Looks aren't everything! (was:Re: Sirius / Severus)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 86769

serious_schwartz wrote:

> Can I add here that the entire pensieve scene is Snape's memory?
Harry only 
> sees the scene through Snape's eyes, and as we all know we tend to
color 
> our own memories. It is true that Remus and Sirius admit to their
personality 
> failings, but it is Snape recalling his view of James and Sirius,
the taunts, the 
> hexing, and so forth.  JK is cunning enough to let us think the
pensieve scene 
> is an objective view, but it is not. We can't judge everyone there
based on it.
> 
> Just my two cents
> 
> Serious, who is learning to like Snape more than she used to.

Carol:
Actually, the memory is not revealed from Snape's point of view. Harry
is not inside Snape's head, as he's inside Snake/Voldemort's in his
dream of trying to kill Arthur Weasley. He sees Snape from the
outside, sitting at his desk writing with his nose almost pressed
against the parchment and again, hanging upside down with the
Marauders laughing and taunting him. Similarly, when he's inside
Dumbldore's memories, he sees Dumbledore himself (and sits beside
him). He himself is actually inside the memory of the event just as it
happened. In other words, a Pensieve memory is much more objective
than a normal Muggle memory, which is necessarily subjective and
incomplete because we remember only what we perceived, distorted by
our own interpretation of the events. There is no interpretation in
the Pensieve memory itself. It's only what was actually said and done
from the viewpoint of a nonparticipant onlooker. Any interpretation
must be done by the onlooker, that is, Harry, not by the objectively
rendered event itself.

Carol, who hopes this is clear and is glad that you're learning to
like Snape