Snape - A goodie and nasty with it!

[Philip Nel]

No: HPFGUIDX 37670

Dear Potter-ites,

Mercia writes (of Snape):

> He can be cruel, vindictive, petty, irrational, unfair and
> downright unpleasant yet he is also constantly in fact acting to
> protect and advance the good and he clearly has great courage and
> determination.
>
> This seems to me to be moral sophistication of a high order
> especially in a 'children's' book. I love it when black and white
> assumptions are undermined like this. People can be on the right
> side and be thoroughly unpleasant with it. We don't and can't always
> like those who are doing the right thing and are on our side.

To which Demeter replies:

>     Precisely. Severus Snape is one of the few gray
> characters in an otherwise, black and white book. That's not
> surprising since this is fundamentally meant for children.
> It just happened that many adults got suckered in too. ^__^

To which I reply....

Cheers to Mercia!  I find the moral sophistication of the _Potter_ books fascinating, too.  (If you haven't already read them -- and you probably have -- give
Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy a try: the first book is _Northern Lights_ [UK title] or _The Golden Compass_ [US title].)

But, to Demeter, I would submit an incomplete list of "gray characters": Percy Weasley, Cornelius Fudge, Peter Pettigrew.  And I would add that there are many gray areas in the novels.  For example, does Harry do the right thing in sparing Peter Pettigrew's life at the end of book three?   And does Rowling's treatment of the house-elves in book four endorse slavery (as some reviewers have suggested) or offer a critique of the means by which individuals are enslaved?  I'm not suggesting that we need to answer these questions right now, but I do offer them as examples of the moral sophistication that Mercia  describes.  Indeed, it is this very sophistication that gives HPforGrownups listserv-readers so much to discuss.  And, if I may return for a moment to my list of "gray characters" (Demeter's term), even Ron's prejudice against giants makes him more complicated than he at first may seem.  He's clearly not of the same order of "grayness" as Snape, Percy, Fudge, or Pettigrew, but there
is some ambiguity there.

I'm sure that this subject has been discussed at length on the HPforGrownups listserv, so my apologies for what I'm sure is redundant information: at any rate, when asked if she wrote the books for grown-ups or for children, Rowling has said both.  She says that she wrote them for herself: these are stories that she enjoys reading now and that she would have enjoyed reading when she was eleven.  But, more importantly, all great children's literature works on multiple levels -- it contains pleasures for readers of many ages.

Well, that's all.  I'll get off my soapbox now, and will (gladly) pass it on to another participant.

Happy discussing,

Phil
--
Philip Nel
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Denison Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-0701
U.S.A.
-----------------------------------------
http://www.ksu.edu/english/nelp/
philnel at ksu.edu