More Snape! She's at it again! AAAAAGH (was Snape as teacher)

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 17436

lea.macleod at gmx.net wrote:

> Amanda has brought up the Snape issue again,

Yeah, sorry about that; that's what happens when you let old emails pile
up in your box and then go through a glob of them suddenly. But Amanda
tends to bring up Snape issues a lot, Amanda does....  :::pauses to
accept "understatement of the month" award from list:::

> I disagree with the second bit, though. The great "break" in Snape´s
> view of his own past and especially regarding his old enemies came at
> the end of PoA, not at the end of GoF, so we already *know* how Snape
> reacted to it: *not at all*.
>
> When I had finished PoA, I somehow thought: How will Harry ever be
> able to take Snape seriously again, as a teacher? How will they ever
> find back to an everyday mode of getting along with each other on a
> student-teacher-basis?
>
> I mean how would you interact with your teacher after you´ve seen him
> go positively mad so you had to knock him out?
>
> But all JKR says about it (at the start of GoF) is that Snape had
> attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, and right as
> she is, is that a realistic reaction?
>
> Amanda would of course suggest that´s just the way he handles these
> experiences - ignore them.

I think there's a big, big difference between ignoring something and
sublimating it. Processing something without mentioning it is also not
the same as ignoring. In my mind, ignoring something of magnitude is the
same thing as lying to yourself, and with all Snape's faults, I don't
think he does that. I think he takes some major-league convincing to
even entertain the notion of changing a viewpoint, but once the evidence
is presented I believe he takes it into account.

> -----------
> Amamnda on teaching qualities again:
>
> So Snape´s problem really is (apart from all the many others we don´t
> know about yet) that as much as he tries not to be influenced by and
> show his own emotions, he doesn´t even manage to do his teaching job
> rather unemotionally and mechanically.
>
> So if Amanda is entirely right with her "emotional autopilot"
> statement (which was a brilliant metaphor, I think) we would see Snape
> in class as a second Prof. Binns. Which he is not, obviously.

No, by emotional autopilot, I meant he's not really thinking about his
reactions too much, or involving a deeper level of himself. By analogy,
my brother is a musician, and has what my husband calls a "hail fellow
well met" way of dealing with people. It's a learned thing, a hearty
"hey, how's it goin'" type thing which can seem very sincere, but which
is simply a pattern or mode of processing people and handling
interactions. Over the years of dealing with audiences, contacts, etc.,
he has picked this up, and that's his "autopilot." He can know you for
years and never come off the autopilot, never really consider you as a
person or think any deeper than the "how's it goin'" mode. It's not
unemotional, just uninvolved.

This is more what I meant for Snape. His autopilot is a mode of
nastiness, favoring Slytherin, making snotty comments, and having a dour
outlook. But he doesn't seem all that involved. He seems to be doing all
of this on a superficial level, without bringing any real consideration
of the personalities of the students he's interacting with. It is only
in conversations with Dumbledore, or in the staffroom scene, that he
seems involved on a less superficial level.

Operating on an auto-mode is easier than having to think. I think he's
been doing this as a teacher for years, and especially now when Harry is
here, he doesn't want to revisit old thoughts and feelings. He has
to--the associations are too clear--and I think this is the source of
his especial nastiness to Harry and his friends.

I also think that it is only at the end of GoF that Snape has managed to
bring any deeper involvement of himself to Harry. The whole different
character of the way he and Harry looked at each other at the end of
year feast seemed very signficant to me. Snape seems to be ready to see
Harry as Harry, and interact with him as a real person, rather than via
the easy-chair, unthinking autopilot mode.

Wow, I ramble when I'm sleepy. Sorry.

--Amanda


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