Plot holes (Was: It's over, Snape is evil)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 137626

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Kathryn Jones <kjones at t...> 
wrote:
 
> Kathy writes:
> Please have patience because this is difficult to work backwards 
> on pure plot points as opposed to a character or personality basis. 
> These ponts are just how it seems to me.

Okay: these are not *plot* holes in the sense of holes in the plain 
course of events.  Everything here is a perceived thematic hole.    
Which means I can pull out another argument:

All of the objections here are based upon projections and patterns 
from what has happened so far.  That's what we all do when we read.  
However, the greatest thing about reading series fiction is that we 
must, at each new installment, go back and re-read what has 
happened.  At times we then realize that what we thought was a 
meaningful pattern was not what was actualized in the text.

[That, IMO, is what has happened with the shipping Armageddon: the 
cold hard realization that the patterns being read turned out to be 
the wrong ones.]

JKR is writing a very heavily end-weighted series, so a lot of things 
are only going to pop into focus with the resolution of the entire 
plot.  However, she's left it very open-ended in the case of what 
even actually happened (plot level), which means that what it means 
(theme level) is correspondingly open.

So here's my stab at showing how these thematic objections *could* be 
read another way.

<snip>

> Snape may have made a definitive choice for good or evil but we 
> have not been allowed to see for certain which way he chose. That 
> is still coming. If Snape has chosen evil, it adds nothing to the 
> plot, other than Harry will have to go through Snape to get to 
> Voldemort.

Disagree that it adds nothing to the plot.  If Snape has chosen evil 
as of the end of HBP, but had not chosen evil before then (he'd been 
on the side of good), we have the opposite of a redemption plot--the 
fall from grace.  I don't know about you, but that's BANG-y and 
dramatic for me.  Possibility for some great conflict scenes, too.

<snip>

> Snape is mean, miserable, unattractive, and nobody likes him, 
> but he has directly saved Harry's life, and Dumbledore's life. This 
> would seem to fit with JKR's message. To simply turn him evil at 
> this point might validate Harry's feelings, but just validating 
> Harry's feelings adds nothing to the plot or the message.

Validating Harry's feelings at this point is actually quite BANG-y as 
well--precisely because we've spent however many books being told (or 
arguing) that Harry is Always Wrong in his perceptions of people, and 
that there is always so much more than we think below the surface.  
The plot point here could well be 'hiding in plain sight'; JKR has 
convinced us to read more into things than was actually there.  The 
act of wondering is an essential part of reading itself, regardless 
of whether it's ultimately validated or not.

<snip>
 
> Snape has apparently given up fifteen years of his life to 
> Dumbledore so far. At the end of HBP he has given up any hope of a 
> future, any possible respect, even if vindicated by Dumbledore 
> somehow, and I expect his life in the satisfaction of the life debt 
> that he owed James. His death in the service of Voldemort would not 
> fit in with the theme of sacrifice that JKR has presented.

But what if Snape's thematic role is not to be one in the line of 
sacrificial martyrs, but the one who could not bring himself to do 
the same thing?  I'd say that comparatively he's had a pretty good 
fifteen years in Dumbledore's care, although the last two have 
probably been pretty nasty.  There's nothing to foreclose upon the 
idea of Snape having become embittered during his time in 
Dumbledore's service, though.

<snip> 

> There has to be some plot line in the next book that allows this 
> redemption and Harry's understanding of it.

I object here to the 'there has to be'. :)  Only if Snape is the 
character earmarked for redemption or revelation.  Personally, I 
think that Peter's stock on that front has risen dramatically, but I 
make no predictions.

Now, this is not to say that I don't think many of these are very 
strong arguments.  I just don't think any of them are, if not carried 
out, plot holes--it simply means that Rowling has taken her thematic 
structure to a different place, and that means a different pattern 
has to be retrospectively read for the earlier books.  It's a fun 
exercise to work out, for instance, two different charts for Snape.

You can write out the one which you did here, emphasizing his loyalty 
to Dumbledore, redemptive path, and accordingly noble and helpful 
actions.

Or you can write out the one with Snape's unhealthy obsession with 
his past, personal hatefulness and nastiness to children and others, 
his Dark Arts knowledge, and the more overt actions in HBP.

It's going to take book 7 to see if the balance tips strongly one way 
or the other--assuming that JKR is going to give us that kind of 
clarity at all.

-Nora counts 'em up and shuts 'em down