Is Snape good or evil? (longer)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 148779

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> 
wrote:

> Can you explain how  this would make dramatic or psychological 
> sense? If Snape's betrayal on the tower was his big dramatic 
> moment, it's awfully flat -- after sixteen years of treachery, or 
> indecision, or whatever non-DDM!Snape is supposed to be playing at, 
> he blows Dumbledore away without a word?

Dramatic and psychological sense are both things which mainly run on 
the mileage of the reader.  You find it flat, I find it interesting, 
particularly when I think about possibilities for where it could go.  
What I think we all have to avoid is going "I find this lame, so it 
can't possibly be an option."  That way lies, dare I say, an 
unharmonious state of mind.

<snip>

> The most powerful feeling Snape expresses in the concluding chapters
> is *anguish*. Here's the passage, in case you've forgotten it
> 
> "DON'T--" screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented,
> inhuman, as though he were in as much pain as the yelping, howling
> dog in the burning house behind them--"CALL ME COWARD!"

You read that as 'anguish', but it can be read any number of ways, 
particularly if you follow a line of thought from the text proceeding 
which you didn't provide.  Pain is something which can come about in 
intense anger, for instance, or even rage--and if there's any 
character who seems to have a substantial base of rage built up, for 
me it's Snape.  Is that a scream of anguish about what he's had to 
do, or a scream of rage that he can finally vent at that godforsaken 
child, the spitting image of a man he's still obsessed with?  

> But I don't doubt that he was really upset, do you? 

I'm not the one who's argued artfully for the theory that he's just 
acting when he blows his stack and becomes CAPSLOCK!Snape in the 
past, am I? :)

No, I think he's caught up in emotion, but it's a deliberately open 
subject what that emotion is centered upon.  I don't think he brought 
up James as a feint, for instance--I think that idee fixe is genuine.

> It's strange that for all of Snape's gloating, we never hear him
> say that it was satisfying to fool Dumbledore, even when he's
> telling Bella about how he did it. I'm curious why evil Snape
> would pass up the opportunity.

Argument from absence, particularly in JKR's style of writing and 
character development, is a dangerous and delicate thing, so I think 
I'll leave it at that.

-Nora sits down to read on her Krimi, a twistier novel than JKR for 
sure