Is Snape good or evil? (longer)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 148976

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "festuco" <vuurdame at ...> wrote:

> Yes, that would be very disappointing. But it should not be about 
> DD, but about Snape.

The problem for me there is the emphasis on things like Lupin's 
comments at Christmas: Dumbledore trusts, and we have to trust in 
him.  That's the horse that's flogged to death throughout the books, 
and I think it's flogged for a reason...

> Apparently we have a bunch of people who did not bother enough 
> about their collegue and order member to form their own opinion 
> about him. He has his past, so they wondered and DD's trust made 
> them stop wondering.

I get the feeling that, say, McGonagall had thought she knew him, as 
he was her student (pretty certainly) and then her colleague.  But 
that whole "I was a DE" thing must have then struck her for a real 
loop, as it wasn't common knowledge.  That's a pretty big revelation 
about someone's past and what they're capable of.  I brush off the 
invocation of Godwin's here because the author herself made the 
comparison, and say that having been a branded member of the DEs 
seems like having been in the SS.

> What kind of world is that, where mistakes of the past haunt 
> someone forever, only being stopped because someone else says so? 

One where the mistakes of the past are never brought forward into the 
light to be made open, discussed, and dealt with, but stay hidden 
under the aegis of a superior figure, who then simply states trust 
and seems to expect everyone to follow his lead.  (This seems to me a 
lesser version of the general WW modus operandi, which is: shove it 
under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist, demote some people, take 
some bribes.  Not saying that it's easy for Dumbledore to change 
things, but it is interesting to see where he can be a parallel.)

I can easily envision a number of members of the Order asking 
Dumbledore for some kind of proof or reassurance about Snape, given 
his past as a member of a group which was handily killing off Order 
members, only to be told "I trust him".  It's hard to see how anyone 
could have gotten to know Snape, as he doesn't strike me as the 
forthcoming type, and what he presents as a public face is not, I 
think, especially attractive.

-Nora wonders why it always comes back down to the nature of trust, 
for her