Harry's detention in HBP

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168332

Bart wrote:
> 
> Snape IS a sadist. I think JKR has made that much clear. It may ALSO
be an effective teaching technique, and he may pretend that this is
what he is doing, but he gets joy over the suffering of others. I know
the style of teaching he is pretending to use; you are brutally frank
with your students. When they fail, you let them know damned well they
failed, and WHY they failed. But, if they succeed, you also let them
know that. <snip>

Carol responds:

I'm aware that JKR has said in an interview that Snape is a very
sadistic teacher, but she's trying to create and sustain a certain
view of him--Harry's view--that may not necessarily correspond with
the reader's impression.

Snape is without question sarcastic (and much more clever about it
than Sirius black, when they use words as weapons against each other).
He can convey contempt with a look, as he does to Bellatrix and
Wormtail in HBP  or an ironic little bow, as he does to Umbridge in
OoP. He *can* be cruel to his students. I've read attempts to justify
"I see no difference," but I agree with Snape's attackers that these
words are needlessly cruel.

However, We see evidence that some students (not only Slytherins)
flourish under his teaching methods. Ernie Macmillan, for example,
must have attained an O on his Potions OWL to have ended up in NEWT
Potions and he praises Snape's first DADA class in HBP. As for
Neville, the boy is a danger to his classmates, melting someone else's
cauldron and splashing fellow students with a potion that causes boils
on his very first day and never learning to follow instructions in a
class where carelessness is dangerous. No wonder Snape is frustrated.

The marks Snape gives to essays are apparently the marks they deserve,
or we'd hear Hermione complaining. Yes, Snape sometimes docks points
unfairly, but he gives detentions only when they're deserved, and
however unpleasant it may be to copy out old detention records, some
of which are your dead father's, Harry has done something that needs
to be punished (not just using a Dark spell but lying to the teacher
about where he found it and hiding the book).

Snape only once lays a hand on Harry, gripping him rather hard around
the arm when he takes him out of the Pensieve and pushing him away. (I
don't think he actually threw the jar of cockroaches which explodes
above Harry's head; I think that's accidental magic caused by anger.
Had he thrown it, he wouldn't have missed.) And his rage on that
occasion is understandable. He trusted Harry, who betrayed his trust
and violated his privacy. Few adults would remain calm under similar
circumstances. And McGonagall's forcing Neville to wait in the hall
with the security trolls until someone lets him into the common room
is at least as devastating as having him skin horned toads (which
could not cause him to have "frog guts" under his fingernails even if
they really were the same as regular toads). Unkind, certainly, but
what was Neville thinking bringing a toad to a Potions class, anyway?

We do see true sadists in the books. Filch longs for the old days when
students were whipped or chained. Umbridge attempts a Crucio on Harry,
looking for the most painful place to aim the spell, and makes him
write lines in his own blood. Bellatrix tortures Neville and reminds
him that she tortured his parents into insanity. Her fellow torturer
Crouch!Moody Crucios spiders in front of him, deliberately upsetting
him so that he can take him to tea and give him the book he hopes
Neville will show Harry.

In comparison to these people, all but one of them teachers, Snape's
detentions and point taking and sarcasm are mild indeed.

Call him a sadist if you so choose. I call him a sarcastic and
sometimes unfair teacher who can ensure silence by his mere presence
and make students nervous by looking into their eyes and to some
degree at least reading their minds. But if he were a true sadist,
he'd have let the Death Eater Crucio Harry.

Not once, except in teaching Harry Occlumency or provoking him into
casting what should have been a nonverbal Protego does Snape as
teacher hit Harry with a spell. (Even in the duelling scene in HBP, he
deflects Harry's spells until the last moment rather than Crucioing
him or sending his own spells back onto him with a Protego.) Contrast
Fake!Moody, who transforms Draco into a ferret and bounces him. Or,
again, Umbridge and her poisoned quill.

Sarcastic? Absolutely? Unfair? Frequently, or so it seems from Harry's
pov. But sadistic? I just don't see it. If Snape Crucios Harry or one
of his friends in DH, or performs any similar action in which he
clearly takes pleasure from causing physical pain (as opposed to
stinging them with his bitter and ironic wit), I will, of course,
stand corrected.

Carol, who thinks Snape is brilliant and would much rather have had a
class from him than from Trelawney, Binns, or Hagrid (not to mention
Lockhart, Umbridge, and Fake!Moody)