Healing Themes (WAS Re: LID!Snape rides again)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 149927


> Carol:
> 
> > So maybe what Snape feels is Remorse that has not yet 
> > reached the stage of Penitence, which requires humility, 
> > and consequently his efforts to atone for his sins 
> > (reporting the Prophecy and joining the DEs in the first 
> > place) have not been entirely successful because without 
> > Penitence (humbly admitting that yes, he is at fault), 
> > he can't truly Repent and resolve to change. Anguish (remorse) 
> > is not enough. Joining Dumbledore's side and risking his 
> > life is not enough. Following DD's orders, even at the 
> > cost of still more personal anguish is not enough.
> 
> houyhnhnm:
> 
> Because following Dumbledore's orders is part of what is keeping Snape
> from evolving from remorse to penitance.  At least, the role he has
> taken on as part of his atonement is not one which is conducive to
> such evolution.  Social isolation, dissimulation,
> compartmentalisation, (not to mention Occlumency, which to me is the
> darkest of arts--a horcruxmancy of the personality), these do not
> foster spiritual growth.

Sydney:

Oh, man, this goes right to the heart of the themes of the series,
doesn't it?  So many of the adult characters are stuck in this
situation that they can't move on from.  Like Sirius couldn't leave
his mother's house.  Snape can't break away from these repressed dark
feelings of hatred-- represented by being a spy on the Dark forces. 
Lupin looks like the first one to actually start something new-- he
was in this space where he was holding himself apart from other
people, because he's afraid he'll hurt them.    And Hogwarts has this
unresolved issue going back, like, a thousand years, of an angry
breakup, fragmentation, something that was broken and hasn't been
fixed. And how did this unresolved stuff come out?  Overflowing
blocked pipes full of snakes, that's how. Rowling doesn't have a big
book with "Freud" on the spine for nothing!

A lot of how I see the series turning out is because it seems to me
that this isn't a "Lord of the Rings" style epic of warrior heroes; 
it feels a lot closer to "The Secret Garden" or "Little White Horse"
or even "Great Expectations"-- a darker, more elaborate version of the
child healer story.  I just finished "I Capture the Castle", another
book JKR's cited as a big influence, and it's the same sort of thing--
at the heart of the story is a blocked writer, who needs his children
to break through these badly healed scars, get the blood flowing, and
recover in an organic way.  JKR says she didn't set out to write a
children's story-- I think she set out to write a story that required
children, as symbols of renewal and the possibilty of starting again.
 I read an interview once with the great animation director Miyazake,
who was asked what the difference was between children's movies and
adult movies.  He said that in an adult movie, you have to make do and
struggle on with all your crippling mistakes;  but a children's movie
always has this feeling that everything can start fresh and clean again.

One thing nearly all of Rowling's favorite books have in common--
"Little White Horse" and "Pride and Prejudice" and "I Capture the
Castle", is that they're dramas of recognition, or re-cognition-- the
central event is the protagonist going back over events that she saw
one way, with one set of assumptions, and re-thinking everything
because of new knowledge about the past and about people's
motivations.  This has the same sort of thematic movement as a healing
story, because it's all about opening up festering wounds and letting
out all the toxins, as it were, to the air, so they can heal properly.

People seem to be speculating about big battles and the Horcrux-hunt
being an Indina-Jones-type-thing and everything sort of going along an
action-adventure, destroy the baddies thing.  I don't think it's going
there at all.   I think book VII will be packed full of backstory, of
misunderstandings cleared up, of things that were broken being put
together.  I don't think the Locket is going to be the first Horcrux
that's going to turn out to have been already taken care of in some
way.  What's needed isn't destruction, it's recognition, or un-burial.
 I mean, not there won't be a lot of derring-do and such, but with a
twist.  I wish there was another thing coming up where we could put
questions to JKR, because I'm longing to ask her if she has put in
Tarot stuff other than the Tower and the Hanged Man.  Because shortly
after the Tower appears in the deck, the Judgement card shows up-- a
card showing people joyfully rising from graves.  I'm certain at least
one character we thought was dead will be alive;  whether it's Regulus
or Emmeline Vance or even Dumbledore (though I doubt it will be him).  

I dunno... I don't really have enough coherence to put together an
actual post on this.  Random thoughts--

I LOVE Magpie's idea of Draco paying back Snape's life debt by saving
Harry.  It's so appropriate to the genre, that the children have to
step forward, because the adults are just plain stuck.  Snape is the
past;  Draco is the future.  

I think there's something important to the Sectumsempra healing spell
sounding like a song-- Phoenix song?  I wonder did Snape learn it from
Fawkes?  Dumbledore tells Harry in CoS that only true loyalty could
have called Fawkes to him-- is this how he's so certain of Snape's
loyalities?  I'm just sort of riffing on suicidal!Snape, because it
would be so like him to express this extraordinary remorse Dumbledore
spoke of by trying to destroy himself, rather than by healing. 
"Sectumsempra" means to "cut forever", it seems very appropriate
Christina symbolism that the Phoenix can heal even that which seems
cut forever.  "Sectumsempra"-- wow, that spell is just Snape in a
nutshell- the idea that things can just be cut off and that takes care
of them.  

Sorry to stay on Snape, but, I mean, he does seem to appear at the
heart of the thematic stuff!  There has to be some connection here to
that damn DADA job.  The job is cursed by Voldemort, the embodiment of
Dark magic, that is, hatred and fear.  Snape seems to be pursuing
this-- I dunno, Snape thematically is so tied in to the ideas of
repressing bad feelings and lashing out against them, rather than
embracing and healing them-- spying and Occlumency and non-Verbal
spells.  This whole thing bugs me, I can't quite figure out what
meaning it's meant to have. But the disagreement between Snape and
Dumbledore on that job seems to go right to the heart of the symbolic
stuff.

On Snape's crimes and redemption generally:  I think whatever Snape
did as a DE will likely remain offscreen, like what the centaurs did
to Umbridge, where people's imaginings can be as lurid as they like. 
Personally I have a hard time picturing Dumbledore twinkling at
someone who'd tortured helpless people to death, and offering him
vulture hats because he takes himself too seriously.  But then, some
people think Dumbledore's a lot more of a psycho than I think he is! 
Anyways, I'm pretty sure the question with Snape isn't one of
redemption, in the sense of what side he's on;  I think that's already
happened.  All the symbols Rowling puts around him seem a lot more
tied into the idea of recognition, of bringing out the hidden.  I
really see Harry's role here as one of being able to say, even if
Snape doesn't change a hair, "I trust Severus Snape completely",
because he'll have attained this Dumbledore-level integration with his
dark side.  Just my feeling.  


Anyways, random long disconnected post.. 

-- Sydney, feeling both expansive and incoherent at the same time, not
a great combination.