Zombie Will Think for Food

Today, I was thinking about Sorting. You know, the kind of Sorting done in the Harry Potter books where students put a hat on their head that decides which Hogwarts House to which they belong. Funny though it may sound, I find Sorting to be a useful tool for understanding people—their motivations, fears. What, after you strip away every other facet of their personalities, is their base trait. Perhaps just four types of people sounds too simplistic for what we think of as highly complex personalities that it’s taken years for us to craft perfectly, but it works. Don’t believe me?

Here’s how J. K. Rowling initially defines her houses in the books:

You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve and chivalry
Set Gryffindors apart;
You might belong in Hufflepuff,
Where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true
And unafraid of toil;
Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,
If you’ve a steady mind,
Where those of wit and learning,
Will always find their kind;
Or perhaps in Slytherin
You’ll make your real friends,
Those cunning folk use any means
To achieve their ends. (Philosopher’s Stone, ch. 7)

Rowling goes on to reinvent the Sorting song twice more, in Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, but her first descriptions of the Hogwarts Houses prove most eloquent and most useful. Only two people on the planet, I believe, are capable of properly Sorting—myself and Megan. Preferably, working together. The only way I can demonstrate is by Sorting some people who are very close to my heart—some of my favorite poets.

Philip Larkin — Ravenclaw
Larkin is a quintessential Ravenclaw: clearly brilliant, but emotionally cooler. Ravenclaws thrive on intellect, but not in the Doogie Howser, Boy Genius way. Ravenclaws are passionate about learning, but not in an overachieving way. Larkin’s refusal to entertain sentimentality, his rejection of religion and his cynicism about human relationships, all wrought in almost imperceptible rhyme, depict him as a man who knew where he was brilliant and never felt the need to prove it. He spent his life being a librarian and when offered the Poet Laureateship, turned it down because it thought it was a waste of time. While I believe his caustic sense of humor and his misanthropy flag him as a Ravenclaw, it’s merely one end of the spectrum—a crabby end, clearly.
Other Ravenclaw Poets: Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein

Emily Dickinson — Hufflepuff
Now, my initial inclination was Ravenclaw here, but she’s so optimistic. Hufflepuffs thrive on community, but poor cloistered Dickinson is a good example of an independent Hufflepuff. Her meticulous revisions, bizarrely specific system of dashes, and her obsessive contemplation of the same themes over and over scream Hufflepuff with their dedication to specificity. It’s almost as though Dickinson wanted to get it right and so she went over and over her work, only publishing a handful of poems in her lifetime. For her loyalty to her work above all else, I dub Dickinson a Hufflepuff.
Other Hufflepuff Poets: Billy Collins

W. B. Yeats — Gryffindor
Oh, Willy. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…Yeats epitomizes “brave of heart.” Yes, he was an Irish revolutionary, but it was more that he got to be an Irish revolutionary because he was so so so in love with Maud Gonne. You don’t unsuccessfully propose to someone four times without a good bit of courage in your corner. I think that his Gryffindor can most clearly be seen in this poem, written immediately after Maud Gonne’s marriage to John MacBride, in which Yeats seems to advise other Gryffindors to just…stop it.

Never give all the heart, for love
Will heardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all the smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost
For he gave all his heart and lost.

He describes himself as someone gives his heart, whole and outright, and wishes he didn’t. Unfashionably earnest with a willingness to put everything on the line for what he believes. I think that’s what Gryffindors do best.
Other Gryffindor Poets: Walt Whitman, Ranier Maria Rilke

Slytherin — ????
Slytherins don’t write poetry. There, I said it. Not because I think they’re evil, just that it’s more of an idle past time than anything. Poetry has no pay off but itself. Maybe Anne Sexton. Maybe.

But What About Shakespeare?
Shakespeare is like Dumbledore, who, Hermione helpfully tells us in Philosopher’s Stone, is rumored to have been a Gryffindor. But really, Dumbledore—and by extension, Shakespeare—belongs to the whole of Hogwarts, and even if he were a Gryffindor, it doesn’t matter because he’s The Man and totally above being Sorted.

Also, much like Dumbledore, Shakespeare was killed by Snape. True story.