Straightforward readings? (was Re: Truth vs. what meets Harry's eye )

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 140724

 
> Pippin: 
> > Fine by me...but wasn't the straightforward reading of Snape that 
he saw Harry as a symbol of the way he got picked on when he was a
kid,  and kept trying  to catch Harry doing something wrong so he
could feel good about it when Harry was punished? 
> > 
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Erm... Yes. Sorry, but what is your point? If it is a comparison 
between readers who are just as mistaken about Snape doing 
something wrong as Snape is mistaken about Harry, well, then 
I beg to differ.

Pippin:

I was thinking of the readers who were saying that they were relieved,
in a way, that Snape had killed Dumbledore, because they didn't have
to reconcile how someone who picked on kids could be on the good
side. (This, despite that fact that history, myth and legend are  full
of heroes who were badly behaved when they weren't heroing, though
admittedly this sort of thing has been rare in children's books.)

Now, Snape, being a fictional construct,  has never picked on 
any real children, so I suppose that to engender such a desire  he
must represent real people who pick  on children, in the same way 
that Harry, to Snape, represented the people who bullied him.

In Snape's case, this old prejudice led him to place too much reliance
on superficial evidence and biased witnesses, including himself.

Whether readers are making the same mistake is for them to consider.

Related to this, there is the question of whether  it's
straightforward to suppose that  one can exchange information or have 
some kind of a conversation through legilimency. In OOP, Voldemort
was able to plant an entirely imaginary conversation between himself 
and Sirius in Harry's mind. It *is*  therefore possible to convey
words that have never been spoken via legilimency.

Pippin