I have mentioned the post-modern side either way back along the line in this blog, or maybe even back on my other blog, but it is basically the same as some of what I got into in the Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest ... which is Existentialism. Hardcore existentialism say, across the board, that existence preceded essence and that we exist and then choose who we will be. A healthier existentialism is that of Dumbledore in COS when he says something to the effect of "it is our choices that make us who we are omre than our (and I forget what he says there)."
The reason that it is healthier is that it is cobined with the pre-modern. There is a certain set of parameters in the wizarding world. For example there are 4 houses and only 4 houses and they are 4 specific houses ... Harry cannot simply make up a new house and decide that is what he is.
What I really like here in what Pauli has brought out is the incorporation of the 4 houses/elements/humors (etc) in Gryffindor by way of the quadrium's choices in being sorted: Hermione as Revenclaw, Neville as Hufflepuff, Ron as a "traditional Gryfindor" (can you imagine a red-haired Weasely being in any other house?) and Harry as a Slytherin. Harry, however, is also a bridge character who will provide that thing that Granger and others are talking about as the "5th element" that goes beyond, or rather transcends, the 4 elements (while still remaining "immanent" in all of them ... transcendance does not mean "leaving behind" and he pretty much will take the "system" or the "structure" of the wisarding world as embodied in Hogwarts, to use PoMo language, to a new level of unification).
Importantly Harry has ties to both of the two houses/elements that are "driving" the battle, the two that are diametrically opposed, representing the disunity that needs to be healed in unification (there is a lot of other stuff here two, but I tread lightly in gender and gender identity issues. Note that Slytherin and Gryffindor are males and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are females, and then ask if you can see Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws going at each other the way S and G do ... to be sure Ravenclaws may have a little bit of intellectual snobbery and Hufflepuffs a little bit of earthy resentment, but it's not the same "epic battle" level as S and G. Then note that Harry and Ron are more typically male than Neville, but even that is too much down on Nevile ... I respect Neville immensely and think he has some serious minerals [or cahoones, or choose your term] - the guy had the moxy to ask a serious fireball like Ginny Weasely to the Triwizard ball long before Harry had ever pulled his head out fo his crucible [figuratively, to have a little fun with the alchemical language] - not to mention the one Pauli brought up about [but I also luv the example of him asking Ginny to the ball as an example of curage ... but just saying that along more lower-level lines you see HP and RC being represented by Neville and Hermione and S and G being represented by the, uh, shall we say, more rash personalities of Harry and Ron and it does, on a certain level have someting in the RC and HP being female elements and S and G being male elements ... now, hopefully to extricate myself from any stickyness I have gotten myself into with women who might, and probably very justifiably, want to rip into me for all that ... notice that Hermione is the lone actual female in the quadrium, and it is she that represents intelligence, and there is something to being the only actual female in the quadrium, and especially when you have scenes like her clocking Malfoy in POA and hexing McClaggen in HBP ... the girl has not only brains, but some real gutsyness, and morever, a good bit of style. And of course, Ginny enters the mix more as Harry's counterpart in his being the "5th Element" in the crucible, but ... I wouldn't mess with her, especially not the bat bogey hex ... and to backpeddle even more :) Neville is not alone in being a male who MIGHT fall into the PoMO caegory that Granger has discussed of the character with both strong male characteristics and strong female characterics ... Neville MAY fall into that, but Hagrid is DEFINITELY running around in an apron calling himself Norbert's "mommy" ... and there is no way I would ever mess with Hagrid, not the way he was dishing it out with those fists in Order of the Phoenix [and me not even having the advantage of a wand, like poor Dawlish had and still got laid out like a wet carpet]).
Harry is in and of himself, as Pauli notes, a bit of a Slytherin type, but it is also important that he is from a line of "traditional" Gryffindor's ... it is important for him to have those two elements in him in his role within the Gryffindor quadrium because that is the main locus of reconciliation.
A few extras I wanted to throw in:
1. good call on Pauli's part using Sluggo's comment on Lily as the leader for this post ... because there you have a Slytherin and a Gryffindor interaction, fore-shadowing and "forth-shadowing" the resolution in Harry.
2. Sirius as Harry's godfather makes all the more sense (and, I think, in a really neat way, brings that concept of a godfather into a newer and more live contemporary context, at a time when one could argue that the concept has come to be mis-understood in a sort of stale way in present-day culture). In one way the connection is a straightforward fore-shadowing in that both are Slytherin material and end up in Gryffindor. But in another way the fore-shadowing is one of development by way of reversal or flipping. Sirius is a "Slytherin" in that he comes from Slytherin family and stock, and is then revealed to be a Gryffindor at hear ... whereas as Harry is a Slythering more on the individual level but from Gryffindor "stock," but he goes into Gryffindor in the end and I think that is the cruxt where the final development and transcendant unification will take place.
And brings me to the uniqueness of the sorting hart as an image: that it functions within this PoMo concept of the healthier type of existentialism, but does so as traditional oracle, or revealer. I liked Granger's quip/wordplay in The Hidden Key about the COS incedent of the "sorting hat"/"sword-in-hat" and the connection with the sword in the stone from Arthurian legend ... which was basically this same type of oracular revealer.
In the end, I think that on the level of ... humanity is a confusing thing. Unbridled existentialism is practically the polar opposite of Marxist determinism and I think both are extremist and faulty, and I think Rowling has that type of mix that is not, like Chesterton said, the "boringness of the very stable, but also very ininteresting, Greek Column," symbolizng the Greek "golden mean" and that the Harry Potter works are precisely what he called "the Romance of Orthodoxy." I am also becoming a bit of a pre-pre-modern (and PoMo) as I read more Hebrew, and for the Hebrews the center of the human person was the heart, the same as Pauli noted about "courage" being from the Latin for heart ... and the red house of Gryffindor (the blood red house, the blood red that, for the Hebrew mind, was the locus of the nephesh, or life force, and when one is wounded, like Harry is in OotP and Dumbledore says "you car so much you feel like you are going to bleed to death from it" spills hot like the Gryffindor fire) is indeed the primary locus of whatever that mystery we call free will is and will be the place of the salvific unification.
In the end, I'm more excited than ever about book 7 drawing nearer (she said she planned to have it written by years end which is less than 2 months away ... exciting to think that by the time I am done with recovering from finals the story itself may be written, the final chapter of the saga unfolded ... of course we still havre to wait to get it :) )
sorry, meant to say "on the level of free will and determinism ... humanity is a confusing thing."
Yes; speculation is that book 7 will have a 07/07/07 release date. Cute, but oh, the pain!! Waiting I mean.
Whoah, Merlin. Thanks for the thoughts.
I especially like the comparisons about Sirius and Harry's houses: Sirius being from traditional Slytherin house, ending up in Griffindor because he's Griffindor at heart, Harry being picked for Slytherin, but ending up in Griffindor because of will--choosing--and that working it all out in the end has to do with the battle between Slytherin and Griffindor...as feelings more than as houses. It's what's inside you, Dumbledore said, our choices rather than our destiny (or birth if you will) that makes us who we are. The sorting has thought Harry was a Slytherin (by birth or it was his destiny) but Harry wanted to be in Griffindor.
I also really like how you figured out about Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville being the four different "types" of Griffindors, that is very interesting.
Thanks!
Yeah, Merlin is definitely the king of rebounds. Great analysis; definitely the Howard Cosell to my Frank Gifford. I obviously prefer his term "oracular revealer" to "ideological state apparatus". (Boy, it would really suck to be a neo-Marxist. Do they listen to a lot of Depeche Mode, I wonder?) It seems like the hat only said "You'd be good in Slytherin..." because it knew that Harry would protest. Otherwise it would just have said "Slytherin!!" like it did with Malfoy.
Originally I got the idea of the post from the different kinds of bravery that the four (Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville) showed at the end of the Philosopher's Stone. There's definitely a microcosmic layering going on here where you have Gryffindor as representative of the school and the school representative of the world (all the elements). This representation isn't lost on Voldemort; he knows that if he gets the school he gets the entire wizarding world that's why it is his major target. I mean, screw the ministry -- he could tear that phony fortress to shreds anyday like he did to that fountain in OotP.
Very thought-provoking post, Pauli.
Your essay has made me wonder about other characters.
Sir Nicholas was afraid of death and chose to stay behind, which doesn’t seem consistent with Gryffindor traits even though he’s the Gryffindor ghost. What a completely different attitude he had than Gryffindor Dumbledore, who regards death as the next great adventure.
Romilda Vane certainly seems more fitted to be in Slytherin than Gryffindor. After all, the only other character we’ve seen use a love potion to hook a man was a Slytherin descendant, Merope Gaunt.
What about Percy Weasley, the ambitious, power-loving name-dropper who turned from his own family in exchange for advancement, all because he’s too blind to see he’s being used by the MoM? He’s smart enough to be in Ravenclaw with his girlfriend, Penelope, and if Slytherin would have helped to advance Harry’s ambitions, surely they would have helped advanced Percy’s. And Ginny was the first daughter born to a Weasley in many generations, so the Weasley’s have had to marry other pure-bloods, not necessarily Gryffindors. Remember the Weasley’s evil cousin, Mafalda, who was cut from GOF? Surely she was sorted into Slytherin.
Peter Pettigrew’s house is unknown, but it’s highly likely he was in Gryffindor since he hung out with three Gryffindors for years and was with them on nighttime excursions with the map. I expect Pettigrew will have a Gryffindor moment in book 7, but only because he owes Harry a life debt, a “deep magic” that will put pressure on him to do the right and courageous thing, for once acting against his own self-preservation.
Luna Lovegood is decidedly not an obvious choice for brainy Ravenclaw, and she has courage – she insisted on accompanying Harry to the MoM and was the only non-Gryffindor to fight the DE’s in the Department of Mysteries.
Ernie MacMillan, a Hufflepuff, publicly proclaimed his belief in Harry and Dumbledore in the middle of OotP when Harry was being ridiculed by the Daily Prophet as an attention-seeking liar for claiming Voldemort had returned. Ernie also said that Dumbledore’s Army (preparing in secret to fight Voldemort) was the most important thing they were doing in their fifth year.
Sirius was the first Black not to be sorted into Slytherin. But Andromeda Black, Sirius’s older cousin, was also a renegade who acted out of character by marrying muggle-born Ted Tonks and was burned off the tapestry for it. So Andromeda rejected her family’s pure-blood mania, and yet she was sorted into Slytherin, not Gryffindor. And what house was Tonks sorted into?