Bathroom scene again

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165064

BetsyHP wrote:
>
> > Um... When has Snape ever gotten a free pass? One-liner, but I'm
fairly curious about this. <g>
>
Eggplant responded:
> No offense but I find it rather difficult to believe you really
don't know what I'm talking about. I don't think you need me to spell
it out because a blind man in a dead drunk on a moonless night could
see it. An excuse can always be found for Snape's outrageous behavior,
but one can never be found for even the slightest infraction by Harry
or Hermione. Remember the horror everybody felt when book 5 came out
and Harry raised his voice at his friends once or twice, you'd think
the poor boy was a war criminal. But when Snape 
. well, you get the
idea. <snip>

Carol responds:
Yes and no. I understand why you think as you do, but I also remember
your very thought-provoking "Could I be wrong about Snape?" post. I
was delighted to see that you realized that we weren't just blindly
defending someone we didn't want to admit was evil, that there was
indeed evidence in the text for Snape's loyalty to Dumbledore.

Now, I realize that what we want to see colors our theories, but if
that's all we see and all we look for, we won't get very far. No one
is denying that Snape docks points unfairly or that his teaching
methods could be improved upon. OTOH, we (I) do see, for example, an
encyclopedic knowledge of Potions and DADA, a Dark Arts background
that *enhances* his newly revealed abilities as a Healer, and a
complex character whose motives are not necessarily what he states
them to be in "Spinner's End." He's a whole lot more skilled and
powerful than most readers thought, and he kills Dumbledore after an
exchanged look and a plea, yet he saves Harry from a Crucio and passes
up the opportunity to kill him. What motivates Snape and why
Dumbledore trusts him have to be the most intriguing questions on this
list for half the posters here. Or, to put it in more simplistic
terms, how can he be a good guy when he's so mean to Harry? I think
you've explored that possibility yourself and come to some interesting
conclusions. Saying that Snape's putative abuse is not as bad as
Umbridge's very real abuse is not giving Snape a free pass. It's
simply stating that, mean and vindictive as his detentions are, they
pale in comparison to Umbridge's sadism.

As for our discussions of Harry, Hermione, Ron, the Weasley family,
Lupin, Dumbledore, et al., criticizing the good guys is not the same
as attacking them. They're not perfect or they wouldn't be
interesting. If you don't make mistakes, you can't learn and grow. If
we don't examine the characters honestly, admitting their
imperfections even when we like them, we can't arrive at valid
interpretations of the books and where they seem to be going. I love
Dumbledore, but I don't think that he's perfect. I like Ron a lot, but
I'm not going to pretend that he isn't overly concerned about money or
that he doesn't have a tendency to become jealous. As for Harry, I
care about him and want him to survive, but I really wish he would
open his eyes and stop seeing what he wants to see, especially with
regard to Snape, whom he blames, fairly or unfairly, for everything
bad that happens. Saying that Harry used Sectumsempra unwisely is not
the same as calling him a war criminal. Saying that he should have
realized that Voldemort was baiting him rather than falling into his
trap is simply stating a fact. His instincts *aren't* always sound
(though they certainly served him well when he stabbed the diary with
the Basilisk fang).

Most of us on this list are trying to examine the books and characters
objectively and to separate our likes and dislikes from that analysis.
It doesn't always work (I don't think it's any secret that I don't
care for the Marauders except for Lupin, about whom I have mixed
feelings), but we do at least try to examine the evidence, ambiguous
and incomplete as it sometimes is, before arriving at our tentative
conclusions.

No one, or almost no one, is calling Draco an innocent victim. No one
at all is calling Harry a "war criminal." We're simply trying to
figure out why they (and Snape and others) act as they do, why no one
raises the question of self-defence with regard to the attempted
Crucio and the all-too-successful Sectumsempra, etc. Why does Harry so
quickly put the image of Draco lying in a pool of blood out of his
mind? Will he end up blaming Snape for that, too, even though he
defended the HBP for jotting down the spell when he didn't know who he
was?

Our discussions are a matter of intellectual curiosity, of trying to
understand what makes the various characters tick. It's not about
attacking Harry and Hermione and getting everyone else off the hook.
And if you haven't seen defenses of Harry and Hermione in response to
the criticisms of their behavior, perhaps you've been overlooking
those particular posts. And if we're examining the question of who's
right about Harry's use of the HBP's book, one or the other is going
to be criticized because they're on opposite sides of that particular
question.

Carol, who hopes that HRH will learn from their mistakes and survive
into the Epilogue, along with Neville and, yes, Severus Snape