Conspiracies and re-assessments

[Alex Boyd]

No: HPFGUIDX 112561

Valky wrote:

> So James and Sirius thought they were superior to Snape, they even 
> made him cry.  
> Is that *really* such a bad thing given the context of the story? 
> I am still not saying that their actions were right. But are they 
> entitled to their delusion of superiority, after all?


I would say, yes, it is really such a bad thing, and no, they are not
entitled to their delusion of superiority.  But that's not a matter of
textual interpretation.  Obviously, since we're both intelligent
readers and have done so, the scene can be read either way.  

IMHO, to say that James's actions were ultimately OK, because he's a
good guy and he was picking on a bad guy, undermines the very point
that you're trying to make--that good people can do bad things, and
vice versa.  It was a Bad Thing.  It doesn't make James a bad person,
nor does the fact of having been picked on excuse Snape for any of the
vile things he has surely done off camera.  But it was a Bad Thing. 
Good people can do Bad Things, they are just (according to my moral
compass, which is of course not the same as everyone's) required to be
ashamed of them.  Lupin, and to an extent Sirius, demonstrate when
they're talking to Harry about the pensieve scene that they are,
indeed, ashamed of having bullied Snape.  We don't know whether James
had time to grow up enough to be ashamed of it or not.  He probably
did, but we don't know.  

If Harry went back in time with the Time Turner (I'm mixing up my
threads here...) and turned Tom Riddle upside down to show the entire
school his underpants, that would *still* be a Bad Thing.  Even though
Tom Riddle grows up to be a much worse person than the Snape that we
see in the Pensieve grows up to be.  It's bad because depriving people
of their dignity (without some compelling reason) is bad, regardless
of whether the victim has done something else bad first.  

Now, if James et. al. for some reason believed that tormenting Snape
would make him realize the error of his ways and stop being mean to
other people, that would be a different story.  I would still, moral
absolutist that I am, expect them to be the eensiest bit ashamed of
having done something Bad in the service of a greater good, but if
they came to me crying that they just felt awful for what they had had
to do to poor Snivelly, I'd probably tell them they were being too
hard on themselves.  However, the point is a bit moot (at least with
regard to this particular scene), because there's no indication that
James et. al. thought tormenting Snape would serve any purpose but
their own amusement.  

However, I suspect that this is not an issue on which either of us is
likely to budge (I know I'm not, anyway), so perhaps I should find
something else to talk about for a while.  

Alex