No one likes to be pigeonholed, told who they are and what they are. For adults, it's annoying and troublesome when you come across another grown person who has such a limited perspective that they can only see one use for you, one side of your Self. When that happens to us, we wonder about ourselves and the image we present to the world. What about when it happens to a kid? Superman's long-time archnemesis, Lex Luthor, is an evil genius, always hatching some scheme to destroy Superman and take over the world, indifferent to the cost in innocent life. But how did he get that way? The current retelling of the Superman legend offers a theory. Lex was a spoiled rich kid, son of the most powerful man in the state. Lex's father Lionel came from the depths of Suicide Slum, that most wretched hive of scum and poverty. He dragged himself up by means of an arson scam which killed his parents. He rose to wealth and power by being ruthless and indifferent to anyone's interests except his own. He raised Lex to be a business man, taught him always to look for an angle, a way to turn the situation to his profit. Lex was not loved so much as trained. Everyone knew who he was and what his father was like, and assumed he was his father's son, and he was, in many ways, but there were numerous times when Lex's genuine offers of help or genuine expressions of affection were rebuffed as being part of some scheme or another. Everyone who met Lex was on their guard because, well, he's a Luthor, you know what the Luthors are like. Even his friendship with the virtuous farmboy Clark Kent, and the trust of Clark's parents, which he had to work hard for, even the love of the beautiful Lana Lang, were not enough to tell him that he could be anything other than his father's son. He was told so often that he was a bad guy that he believed it. He betrayed everyone who ever trusted him, his own father, even. (Lionel would do, and did, the same to Lex.) Which brings us to Draco Malfoy, the boy in the picture at the top of the post. Now, mind you, I don't know the end of Draco's story. I only know him as an arrogant, spoiled and spiteful schoolboy. But what kind of wizard will he be? What kind of wizard can he be? Like Lex, Draco's family name is feared, hated, maybe respected in some small circles, but not trusted. Lucius Malfoy is a vindictive wizard, a man who joined forces with the most dangerous Dark Lord Voldemort when it was advantageous for him, later, only after Voldemort's fall, claiming to have been coerced. The Malfoy family is pure-blood, all wizards, and they believe that this makes them better somehow than muggle-born wizards, whom they derisively refer to as "mudbloods."
For those of you who don't know, Hogwarts is divided into 4 houses, each named for one of the founders of the wizarding school, and each child is sorted into one house or the other by the Sorting Hat, which is placed on his or her head on the first night they arrive at school. The children are placed in the houses based on certain aspects of personality, which the Sorting Hat, being magic, of course, can see. Ravenclaw is the house for the most clever children, Hufflepuff is for Children who are brave and true. Gryffindor is for the bravest, and it is the house where the heroes of the story reside. Slytherin House is for those children who exhibit ambition and cunning. It is said that Salazar Slytherin, one of the 4 founders of the school, hated "mudbloods" and that he wanted to purge Hogwarts of them altogether. Of course, none of the others agreed with him and cast him out, but most Slytherin children even now tend to be purebloods. What happens to young Draco, who at 11 years old is already a terrible kid? Is he going to be pigeonholed, or will he be given a chance to show that he is not his father? Is it right in an educational atmosphere to put all the kids with selfish and hateful tendencies together and encourage the mindset? Doesn't every kid deserve the chance to be a good person?
Look here at young Draco, 11 years old, first night at a new school, called up to the front of the Great Hall to be judged by the Sorting Hat in front of all his peers:
And not even upon touching his head, did the hat yell, "SLYTHERIN!"
1 comment:
this is a very thoughtful post. i appreciate your sympathy for Luther and Draco. Lex didn't have a chance to be,...Lex. He was raised to treat people a certain way, and in turn they treated him with mistrust. How can you distinguish yourself from such a label when no one would every extend that trust. And that the trust has to be earned is an equally exhausting battle.
As for Draco, I always hoped for two separate things to happen to him. If he remained as hateful as I saw him in 1-4, I wanted Ron to have a go at him. But mostly, I wanted Draco, and Harry's view of him, to change. The same goes for Duddly.
Draco is in a difficult position. He, like most children, wants the approval of other people and most of all to make his father proud.
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