That Bloody Man Again WAS Re: The curious incident of the Felix Felicis

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" <pip at e...> wrote:

> Pip!Squeaks:
> No, Freudian psychology does not have a scientific basis. It isn't 
> disprovable. On the other hand, when and where Snape is acting 
> *should* be disprovable - though I admit it's going to be a heck of 
> a lot handier when we get Book 7 in our hot little hands.

Well, yes.  Testable eventually.  Not so testable at the present--
which is why I'm wary of it. :)
 
<snip>

> Of course, Snape does give a perfectly plausible reason for that. 
> And Snape claims to be supporting Voldemort, and with the death of 
> Dumbledore he's certainly more than talking a good talk... except - 
> why didn't he take advantage of the confused situation and strike 
> the Order with a few more killer blows? He doesn't seem to aim any 
> jinx or curse at *anyone* on the side he's supposedly not on. 
> Instead he pulls the DE's out, immediately. 
> 
> And then he calls off the DE Crucio'ing Harry Potter...

So he could be helping out Harry--or he could be sincere and far more 
interested in getting his ass out of there and going off to tell Mr. 
Boss what he just did for him.  I wonder what the meaning of giving 
Snape a quasi-comic exit is.  Chased off by an enraged hippogriff--
why does JKR make him ridiculous so often?

> He's a liar. That's the straightforward character reading. The only 
> question is - *when* is he lying?

Agreed. :)
 
> If you decide WYSIWYG with Snape, you are actually going against 
> the text. That is not the straightforward, simple reading. The 
> straightforward, simple reading is that - after six books - we have 
> no idea what's going on in this man's head.

The most straightforward reading that I was thinking of takes actions 
as primary.  Yes, some of these are complex/contradictory.  However, 
many of them are not unless you want to complicate them: these 
culminate in, you know, murdering the Headmaster and running away 
from Hogwarts.  WYSIWYG says that when Dumbledore gave us the reason 
for Snape's actions at the end of PS/SS, it was sincere.  The text 
gives us a particular picture of Snape--we are the ones who choose to 
read more or less into it, going on the lack of explicit motivation.

> We have no idea why he does what he does. We don't know what side 
> he's on. We don't know whether he's good, evil, or (going by the 
> imagery in HBP Chapter 2, and the Hanged Man symbolism) the person 
> balanced between good and evil, a mixture of both light and dark.

Despite the canonicity of his being a liar (why is it, then, that 
y'all are so consistently reading him as lying to Voldemort but not 
to Dumbledore, when either side is now so totally open?), I don't 
think that essentially impinges upon the demonstrations of 
grudges/pettiness/whatever you want to call it, assuming something of 
the WYSIWYG.  I think of this because JKR seems to be working as an 
essentialist, with people's actions illustrating their inner 
character.

I think his literary effect works as it does precisely because he's 
lurking, but rarely a genuinely prominent character.  Neri's list of 
How To Write Snape is devastatingly accurate.  I suspect that he will 
actually be much less interesting post book 7.

-Nora looks forward to Magical Happy Fun Fantasy Quest Mode