[HPforGrownups] Reasons for reactions to Snape (was: Reactions to Snape's death)

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 175778

Judy
I really wasn't trying to start another thread where some posters attack
Snape, and others defend them. There's been a lot of back-and-forth posts on
Snape lately, and I don't think they're really getting us anywhere.  (So,
I'm not going to try to defend Snape from the claims in your post.)
Instead, I was trying to find out what those opposed to Snape saw as the
causes for their own emotional responses to the character. I was hoping for
the sort of post Alla made where she discusses when and why she developed
her emotional responses to Snape.  


Sherry now:

I'll try to answer this, though it's complicated.  It's based partly on his
behavior, and partly on my own personal emotions and reactions to someone
whose actions seemed far too familiar.  

Let me get the personal part of it out of the way, so I can bring it back to
canon.  In high school, I had a teacher very much like Snape.  He was a
resource teacher, a teacher in a public high school who was there to help
the disabled kids in the public school.  He was also blind and he thought
that his opinion of what I should or should not do, as a blind person, was
all that mattered.  Ok, all kids have annoying adults who try to tell them
what to do, and if it had been only that, it would have been nothing.  But
for four miserable years, he made my life hell.  Putting me down, personal
insults about my looks, my physical condition, my interactions with my
family, my hopes and dreams for my future life.  He pushed and nagged and
pushed and nagged.  Never a good thing with me.  My father believed him over
and above me, even when I was right, and I would have to jump through hoops
to prove it to my dad, even though I'd never been much of a liar.  And I had
to put up with this creep for those whole four years.  I got an ulcer in my
sophomore year, was so ill I only weighed 68 pounds, and though there were
other causes of that, the teacher was part of it.  I grew up in the 60's,
when kids got their faces slapped for talking back to teachers or other
adults.  So, I internalized it all, only breaking and lashing out when I
couldn't stand it anymore.  I would never have graduated if not for another
wonderful teacher, a very kind, but oh so tough and fair teacher!  For many,
many years, the mere idea of more school, meaning college, made me
physically ill.  That teacher used to tell me that all his students came
back and thanked him, but even 30 years later, I would not thank him.  It's
actually pretty easy to get me to consider, to think and to try, but he
never learned what was the best way to motivate me.  Tearing me apart as a
person is most definitely not the way.

Ok, so excuse all the personal garbage, but I've always known I react to
Snape in part because he reminds me so much of that horrid man from high
school.

So, we meet Snape in the very first book, and the first thing he does is
start being cruel to Harry, attacking him verbally from the very first
lesson, for no good reason.  He continued to be a jerk to Harry.  Then in
the third book, he was stunningly awful to Neville.  Whether or not he
honestly meant to Poison Neville's pet, the fact that he did give it the
potion, knowing how precious that toad was to Neville was so far out of
line, that no calm different view of the scene will ever change my mind.  If
I'd been Neville's parent, the board of governors would have had an earful
or two from me.  In the same book, he humiliated Neville in front of Lupin
and the rest of the class, which is a rotten thing for a so-called adult to
do to a child.  I really hated Snape after that.  It continued in book four
with the "I see no difference" remark about Hermione's teeth.  And it just
went on and on.  

Yet, I always tried to believe that though he was a twisted disgusting
excuse for a teacher and human being, he was ultimately on the side of good,
Dumbledore's man and all that.  Then came HBP.  Not even the revelations of
DH have made me able to accept the plan, Snape to kill DD.  Neither Snape
nor DD look to good to me over that one!  

Strangely, I do feel less hatred toward Snape, and I think some of that is
because he wasn't perfect.  He wasn't really DDM, he was lily's man.  He
wouldn't have lifted a finger to help James or Harry if not for Lily.  No,
that doesn't make him a good person, it just makes him more human in a way,
more understandable.  He was a rotten git, not a nice person, horrible to
children.  But he did care about something, someone, not just an idea of
ridding the world of Voldemort.  I don't know why, but that makes him
somehow more acceptable, though not likable ever for me.

Sherry