Deontological!Snape (Was: OPEN: Ultimate and Last Bragging Rights)

pippin_999 foxmoth at qnet.com
Thu Jul 5 15:15:38 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 171301

Carol:
> In HBP, both DD and Snape are preoccupied with Draco's personal (and
> moral) safety as well as with Harry (over whom Snape has apparently
> been watching since SS/PS as part of his obligation either to DD or to
> his own set of ethics--certainly, you're right that he's not
> Machiavellian). Keeping Draco safe could jeopardize the school, but
> keeping the school safe by, say, expelling Draco, would guarantee
> Draco's death. Again, it seems to me, DD tries to strike a balance
> between the good of the individual (Draco and perhaps UV-bound Snape)
> and the good of the "greatest number" (the students and staff of
> Hogwarts). Expelling Draco would certainly be easy, but I'm pretty
> sure that DD doesn't consider it right. 

Pippin:
JKR gives us so little information about the adult wizards and their
world that it's almost impossible to understand their choices from
canon alone -- it's one of the most effective things she does to 
force us into the child's perspective. Canon gives us room for
Idiot!Dumbledore and Puppetmaster!DD, and we may doubt that
either one of them is what JKR  meant by calling DD the epitome of
goodeness.

I think from what JKR has said outside canon that Dumbledore's
value system, when it's revealed, is going to be familiar not
esoteric: recognizable by anyone from six to sixty. But conventional 
morality is not the same as the morality of convention. There
is nothing so radical about saying that innocent lives must
be protected, after all. But Dumbledore is willing to consider
that the conventional, easily accepted means of doing so 
might not be the most effective, and therefore not the most moral.

Convention would say that Draco let himself be manipulated
through hatred and  greed, that most of the students would
not have allowed that, and therefore the school
would have been safer if Draco had been expelled. But
the grim truth as witnessed through volumes of canon is that
none of the students so far has been good enough or
wise enough to recognize and evade all Voldemort's attempts 
to manipulate them.

Dumbledore knows this. Expelling Draco is what Fudge
would have done: it satisfies the morality of convention. But
it would not have made the school any safer, because Voldemort
just plain doesn't need hatred or greed  to manipulate people. He
can do it just as easily through their desire  to have friends, 
like Ginny, or to be a rescuer, like Harry. 

Voldemort  manipulated Harry into invading the most 
heavily guarded area in the Ministry of Magic and stealing
the prophecy, and incidentally bringing five other students 
into mortal danger along with him. Can we doubt that Voldie
could have gotten Harry to fix the cabinet for him? 
And that in the process Harry would probably have 
endangered others at least as much as Draco endangered Katie 
and Ron?

I think JKR wants to show us that the conflict between
doing the greatest good for the greatest number and protecting
our dear ones is an illusion -- we might feel more secure
assuring our personal comfort and safety over that of the world
at large, but that sense of security would be false. 

I think Snape chose to accept this when he saw
that bringing the prophecy to Voldemort had unintended
consequences for people he knew. 

I don't think Snape killed Dumbledore, but I think JKR and
Dumbledore both were relying very much on people's faith
in convention to make both the watching DE's and the
readers think that he did. It would satisfy convention to
have the hateful Snape be a murderer, it would satisfy
another sort of convention to have Hubristic!Snape be the 
victim of the cursed DADA position or the UV. But I don't
think it would satisfy the logic of the story, which is 
that Dumbledore trusted Snape because their aims were
identical and because Snape's heart, though filled with 
hate, was still not the heart of a killer.

Pippin





More information about the HPforGrownups archive