In Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, the House Cup system creates a
negative competitive environment between the houses at Hogwarts, while also
promoting good behavior. The negative competitive environment developed from
the house system reflects primarily in the hatred between the Gryffindor House
and the Slytherin House. In particular, Harry and Malfoy express their hatred
between their houses through their constant altercations. When Malfoy takes
Neville’s Remembrall during their first flying lesson, Harry mounts his broom
and yells at Malfoy, “Give it here…or I’ll knock you off that broom!” (Rowling
148-149). Malfoy’s only motivation to steal Neville’s Remembrall is to make fun
of Neville, benefitting himself in no other way besides the humiliation of the Gryffindor
House. Additionally, Harry defending Neville and going after Malfoy and
threatening to hurt him illustrates how Malfoy’s actions create an aversive
competition between the two boys and their respective houses. In a similar way,
Malfoy displays his dislike of Harry and the Gryffindor House once more when he
challenges Harry to a wizard’s duel (153). However, instead of taking Harry
head on, Malfoy uses the duel to attempt to get Harry into trouble by not
showing up and “[tipping Filch] off” about where Harry would be (159). Because
of the hatred between the two houses and their incentive to win the House Cup, Malfoy
goes out of his way to try to get Harry in trouble in an attempt to lose
Gryffindor points. Rather than facing Harry and fighting out their differences,
Malfoy leverages the House Cup system to compete with Harry through teacher
punishment.
Despite the
House Cup system creating a negative competitive environment between the
Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses, the House Cup system also incentives rule
following from each of the respective houses. The House Cup system rewards the
house when students display exceptional behavior, and penalizes the house when students
misbehave. For example, when Ron and Harry rescue Hermione from the troll in
the girls bathroom, Professor McGonagall takes five points off of Gryffindor after
Hermione claims, “I went looking for the troll because I – I thought I could
deal with it on my own” (177-178). However, she rewards Harry and Ron ten
points for saving Hermione and “[taking] on a full-grown mountain troll” (178).
While Professor McGonagall penalizes Hermione from what she believes to be “foolish”
(178) behavior, she rewards Harry and Ron for being loyal to their housemate,
Hermione, and performing excellent magic. The point system motivates those in
the houses to behave well and follow the rules so they do not penalize their
entire house for their own poor behavior. Due to the negative and positive
aspects of the House Cup system, students display hatred and a competitive
atmosphere between the other houses, while also working to follow the rules and
create a positive image for their house.
I agree that in some ways, the House Cup encourages a negative competitive environment in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Not only is this shown through examples of altercations between Malfoy and Harry, as you bring up, but also by the way fans feel so strongly about the houses they represent. As we discussed in class, no house at Hogwarts is inherently evil. And yet, fans take several sorting hat quizzes, willingly accepting their house assignment as long as it is not Slytherin. Harry wishes for any house other than Slytherin when he is sorted (Rowling 121). Looking to Harry as the hero of the book, fans adopt his feelings as their own, seeing Slytherin as evil for much of the following chapters and even in the following books.
ReplyDeleteWhile the point system for the houses does incentivize rule following throughout most of the novel, I believe instances when Harry, Hermione, and Ron blatantly break the rules are even more important. When Harry decides to find the Sorcerer’s Stone before Snape can, even Hermione, who has always valued obeying the rules, is in full support (271). Getting the Stone involves wandering some of Hogwarts’s most dangerous corridors and puts the three characters in extreme danger. That Dumbledore rewards them most for these actions, awarding Gryffindor the House Cup at the very end, shows that Rowling aims to emphasize doing good and being courageous in the face of evil as the most important lessons of the novel (306).
I like a lot of the things that you are saying about the house system that J.K. Rowling creates. I also believe that it is a flawed system in a lot of ways. I don’t think that the a house system is, in general, a bad idea, but rather this specific system. The reason I think this is because most house systems that exist in the U.K. and America divide kids randomly between the different houses. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone they are divided based on their personality traits and morals. This is the actual cause of the animosity between the houses. If the houses were divided randomly like they are in real life, then there would be no reason for the kids to have biases about each other. Gryffindors hate Slytherins, not because they compete against them in Quidditch, but rather because they think Slytherin kids are evil. This is exemplified when Hagrid states to Harry early in the novel, “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin” (Rowling 80). These kinds of preconceived notions about the separate houses fosters an environment of prejudice and unhealthy competition. Without even knowing each other, Hogwarts students can make guesses on each other’s character traits based on their houses. The only way to end the unhealthy animosity between the houses is to end sorting based on personality.
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