Understanding Snape

[Jim Ferer]

Pippin:" Just as more than one physical flaw contributes to Snape's 
ugliness, I think there is more than one reason for his feelings of 
inadequacy. Indeed, each book has revealed a new one : the said 
ugliness, failure to save James, career blockage, unpopularity at 
school, a criminal past, an unhappy family life...and I'm sure 
there's more to come. Listies have delighted to guess: socio-economic 
discrimination, romantic disappointment, sexual frustration, racial 
or religious prejudice, social phobia, yada yada. Maybe all of them.

Yes, indeed.  Calling where Snape's head is "social phobia" isn't 
much more than an umbrella to describe the effects we're seeing.  
Many of the factors you cite are common precursors to an isolated 
life; romantic disappointment and/or sexual frustration being big 
magnifiers of the problem.

Pippin:" Much as I enjoy speculating about what's to come 
cough*vampires*cough* , I think we should not expect a grand 
resolution where all Snape's difficulties are revealed to be caused 
by (fill in the blank)."

Agree again. It's a life course thing, and being a vampire (or maybe 
worse, half-vampire) would be another oddity to make a kid stand out 
unfavorably in playground society.

Pippin:" I think the question JKR wants to deal with is not what 
makes people act like Snape. There can be lots of different reasons. 
But she wants us to see that people can be so valuable despite their 
faults that we ourselves will be crippled if we can't learn to put up 
with them. For Harry, it's a package deal. If he wants Hogwarts in 
his life, he's going to have to endure Snape."

Yes, but JKR is doing something else important.  She's introducing 
complexity to young readers about characters, especially good guys 
who aren't plaster saints.  Snape is a truly nasty son of a ______, 
but he's on the right side.  Harry's our hero, but he was plain 
unlikable for large portions of OotP.  We've been conditioned to tear 
down public figures who aren't perfect.

The scene that just has to happen is the one where Harry tells Snape 
that Harry and James Potter are two different people, that Harry 
doesn't like what his father did to Snape, and Snape ought to 
remember that.  Can Snape even absorb that statement? It'll be 
interesting to find out.

Jim