[HPforGrownups] Re: Father - figures (Was: Snape the Father)

[Amanda]

No: HPFGUIDX 38022

Marianne said

> Part of being an effective father-figure is the ability to guide
> someone when they are following the wrong path.  Or to try to correct
> improper or dangerous behavior.  Or simpy to let a child know that
> their actions are wrong and that they have not behaved in the way
> that's expected of them.  However, that message has to be delivered
> effectively in order for the child to learn the lesson.  Harry's
> problen is that he is willing to be guided by Remus and Sirius, but
> they are not present day-to-day.  Snape is there, but Harry still
> sees him as more adversary than ally.

Firstly, this sounds like you think Snape is *trying* to be an effective
father figure. I don't think he is. I think the idea that he could be
considered as such would horrify him, if it even occurred to him.

Second, nobody said he was an *effective* father figure. I said he was a
father figure. The aspect of fatherhood that I believe he's standing in for,
in Harry's psyche, is the aspect that is least effective anyway, even from
our own fathers--the "do what I say because I say so" father, the one who is
totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial, <fill in your own expletive from
your own teenage years>. This is the father who has the desire to protect a
child, and the authority to take steps to do so, but the complete inability
to connect with the child to communicate anything; thus the efforts
generally produce rebellion and estrangement.

There is an aspect of this negative father in all dads--nobody has failed to
be furious at their own at some point for some flavor of this--but what I
had pointed out earlier was that Harry has the luxury of not having to deal
with complex emotions attached to one man. He has a range of paternal
influences which each have different shadings of the role, and his reactions
to each are thus less complicated and probably stronger.

--Amanda