Snape, Snape, Loverly Snape...and authorial intent

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 148239

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "leslie41" <leslie41 at ...> wrote:
giving too much away.

> Not according to the vast majority of contemporary literary 
> critics.  

Err, not according to my friends over in English, any more.  I do try 
to ask them what the trends in that field are, although it tends to 
involve too much beer.  I've been told that deconstruction is mostly 
dead, 'cultural studies' is where it's at.  My own discipline has 
mostly passed through a variety of the dead author but has resurrected 
him (or her), largely because if you follow someone like Barthes 
through, you can't do history anymore.  There are a number of analysts 
(not the same thing as critics, I think) who have also solidly lost the 
concept, because they want to be able to read from context.

<snip>

> But that Snape is there, most *obviously* there, whether she "means" 
> him to be or not.

But would you agree that the Snape you want to see, the blindingly 
complex one, is a very fragile creation?  The genius of Rowling in 
creating Snape is that he's not a character made from page time or deep 
psychological exploration: we certainly never get into his head, he has 
no monologues, we never know what he's thinking.  To claim to 'know' 
him is a slippery proposition at best.

Snape exists as a complex creation largely from the efforts of the 
reader.  I would never say that's not profound and significant--it's 
essential to the act of reading, which is a cooperative enterprise 
between the reader and his assumptions and the text which the author 
has created.  But it is something which can be crushed by the author, 
if she chooses to break her pattern and, for once, lets Snape talk 
directly to the audience (via the medium of an audience on the page, of 
course).  She could, for instance, have Snape himself scoff at the idea 
that he felt genuine remorse.  She could have him talk about how single-
mindedly he's been motivated by one or two things.  As she wants to 
give us answers to questions, I can easily see a scene like this 
somewhere in the future.  She's already played a slow game of 
revelations with Snape which cut off any number of interpretive options.

That's both the beauty and the danger of the withhold.  Just as, in 
many ways, Sirius Black was created as a character so that he would 
fall behind the Veil and mean certain things to Harry, it looks more 
and more like Severus Snape has been built ambiguous to create tension 
before the ultimate denoument.

I just won't be surprised if the ambiguity doesn't survive it.

-Nora offers her suspicions as one option possibly garnering support