Choices/Snape as abuser, SKIP if not interested WAS :Re: CHAPTER

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 188590


> > Pippin:
> > As far as whether Rowling wants us to hate Snape or forgive him, I think we might be  missing the point. What she wants us to see, IMO, is how our judgement, like Harry's, is distorted by our feelings. <HUGE SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> Well, no, unless you are arguing that JKR really is saying that verbal abuse is a good thing and we are supposed to see it as such I do not agree with it.

Pippin:

Of course not. If she thought it was a good thing, there'd be no need to forgive it. No one can deserve forgiveness -- the whole idea is that it's a gift, unearned.  But  Harry was willing to forgive people he likes for things that were just as bad, and  wasn't willing to even consider that Snape might be innocent of anything he imagined Snape capable of doing. His hatred made him unfair, and I think it is JKR's premise that hatred makes everyone unfair.   So, IMO, she says we have to choose between hatred and fairness.  We can only have a fairer world if we choose not to bring hatred into it. That means we will have to learn how to forgive. 

Harry does that by re-enacting Christ's sacrifice, but that doesn't bother me as a non-Christian. I believe there are other ways to forgive as well. 

Of course since Snape isn't real it does no harm to anyone if we hate him. JKR makes it easier to hate him, in a way, than to hate Voldemort. By the end it is clear that Voldemort was always mentally and emotionally crippled, and most of us have powerful cultural inhibitions against hating people who have been damaged in this way. It seems like Snape had more chances to love and forgive than Voldie did and turned his back on them. 

But JKR shows us, through Sirius, what Snape might have had to go through if he had given up his anger.  It's not like you give up your anger over your old hurts and are instantly healed. You're faced with your own responsibility for your condition, and the reality of what you've lost, and it's devastating. It's a long path, and it may not end in this world. 

She doesn't kid us that it's an easy choice to make, but it's pretty clear to me which one she thinks is the right choice. But it's also a choice that even Harry can't make without support. The tragedy to me is that Sirius had people who would have supported him   through  it and didn't get the time, and Snape had the time, but not the support.

Pippin