Saving Harry was Secrecy (Was: Re: It's over, Snape is evil)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 137646

> > Pippin:
> > That percentage of readers will be revealing their ignorance of 
> > chivalric legends, from which all three works are derived. 
> > Lancelot could be considered the ancestor of all
> > traitorous comrades who eventually come to the kingdom's aid.
> > TH White even conceived him as being ugly and sadistic, though 
> > there's no basis for that in Mallory.
Nora:
> This assumes, of course, that JKR is interested in such strict 
> correspondences.  The way it's put here smacks of far too much
Joseph  Campbell structuralism for my taste--by which I mean that
everything is  reduced down to the points where things correspond, 
and everything that  doesn't match (and is usually what makes the 
milieu of each story  different and meaningful) is elided out.  
'Derived' in this case seems,  IMO, so vague as to be almost 
meaningless.

Pippin:
When an author who professes no love for the form finds herself willy
nilly writing of castles, unicorns, good and evil enchanters, etc. I 
would say there is some correspondence  at work. And if she has no 
great affection for these  things in themselves, then perhaps we
might  profitably look at the structure. If she chose an evil
Overlord for her villain, it is probable that she had something to
say about the nature of evil that she couldn't say if she made him an 
officer of Grunnings, Ltd.

The middle ages were haunted by the fear of treachery as is our own,
because they too had a social structure that depended on strangers
keeping their agreements and  being who they claimed to be. In their 
tales, the enemy may come from outside, but he is aided by a traitor
within, sometimes consciously, but sometimes not. Usually the
traitor's aims are purely domestic-- not the sort of thing an Evil 
Overlord would waste time with. Consider Snape, who seems genuinely 
interested in teaching DADA, though perhaps a little too morbidly 
fond, compared to Voldemort who sought the position only as a 
source of power.

What I was trying to get at, though, is a comparison between
Lancelot, who  for all the good that was in him seemingly could 
not give up his wrongful enjoyment  of the Queen, and Snape, who, 
whatever good might be in him, seemingly cannot give up his 
wrongful enjoyment of Harry-baiting. Does Snape has to be redeemed 
of Harry-baiting before he can effectively help the good side? 

In Lancelot's case, after his treachery with the Queen was exposed,
he was also thought to have murdered two young knights who had 
been his friends. But he had not knowingly killed them, and the
salvation of the realm depended on their brother realizing this, 
abandoning the quest for vengeance against Lancelot and begging 
him to come to the aid of the king, who had  meanwhile been 
attacked by  Mordred, another traitor who did have designs on the 
throne.  

Although Lancelot did eventually have to give up his sinful
relationship and seek redemption, the other good guys had to give up
their wrongful suspicions of him first.

Pippin
sorry to have to condense Le Morte Darthur so severely