Snape: the Riddle

[lealess]

No: HPFGUIDX 136066

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "kneazlecat54" 
<12newmoons at g...> wrote:
> 
> I think of Snape as a double agent who's been caught in his own 
> trap.  I don't believe that he's particularly loyal to either 
side.  
> He just likes the power of being able to manipulate people who are 
> ostensibly more powerful than he is-another enactment of his 
> egomania.  He makes me think of someone out of John LeCarre or 
> Graham Greene, who has played the game so long that he's forgotten 
> why he started doing it in the first place and now keeps it up 
> because he has nothing to live for outside the game. 
> 

lealess:

I think of Snape as someone like Tom Ripley in the Patricia Highsmith 
novels.  He is capable of murder, but also kindness.  He has made 
decisions in the past from which he cannot escape.  Why did he make 
those decisions?  It may have been envy of others (Malfoys) or a 
sense of injustice (Marauders), or a desire to be appreciated (Dark 
Arts-loving, shunned kid at school), or perhaps he just fell into the 
Death Eaters like Ripley fell into his life, almost accidentally.  
Because of his decisions, and like most people, sometimes he controls 
his life, and sometimes, others control it.

I think his petty cruelty to students and others is a reaction to 
this powerlessness, and does not go further, to the actual desire to 
exert control over them.  If that was his intent, he comes nowhere 
close to achieving it in his classroom.  To the extent he does 
control others, it seems to consist entirely of blocking them from 
knowing his thoughts through Occlumency.  We do not see him 
proactively controlling others, however, forcing them to do his will.

I do not see him wanting to be the next Dark Lord; think of all the 
dunderheads he would have to manage then.  He would probably prefer 
to be alone, living on his own terms.

I would like to see him scowling into the sunset at the end of the 
series, continuing his morally ambiguous life, seeking his own path 
through the mess.  I know that will not happen, however, because 
while these are complex books in terms of plot, they are not complex 
in terms of morality.  In fact, I have to agree with posters of long 
ago that the morality is {depressingly to me} deterministic.  Snape 
will have to pay, one way or another.  The books are about Harry, 
after all, the hero of Love and Light and Good, or something.

lealess