[HPforGrownups]Intro and What About Snape?

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 14698


I love your Gilda radner quote! Now on to ol' Snapey, who I have a 
soft spot for despite my passion for Sirius:

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Barbara Foster Williams <bafoster at m...> 
wrote:

> Well, I think this is because Snape is firmly convinced that he 
should
> do what *he* thinks is right.  This includes, for example, turning
> Sirius in because he honestly believes that Sirius is dangerous and 
that
> he has misled Harry and Co. into trusting him. 

One of the things I like about Rowling is the complexity of some of 
her characters. She's is not completely even in this in my opinion-- I 
have very little interest in Voldemort as a character precisely 
because he is so black-and-white in his evillness, and I desperately 
hope that he will become much more complex. I also wish that the 
malfoys had SOMETHING in them that I could find attractive. It would 
make their nastiness more moving.

What is great about Snape is that his moral conscience is very, very 
complex. He is not a nice person, and fails in really important ways. 
He WAS a deatheater, and I can see his cruelty. And yet.... he is 
capable of putting himself aside for a greater good. In 
Dumbledore's words, at great risk to himself. He transends himself in 
a way that few people ever do. All this, and he is still very, very 
human and you are not obligated to like him. I think that what Rowling 
is showing us brilliantly in Snape is that good and evil are complex-- 
great good can come from the least expected place; and conversely the 
person we expected most to be utterly affable and attractive (I 
am thinking of the young Ludo Bagman here charming his audience 
at his trial) might be the very person who sells out to evil and has 
no moral courage at all.

I don't know Snape's story yet, but like everyone here have all sorts 
of favorite theories. I am watching him, and I care about what he will 
do next, and what he will become. The romantic in me hopes and wishes 
that he will find redemption, perhaps in love, but I have a hunch that 
Rowling will come up with something much more interesting and harder 
than that. I think he may be the one who makes the greatest sacrifice.

--Suzanne