Houseless or Divergent?

If I went to Hogwarts, I’d want to be Sorted into Slytherin. But not because I like power or ambition, because I see myself as cunning or ruthless, or even because I like the idea of being a “bad girl.”

In fact, when it comes to philosophies I can get behind, I much prefer that of Helga Hufflepuff, who committed to teaching anybody who wanted to learn. Everyone has a right to education. I suspect that I champion the Hufflepuff approach to life as well — work hard, value fairness, be steadfast in your friendships. Living for your beliefs can be as hard as dying for them, and there’s no point in the latter if nobody does the former.

Similarly, if you look at how I’ve actually behaved in real life, the evidence probably sends me to Ravenclaw. It’s safe to say that, as a PhD candidate, I value education and knowledge. I love to read. I love to learn new things. And if I have a point of overweening pride, one thing about which I’m more arrogant than I’d like, it’s my intelligence.

My preference of Slytherin also assumes that Sorting is mandatory and that one must get Sorted into exactly one Hogwarts house, without opportunity to review or challenge the Sorting system. If the choice were between getting Sorted as described in the Harry Potter books or living my life according to my own categories and analysis, I’d choose the latter every time. You can’t neatly divide people by dominant virtue, no matter whose brains are inside your magic hat, and the idea of doing so sets my teeth on edge.

But given the Sorting system as it stands, it’d have to be Slytherin. And while I admit that it would be partly because most of my favourite Potterverse characters would be around to gawp at*, it’s mostly because, if I were ever to be Sorted, I would obviously be living in the universe J. K. Rowling built for the Harry Potter series. And in that universe, only Slytherins consistently have the privilege of making real moral choices with lasting consequences.

I’ll get back to this in a second, because first, I want to introduce a second, more nuanced take on the appealing idea of sorting people depending on what they choose to hold dear above all else: the faction system introduced in Veronica Roth’s exciting YA dystopian novel Divergent (2011).

Divergent, which I recommend reading, tells the story of teenaged Beatrice (Tris), who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in which, upon reaching the age of majority, teenagers must decide to align themselves with one (and only one) of five factions, each of which pursues a particular virtue. Tris, born into Abnegation (selflessness), must choose between remaining in her home faction and joining one of the other four: Amity (peacefulness), Dauntless (bravery), Erudite (intelligence), and Candor (honesty).

I find myself intrigued by Roth’s take more than by Rowling’s not only because I like Roth’s overall ideological standpoint better (as you could probably guess from what she says in, for example, this interview), but because within the rules of the story, all the factions get the same treatment. Each, Roth suggests, has positive attributes, no matter how awful some of its behaviour might seem; each can be used for evil as well as good; and each runs the risk of becoming harmful if it loses sight of its goals — the reasons why its members uphold its chosen virtue — and starts pursuing that virtue as an end in itself.

Roth’s overall characterization of the faction system is also interesting. Whereas incoming students at Hogwarts are Sorted by a for-all-intents omniscient hat that scans their minds and places them where they ought to be (and even their requests are just actions that “show” the underlying true properties of their personalities), the factions subject teens to a series of simulated scenarios in which their reactions show which faction would best suit them. But they seem free to choose another — like job aptitude tests at school. And the real difference is in the title of the book: some candidates are “divergent”; that is, their tests don’t point them unidirectionally toward one particular virtue, and (this is the important part), unlike other candidates, they are able to perceive the illusory nature of the test simulations even during the test.

I spent a while trying to decide which faction I’d choose if I lived in Tris’s world, but I came up empty. I think intelligence is important — but not to the exclusion of being kind to other people. I’m drawn to the idea of amity — but not at the expense of fairness. Likewise abnegation. And honesty is good when truth is necessary, but sometimes it can be used as an excuse to hurt others. The only one I can cross off is bravery, and that’s just because, yeah, it’s important to have the courage to stand up for what you believe, but bravery for the sake of bravery is just foolishness, and holy cow do some of the Dauntless’s activities sound like no fun at all.

The point is, there’s no obvious “correct” answer in Roth’s world the way there is in Rowling’s. Heroes and heroines have qualities of all five factions, not just Gryffindor. Furthermore, the ability to take a critical look at one’s actions — to step outside my scenario and consider whether certain virtues are appropriate right now and what it will mean about me as a person if I choose to act on them — is the key to acting morally. The divergent get to choose what to do. They get to take responsibility for their moral decisions.

Which brings me back to Slytherin. Of the four Hogwarts houses the way they’re characterized in canon, Slytherin is arguably the closest to being divergent. They obviously aren’t the best house when it comes to morals, what with the whole genocide/magical Nazism thing, but the majority of characters who are shown making considered and explicit moral choices — choosing what’s right over what’s easy (or vice versa) and knowing they’re doing so as they do it — are Slytherin.

True, Gryffindor characters like Ron and Percy Weasley are shown switching sides (and sometimes switching back again), but this is usually characterized less as a real change from one perspective and set of goals to another as moving from a brief denial of one’s “true” self to reality. There are no lasting consequences to Ron or Percy’s flirtations with betrayal; Harry doesn’t die because Ron isn’t there to save him, and Percy’s loyalty to the Ministry doesn’t cost anyone her life. Their only effect is on the emotional lives of those who care about them**.

Contrariwise, Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape (and to a lesser extent, Narcissa Malfoy) may make poor moral choices, but at least the author unequivocally states that they get to choose. Draco’s self-awareness is contrasted with the moral obliviousness of his henchmen, Crabbe and Goyle, who Rowling wants us to understand are so stupid that they stumble buffoonishly over pronouncing simple words at the age of seventeen.

Draco, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s doing — he can articulate, as he does to Dumbledore at the end of book six, the external forces that motivate his actions, despite obvious discomfort with his new role, and he can struggle, as he does in book seven, with the moral dilemma of whether or not to deliver his hated rival into the hands of a lunatic who wants to kill him. Unlike those of the Gryffindors, Draco’s choices are not obvious because both options have unpleasant consequences: yes, Voldemort really will kill Draco’s family if he fails in his mission, and yes, Draco really will be responsible for another person’s death if he succeeds.

Similarly, Rowling makes it clear that the reader is to condemn Snape’s crimes precisely because he had an explicit ethical choice. He knew darn well what was at stake if he chose to side with Voldemort — his best friend laid it out for him over and over again — and, later, he knew what kind of suffering he’d bring on himself and what kind of good he might achieve  if he accepted Dumbledore’s offer of redemption. Yes, Snape’s and Draco’s situations were kind of lose-lose, and no, everything didn’t exactly come up Milhouse for the two characters, but at least their choices were freely made and, more importantly, made with awareness of making them.

Getting stuck between a rock and a hard place is scary, but I’m even more scared of losing my moral accountability. I don’t want to wear the blinders of one faction, no matter how good the virtue at its core. Significant ethical dilemmas are not conflicts between good and evil but between one good and another, and therefore the ability to see and value different kinds of virtue is necessary to leading a moral life. So as much as I’m down with bravery, intelligence, and fairness, and as much as I think selfishness is ultimately destructive, sorry, Golden Trio: from my meta-fictional perspective, I’ve got to side with the divergent house of the snake.

Also, let’s be honest: who do fans agree has got it going on? Snape. That’s right. There, I said it.

* And to share my dislike of casual hugs.

** I’d be willing to hear an argument that Peter Pettigrew exercises real moral choice, but I’d also want to counter-argue that his ethical standpoint is constant: do what you are least afraid of without considering personal utility, only he’s so cowardly that in the end this puts him at odds with both the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters. Also, there’s some ambiguity over whether Peter’s final actions stem from his own agency or from the magical life-debt he owes to Harry.