Admonishing Snape

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 129587

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lupinlore" <bob.oliver at c...> 
wrote:

> Lupinlore:
>
> Still, what kind of rethinking do you think will have to be
> done?  If you were running a betting pool, on what would you bet?

I'm not the predicting kind, except in large trends, but I'll make an 
exception here (a little bit).  All of these are likely to be wrong, 
and I have no deep attachment to any:

I think that we-the-readers consistently underestimate what having 
been a Death Eater means, and I think that's going to be a large part 
of the rethinking.  No Snape hanging back and doing potions research, 
or a poor boy who just wanted recognition and someone to believe in 
him, but a full-hearted participant in everything that went down.  
Snape has genuinely bloody hands and believed in it when he was doing 
it.

This means that why he turned away from it is the key to the ending 
for the character.  Contra Betsy's motivation-schmotivation :) the 
reasons characters do things are massively important in JKR's world 
and she has a tendency to look upon them with ire or favor 
consequently.  [This is why present-day Draco doesn't look like he's 
heading in a good direction; she doesn't like him, although she made 
him, because of what he is and that certainly includes his 
motivations.]  IF Snape turned for the wrong reasons and still holds 
the wrong ideals, a sticky end.  IF not, something better.

I'll also go out on a limb and say that I expect a general amount of 
dirt on the character.  OotP was an author showing us something to 
make us think more sympathetically about him--which means he's primed 
for a complication/reversal, especially with the missing data about 
both schooldays (gang of Slytherins; the general climate at Hogwarts 
at the time) and activities afterwards.

I also expect to find out what and why he's been behaving as he does 
at the school, and whether there are any of the oft-posited excuses 
for it.  I'm skeptical.  The big question "Is he back in the DEs 
circle or not?" goes 50/50...but...

If Snape is NOT currently a DE in good standing and spying on 
Voldemort directly, a lot of the reasons for his behavior go out the 
window.  What Snape Is Doing is another huge question to help resolve 
some of our arguments.

In general, I still stand by my contention that at present none of us 
really 'know' Snape for sure, and the claims to do so and thus be 
able to be so deeply sympathetic to the character don't hold up under 
cross-examination.  I expect this to change and the character to 
solidify, and the theories to go onto the GARBAGESCOW.  And with the 
theories go a lot of the character's complexity, because it's more 
based on what's not there than what is.

-Nora notes that there wasn't much BANG-y in there, but is more a fan 
of Diana than any other theory.  Besides the inestimable Faith, who 
is properly not a theory.