What is Manipulation (was Re: Nice versus good, was: Hagrid and Snape)

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 152869

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Marion Ros" <mros at ...> wrote:


Marion: 
> Now, it could be that Lupin is trying to compensate for being a Dark 
> Creature. Maybe he feels he isn't allowed to be angry, or snarky,
for fear 
> of being seen as 'that nasty werewolf' ("see?! See?! I *told* you
he'd go 
> wild one day! They're all the same.." etc. etc.) But his 'niceness' is 
> blankets over his personality so completely, the real Remus J. Lupin
has 
> become invisible. And I find that scary, to tell you the truth. <snip>
> Lupin's niceness is too smooth. One day, it will crack.

Renee:
In the Shrieking Shack, Lupin isn't particularly nice when he's about
to kill Wormtail together with Sirius, unless you define `nice' as
merely referring to manners, which I don't. And in OotP, to mention
another example, he's not particularly nice about Umbridge (not that I
blame him for that), though it *is* telling we have to hear this from
Sirius, his friend. 

Lupin doesn't let himself go in the presence of just anyone; like you
point out, people might attribute it to the fact that he's a werewolf,
something he's very anxious to avoid. But it's obvious enough from the
books that there is a more unpleasant side to Lupin; he's by no means
a goody-2-shoes. *If* his niceness is a blanket over his personality,
it doesn't cover it completely. 

But like Magpie in a previous post, I find the automatical assumption
that niceness is always a cover for something more unpleasant a bit
strange, and insulting to certain personality types. So people who
generally behave nicely are play-acting? (Interestingly, this is how
the Dutch tend to see the English, if they give in to prejudice.) If
you ask me, this is a misconception.

Being nice most of the time is part of Lupin's personality, just as
being pedantic is part of Hermione's, or being hot-headed part of
Ron's. He may cultivate it more than most, due to what he is, but that
doesn't mean it's merely a mask. 

For Lupin to be scary, he doesn't need to be a raging turmoil
underneath a mask of niceness. Lupin's dark side is the werewolf, and
after PoA this is no longer invisible. One little slip - and we've
seen he can and does slip - and the raging monster is unleashed again.
As I see it, this is a metaphor, and from a literary point of view it
would be inelegant to have Lupin crack in human form - unless by
cracking you mean that he'll get tired of taking precautions and will
let the wolf run free in Book 7, because that does seem possible to me.   

What I do think, though, is that Lupin's nicenes *is* a mask where
Snape is concerned. It just doesn't sound believable when he says he
neither likes nor dislikes Snape; I believe he does dislike him but
carefully refrains from adding fuel to Harry's hatred of the man,
because that would be counterproductive.              

Marion:  
> Besides, I find Lupin manipulative in a far more subtler way. Look,
It's 
> late and tomorrow morning I'm going on a trip to Oxford for a week
and I 
> just can't be bothered to look it all up, but when Harry rants to Lupin 
> about Snape, Lupin will always correct Harry with a 'Professor
Snape'. That 
> *seems* nice and polite, but suppose Harry would say something like
"That 
> rotten Snape exposed you as a werewolf and got you fired" (I'm
making this 
> up, remember, because I'm not in a positition to look up true quotes
from 
> the books but there are a few of these kind of conversations around)
Would 
> Lupin not be nicer and more honest when he would reply with "No
Harry, I 
> endangered the school and therefore I resigned myself" or even "I don't 
> think Professor Snape could get me to resign if I didn't think it
were for 
> the best myself"? But in these kind of cases, Lupin (and Dumbledore)
always 
> respond with a "that's *Professor* Snape, Harry".
> It *sounds* like he's defending Snape, but he's really not.
Reinforcing the 
> correct title of Snape is superficial.
> 
Renee:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression he only does so
in PoA, where Snape is his colleague. He probably sees it as his
professorial duty to correct Harry, which IMO it would be. In OotP and
HBP, where Lupin is no longer Snape's colleague, he doesn't bat an
eyebrow when Harry leaves out the "Professor"; on the contrary, on
occasion he says "Snape", too, though he talks about "Severus" as
well. Correcting Harry was a formality. 

Renee