Dateline Redemption was Re: Victory for TEWWW EWWW

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 173720

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pair_0_docks" 
<pair_0_docks at ...> wrote:
>
<SNIP>
> >
> 
> pair_0_docks:
> 
> Yes I probably could have just put the more of the quote in there 
but
> she continues after stating:
> 
> "He's a complicated man...he's bitter, he's spiteful, he's a bully,
> all of these things are still true of Snape.
> 
> Was he brave yes immensely, was he capable of love very
> definitely...Harry forgives him. Harry sees the good in Snape."


Well, that certainly seems a fair assessment.  It's hard to see Snape 
as anything but a complicated man, a man full of evil and darkness 
who nevertheless did good things because of a love that itself was 
far from unproblematic -- at least in its obsessive aspects.  Harry 
certainly does forgive him, but that is what Christ-figures, or 
Christ-like figures if you prefer, are supposed to do.

> 
> Curious to know how you would define hero? I guess it does seem
> possible, to me at least, that a person (Snape) can still act
> heroically and yet still have some other negative qualities...this
> would seem to fit better with the philosophy that Sirius (movie)
> and/or DD (book)and therefore Rowling herself believe: "the world 
not
> just split into good people and death eaters we all got both light 
and
> dark inside us what matters is the part we choose to act on."
> 

Hmmm.  I can't speak for Alla but I would say that the problem with 
many of the arguments about Snape as a hero is that they try to say 
that somehow his brave acts completely redeem him from his abuse of 
Harry.  I would say that they most certainly do NOT.  He remains the 
same bitter, spiteful, cramped little man that he was in the 
beginning.  He is a man whom Dumbledore, the epitome of goodness (if 
he remains such, which I know is problematic) plainly disapproves of 
in some respects, and certainly we never have any argument that his 
abuse of Harry was worthwhile or justified for reasons of teaching or 
anything else.  He never had any feeling for Harry as a person, which 
is what could have granted him true redemption.  Instead, he is 
driven by his emotional burden to protect a boy that he hates and 
whom he never would have helped, otherwise.

Thus Snape is, as JKR puts it, a hero to an extent, in that he does 
very brave things for the good side.  But he is not a hero in the 
sense of being fully redeemed.  Unlike Harry or Ron or Hermione, or 
for that matter unlike Percy, he is unable to find his way to 
rejecting the full darkness within himself.  Percy turns his back on 
his embrace of the Ministry and his spurning of his family.  Snape 
cannot turn his back on his bitterness and cruelty.  Dumbledore asks 
him "Have you come to care for the boy after all, Severus?"  In that 
moment the door is open for Snape's full redemption.  It is the 
tragedy of Snape's bitterness and cruelty that he slams it shut again 
immediately.  It is fitting that a Christ-figure should forgive 
Snape, if only for the good he has done.  But it is also fitting that 
at his end the dark side of himself, the side he is never able to 
totally overcome, brings his doom.


Lupinlore, who is quite amused at continuing efforts to deny Snape's 
cruelty and sins, and the appropriate end he receives for them