The Mechanisms Of Rearing Hat And The Sorting Hat

One of the mechanisms by which these ideologies are perpetuated is the Sorting and the Sorting Hat. At the beginning of a student's journey at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat sorts and depicts each student into a house. Before beginning the Sortings, the hat sings a song to acquaint those being sorted with what to expect. "There's nothing hidden in your head' it sings in Sorcerer's Stone, "The Sorting Hat can't see, / So try me on and I will tell you / Where you ought to be." (117-118). This song, creates in the students – especially Muggle-born students, a powerful desire to belong. As Harry Potter is awaiting his Sorting, his thoughts are centered on this need: "A horrible thought struck Harry, “What if he wasn't chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train?" (121).
As the hat is placed on each student's head, it decides which house the student is more suited in, it explores their minds, and calls the house out to the crowd.
Presumptuously, the Sorting Hat is hailing each student as a subject of the house to which they will belong. Since the hat can see into each student's head, the hailing is more individualized than most. The Hat is never wrong about where a student belongs, as a magical object with unique abilities. The Sorting Hat is saying, in effect, "This is you. This is where you belong. You are brave, or you are loyal, or you are smart, or you are cunning."(118). However, the student wants so desperately to belong, so when the Hat makes the choice of the student for a certain house, the student chooses that house, too. "I'm brave!" she thinks. "I belong in Gryffindor! I'm going to be the best Gryffindor I can be!" The student responds by identifying him or herself as a member of that
house. Loyalty to the house becomes loyalty to the ideology that the house represents, and that ideology is reproduced in house members. As we have seen, the Sorting Hat does not necessarily place someone in a particular house based on the witch or wizard’s innate talents alone. It seems, sometimes, the student plays a role in which house he or she is assigned to. In Harry Potter’s case, his repeated thoughts of "not Slytherin" place him in Gryffindor. Another example, is that of Draco Malfoy expecting to be placed in Slytherin, and indeed he is Sorted into that house. Hermione Granger has indeed already made up her mind that Gryffindor is where she wants to go and is Sorted there rather than in Ravenclaw, despite her immense intelligence. Ron Weasley hopes and wishes to be in Gryffindor because the rest of his family has been Sorted there, and of course, he is. Following Althusser's thought processes, an apparent influence of free will is entirely imaginary, for in his conception, there really is no such thing as free will. Yet, in these cases where free will seems to be an important factor, the identity of the student with their respective house seems to be even stronger than for those whom the decision seems to be made without the student's input.