In Defense of Snape (Against Snape in JKR's words)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 122098


> >Betsy:
> No one avoids a question like JKR. And she provides such
> entertainment as she does so. Not much insight into Snape's
> 
> **vmonte again: Betsy, you cut out the most significant part. I 
will  quote it again though. JKR: ..."But you must not forget that 
Snape  was a Death Eater. He will have seen things that
 Why 
do you love  him? Why do people love Snape? I do not 
understand this." [EBF-04]<


Pippin:
But Dumbledore said that Snape is now no more a Death Eater 
than Dumbledore himself, and JKR criticized Sirius on her web 
site for treating Snape as if he couldn't have reformed.


> **vmonte again: We also find out that Snape was once a Death 
Eater. So, that also is a bad sign in my opinion, especially since 
he  doesn't seem to have had a moral epiphany. He is still a 
deeply  horrible person, no?<

Pippin:
The world isn't divided into good people and Death Eaters. JKR 
has said that she doesn't believe children become evil unless 
they're damaged. This suggests she sees evil as a two step 
process. People become damaged, and then evil can take root 
in them, like germs can grow in a wound. 

That suggests that you can clean the germs out and get rid of the 
infection, but you aren't necessarily all better then; you still have 
the wound to take care of. Snape's ability to empathize with other 
people has apparently been damaged and like Harry tearing into 
Dudley at the beginning of OOP, it seems he's no longer as 
responsive to other people's distress as he should be, 
especially when he's the cause. 

The signals are drowned out by the pleasure he feels 
that for once, he's being the kicker instead of the kickee. There 
probably isn't much Snape can do about that. No matter how 
much he reforms, he isn't going to develop the ability to be 
sympathetic. It's gone. But he is no longer seeking out innocent 
people to victimize. It's true he can't resist remarking on Harry's 
celebrity, and his likeness to James, but then neither can most 
of the adults. The difference is that Snape has some very 
negative associations with these things.

I'm sorry for the awful experience you had with that teacher, and I 
can see why you'd want to see Snape as a stand-in for her, but to 
tell you the truth she sounds much worse than Snape -- more 
like Umbridge. One of the things we find out with Umbridge is 
that Snape could treat Harry much, much worse than he does 
and Harry would not complain about it. 

So I think, although he insults Harry freely because that is the 
way that Slytherins treat anyone they consider  beneath them, 
and  he criticizes Harry to excess, that he is not abusing Harry 
because he wants to break him, any more than Harry wanted to 
break Dudley. He just wanted a target for all the rage and 
frustration he was feeling, and Dudley, he thought, deserved to 
be it.

Pippin