Of Sorting and Snape

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 175576

Sydney:

> I keep going back to her list of favorite books.. 
> they all GET this. Pip has to cope with the fact 
> that all his money came from Magwich, making him 
> not exactly as 'better than those people' as he 
> had thought-- why didn't she do something like this 
> with Gryffindor? Elizabeth has to go through a 
> thing where, oh, yeah, that pride and prejudice 
> stuff turns out to not just be something other 
> people do. Frodo in the end ISN'T sufficiently 
> pure of heart. He succumbed like Gollum did and 
> felt their kinship. And of course, "Little White 
> Horse", which somehow managed to read at a much 
> younger level but come out far more mature and 
> realistic about our myths about other people and 
> how we use them to soothe our egos. I still feel 
> like I *have* to have missed something.

houyhnhnm:

JK: When it comes to writing the books, I operate to 
a different set of rules. In fact, I write what I want 
to write. . . when I'm writing I do not sit down and 
think of it like, there's my line, and here's the moral 
lessons we are going to teach our children. None of 
that ever enters my head. I write what I want to write.

For real.

I think Rowling doesn't really get it.  On a superficial 
level the themes contained in her favorites list books 
appeal to her, but they are not internalized. That's why 
I don't see the HP series as a rejection of Jung in favor 
of Calvin.  I see it as schizophrenic and schizophrenics 
can be interesting.  One is free to pick and choose.  
Rowling does occasionally have her characters do and say 
interesting things that I find pleasing.  What is offensive, 
I simply reject.  Maybe the books appeal to my inner schizophrenic.

I *don't* see a connection between the suffering child 
and Severus Snape.  I don't think it was intended as the 
soul bit in Harry, either, but I agree that there is 
something very mean in that image.  I had not read Ursula 
LeGuin's comments about HP, but I think they are dead on. 
(I have frequently turned to LeGuin to get the bad smell 
of the Potterverse out of my nose.  Edith Pargeter/Ellis 
Peters is another efficacious light fiction palate cleanser.) 
There *is* something mean spirited in the books. The stories 
appeal to the mean in readers and for some they are not nearly
mean enough, as we have ample evidence.

So in the spirit of mean, here's a thought.  While I think 
there is much merit in lizzyben's argument that Snape is 
Rowling's shadow self, I think he may also have been her 
rival.  JKR is Petunia.  The Potter saga is being told by 
the bitter, less pretty, rejected Muggle elder sister, 
and of course parts of it are ugly.  Petunia sees the 
Potterverse through dirt-colored glasses.  That doesn't 
stop me from attempting to extrapolate, find things that 
I like, and imagine them from my own point of view.