[HPforGrownups] Re: JKR, Harry Potter, and the Nature of Evil

[Susan Hall]

No: HPFGUIDX 19628


>I really don't think Snape's greatest desire is to redeem himself.
>I cannot figure Snape out. I can understand that he became a Death
>Eater and then changed/transformed. But I cannot understand his
>vicious, abusive treatment of Harry and Hermione

Snape, IMHO, is pretty typical of a certain sort of teacher.  In order to
avoid the justified hail of owls from people who may think this makes me
sound as though my attitude to teachers is something like Draco Malfoy's
attitude to Mudbloods, only minus the tolerance and the charity, I will add
that I think teachers are, in the main, underpaid and underappreciated, and
that I have met some truly inspirational ones.  I have, however, met and
been taught by one or two  who make Snape sound positively cuddly.  There
was no apparent reason why these people should behave like psychopaths (I
particularly remember the one who left me with a permanently damaged left
elbow) except (1) that they could; and (2) they seemed to be in the wrong
job.  I cannot imagine anything closer to hell than being forced to stand,
day in, day out in front of a bunch  rampaging kids  if you didn't like
children at all, and if you suspect that the minute you let down your guard
the savages would be through into the compound.  No wonder it does  nasty
things to people's personalities (it's no good saying that if Snape had the
nerve to act as a double agent in Voldemort's camp he ought to be able to
handle a group of sulky Griffindors without it getting to him - one of the
nicer teachers I experienced had been "relegated" (and I assure you that was
how the school saw it) to teaching the educationally subnormal because his
nerves wouldn't let him teach regular classes, despite the fact that he'd
survived 2 torpedoings and won all sorts of medals  when he'd been in the
Royal Navy).  My view is that Snape never wanted to be a teacher at all
(probably he should have been the magic equivalent of a research chemist)
and Dumbledore offered him the job because no-one else wanted to employ a
suspected Death Eater and Dumbledore wanted to keep him under his eye to
ensure no backsliding.  Being Snape, and therefore something of a
perfectionist in his own way, he then set out to prove that he was the best
in the school in his own line.  The slot of "Most Terrifying Teacher" seemed
the easiest for him to fill, and his career was born.

Susan