Off-page Snape (Was: Character construction)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174936

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "k12listmomma"
<k12listmomma at ...> wrote:
>
> Snipping a lot of good stuff before this:
> 
> Carol responds:
> > And as for not seeing Harry forgive him, we don't need to. It happens
> > without his conscious awareness as he moves through the memories. The
> > contrast between his hatred of Snape before his death and his very
> > public vindication of Snape afterwards speaks for itself, and the
> > tribute in the epilogue shows that he still holds that view nineteen
> > years later.
> >
> > Snape's courage and perseverance and devotion to duty and loyalty to a
> > man who used him are just as evident as his love for Lily, which
> > starts out selfish but does not remain so, as are Snape's many
> > talents, which are there for anyone who reads the text to see.
> >
> > Carol, wondering if Snape could have saved himself from death with a
> > healing spell if he had really wished to do so
> 
> Shelley:
> 
> It's this line that I take exception to: "And as for not seeing Harry 
> forgive him, we don't need to."
> 
> Says who? Ok, for those that already had worked out a redemption
plan in 
> their heads for Snape long before reading this book, all they were
looking 
> for was a confirmation that their theory was correct. Those people
weren't 
> directly looking for all the backup and supporting details of such a 
> conclusion probably didn't even notice that anything was missing.
Why read 
> the details in the book when your fan theory already has worked out
all the 
> details you will ever need?
> 
> But for those of us who wanted to know exactly WHY and HOW Snape gets 
> redeemed, there's just something terribly wrong. We are reading this
book 
> expecting Rowling to tell us through Harry's eyes how Harry forgives
Snape. 
> As I and some others have pointed out, a few damn lines here or
there would 
> have done it- Harry, under the invisibility cloak, wanting to be
alone- heck 
> it would be one paragraph to have him stop and consider Snape and
whether he 
> had been wrong about him. A single line to say that "he now
understood, and 
> chose right there and then to forgive him.".  Then, the name Albus 
> Dumbledore would have made sense.  Or Harry talking to Dumbledore, 
> questioning the fact that he misunderstood Snape and Dumbledore
wishing him 
> to forgive Snape so that he could moving forward with his life,
tying the 
> idea of coming back to life with a clean slate, without the burden
of hating 
> Snape any longer. Both of those would have MOVED me, a solid "Snape
is scum" 
> believer, into the realm of forgiving Snape with Harry.
> 
> I strongly disagree that "I" personally didn't need to feel that 
> forgiveness, that redemption, that turn around. I did, and because I
didn't, 
> when I read that Harry had named his son after Snape, it caused me
to scream 
> and yell at my book- I just couldn't believe that Harry had done
that, and 
> then later I realized that Harry wasn't the one at fault, it was all 
> Rowling's for not helping me to see that transition more clearly.
> 
> Shelley
>

Carol responds:
Sorry about the "we." I should have said, "I, for one," though I'm
sure I speak for many readers besides myself. For one thing, showing
is usually more effective than telling, and I think that the reader is
expected to mirror Harry's thought process. The Snape in the memory
isn't the Snape he thought he knew, the Snape he hated. Instead, it's
a man who loved his mother, felt remorse for her death, protected
Harry and spied for DD at great personal risk, killed DD against his
will on DD's orders, and sent Harry the Sword of Gryffindor using his
doe Patronus. Even George's ear is an accident, the result of saving
Lupin's life.

IMO, JKR doesn't need to say, "Harry's eyes were opened. Snape wasn't
at all the man he thought he was. He no longer hated him." To do that
would (IMO) destroy the impact of the memories, which speak for
themselves. Show, don't tell, is the first rule of good writing.
(Well, usually.) Instead we get the very understated, and yet, to me,
moving, "Snape might just have closed the door" (DH Am. ed. 690). He
has just watched Snape leaving Portrait!DD to bring him the Sword of
Gryffindor. He doesn't need to feel his hatred fall away. It has
slipped away so gradually that he's not even aware of it. Snape is
human to him at last, too late.

Harry's reaction (next chapter) is "finally, the truth." (691). The
truth from a wholly unexpected source, Severus Snape. Unfortunately,
the truth about Snape is accompanied with a much more bitter "truth"
about Dumbledore and the revelation that Snape died giving Harry, that
Harry himself must die.

But that Harry has, indeed, forgiven Snape (along with many readers)
is clear from the text itself. "Albus Severus" does not come out of
nowhere. First, there's the "abandoned boys" reference, showing that
he understands and empathizes with young Severus's homelife and his
view of Hogwarts as home (697). And then there's the very public
vindication speech, starting with the part about "the man you thought
was your servant" and more emphatically from "Severus Snape wasn't
yours. He was Dumbledore's" (740) and continuing to "Dumbledore was
already dying when Snape finished him" (741). the key point, for
Harry, is that "Snape was Dumbledore's . . . [man] from the time [LV]
started hunting down [Harry's mother]" and Voldemort "never realized
it because of the thing [he didn't] understand": love. He mentions the
doe Patronus, makes clear that what Snape felt was love, not desire.
He has also made clear that DD's death was arranged months before it
happened with Snape, who was loyal to him and not to LV. Granted, his
courage is not specifically mentioned in this scene, but Harry knows
the risks that Snape has taken and the perils he has faced. He has
seen him die, sending mesaages from his own head to Harry so that he
won't have died in vain.

After that speech, in which Snape is publicly presented as working
with the man he had supposedly murdered to bring down Voldemort, also
publicly declaring Snape's love for his own mother, why should we be
surprised that Harry would name his son after him? And in "King's
Cross, both Harry and Dumbledore sit in silence "for the longest time
yet" in memory of "poor Severus," who died because the plan went wrong
(721). 

JKR does not overtly tell the reader what to think. She lets these
scenes work for themselves. That they did not work for you, as a
reader, is understandable. No scene works for everyone. But they
worked for me, and I didn't want Snape's motive to be love. (It helps
that we see him grow and change, with lines like "Lately, only those I
could not save," which bring to mind Snape healing Draco and Katie in
HBP. And he has seen Healer!Snape in action, using wand and potion to
slow the action of the ring curse. No wonder, BTW, that DD didn't want
to recount that "thrilling tale" in HBP. As for his own "prodigious
skill" in contrast with "Professor Snape's timely action"! Makes me
want to shake him. It's Snape who has the prodigious skill, and had DD
called him earlier, Snape might have been able to save him from his
own supreme folly in putting on the ring.)

But I fail to see how "Albus Severus" could come as a shock after
Harry's very public vindication of a man he once hated.
 
Carol, who still thinks that Harry's perception has been cleansed by
the Pensieve memory and his own intended self-sacrifice, as symbolized
by the absence of glasses in "King's Cross," and part of that cleansed
perception relates to Snape