Re: Snape: evil or not evil?

On 25 Nov 2007 Toon wrote:

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 13:35:55 -0500, Thom Madura
<Tommadura@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]
It would be hard to justify that Snape was GOOD based on
all the bad things he did.

Actually, the question always was which side was he on. Good meant
DD, bad meant Voldemort. Then came the moral and ethic debates. and
who can say if he was truly good or evil. You think petunia hated him
just because he was a wizard? She knew he was bad news, and tried to
protect lily from him.

I didn't get the impression Petunia had any great insight into Snape,
let alone knew him for a bad 'un right off; she despised him for being
poor and ugly, on top of which he was 'weird' (a wizard), and an
interloper into her own (uneasy) relationship with her sister. In fact,
I'd assume that people like Sirius, Petunia and James (let alone his own
unattractive parents) were responsible for turning a maladroit,
precocious, unappealing child into a bitter, paranoid and gratuitously
cruel adult.

Give first-year Hermione a talent for the Dark Arts and subtract the
protection of the 'cool' (i.e. rule-breaking) Harry and Ron, and I don't
think it's so far-fetched to posit that she could easily have ended up
as the female equivalent; unattractive, unloved, talented and twisted
beyond repair. Suppose the unpopular 'know-it-all' had been taken up by
Draco Malfoy and his cronies instead of Harry Potter and his...?

(hmm, fanfic? ;-)


Snape is as gray as they come. But he was on DD's side in the end.
And pressured onto V's in the beginning.

I'm not sure he needed to be pressured. It may have been more a case of
'the world has always hated me, I hate the world, these people hate the
world too, plus they like the things I'm good at'... When you're full
of hate and despise those without ability, people who routinely jibe at
Muggles and encourage ingenious curses are an attractive clique. Add to
that the promise of real power by overthrowing a present order that
appears to be 'down on you', and I think the appeal's fairly clear. His
home environment hadn't exactly given him a healthy yardstick to gauge
human behaviour against, either; cruelty, quarrels and backbiting would
be taken for granted rather than seen as an ugly atmosphere. You assert
yourself by climbing on the backs of those weaker than you -- like Draco
Malfoy, that was the normality he was used to.


I don't think Snape was evil. I think he was damaged to the degree that
only watching others flinch gave him any pleasure; I would hazard that
only this assuaged in any degree his own gnawing demons. I think he was
proud, obsessive, bitterly resentful, unforgiving of himself or others,
and deliberately isolated from all the 'tender' emotions; affection,
pity, gratitude, all were betrayers, all were weak. "When I have set my
hand to the plough I shall not turn back, though a river of blood flow
from every furrow."

I suspect that a number of those among us may have been there also.

----------

Incidentally, do we *ever* find out exactly what Lily did see in James?
So far as I can remember, the closest we ever get is Sirius' offhand
remark that she started going out with him once he stopped hexing people
for the fun of it; we see them married, but I don't think we ever see
her as a schoolgirl finding him even remotely attractive. I was assuming
Rowling would cover that in the last book, but she doesn't -- she only
shows further scenes of Lily dismissing him.

I'm not saying that it's not a plausible relationship (people do grow
up, and grow into each other); I'm just wondering if we ever see any
indication at all of their relationship in between Lily's perceiving
James as a big-headed bully, and then being happily married to him...
--
Igenlode Wordsmith

Igenlode's erratic blog:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=257221781

.

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