Vengeance on Snape?Re: Snape--Abusive?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115040


Pippin wrote:
>  It wouldn't be very satisfying to me if Harry 
> > was noble enough to forgo vengeance on  Pettigrew for killing 
> > his parents and then took out his wrath on Snape for insulting 
> > them. To paraphrase something Ron never said, he'd really 
> > need to rethink his priorities.
> > 
> > Pippin
> 
> 
Dzeytoun responded:
> But he wasn't going to forgo vengeance on Pettigrew, Pippin, he was
going to send him to Azkaban.  That's hardly forgoing vengeance, or 
justice as the case may be.  Now, it's true he believed that there 
are certain places you shouldn't go for justice/vengeance, and I'm
sure that he still believes that.  Which is probably going to be a 
big deal for him as he wrestles with having to kill Pettigrew.
> 
> It would be an enormous disappointment for me if he did not put
Snape in his place in some appropriate fashion. That doesn't mean I
think he should kill Snape.  But just as he was ready to appropriately
punish Pettigrew by sending him to Azkaban, I expect him to
appropriately punish Snape for his behavior.  Public humiliation would
probably be best.


Carol notes:
For the record, vengeance is not justice. Merriam-Webster defines
"justice" (in part) as "the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
b (1) : the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2) :
conformity to this principle or ideal," which forces us to define
"just" (again partially) "2 a (1) : acting or being in conformity with
what is morally upright or good : RIGHTEOUS."

"Vengeance," OTOH, is "punishment inflicted in retaliation for an
injury or offense : RETRIBUTION."

Surely righteousness and retribution are not the same thing. One
requires fairness, the other returns injury for injury. Snape, I'm
sorry to say, wants vengeance against Sirius in PoA. He may think, and
probably does think, that justice and vengeance are the same thing,
that Sirius *deserves* to be given over to the Dementors and that
therefore such a punishment is good and right, but (IMO) JKR wants us
to see him as wrong in this view. By the same token, when Harry
imagines vengeance against Snape (chopping him into little pieces,
IIRC), he is making the same mistake. Snape's making him and Ron help
the supposedly injured Draco with his potion is hardly worthy of such
harsh punishment (or even, for that matter, a reprimand from
Dumbledore). In OoP, Harry is almost certainly *wrong* to seek
vengeance against Bellatrix, to want to punish her for Crucioing
Neville by trying to Crucio her himself (which only a person who
enjoys hurting another can do successfully). Surely one of the chief
lessons Dumbledore is trying to teach Harry (and perhaps to teach
Snape as well) is that vengeance is not justice. Evil in return for
Evil cannot, by definition, be Good.

Turning Pettigrew over to the authorities, who in turn will send him
to Azkaban is justice (as the WW rather arbitrarily defines that
concept). Murdering him, as Black (and later Lupin) intended to do, is
vengeance, the desire to punish Pettigrew as retribution for personal
injury. It returns evil for evil and in so doing, stains the soul or
the conscience of the person who commits it (as Tom Riddle is
permanently stained and corrupted by the murder of his family). Harry
saves Black and Lupin from the corruption of murder and vengeance, at
the same time making possible what you acknowledge would have been an
appropriate punishment (carried out not by the victims getting revenge
but by MoM officials appointed to deal with criminals)--sending him to
Azkaban. That is justice, not vengeance. (Too bad the rat escaped.)

Snape in his capacity as teacher is an entirely different matter. All
he has done is to criticize or ridicule and dish out a few unfair
marks and detentions. Vengeance, IMO, is simply inappropriate in this
case, not only because it returns evil for a very minor evil but
because getting even for a perceived injustice is neither mature nor
noble, and Harry, to defeat Voldemort, must surely be both. Nor is it
his job or his responsibility to bring Snape to justice, if justice is
even called for here. All Harry needs to do is to stop following
Sirius's example of rising to the bait. As soon as Snape no longer
receives the satisfaction of seeing Harry seethe with helpless rage,
he'll stop ridiculing him. (And a respectful manner and a greater
regard for the rules would rob Snape of his excuse for punishing
Harry.) And what, if anything, would constitute justice for Snape--in
the WW, where strict teachers and obedient students are the norm, not
the RL where are expected to respect their students' feelings? I, for
one, think it will be sufficient for him to understand at last that
Harry is not James and to somehow come to terms with him. Shake hands
and realize they're on the same side. I'm not saying that it will
happen, but it's the best possible outcome that I can foresee, as much
for Harry as for Snape. And it involves justice, in the sense of doing
the right thing, on both their parts.

And what about the person who really has harmed Harry, seriously and
irreparably--Voldemort? Even here I think we should separate justice
(which is impersonal and right) from vengeance (which is personal and
wrong). I'm certainly not saying that Harry should turn the other
cheek and let Voldemort kill him (only I do hope JKR will find a way
to make him defeat Voldemort without AKing him). And he will have a
much more difficult time distinguishing between vengeance and justice
in dealing with Voldemort, the murderer of his parents, than with
Snape, a critical and sometimes unfair teacher. As the hero of a book
whose primary theme, according to JKR herself, is Good vs. Evil, he
cannot fight evil with evil or he will cease to be good. He must be
noble and powerful, like Dumbledore, who has powers that he is too
noble to use. He must find a way to bring Voldemort to justice without
succumbing to the lust for vengeance. And just maybe figuring out how
to deal with Snape without the immature and ignoble satisfaction of
getting even is the means by which he'll learn that critical lesson.

Sorry about the "musts." I mean "must" in my view, not ABSOLUTELY MUST
WITHOUT QUESTION. The distinction between vengeance and justice exists
within the language and has nothing to do with you or me. My
application of those terms to HP is, as I'm fully aware, just my opinion.

Carol, who hopes that certain onlist friends will understand the
experimental nature of this post