The Huge overreactions from a five minute time span

[juli17 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 150139

 
Joe wrote:

People should be able to feel and say whatever they  like. That said, the 
many attempts to make James Potter out to be some sort of  horrible person, which 
often use this one scene as 'evidence,' are laughable.  Strangely I have 
gotten a few 'Off list' emails agreeing with me and warning me  that the 'Save 
Snape brigade is going to have a fit."


Were Sirius and James both guilty of a lot of pranks? Absolutely. Did  they 
get punished? Well we see Harry having to go through all the dentenion  forms, 
including many of James and Sirius. The truth is that they were mostly  normal 
boys who often tease, prank and pick on each other. They were not nasty  and 
if Sirius is nasty to Snape after they left, well frankly I think it is  
totally understandable. Snape is nasty to everyone.
 
Julie:
The thing is, it's not an either/or situation. One person doesn't have to  be 
good while the other is bad. Fact is, it's very probable Snape was a  nasty 
little git during his school years at Hogwarts, doing his fair  share of hexing 
those who annoyed him. But we also now know factually that  James was an 
arrogant prick at least some of the time during his years  at Hogwarts. Lily knew 
it too, and said as much. Lots of teenage boys do  act like this, and what 
separates them once they're adults is that some of them  recognize their behavior 
is adolescent and wrong, and decide to grow up,  while others don't. So James 
at some point looked at himself in a mirror  and said "Geez, sometimes I'm 
really an arrogant prick. I think it's time I grow  out of that." (And good 
thing too, as Lily wouldn't have had him otherwise.)  Snape, OTOH, never got 
around to that kind of  self-examination, and to this day he's still nursing his 
wounds and  spreading his venom instead of letting go and growing up. 
 

Joe:  
If I remember right Harry, who has zero experience  in these matters, 
speculated that his Dad might have tricked his Mom into going  out with him. No, not 
a hysterical little boy but certainly a teenager who tends  to over react.

I think we can safely safe that Lily Potter  didn't feel she was being 
coerced or do you think she was so stupid as to marry  someone who tried to do that 
to her?


Julie:
Of course we can safely say that Lily wasn't coerced. So can Harry after  his 
initial reaction. But initial reactions are often fraught with strong  
emotion. Harry recognized that his father wasn't a paragon after all but a mere  
human being with warts and all, which was really the point JKR was trying to  
make (IMO). James isn't GOOD and Snape isn't BAD (especially if he turns out to  
be DDM), just as very few people in the real world are GOOD or BAD but a mix 
of  both positive and negative traits and tendencies. But James, especially as 
he  got older, made good choices, while Snape made some pretty disastrous, and 
 that's what really separates the two now.
 
Julie 

 


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