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WHAT DEFINES A RAVENCLAW?
Essay By:

minisinoo
Title: The House of the Different Drummer

First, let's get one thing clear. Ravenclaw is not -- repeat not -- "the clever house." Yes, that's the stereotype, one reinforced by the Sorting Hat itself, but it's not the whole story -- or I'd argue even the primary story. According to the Hat song in Harry's first year, Rowena took those of "ready mind," "wit" and "learning." Later, that was simplified to "clever," and the year after that, (those whose) "intelligence is surest."

All of which makes the house sound like a Wizarding version of Phi Kappa Phi, or a NASA convention. Or the Swot House, if you prefer.

The problem is that this definition doesn't adequately explain some of the Ravenclaws we've come to know best, and some non-Ravenclaws, too. I'd submit that to properly define a house, one's definition must allow for all known members, even (especially) those who don't seem to match well or would fit better in a different house. The difficulty with defining Ravenclaw is that, relative to the other three houses, we've got a small sample about which we know more than a name. I'd still submit we know enough to dump the popular cliche. That's looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. Seeing Ravenclaw as the "clever" house is naming it for one of its more prominent characteristics -- not its most basic and essential nature.

Ravenclaw is the House of Independent Thinking.

Driving curiosity. Ability to work well alone. Stubbornness. Originality. The occasional rebel without a cause. Eccentricity. Perceptivity. All those describe Ravenclaw beyond just "clever."

And in the cauldron of human personality, those elements can add up to Albert Einstein (who almost flunked out of school, remember), or Albert Schweitzer, or Thomas Aquinas, or Leonardo Da Vinci. But they can also produce Angelina Jolie (who you gotta admit marches to the beat of her own drummer). Or Alexander the Great.

Yes, Alexander the Great, the man every conqueror since has tried to emulate from Caesar to Napoleon, the man who reputedly wept because there were no more world to conquer -- and if that's not ambition, what is? -- would NOT have been sorted into Slytherin. The man with undeniable physical courage -- who once leapt down off a wall, alone, INTO a city full of people shooting at him -- would not have worn the crimson and gold of Gryffindor. Nope, Alexandros Philippou was a Ravenclaw through and through. Why? It's not because he was arguably the greatest military mind the world has ever seen, a student of none other than Aristotle himself.

No, it's because his greatest passion was to see the Encircling Ocean (e.g., the other side of the world). He wasn't really a conqueror, you see. He was an explorer with an army, because that's how a king did it back then. He left home at the tender age of 22, marched the length of his entire known world ... and never returned to Macedonia, never even showed signs of wanting to. He was insatiably curious. Yes, he was smart too -- quite likely a polymath, in fact -- but that's not why I'd put him in the silver and blue. He would have belonged there because he thought outside the box, was never content with what was, had to drive forward to see, to KNOW. He was curious.

Slytherin's motto might be the advice Achilles' father gave him before he left for Troy: "Ever to be the best and stand far above all others." But a Ravenclaw would answer, "Others? What others? Don't need no stinkin' others."

Well, perhaps not really -- it makes us sound anti-social -- but Ravenclaw needs others least of all the houses, I think, whether as friends, followers, family, subjects or sycophants. That doesn't mean we don't like having them, but we don't need them.

Now you might be thinking that would describe Luna -- but what about Cho? The pretty, popular girl, the one who dated a Triwizard Champion and is described as always being in the company of others? Yet Cho also turned to the ostracized boy a year younger than her, the very one The Daily Prophet was making out to be a loony. Sure, he was the Boy Who Lived, but she went out with him in the year he might better have been called "notorious" than "famous." Certainly the fact he was the last one to have seen her previous boyfriend alive figured into it, but it wasn't the only reason.

Cho chose popular Cedric Diggory AND unpopular Harry Potter, each for reasons of her own. Later, she stuck with her friend Marietta despite Marietta's betrayal and subsequent unpopularity with the D.A. -- again, for reasons apparently of her own. We don't know why she went out with Cedric the year before, but given her subsequent behavior, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it wasn't for his pretty face. While we only ever see Cho through the distorted lens of Harry's point of view, I think there are enough hints to suggest that she doesn't really give a damn what others may think of her decisions. She does what she thinks is right. (And maybe that's why she and Cedric were seeing each other, because he seemed to share that attitude, if arrived at from a Hufflepuffian angle.) Cho thinks for herself no less than Luna.

Now, back to that "clever" business ... Perhaps the most telling hint of all that "clever" isn't the defining characteristic of Ravenclaw is the fact that the girl called "the cleverest witch of her age" isn't IN Ravenclaw. She's in Gryffindor. Cleverness can't be the primary measuring stick for inclusion in Ravenclaw then. Were it so, Hermione would wear blue and silver.

But, you may be wondering, how could the Sorting Hat lie? It says Ravenclaw is about cleverness and intelligence!

Well, partly. Remember the Hat is giving a thumbnail sketch in a few phrases that rhyme, not an in depth scholarly analysis. Nor does it say the same thing every year. "Of ready mind" is as much a description as "clever" -- may be a better one, in fact. "Of ready mind" implies curiosity, and "wit" isn't necessarily the same thing as "intelligence." Nor, for that matter, is cleverness. "Odysseus of the bent mind" is the literal translation of an epithet in Homer that most English translators render as "clever Odysseus." I prefer the Greek. Odysseus thinks around corners and outside the box, and that may not always translate to making Os (or As) in classes. Of all the leaders at Troy, Odysseus has the distinction of being the only one to piss off a god so badly, he wasn't permitted to return home for 10 years. He lies, cheats, steals, and charms his way around the Aegean. Hardly what one associates with a swot, eh? He has more in common with Disney's Captain Jack Sparrow than with the class valedictorian.

Odysseus would also have been in Ravenclaw.

So calling Ravenclaw the "clever" house is a bit of a misnomer when it's reduced to making good grades or being the teacher's pet. Ravenclaw is the house prepared to think for itself -- for good or ill, and regardless of whether the conclusions drawn are wrong, right, something of both, or so far out in left field they've left the ballpark.

Perhaps the best description of how a Ravenclaw's mind works can be found by returning to Alexander the Great. Plutarch, one of his ancient biographers, says that King Philip, Alexander's father, sent for Aristotle to be his son's tutor because "ordinary teachers would not be enough for Alexander, who could easily be led by reason but refused to submit to compulsion."

So yes, it is about a ready mind -- but not what we do with it, the conclusions we draw, or the grades we make. It's all about how we think.

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