Salazar Slytherin

You have clicked on Slytherin's Locket which represents Tom Riddle's ancestry and the Chamber of Secrets. One of the four celebrated Founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Salazar Slytherin was one of the first recorded Parselmouths, an accomplished Legilimens, and a notorious champion of pureblood supremacy.

Riddle's ancestor Slytherin, prized in his "handpicked students" which included characteristics such as resourcefulness, determination, and a certain disregard for the rules, along with the ability to speak parseltongue. He also selected his students according to cunning, ambition, and Blood purity. His House within Hogwarts is symbolized by a serpent, with House colors of green and silver. The statue of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets depicts an “ancient and monkey-like” man with a "long thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of his sweeping robes." Marvolo Gaunt, a blood relative, and also the Grandfather of Voldemort, is similarly described as being monkey-like in appearance.

“Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin,” said Hagrid darkly. “There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.”
- Hagrid to Harry Potter

Slytherin owned the locket emblazoned with the letter S that became an heirloom of his last known line of descendants, the Gaunts. As mentioned before, Merope Gaunt sold the locket to Caractacus Burke because she was desperate for money. It was then bought by Hepzibah Smith who loved to collect rate items. Also mentioned earlier, Riddle killed her for it and placed it inside a seaside cave he had visited in his youth, after making it into a Horcrux. The same locket was later removed from the cave by Regulus Black (Sirius Black's Brother) with help from his house-elf, Kreacher. Kreacher was ordered to destroy the locket, but this was not done. It was later stolen from the Black family home at 12 Grimmauld Place by Mundungus Fletcher, and eventually found its way into the hands of the Ministry of Magic employee, Dolores Umbridge. Umbridge used it as an intimidation tool by wearing it and claiming the S stood for “Selwyn”, a pure-blood family line. Harry and the others managed to take it from her so that it could be destroyed with the Sword of Gryffindor.

Slytherin was also responsible for the construction of the Chamber of Secrets beneath Hogwarts dungeons. It was specifically created for the purpose of purging the school of all Muggle-born students after Slytherin and the other co-founders of Hogwarts disagreed over Blood purity; Slytherin wanted magical learning restricted to pure-blood families as he believed Muggle-born students to be untrustworthy and unworthy. The Chamber contained a Basilisk (a gigantic snake) which could be controlled by Slytherin's true Parselmouth descendants. After creating the Chamber, Slytherin departed Hogwarts because the other founders did not agree with his ridiculous blood purity beliefs. The Chamber is lined with statues of snakes, and a large statue of Salazar Slytherin is at the center. The entrance to the Chamber is at a snake-engraved sink tap in the second floor girls' bathroom, where Moaning Myrtle can often be found crying. The Chamber may be entered by giving the password of “Open up”, which must be said in Parseltongue.

The Chamber was opened in the 1940s by Riddle, who also followed his ancestor's pureblood beliefs (even though he himself was half-blood). In his fifth year, Tom located the secret entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and was able to control the Basilisk, turning the beast loose on the school, injuring many. The last victim was a student named Myrtle, who was killed in the girls' bathroom. Hogwarts was supposed to close, but as Hogwarts was unnaturally precious to Tom, he framed fellow student Rubeus Hagrid, who conveniently had concealed a pet acromantula named Aragog. Tom convinced the Headmaster at the time, Armando Dippet, that Aragog was the monster that had terrorized the school. Hagrid was expelled, and Tom received an engraved trophy for Special Services to the School. Because it was no longer safe to open the Chamber of Secrets, Tom created a diary to preserve a part of his soul, hoping it would one day lead someone to finish Salazar Slytherin's "noble work."

“Haven't I already told you," said Riddle quietly, "that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me any more? For many months now, my new target has been you.”
- Tom Riddle to Harry Potter

The Chamber naturally reopened when the bewitched diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle manipulated and controlled Ginny Weasley to do Lord Voldemort's bidding. Ginny was compelled to write terrifying messages on the corridor walls in blood. She was made to open the Chamber, releasing the Basilisk. The Basilisk petrified many students, including Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Penelope Clearwater and Hermione Granger, as well as the ghost of Nearly Headless Nick and the Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris. They were later restored to their proper states through the use of Mandrake Restorative Draught. Fortunately, during this time, no one was killed. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and then-Professor Gilderoy Lockhart went to the Chamber during that same year to rescue Ginny, as a message had been left that she was being held prisoner there. With the help of Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, and the use of Godric Gryffindor's sword, Harry defeated the Basilisk as well as the memory of Tom Marvolo Riddle by stabbing his diary with a fang from the monster.

Some other notable Slytherin students include most of Voldemort's Death Eaters, such as Avery, most of the Black family, Vincent Crabbe, Bellatrix Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange, Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Montague, Severus Snape and Gregory Goyle. There are some good Slytherins such as Horace Slughorn, Phineas Nigellus Black, Andromeda Tonks and Regulus Black.

Blood Purity was clearly an important issue in the books, as all of the villains supported the idea. Many wizards advocated that the muggle and magical worlds should be kept absolutely apart. This view led to some wizards viewing Muggles (and wizards of pure Muggle parentage) as untrustworthy, foolish, or, in extreme cases, racially inferior. This idea is very common in the real world, as many cultures have and still believe in the concept of racial hygiene. It was based on the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau, a French count, who called his beliefs, "Eugenics" which sought to breed humans as if they were farm animals, and social Darwinism. Applied to human beings, "survival of the fittest" was interpreted as requiring racial purity and killing off "life unworthy of life." Adolph Hitler is probably the most well known follower of this disturbing and evil pseudo-science.

“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods' friend,” said Malfoy slowly. “He's another one with no proper wizard feeling, or he wouldn't go around with that jumped-up Granger Mudblood. And people think he's Slytherin's heir!”
- Draco Malfoy

Pure-blood is the term applied to wizards who claim to have no "Muggle blood" at all in their genealogical pedigree; who are in a twisted sense, racially hygienic. To be a pure-blood, all of a wizard's grandparents (or further more generations) must have been wizards. To maintain their blood purity, supremacist families have been known to inbreed into their own families by marrying their cousins (such as Riddle's Mother & other Gaunt relatives); this results in mental instability and violent behaviors. Pure-blood supremacists believe blood purity to be a measure of a wizard's magical ability. However, quite to the contrary, characters such as Hermione Granger (a Muggle-born) are highly skilled compared to purebloods like Ron Weasley. Supremacists also believe Muggles as “low-lives”, having no magic in them, though consider Muggle-borns even lower than Muggles. Supremacists also apply the term Blood Traitor to pure-bloods who hold no prejudice against non-purebloods (enjoying their presence and relations with them).

The wizards who see themselves as superior because of their heritage are the books' villains, such as the Malfoys, and Voldemort; while the idols, or heroic characters who are completely against the ideology, are Harry Potter, his friends, and most importantly, Albus Dumbledore. Rowling draws several parallels between the pure-blood supremacists and Nazi ideology in "Deathly Hallows" (the belief that pure-blood Wizards have the right to subjugate the Muggle world and view themselves as being a "master race", laws requiring Muggle-Borns to register with the Ministry of Magic, the establishment of blood purity laws which restrict which people witches or wizards can marry, rounding up undesirables, etc. Remember now, even though Lord Voldemort was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin, a pure-blood, and advocated this, his genealogy made him a half-blood. Keep in mind, not every pure-blood family advocates the pure-blood belief of racial superiority; the Weasleys, Longbottoms, and even a few of the Black family members, like Sirius, were completely against the idea.

So why are all these themes, especially the ones of racism & prejudice, incorporated in these books, anyway? Jo obviously wanted her world to be no different from the real one. She wanted Harry to understand that even though his Wizarding World was full of magic and wonders, it was still full of injustices. Voldemort is full of prejudice because he's the sort of person who lashes out on others in order to deal with his own defects. She also wanted to create a villain where readers could understand the workings of that person's mind. Harry learns what makes a person turn that way; they made the wrong choices and Voldemort took wrong choices from a very early age. Voldemort knew even when he was just a young boy, exactly what he wanted to be when he was older.