[the_old_crowd] The trouble with Harry and how Snape saves the day.
Sherry Gomes
sherriola at ...
Thu Sep 22 18:13:50 UTC 2005
Oh dear! If I could only know in advance that Snape will be the moral core
of the series in the end, I could stop reading the damn thing all together.
Funny, though I debate that he is evil, because I believe he most definitely
murdered Dumbledore, i am so uninterested in Snape as a character. I don't
care about his back story, nor his turmoil, nor his spying or anything else.
He has abused children, his students, and to me, he isn't a bit interesting
or complex because of it. if it has to turn into Snape's story in the end,
i would long to know in advance, so I can throw out the books and find
something else to obsess over!
Sherry
-----Original Message-----
From: the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com [mailto:the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of mooseming
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 11:03 AM
To: the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [the_old_crowd] The trouble with Harry and how Snape saves the day.
Hi all and welcome to the newbies.
For a couple of months now life (other people) has taken up most of
my time so have not been able to participate in what have been some
thoroughly enjoyable threads. So in passing I will note they have
provided much thought provoking stuff and entertainment and I
proffer a big thanks to you all.
Having been silent for so long I find I must compensate by
submitting this extremely long and tedious post, feel free not to
read it and accept it's a sort of overexcited `hello I'm back`!
I sense in JKR's interviews a frustration that we don't really `get'
Harry. JKR clearly is emotionally invested in him but somehow her
readers will keep focussing on Snape, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Baggy,
Mark Evans, whoever.
I believe this is because, ironically, Harry sprung to her mind
fully formed. In other words he was a character at the end of his
inner emotional journey and not at the beginning of it. There has
been much discussion regarding the plausibility, given his
background, of Harry arriving at school on his first day as a
competent, well balanced, functioning human; but my point is, that
in a narrative sense, this makes him very dull indeed.
Harry's failings are not driven by some inner conflict but a
tendency to go off half cocked without getting the facts straight. A
tendency to make value judgements, eg Snape is bad, based on
incomplete evidence. This is prone to colour him annoying rather
than compelling which JKR doesn't seem to have anticipated!
I think HP is, at heart, a morality tale. The dilemma that JKR is
exploring, well illustrating really, is essentially about how we
distinguish good from evil, how do we make moral choices. To date
Harry has had very little difficulty in making the right choices.
Yes he's done stupid things, ill advised things, dangerous things
but always the *right* thing. His story is not one of moral
ambiguity rather it is an investigation into the world around him,
its history, his own history and a search for a surrogate father.
In the first 5 books of the series Harry (and the reader) is never
presented with a dilemma to which the answer is not clear to him.
Should Harry be merciful to Wormtail, should Flammel destroy the
philosophers stone, should Harry trust DD, should Harry fight Voldy,
should Harry care about people, are mud bloods bad, is freedom good
etc? I get a sensation that in these books JKR is presenting ideals
in a kind of shopping list manner: prejudice (tick), bullying
(tick), greed (tick), arrogance (tick), overreaching ambition (tick)
and so on. Which brings me to the question if Harry's story isn't
the moral focus of this series who`s is?
At the end of HBP we are left with our first true dilemma - is Snape
good or bad? We are also aware that for the first time Harry is in
peril because his hatred for Snape is the one failing that might,
just might, corrupt his moral compass.
JKR has repeatedly stated that what makes us good is our choices.
Snape made two big choices in HBP, the unbreakable vow and offing
DD. Now we can tie ourselves in knots (removes leg from behind ear)
trying to justify these choices but without knowing the full story
we can't make a judgement.
We can, however, deduce the laws governing that judgement from the
previous choices made by good people and bad people.
Almost saintly Lily's big choice was to sacrifice herself, *not* to
save her son (there was no special charm, no extra magic at GH, Lily
didn't know her sacrifice would protect Harry *it had never happened
before*), not for the greater good (committed to defeating Voldy she
was given the option to live and fight another day but didn't take
it) but because she would not sacrifice her ideals (a mother must
never abandon her child). Lily placed her moral beliefs above
rational thought not knowing that this would have a positive outcome
but because it was the *right* thing to do.
No longer human Voldy's big choice was to use the death of others to
avoid his own death. Murder alone was not the big evil, it was the
rational abstraction and application of that evil that condemned Tom
Riddle.
So we have an essential conflict between what is right and what is
rational, where right always has priority.
With the introduction of HRXes and the information that a living
being can be the vessel for same we have the perfect scenario for
confronting this conflict.
If Voldy declares that his final HRX is in an innocent (unconscious)
third party, say, oh I don't know, um, Stunned Neville, what`s to be
done?
Should Neville be killed so that Voldy can be destroyed? Is the
purposeful killing of an innocent ever justifiable?
Snape and Harry would have a different view of this question and
polarised conclusions I suspect.
Even Good!Snape would say yes, that unbreakable vow is proof of
that, thus failing to reach Lily's level of enlightenment. So Snape
is the moral focus of the story.
Harry would say no, he has his mother's eyes after all. What's the
point in Harry then? Well he's the catalyst for Snape's redemption.
He can stop Snape nixing Neville.
Followed through this dynamic has a rather sticky outcome. To save
Snape the last HRX must not be destroyed and thus Voldy gets to win
this round, at least until Neville shuffles off the mortal coil.
Nothing to stop Voldy repeating the process with a succession of
vessels either!
Still the advantage of a story is you *can* have it both ways. If
Voldy is deliberately misleading Snape and Harry, Snape's rational
approach would enable him to perceive the deceit and the solution
more readily than short sighted Harry. This way JKR can qualify her
absolutist moral position by indicating that rational thought is
still important. If Harry can stop Snape from killing Neville then
Snape will have the opportunity to see that the HRX really is, for
example, Neville's wand.
Happy endings all round. Harry still has something to learn and
Snape is the man to teach him, Snape equally can continue to learn
from Harry (on the subject of bullying students for starters). Like
father and son perhaps. If Snape is married Harry might just have
found some new parents. The end.
Regards
Jo
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