The Continuing Tragedy of Severus Snape: Reflections on Books 1-5

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 164623

Ronin:
>   Come to think of it, by this thinking, Harry Potter has been 
nothing more than a whining, pretentious, snot nosed prat for the 
past 7 years and he should die as well. All of his life has been 
nothing more than fulfillment of a prophecey, linked to the Dark 
Lord and whining about not getting to play enough Quiditch. After 
it's all over, what purpose would he have? To find something else to 
whine about? So I guess he's a goner as well.

Alla:

LOL. There are plenty of reasons because of which Harry can be gone 
at the end of book 7 ( I do not want him to, but he certainly can 
be), but orientation to the past is not one of them.

I cannot speak for LL, but here is what I mean when I am thinking 
about character oriented to the past. Let's put aside Harry who, I 
obviously like and look at Draco, whom I cannot stand. I do not 
think that he is oriented to the past at all, he has an issue of his 
allegiance to resolve and life to look forward if he does.

And I think all kids are.

Now before book 6 I thought Lupin is a goner, since all his friends 
are gone, nothing to look forward, etc ( of course it is simplistic 
for RL - person can still find something to look forward to, but for 
book purposes it does symbolise to me the character is past 
oriented).

When JKR gave him a girlfriend, that to me is one of the strongest 
signs that Lupin may survive, because he has something oriented to 
the future, if that makes sense, something he has to look forward to 
after war is done.

It is not a guarantee of course, she can kill them off together, I 
am just giving you example.

So, if in book 7 we learn that Snape say all his life wanted to be 
researcher in St.Mungo, that would mean to me that he is not 
oriented to the past.

 
Ronin:
<SNIP>
 So, unless you define child abuse as the taking away of house 
points and failure to display a rosey disposition, Snape is no more 
a child abuser than Hagrid or McGonagall are.

Alla:

I define one of the varieties of psychological abuse as carrying 
vendetta against innocent child, whose father Snape hated. I 
provided examples of such vendetta many times, so I can send links 
to you offlist, if you wish.

Mcgonagall, love her as I am comes in my book quite close to what I 
call psychological abuse of Neville several times, the only reason 
why I hesitate to call it as such is because I think in those 
circumstances she would have humiliated any child who did what 
Neville did, so IMO she did not single him out at least.

And Mcgonagall changes her attitude towards Neville, which is good 
as well.

 
Ronin:
>   Also, the bit about Snape becoming Hogwarts Headmaster was a 
joke. I had thought it was obvious when I included it along with 
fisherman.

Alla:

Okay.

Ronin:
>   There's plenty of evidence to prove that JKR is a big supporter 
of child abuse. Having Professor Snape return to the school where 
he's been teaching for some 17 years though, that would really be 
conclusive proof. We could finally string her up for that one, eh?

Alla:

I stated many times that I completely disagree with LL that 
portraying anything in the story, anything about fictional 
characters can show us that JKR is supporter of child abuse, if 
anything I think she was abundantly clear in the interviews that she 
dislikes Snape's way of teaching, but I as well think that Snape is 
child abuser. The fact that Umbridge is **more** abusive in my book 
does not make Snape **not** abuser, he is just *minus one or two* on 
the scale where Umbridge is *minus 100 or 1000* ( love that 
comparison)

IMO of course,

Alla