[HPforGrownups] Re: Good characters/Snapers vs. Sirists

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 34687

In a message dated 05/02/02 14:33:58 GMT Standard Time, cindysphynx at home.com 
writes:


> Seriously, though, the level of affection for Snape among fans is 
> still a mystery to me.  I can understand thinking Snape plays an 
> important role in the books, and I can understand thinking that he is 
> interesting and mysterious.  But that's as far as I can go.  
> 

Well, it puzzles me too, as one afflicted by this peculiar disorder.

I suspect this question is strongly linked to your one about good characters, 

>How is 
>it that an author can have her Good characters behave in these 
>morally questionable ways and still remain Good in the readers' minds 

Which in turn raises the issue of whether we can categorise people or 
characters as 'good' or 'bad'. I would say that we can't. We can be on the 
side of good or evil, but many of our actions are somewhere on a sliding 
scale in between these two absolutes.

Interesting characters are grey, not black and white (someone noted the only 
time people on this list got enthusiastic about Dumbledore was his 'grey 
moment' : the gleam of triumph). In books, we are not attracted to out and 
out goody goodies: they tend to be rather flat and boring. The interest (for 
adults at least) in JKR's characters is their 'greyness'.

In life too, unfortunately, conventional goodness tends to be perceived as 
rather boring. Our newspapers are filled with the bad or the scandalous much 
more than they are with ordinary every day goodness.

Most of us are a bit grey too. Hopefully, the balance is tipped in favour of 
the good, but how many of us have never *wanted* to do something that was 
wrong? When good charaters do something bad, perhaps in a way it's a sort of 
catharsis: we identify with the essential goodness of the character whilst 
somehow, perhaps only subliminally, relating to the 'bad' action. Perhaps 
we're too virtuous to hex Draco et al and walk over them, but hey, wouldn't 
it feel good if we did? We would never feed tongue-tongue toffee to 
unsuspecting Dudley, would never take such easy advantage of a child, but at 
a visceral level, wouldn't we love to do it? Revenge is a very fundamental 
human emotion. Perhaps not noble, perhaps often sublimated, but it's there. 
One of the uses of literature is to let us get in touch with and deal with 
all those murky emotions that we'd rather ignore whilst we're getting on with 
our respectable lives.

Attraction to Snape is perhaps similar. It's a bit dangerous. Not the sort of 
thing you'd probably do in real life. His character is *very* grey. But 
'baddies' (for want of a better word), as others have noted, do seem to have 
some kind of intrinsic attraction. Snape has been *such* a baddie, but now, 
funadamentally he's not . It's sort of a safe way to have a flirtation with 
evil . Bit like kissing a de-fanged vampire, perhaps.

I think I'd better stop there.

Eloise . Off to cover up her soul, which is feeling a trifle over-exposed.


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