Hero types / Why Snape must ultimately be a hero

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 152061

> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Ron as Han Solo?  That's a really tempting thought.  Based on the 
> romance part of the definition I can get that.  However, I'm not 
> sure I'd say that Ron is the bottom of the social heap.  His family 
> is poor, but they're purebloods and very much connected to their 
> society's powerbase.  (The British social system rather than the 
> American.)


> Actually, Hermione may better fit that particular discription.  
> As a muggleborn she's certainly starting at the bottom. 

Pippin:
I'm not sure pure blood counts as much as even purebloods would
like to think; otherwise it wouldn't matter to Lucius that Hermione
beat Draco in every exam. It's Ron who doesn't get invited to join
the Slug Club, and Ron is the one with the shabby clothes and  the
despised "blood traitor' family. Hermione, OTOH, always has all
the spending money she needs, and her parents are solidly middle
class from what we can tell. She hasn't grown up thinking of herself
as underpriveleged, and she really isn't treated that way in the WW.

Ron is.

Betsy HP: Though I'm 
> not sure either she or Ron could really be billed as "Heroes".  I 
> mean, they *are* heroic, yes, but I think they're supposed to be 
> more of a support system for Harry (the "real hero") rather than 
> carry a story line all on their own.

Pippin:
 I think functionally they're far closer to Han Solo than they
are to the droids or Chewbacca. They are invested in plotlines that
have nothing to do with Harry (except of course that they will come
to naught if he fails.) Though their ambitions seemed as out of reach
and comically overblown as Sancho Panza's dream of ruling an island
to begin with, Ron's at least are well within his grasp now, and Hermione 
with the connections she's making through Slughorn may actually have a 
chance to put some reformist programs into action. 

All of that is going to make Book Seven incredibly dense, of course, but
Rowling's 'third acts' so to speak are always like that. The last few 
chapters of each book are so thick with plot developments that I
always have had to read them two or three times before I felt I had
grasped what had happened.

> 
> > >>Pippin:
> > Then we have Snape, the anti-hero.
> > <snip of anit-hero definition>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Snape as Casablanca's Rick Blaine, hmmm.  I do think Snape is the 
> series' other hero.  He's the antithesis of Harry, his shadow I 
> suppose.  Except, I'm not sure Snape is really as disconnected from 
> actually being a hero that the anti-hero requires. 

Pippin:
We're not sure, that's the point. 

If this were Star Wars Ep IV, we'd be at
the point where Han (still an anti-hero at this point) had collected
his money and abandoned the Alliance, and if it were Casablanca,
it'd look like Rick had just betrayed Lazlo so he could run off with
Ilsa.

Han and Rick have  shown us  enough personal vice  that
we believe they  might be as rotten as they look to be.

 Han says, "I'm in this for one person and
one person only --"  a pure statement of OFH. Rick declares, "I have 
no nationality --I'm a drunkard." All Snape's words in Spinner's End 
come down to "I have no loyalties -- I'm a jerk." His cruelty  takes the
place of Rick's drunkenness (in its 1940's context as a moral failing).

We don't *know* how active Snape is in bringing down the enemy
at this point --but I wouldn't say Rick had a history of uninvolvement.
He'd been helping the republicans in Spain, IIRC.

Betsy HP <snip>  
> Though I might not be getting exactly what the anti-hero is.
> 

Pippin:
Basically, he's a major character who lacks some traditional heroic 
attributes, like courage or idealism, or in this case, kindness. 

Pippin