Snape and McGonagall Re: Snape and Lupin's Character Arcs

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 119510


Java:

> But for Snape to hang onto his school days like that is very 
hard to  understand. It's not like he enjoyed it. A lot of things
must 
have  happened after he left school, growing up, seeing the real 
world. He  wasn't sent to prison. Yet he's still only focused on 
age 11-17.  Maybe he's just that narrow-minded and mean, and 
he only focuses on  bad things happened to him. I would 
imagine a person like that, going  into the real world, can only 
find a lot worse memories than school  days. However, his worst 
memory was when he was 15, and his worst enemy, after 20+ 
years, is still James Potter. 

Pippin:

Welcome, Java! JKR stated in the Edinburgh appearance that 
Snape has seen some things while he was in the Death Eaters,  
so I think the chapter title "Snape's Worse Memory" can be taken 
as reflecting the narrator's point of view, which is not necessarily 
the author's. The narrator of the books writes about Harry as if he 
had been observing him all his life, but often does not actually 
know or understand more than Harry himself does. For example 
in PS/SS, the narrator states that Harry has lived with the 
Dursleys ever since his parents died in that car crash.

You'll find it's a matter of constant debate  on this list whether 
Snape is really as blindly obsessed with his schoolboy grudges 
as he appears to be, or whether, like a method actor,  he is 
magnifying those feelings in order to disguise from his former 
associates in the DE's how much he has changed.

Pippin