[HPforGrownups] Authority and rule-breaking or Why does Snape hate Harry?

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 16103

lea.macleod at gmx.net wrote:
 
(much more than this in her excellent post, but rather than quote
the whole thing I'm just excerpting a "reminder" snippet)

> Snape is a man who is obsessed with authority.
> Its what keeps him sane and what keeps him going. Its where he gets
> his self-esteem from. Its what provides him his place in the world.

This is a =wonderful= insight, right on the money, I think.

And it made me realize (now, please don't anyone take this the
wrong way, I'll explain the metaphor in a minute), "My God, Snape
really =is= Jewish!"  Or to be more precise, Snape is a
"Pharisee."  He's the kind of person you're always running into
in the Gospels, saying, "What kind of Messiah is this, who keeps
breaking the Sabbath and a bunch of other rules and hanging out
with tax collectors and sinners?"

Now, make no mistake:  the Pharisees as a sect were =necessary=
when they first emerged (after the Exile).  It was their strict
rule-following that kept the Jewish people from dissolving and
disappearing into the rest of the cultural mishmash that
surrounded them.  I can easily see the same attitude being
necessary for the young Snape to keep him from dissolving into .
. . what?  Whatever kind of chaos may have surrounded him in his
childhood and early youth, on which we can only speculate at the
moment.  But it's all too easy for this sort of attitude to
become so fossilized that one can't see beyond it.

The rift between Snape and the Potters (senior and junior) is the
rift between the "children of legality" and the "children of
grace," between people who follow rules and people who find
themselves performing spontaneous acts of love and valor (like
befriending a werewolf or facing down the Big V. over the Mirror
of Erised).

But the thing about the Law (I'm speaking from a Christian
perspective here, of course) is that, while it is good in itself,
=it can't save you.=  Only the acceptance of grace can do that. 
And I wonder if Our Severus will one day find himself facing that
particular choice.

Hey, what do you want, it's Sunday...


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>