The Cave, the Bible, the Passing of the Baton...
vmonte
vmonte at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 23 15:24:05 UTC 2005
No: HPFGUIDX 134389
Wanda wrote:
At this point, I can't judge just where the "culpability" that Rowling
is talking about lies in Snape. We just don't know enough. We don't
know who was the person who loved him - it was probably his mother,
that's the most obvious choice. But mothers aren't all good - look at
Sirius's mother. She loved her children, but only in so far as they
followed her into evil. It could be Snape's father who loved him - in
the only glimpse we see of him, he's shouting and his wife is crying.
But it isn't only cruel, evil fathers who shout - remember how angry
Arthur Weasley got when he caught his sons fooling around with a Dark
Magic spell. Snape's father could have just as easily been shouting
at his wife because she was doing something similar; little Severus
would just be crying because of the fighting, not because he knew what
was really going on. Or it could be a completely different person who
loved him - a grandmother, perhaps.
I don't tie Snape's guilt to a particular incident - killing or
betraying this or that person. Rowling may have been talking in more
general terms. Perhaps she meant that, unlike Riddle, Snape was or
had been loved, and so he should have known better than to turn to
evil. He was half-Muggle; he knew that Voldemort's anti-Muggle
obsession was a lie, he knew it from his own life, and maybe from his
own family. He even called himself "Half-Blood Prince"; unlike
Riddle, he didn't try to obliterate all trace of his Muggle heritage.
So he knew that he was trafficking in lies when he became a Voldemort
supporter, but he did it anyway. That I think was his greatest guilt.
vmonte:
I don't agree with you. I don't think that Snape was loved by his
mother. In fact it seems obvious that his lack of hygiene (Snape's
Worst Memory--greasy hair, grey underwear) is very reflective of
someone who comes from neglect.
I think that Dumbledore loved Snape like a son. Snape just couldn't
let go of all of his old hates. He also probably thought that
Dumbledore was favoring Harry over him. (Yes, I do think that Snape's
emotional thought process is very infantile. In fact Dumbledore
probably had a talk with Snape about protecting Harry at all costs in
case he were to die (the conversation heard by Hagrid?).
I don't think that Dumbledore asked Snape to murder him.
DD could have just as easily killed himself, no?
Vivian
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