Killing Snape (was Re: Snape and Dumbledore on the Tower: A Defense of Snape)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 165388

Lupinlore:
> The situation with Boromir in LOTR, much discussed in other threads, is 
> perhaps more to the point.  That is that offering up one's life is the 
> final act of penance.

Pippin:
But Boromir didn't offer his life as an act of penance. He fought
to the death to save Merry and Pippin. We may trust he would
have done that anyway, as he would have stayed by Gandalf in
Moria if there had not been lesser folk to care for. 

In any case, Boromir had no intention of dying -- he blew
his horn to summon aid. But his fall from grace seems to mean
that he was no longer protected by it. Though help came in 
answer to the horn,  it came too late to rescue him. Still, he 
was granted Aragorn's assurance of his worth and a peaceful 
death.

But I can't imagine that Lupinlore really wants to hear Harry say
to dying Snape, "No, you have conquered! Few have gained 
such a victory. Be at peace. Hogwarts shall not fall!" 

And then, far from making a object lesson of Boromir's lapse, 
Aragorn kept it secret. Boromir was not forced to confess his 
sins to the whole world, nor did Aragorn conceive that it was his 
duty to make sure everyone knew about them.


Lupinlore:
> But all of this may miss the point.  God may forgive any sin for the 
> price of sincere contrition (under one set of theories, not universally 
> held), but the world and human society does not. 

Pippin:
And Christianity, or one interpretation of it, holds them at fault for
that. "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."

What Boromir's death accomplishes is not the escape from human
vengeance. Aragorn personifies human justice in LOTR, and he 
pardoned Boromir and would have shown mercy even to Saruman.
It just puts Boromir in a safe place, morally, where we can be
sure his pride and ambition will not tempt him further. 

The  Tolkien character who corresponds to DDM!Snape, IMO, would be
Galadriel, who fell from grace when she defied the Valar and lived to 
prove she had redeemed herself by rejecting the Ring, or at least that
is the version of the story we get in The Road Goes Ever On. Tolkien 
seems to have decided later that as a good Catholic he was uncomfortable 
with this idea, I suppose because she shouldn't have been able to 
redeem herself completely until Christ's sacrifice had obtained 
more grace for the world.

But fortunately the WW is a Christian or post-Christian society
(all those painted and ghostly monks and nuns) so this objection 
need not obtain.

Pippin