Power vs. Trust (was:The Possibilities of Grey Snape...)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 143016

Julie:
> Let's see...
> 
> 1. Who can't stand the idea of Dumbledore being wrong? No one in 
the 
> DDM camp has said that to my recollection. Dumbledore's been plenty 
> wrong and has admitted it. He was wrong not to tell Harry what was 
> going on in OotP, he was wrong to trust the Dursleys to treat Harry 
> like a son (hey, how about even like a nephew?), he was wrong to 
> trust Lupin would overcome the DADA curse, he was wrong to believe 
> Tom Riddle could change even if he felt he must give Tom a chance, 
> etc, etc, etc. Dumbledore's been wrong, and no one is denying it. ]


On the contrary, the whole DDM! argument, as far as I can see, rests 
primarily on the idea that Dumbledore just CAN'T be wrong to have 
trusted Snape.  I really don't understand it, myself, but a lot of 
people seem to have a gut reaction to the idea of the old boy just 
not being in the right where Severus is concerned.

> 
> 2. Dumbledore is 135? years older than Harry, so he could be 
expected 
> to have a little more wisdom and experience when it comes to 
judging 
> people.
> 

And yet he still makes mistakes about Quirrel, and Lockheart, and 
Fake!Moody.  Not to mention (perhaps) about the Dursleys.  Not a good 
track record, that.

> 3. Dumbledore has known Snape for the majority of Snape's life. 
Harry 
> hasn't. Dumbledore has also spent much more time with Snape than 
> Harry has, and on a level of equals, as Harry has not. Logically, 
> Dumbledore should know Snape a good deal better than Harry knows 
him. 

And yet he still manages to be wrong about Snape's ability to teach 
Harry Occlumency.  Oh yes, and he manages not to notice in GoF that 
one of his oldest friends, who he has known much longer than he has 
known Snape, is NOT in fact one of his oldest friends who he has 
known much longer than he has known Snape.  The precedent begins to 
build, doesn't it?


> 4. Nothing in Harry being the hero means he has to be right about 
> everything. In fact, one component of being a hero in literature is 
> learning and growing, coming to a better understanding of the 
> surrounding world and the people in it. 


BORING!  Joseph Campbell to the fore, once again.  Not to mention 
that would be extraordinarily insipid and morally revolting.  Oh, and 
did I say BOOORRRIIING!

> 
> 5. For Harry, who's seen only one side of Snape, and one that is a 
> deliberately unpleasant student-to-teacher perspective, being wrong 
> doesn't make him a fool. He's had limited information to work with. 
> Dumbledore, having presumably seen many sides of Snape, as teacher, 
> mentor, colleague, boss, confessor, friend, and perhaps more (there 
> may yet be more connections between the two than we know), there is 
> little excuse for him to be so completely blindsided by Snape's 
> assumed reversal of loyalties. 

Sounds like special pleading to me.  Besides, every side of Snape 
he's seen he's presumably seen of Moody, and probably Quirrel, and 
yet he still managed to be royally fooled.


> 
> 6. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Snape 
> joined the DEs once, then *returned* to the Good side. If 
Dumbledore 
> didn't fully investigate a man who once betrayed his side, making 
> sure there was an extremely SOLID reason to trust him again, then 
> Dumbledore is more than a fool. He's one very worthless general in 
> the war, whose done incalculable harm to his side. 

Oh, Dumbledore doubtless knows more than he has told.  Holding his 
cards much too close to his chest is one of his most grievous sins.  
As is overvaluing those cards ("I thought he could overcome his 
feelings for your father."  How naive can you be?)

<SNIP>
> 
> Julie:
> *Yawn* As you feel about Joseph Campbell constructs, I feel about 
> idiot adults in children's stories. 

You must have been yawning quite a lot through the last six books, 
then.  A bigger bunch of incompetents, idiots, blind fools, and 
magical morons has never been assembled than the adults in the Potter 
books.


<SNIP>
> > 

> >
> 
> Julie:
> I agree with an earlier comment you made about JKR tying up some 
> loose ends in HBP to please the fans. But these were *minor* points 
> and inconsistencies that didn't affect the main flow of the 
stories. 
> Snape's character and the resolution of his and Harry's 
relationship 
> is an integral part of the main flow. I feel certain JKR had 
Snape's 
> story written out from the beginning (as she did even for the minor 
> characters) and that she's always known if Snape is good, bad, or 
> gray--or how many shades of each.


Maybe, maybe not.  Actually, I have a tendency to agree up to a 
point.  I think JKR does have the general direction of things nailed 
down.  But I often get the feeling that she doesn't have the 
specifics down nearly as pat as she likes to let on.  If she does, 
she would have been well advised to check through them about three 
more times, at least once with a calculator to make sure her numbers 
add up :).

> And I'm equally certain she isn't 
> about to change something that central to her story to suit the 
> wishes of fans (who can't begin to agree on this issue anyway!).

Before HBP I probably would have agreed.  Now, I'm not so sure.  Not 
that we would ever know, anyway :).


> I 
> also doubt when she started this she expected such an enormous 
> outpouring of fan debate over her plots, so she had no reason to 
> consider "political" advantages of pleasing the widest spectrum of 
> fans at that time either. 
> 

I'm not so sure that's true, either.  JKR seems to have at least 
partially anticipated having debates and controversy, although I'm 
sure they are much bigger than anything she might have envisaged.  As 
I've said, I never thought of her as stupid, and if you deliberately 
craft a story with a lot of twists and turns and possible solutions, 
a story that partakes of different models and genres, you would be 
pretty dumb not to anticipate that expectations among your readers 
would be pretty divergent.  I don't think JKR, personally, wants to 
leave her readers with a sense that she's shaking a finger, laughing, 
and saying "GOTCHA!"  In this regard, I think the shipping crisis 
blindsided her.  I think she honestly believed she was being fairly 
obvious on that subject.  I don't think she intends to be obvious 
when it comes to Snape, however.  She has been quite deliberate and 
obfuscation there, and so probably envisaged pretty early that there 
would be disagreement and arguing among her readers.  It wouldn't be 
far from there to reach a "political" decision about how best to be 
true to her vision while leaving the fewest readers feeling cheated 
or misled.  In order to accomplish this, I think it means that pretty 
much all of the clues to Snape have to mean something.  Unlike a 
murder mystery, I don't think you can afford red herrings that lead 
nowhere.

  As I said recently, Grey!Snape has many advantages beyond 
the "political."  If you take the position, as many do, that JKR is 
deliberately borrowing bits and pieces of different models, not to 
mention different genres, then Grey!Snape seems to be the one that 
allows her to craft a wide-ranging ending that encompasses several of 
the expectations/tropes/final keys (to use the musical analogy so 
dear to Nora's heart) that characterize those different 
models/genres/traditions of expectation.  In other words, it's the 
solution where essentially all the clues about Snape lead somewhere, 
and none of them are really "Gotchas" or red herrings or artifacts of 
Harry's POV (that other great shibboleth of DDM that I really never 
have understood).


Lupinlore