Teachers - Kappas in Japan, Mongolia, and Thailand

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 184262

---  "littleleahstill" <leahstill at ...> wrote:
>
> >
> > ---  "Steve" <bboyminn@> wrote:
> > 
> > I'll add one more point that occurred to me. WE'VE made this
> > about Kappas, but that is not what it is about to Snape.
> > He could care less were Kappas are more commonly found. This
> > is about Lupin, and Snape's determination to undermine Lupin
> > in the eyes of the students. 
> > 
> > It has nothing, from Snape's point of view, to do with Kappas,
> > it is about discrediting and undermining Lupin. 
> > 
> > We can't even say that Snape's statement is indeed fact. He
> > may have just made it up, again, to undermine Lupin.
> > 

> Leah:
> 
> Well, yes, he does want to discredit Lupin, but I don't believe
> he'd do so by making up a 'fact' in a class containing the 
> 'insufferable know it all'.   ...
> 

bboyminn:

Just so we are clear, I'm not saying Snape did or didn't make
it up. I'm saying that WE the READERS can't determine if Snape's
statement is accurate or not since Snape has an underlying 
agenda.


Further, to my point, we don't know that Snape is making /the/
definitive statement. 'Fantastic Beasts' say Kappas come from
Mongolia, Snape says Japan. Those statements don't necessarily
contradict each other. For one, we don't know what Lupin 
said. Lupin may have said Thialand, and Snape was simply 
saying they are /more common/ in Japan. But being /more common/
in Japan does not eliminate the possibility that the creature
originates in Mongolia.

So, Snape has the motivating agenda of discrediting Lupin, 
and therefore, in his own mind, only need to be more right
than Lupin. 

Further, there is an element of interpretation of the facts.
It is possible that Kappas are more common in Japan, but are
actually a bigger problem in Thailand. Japan has a uniformly
prosperous and educated society; people may be smart enough
to leave Kappas alone. Thailand, while a modern country,
has a higher percentage of superstitious peasant population,
and therefore, those peasants may have more face-to-face
encounters with Kappas, making it fewer Kappas but a bigger
problem in Thailand. 

In a sense, not knowing all the facts about Kappas, and not
knowing exactly what Lupin told the students and why, we,
the readers, are only guessing about the potential conflict
between Snape's statement and the statement in 'Fantastic
Beasts'. 

I'm setting up an alternate scenario in which, in context,
all three (Lupin, Snape, and FB) can be right.

Steve/bluewizard