TBAY - Snape the Killer
dicentra63
dicentra at xmission.com
Sat Nov 23 19:56:08 UTC 2002
No: HPFGUIDX 47037
Dicentra rushes from the back room, Stoned!Harry trailing in her wake.
As she emerges into the main room of the tavern, she sees George,
placidly drying glasses with a towel and stacking them on the shelf.
"It's all YOUR fault!" she shrieks as she comes to a sudden stop.
Stoned!Harry plows into her, nearly knocking her over. "You and your
denial of Banginess! You've got all those Snapetheorists thinking
their dear Severus couldn't have been a genuine Death Eater." She
advances on George threateningly. George backs slowly into a corner.
"Dicey, can you come over here a second?"
Dicentra looks around. It's Eileen at a table with Wendy. She bounds
over to them. "What?'
"First there was this, 'Cruciatus makes you stronger' theory from
Cindy, and now it's 'AK increases your lifespan.' Where do you get the
canon for that?"
"Leave Cindy out of this," said Dicentra, peevishly. "Cindy goes off
half-cocked more than even I do. She does it just to stir up
discussion when things get boring. It's shameful, if you ask me."
Eileen and Wendy are still waiting for an answer.
"Look, I never said popping off an AK automatically makes you live
longer. I said 'Is it not probable that they've learned how to "eat"
the death of someone they've AK'ed, adding that person's remaining
lifespan to their own?' They're doing something beyond merely AK'ing
people. They're doing something else--working a bit of Dark Magic--to
add the lifespan to their own. Want canon? The name Death Eaters
says it all. And yeah, maybe it's not AK, but if you're going to use
a death-causing spell to eat death, attaching it to an Unblockable
Unforgivable makes the most sense."
"Wow," Wendy says eventually. "And here I thought you were just some
nut off the street. But that's a really awesome theory. The first time
I've heard it--is it new, or did I just miss it before? Eating Death.
Yeah. That totally fits. I like it *a lot*!"
Dicentra continues, ignoring Wendy's accolade. "So that means that
Assassin!Snape isn't so far out of character. Effecting a 'surgical'
kill, to prevent more deaths later on, is not going to register on his
Evil scale and neither, might I add, on Albus Dumbledore's.
"Having moral courage sometimes means doing one awful thing to prevent
something worse from happening."
"Umnh," Wendy breaks in. "That's not necessarily my definition of
moral courage. Personally, I think it takes more courage to choose a
path of non-violence."
"Non-violence might not be an option in some cases. Non-violence
works only if your enemy has a moral code but is blind to the fact
that they're doing something evil. That's why Ghandi's non-violent
campaign worked against the British. The British had a moral code,
but they were blinded by racial prejudice and greed. By not
retaliating, the Indians revealed the brutality of the British to
them, and the British, seeing that they were wrong, conceded. Maybe
not in such simple terms, but you get what I mean. The British
believed in right and wrong, so non-violent tactics were effective.
But Ghandi himself said that against the truly immoral and brutal,
non-violence wouldn't work at all, because the immoral don't *care* if
they're being immoral, and showing them their evil doesn't cause the
least bit of remorse."
"I'm still not sure about the 'surgical kill' example you gave in the
back room, though," said Wendy, thoughtfully. "You said that 'The cop
who takes out a fleeing, armed suspect isn't at all happy about
killing another human being (they routinely go in for therapy after
killing someone), but it has to be done to prevent the suspect from
killing someone else. Soldiers in a war have to kill too, in horrific
ways, but if that's what you have to do to prevent a hostile nation
from taking over your country, that's what you do.'
"Perhaps the point here is that good and evil are all relative. Or, at
least not readily found in the rather childish way we are often apt to
conceive of them. After all, in a war the invadees think of the
opposition as a hostile force. But do the invaders think of themselves
as evil? Of course not. They think of themselves as rightful owners of
the territory, or crusaders bent on wiping whatever 'evil' they
perceive in the other side. Not that this is, I think, what we are
being shown in the Voldemort situation."
"Exactly," said Dicentra. "Moral relativism isn't an issue in the
Dumbledore/Voldemort war. JKR has already set that forth in the
now-famous statement from PS/SS 'There is no good and evil, there is
only power, and those too weak to seek it.' Voldemort's side don't
perceive themselves as being 'right'--they want what they want and
they'll do anything to get it. That's often the case with war: the
invaders don't care about right and wrong--they just want something
and are willing to kill to get it.
"For that reason, Dumbledore isn't always going to have a clean means
to victory. He will often have to choose between the lesser of two
evils. And if it so happens that executing Karkaroff will bring Snape
back into Voldemort's good graces, for the purpose of getting vital
intelligence and an operative on the inside, then that will have to be
what he does."
Wendy pipes up. "But it is very easy to wonder about good and evil
being relative when discussing the Sirius/Snape relationship, or even
the rivalry between Draco and Harry. For all we know, Draco feels like
the injured party, and is just retaliating in the only way he knows."
"In this case," says Dicentra, "the 'moral relativism' approach is a
good tool for understanding the other guy's point of view. It always
helps to know all the sides of a story. But as a way of determining
what is good and what is evil, 'moral relativism' really bites: It's a
compass without a needle. Ultimately, moral relativism says that no
one can ever be wrong--no one is ever mistaken, blinded, misled,
deluded or operating under false assumptions.
"To cite a contemporary example, a certain large country has recently
come under attack by a group of folks who believe that the large
country is a threat to them. It is possible to see how this group of
folks might genuinely believe that the large country can seem
threatening--or even *be* threatening--to the group of folks. As it
turns out, though, this group of folks believes that the large country
is ruled by a single ethnic group, whose sole aim in life is to wipe
out everyone who belongs to the same religion as this group of folks.
Now, it turns out that the large country is NOT ruled by the certain
ethnic group, and that the large country's aim is NOT to wipe out that
religion. So the group of folks are genuinely wrong in this case.
(Not to mention the fact that they are violating all kinds of precepts
set forth by their religion, but that's another story.)"
"So what do we really know about good and evil?" Wendy asks earnestly.
"I would like to think that JKR wishes to show us something more
complex, more realistic than the cartoon character (or pantomime)
versions of good and evil we so often see. And I think she's started
doing just that, with, for example, Snape. And maybe even Sirius."
"Time will tell," said Dicentra. "But canon has already furnished us
with one example of good and evil not being that clear-cut: the case
of Bartemius Crouch Sr. I won't go into it, though, because I think I
see a vessel in the Bay, drawing nearer, that deals with that very
subject."
--Dicentra, dropping the gauntlet at the feet of one person only....
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