Snape, Hagrid and Animals

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 143832

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "leslie41" <leslie41 at y...> 
wrote:

> Well, that's a good point.  But remember Rowling's readership.  
> She's not really thinking mostly about the "lesson" adults will 
> get, and that's a very sophisitcated "adult" take on it I think.

I don't think it's that sophisticated, and laying out why answers 
your objection below.  The reading of "Oh, I was right all along" 
requires one to be reading solely for facts; but I think Rowling's 
greatest strength as a writer is in the process she leads us through, 
even more than the ultimate conclusions.

She's laid out various kinds of evil and various kinds of wrongdoing 
for her readers to think about, and she's shown us how people can 
fall into these things.  Why else was so much of HBP taken up with 
the presentation of past events for their understanding, as opposed 
to the action-packed hands-on practical training that so many readers 
wanted and thought they were going to get?

<snip>

> The far more valuable lesson for a child would be to demonstrate 
> that often times "nice" has absolutely nothing to do with "good," 
> that the two are entirely separate things.  That "nice" people can 
> and do seemingly mean things all the time, and that when you 
> examine the actions of people who seem very cranky and mean at 
> first glance you find someone who has in truth done a lot of good.  

You might not be surprised to discover that I, *when thinking about 
Rowling's world*, don't put a great deal of stock in the 'good but 
not nice' vindication theory.  First is that 'nice' is often used in 
the most superficial way possible, while it can actually be a 
profound and deep virtue.  Second is that I think Rowling is playing 
with deep ideas of character--our choices *show* what we are, not 
make--and this idea of character determines a lot of how she thinks 
about her characters.  [That would connect into her enjoyment of 
comeuppance, as well.]  Sherry has laid out how the 'beautiful=good, 
ugly=bad' dichotomy doesn't hold up.  I'd suggest that we may end up 
with distinctions between people who are good and do good things (and 
occasionally things which end up being not good), and people who do 
things which may end up being considered 'good' but are not good in 
and of themselves.

I'm not an essentialist myself, but again, I see it in Rowling.

> A child who is presented with an evil Snape at the end of Book VII 
> gets the message that it's okay to judge a book by its cover, and I 
> don't think that's the message Rowling wants to send.  

What if Snape's bitter and resentful actions aren't cover?  What if 
they're the core, and not a mask?  This is definitely not where I 
expected things to go post-GoF, but the more I think, it may be that 
we were deeply signaled from the beginning that something just ain't 
right with a man immediately gunning for an 11-year old orphan based 
on past factors.  I'm not saying that Snape is painted as a totally 
negative character--far from it.  I'm just suggesting that maybe the 
self-consumed and resentful parts have come to be the dominant, that 
these are expressed in any number of daily actions, and that Rowling 
is fine with portraying that kind of character.

-Nora notes that she's fully aware this could be utterly wrong, and 
will bow to textual reality when it arrives