[HPforGrownups] Snape: ESE or DDM?

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 167072

From: Jen Reese <stevejjen at earthlink.net>
>Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: I HAD A DREAM OR HOW I REALIZED THAT I MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG./ PART 2 sort of
>Jen:  I agree as well.  It's beyond Harry's characterization to understand
>Snape is loyal if he really AK'd Dumbledore (orders or no orders).

The arguments for DDM!Snape vs. ESE!Snape are usually based on events within the books. I want to state, with reasons within the canon but not part of the storyline, why I find it difficult to impossible to believe in ESE!Snape. 

In many mysteries, there is something that Alfred Hitchcock called the McGuffin. This is an object that serves to drive the plot, but is meaningless to the audience; the audience often never even finds out what it is. Sometimes an unexplained story device is never explained, as a kind of joke on the readers (Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, Omega the Uknown, and a very well-liked run on Marvel Comics' THE DEFENDERS, put in a plot device. At unexpected points in the story, action would shift to people meeting an elf, who would take out a gun, and shoot them. When Gerber left Marvel, the story was unfinished, so one writer finished in a way very much in the style of Steve Gerber: the elf got hit by a car while crossing the street without looking first.

A major mystery through the books was: Why did Dumbledore trust Snape so much? Dumbledore let it be known that he had an ironclad reason to do so, but, other than hints, he never actually stated his reason. And, on what appears to be an obvious level, Snape not only kills him, but he does so using an "unforgivable" curse. So, frankly, if Snape was in fact ever so evil, then Dumbledore's reasons, whatever they were, are effectively the elf with the gun. It raises our curiosity and expectations, and turns out to be meaningless. It's like offering a kid a bite out of a candy bar, and pulling it away just as the kid was about to bite. It's not a writing style, it's a pratical joke.

And I just don't believe that JKR is playing a practical joke on the audience.

Therefore, I am willing to go through Rowlingish hoops of logic to explain how Snape was and still is DDM. 

Bart