[HPforGrownups] Tidbits of Snapeness, and Peter's strength

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 7858


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Firebolt 
  To: HPforGrownups at egroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 26, 2000 2:31 PM
  Subject: [HPforGrownups] Tidbits of Snapeness, and Peter's strength


  Ebony said:

  Interesting observation.  Over the holiday I thought about the
  significance of Peter's name.  The Biblical Peter wasn't on
  the fringes of things; he was a leader amongst the Twelve... and yet
  he betrayed Christ.  

  Now, it was Judas who *betrayed* Christ, i.e., who provided otherwise unavailable information to the enemy that they were able to use to destroy Him; Peter, OTOH, merely *denied* Christ, i.e., failed to affirm his belief in Him - although under the circumstances (immediately following Christ's arrest), it has always seemed to me that Peter acted wisely, under the Solomonic principle of "better a living dog than a dead lion" (Ecclesiastes 9:4); if Peter had affirmed his affiliation with Christ in the aftermath of His arrest, he would have merely sacrificed himself  in a superfluous martyrdom.  When he had the opportunity, Peter was invariably zealous in Christ's defense: it is Peter who Christ admonishes to set aside his sword - "those who live by the sword die by the sword" - when he slices off an earlobe of one of the arresting soldiers. 

  Pettigrew has seemingly more in common with Judas - who died (either via suicide or divine retribution, according to conflicting accounts), we should remember, on Potter's Field - than with his Biblical namesake. Yet JKR does seem to be setting up a storyline in which Pettigrew will eventually redeem himself.

  And on a meta-narrative level, what's with Peter losing his original name entirely in GoF,  and being labeled, by not only Voldemort but by the all-knowing narrator, by his alternate Animagus identity of Wormtail?  Perhaps his degradation to permanently animalistic state?

      - CMC



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