Quesiton for Snapeophiles and -phobes RE Dumbledore, Snape, and Harry

[juli17 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 114650

Dzeytoun writes:

> Well, what has Voldemort done that we've actually SEEN?  He killed 
> Harry's parents.  Bad, but they were his enemies.  He tried to kill 
> Harry.  Bad, but that was self-preservation.  He brought himself back 
> to life.  Can't fault him for that.  He tried to get his hands on the 
> prophecy.  Self-preservation again.
> 
> Snape, meanwhile, has subjected Harry to five years of non-stop abuse.
> 
> Yes, in many ways, Snape is MUCH more evil than Voldemort.
> 
> Granted, we keep being TOLD that Voldemort is a great and powerful 
> evil.  But we really haven't see that.  On the other hand, we keep 
> being TOLD that Snape is a good guy.  But his evil is readily 
> apparent.
> 
> On balance, if I had to choose which to send to the gallows on the 
> basis of what I've actually SEEN, I would definitely give Voldie the 
> pass and let Snape swing.
> 
> 

Julie sez:

I definitely can't agree with your assessment. To me, evil has to involve
actions. It goes a little further than being unpleasant, mean, abusive,
a miserable git, etc. I'm also not sure one can have an "evil" heart
if one doesn't take evil actions (perhaps the two go together anyway).
Let's take Hitler as an example...

Hitler could have had all the same hate in his heart, but if he'd 
expended it by sitting in a hovel somewhere drawing pictures of 
children being tortured, women being raped, people being gassed
in ovens, etc, then plastered them on his wall and thrown darts at
them while hurling foul invectives, he wouldn't have been evil. He
would have just been a miserable git, though few would know of
him anyway.

He also could have posted hateful letters directed at Jews in papers,
spread around nasty rumors about them whenever he could, and
chased Jewish children around their neighborhoods, hurling the 
same foul invectives, belittling and threatening them, perhaps even 
throwing rotten fruit at them, so that they ran away and hid every 
time he appeared. While here he is taking some action, which
in some cases might even be criminally prosecutable, he still isn't
quite evil. He's not destroying lives or livelihoods. He's causing at 
most temporary emotional distress, while inviting the repugnance 
of people around him, making him a very miserable git of a person. 

What Hitler actually did of course, was to put what lived in his 
heart into extreme action, taking away the freedom and livelihood
of millions of Jews, torturing and killing them, along with millions
of others who didn't fit his Aryan ideal. It's those actions that tipped 
the scale, making him more than simply a miserable, hateful person
--making him in fact an evil monster.

Snape falls in the second category. He's definitely a miserable git, 
but he's yet to do anything evil, even to Harry or Neville. (Verbal abuse 
doesn't quite qualify, IMO). And, yes, we don't know what he did
when he was a DE, but until we do, we can't conclusively say if
he's done anything evil. Voldemort, OTOH, has killed repeatedly, 
including Harry's parents, Bertha Jorkins by torture,  had a child
-Cedric-killed on his orders, as well as attempting to kill two other 
children (Harry and Ginny). He's also directed the DEs to torture
and/or kill hundreds (maybe thousands) of other wizards. Even if 
we haven't *seen* these things, we know them to be true, unless
we believe the whole WW is delusional. Evil is as evil does, and
Voldemort has done plenty of evil things. 

IMO, there's really no comparison between Voldemort and Snape
when it comes to matters of evil, even if Snape is the much more 
complexly drawn character. 

Julie 


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