good/bad slyth/Disappointment/Responsibility/Sorting/Snape

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 175243

colebiancardi:
> ahhh, but Pensive memories are objective and tell the truth.  They
> have have been *seen* thru Snape's eyes, but it isn't thru a 
> filter. DD states Pensive memories are objective and therefore, 
> there is no perception on the memory, only interpretation on the 
> viewer's part. It isn't a recall with different stories.  It is 
> like viewing a film -the data is all there, but the viewer filters
> thru it, not the film itself.
<snip>

Dana:
That might be so but is the viewer/ reader truly objective when 
presented with this information? And I do not mean Harry, I mean the 
readers of the book. I truly think not, as most people with a Snape 
bias read these scenes just to confirm the opinion/ interpretations 
they themselves have developed about these character's interactions. 

Never does it come to mind that Snape was actually NOT showing these 
memories to make Harry see that his father or godfather were truly 
the bullies Snape had made them out to be. Snape was actually for 
the first time in his interaction with Harry (even post-mortem) 
showing Harry that it was Snape who had been obsessed with the 
marauders and that he truly envied them to the extend that he was 
prepared to do pretty much anything to bring them down, even 
sneaking into the tunnel behind the willow, in an attempt to proof 
to Lily that these guys were not as wonderful as everybody thought 
they were. Yes, read that part again where Snape says everybody 
pretty much thought that the marauders were great as many seemed to 
have missed it. Not my words but Snape's own. 

His hatred for them propelled explosively after Lily's death. 
Blaming the marauders for every single thing related to her, from 
her being sorted into Gryffindor, to him losing her friendship, to 
her getting killed and it was this inability to let go of this 
hatred that Snape projected on to Harry. Not because James and 
Sirius truly did anything that Snape could not have overcome but 
because he could not face that what he lost was his own fault and 
his alone. 

If Snape had wanted to proof that he had been right about them then 
he surely could have chosen different memories but he did not. He, 
for once in his life, showed through these memories that no one but 
Snape himself was to blame for the choices he made in life and the 
consequences that resulted from these choices. 

So eventhough the pensieve memories might have been objective, most 
of the time the reader (or at least many) does not look at them with 
the same objectivity they are suppossed to represent.

Selective reading is bliss if you want it to be so but it is not 
very objective now is it. 

JMHO

Dana