Re: Snape and Harry’s Sadism (was: Lack of re-examination)

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186663

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:
>
> > jkoney
> > It matters because she is the one who created him and has his story in her head/notes. She wrote him with specific thoughts and a certain point of view. At the worst the author can be unable to make you see that point. For me it's Harry naming his son after Snape. That I don't understand, but since she tells me it's true then I will go along with it.
> 
> Zara:
> That Harry Potter gave the middle name Severus to his son, and did so specifically to name him after Snape, is not an opinion of Rowling's hidden away in her notes or revealed to us in some obscure interview. It is a factual occurence within the series that we are shown in the Epilogue of Deathly Hallows. Either that, or we must suppose Harry deliberately lied to his son and there is some other, obscure to me reason that Al Sev is so named that we will never learn.
> 


jkoney replies:
Thank you for making my point. You interpreted what I wrote differently that what I had intended. I was trying to make the point that I didn't see in the story (The Prince's tale) that there was enough there to make me believe that Harry would name his son after Snape. 

I wasn't arguing that he didn't name his son after him like you listed in your response. Just that I didn't see anything that would make me want to name a child after him. I understand the part of him being brave and being on Dumbledore's side.


> > jkoney:
> > You may be able to interpret the characters as you see fit, but that doesn't mean you are interpreting the way they were intended to be interpreted.
> 
> Zara:
> Nor did I state I was. Nor is it important to me that I do so.


jkoney replies:
That I don't understand. You don't feel the need to understand the story as it was meant to be told?


> 
> > jkoney:
> > Some people liked Draco in the early books. There was nothing good about him at all in those scenes. He was arrogant, petty, insulting, etc. He would then hide behind Crabbe, Goyle, Snape or his father. How does one see him as a good character at that point?
> 
> Zara:
> How else does one see him, as an evil eleven year old boy? We might reasonably fear he will be walking down a path that might one day lead him into evil; that is another matter. We might also suspect something would divert him from such a path. Both would be equally speculative suppositions (and the latter would be more correct, IMNSVHO). 
> 
> But I would disagree we saw nothing to like about him. His initial approach to Harry, an unknown boy at Madam Malkin's, revealed him to have been raised in some objectionable views by his family, but was otherwise a reasonable depiction of a boy trying to impress another in an attempt to make a friend.

jkoney:
You see nothing to dislike about a character with "some objectionable views," someone who we see insult the Weasley's on the train as the wrong type of people, somone who is constantly coming up to the trio and insulting them or trying to get a rise out of them, someone who attempts to steal Neville's rememberball (sp?), who buys his way on to the quidditch team, who fakes his injury to be much more than it was.... Sorry but I don't see much at all to like about him.


> 
> > jkoney:
> > Again I see it as a either a failure of the author or a failure of the reader. 
> 
> Zara:
> It seems to be a widely held view, that Severus Snape is perhaps Rowling's finest literary creation to date. Yet there are almost as many opinions about this character as there are readers. *This*, you would call a failure by Rowling? I would call it a triumph. <bg>
>
jkoney replies:
I never said Snape wasn't an interesting literary creation. I'm arguing against the view that people misintrepet the character into being some sort of saint.