Snape, the DEs and the Longbottoms
lucky_kari
lucky_kari at yahoo.ca
Mon Jan 21 23:21:38 UTC 2002
No: HPFGUIDX 33856
I agree with everything you have to say!
--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ssk7882" <theennead at a...> wrote:
> While we're on the subject of Snape's old Slytherin gang, I've
> noticed a curious tendency of fans, both here and elsewhere,
> to resist strongly the notion that Snape could possibly have
> retained any affection or regard for his old DE colleagues
> after his defection to Dumbledore's camp. In fact, many
> people seem to prefer to believe that he never really liked
> them all that much to begin with. (This is particularly
> evident in fanfiction, where Snape's relations with his old
> classmates, when depicted, run a very small emotional gamut
> indeed, ranging all the way from contemptuous disdain to
> virulent hatred.) The general attitude seems to be: "Oh,
> well, Sevvie never really could stand any of those guys in
> the first place, you know. And even if maybe he did once, he
> sure loathes them now."
Yes, I've noticed this too! Could this be connected to people's
unwillingness to believe that Snape really favours Draco or likes
Lucius? I myself proposed that Snape was the one who supposedly
brought Lucius back to the light side, and was astonished that very
few people could even conceive of Snape not being on to Lucius, of
Snape liking Lucius.
> Or, alternatively, might the unwillingness to concede the
> possibility that Snape might have truly cared for his old
> friends and colleagues be really nothing more than a ploy
> we as readers have devised to ensure our *own* psychological
> comfort with the character? Perhaps in order to redeem Snape
> _to ourselves_ we must first place him in an emotional context
> from which he was *not,* in fact, betraying his friends when he
> defected to Dumbledore's camp?
>
> Because, really, there's just no getting around it, is there?
> It's an ugly thing to do, to betray ones friends. No matter
> what the justification, no matter how sound the principles or
> the motivations underlying the betrayal, no matter how much we
> may approve of it as a political act, it remains undeniably
> *ugly*.
I think that was it with me, at first. Though I've started getting
past that defense, and the thing gets more ugly, and potentially more
heartwrenching the more you look at it. Similarly, I was always
extremely disturbed as a child by Bilbo's betrayal of the dwarves in
"The Hobbit" (referenced much in the worthwhile literature
discussion) He was right, and the rest were becoming greedy, hateful,
and callous, but to deceive poor Bombur (wasn't it?) and climb over
that wall with the Arkenstone to go and negotiate with their greatest
enemies, including the Elvenking who had imprisoned them not so
kindly? It really is disturbing. You feel just as much for Thorin when
the truth dawns on him that he has been betrayed, as for Bilbo. But
there, at least, there was a reconciliation. And the DEs don't even
know Snape has betrayed them. It'd be more like the part in "The
Hobbit" where they're all being so kind to Bilbo, while he's hiding
the Arkenstone from him. (That always gets to me.)
> So is that it, perhaps? Do we tell ourselves that Snape
> never really liked the DEs in the first place because we
> are unwilling to acknowledge the extent to which Severus
> Snape is just Peter Pettigrew, seen through the looking glass?
Very good point.
> But I prefer not to. Until Rowling proves me wrong, I will
> continue to operate under the assumption that even while
> conspiring to betray them, Snape retained a strong personal
> affection for many of the DEs, and that when they got
> themselves slaughtered by Aurors or shipped off to Azkaban,
> it really *hurt* -- even (or, rather, *especially*) when it
> happened due to the information he was secretly passing along
> to Dumbledore. It is terribly common for real-world spies
> to engage in just this brand of cognitive dissonance. One
> might argue, in fact, that the ability to maintain such a
> schismed perspective is the hallmark of a successful agent.
Exactly. And we don't know that everyone killed by Aurors or taken to
Azkaban was equally guilty. There could have been people among them
who were less guilty than he. Mrs. Lestrange looks like BIG trouble,
but what about people who were implicated, like Bagman, in collecting
info. for Voldemort (on Snape's information also) and didn't have
Bagman's connections to save them? Poor Snape could really be
suffering.
>Emotions are not rational, and anger is very rarely
> "fair," and blaming the victim, while it may be horrendously
> unjust, is also an all-too-human tendency. I can easily
> imagine Snape feeling particularly resentful towards the
> Longbottoms. They are, after all, the reason that the
> Lestranges (who should have been *safe,* dammit -- the
> war was over, the arrests had come to an end, they would
> have been home free if only they hadn't had to go messing
> with the Longbottoms like that) are now serving life in
> Azkaban.
We don't really know how the whole situation came about, btw. Why
would they suppose Frank Longbottom to know about where Voldemort was?
Sound like "entrapment" gone wrong on the MoM's behalf? Snape could
really resent this, especially if his greater affections in the
situation were for Barty Crouch Jr. More on that idea later.
> And there are likely guilt issues as well. From what Sirius
> tells Harry et al in GoF about Severus Snape's School Days
> (famous for his fascination with the Dark Arts, entered
> school knowing more curses than half the 7th years, and so
> forth), it seems more than likely to me that Snape was the
> one who led the rest of his old Slytherin gang down the road
> to damnation in the first place. If such is the case, then
> he's doubly culpable, bearing responsibility not only for
> what eventually happened to Rosier and Wilkes and the
> Lestranges, but also for the fates of all of their victims
> -- the Longbottoms included.
Now, that I was sure of when I first read GoF, that Snape was the
leader not a follower in the "gang". What's more, he could have
influenced younger Slytherins to the bad. Barty Crouch was 18, no?,
when the Longbottom/Lestrange incident occured? And we have no
timeline for that, right, except that it was after V's downfall? But
supposing that Crouch Jr. was in Slytherin (in a younger year) while
Snape was still there, and like other Slytherins, had looked up to
him. And, even to this day, Snape's influence on the House could have
been a major factor in taking them to where they are.
> But all that said, I think that we might want to bear in
> mind that Frank Longbottom was not precisely an innocent
> in the full meaning of that term. His wife may have been,
> but he himself was not. He was not a hapless bystander,
> caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn't
> even a civilian. He was an _Auror_, invested with the
> authority to investigate, interrogate, arrest, and -- in
> the last year before Voldemort's defeat -- also to torture,
> to magically coerce, or even to kill those he suspected of
> malfeasance. Not to say that he abused his power, of course
> -- Dumbledore seems to have liked him, so we may perhaps
> safely assume that he did not -- but the fact nonetheless
> remains that we are not talking about a defenseless bystander
> here. What happened to the man was horrible beyond imagining,
> yes. But he wasn't exactly a *lamb.*
>
> Nor was he even necessarily all that young. We are told that
> the Longbottoms were "very popular," which does rather
> encourage us to think of them as popular in the same way
> that the Potters were popular -- which is to say, as young
> and handsome and overflowing with potential -- but given
> the mood of wizarding society at the time, "very popular"
> could equally well refer to a hardened, tough-as-nails
> war-hero, well out of his twenties. Not everyone chooses
> to have their first child at the tender age of twenty-one,
> as the Potters did. Certainly the impression I get of
> Neville's grandmother is one of old age, rather than late
> middle-age, which to my mind rather implies that the
> Longbottoms weren't all that young when Neville was born.
Well, I have this strange vision of Donald Rumsfeld as Frank
Longbottom, that has come from nowhere (and that's definitely too
old), so I'm not unbiased, but I do opt for an older, highly ranked
Frank Longbottom.
Eileen
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