Comments on Snapes Character

A Comment made on this post on Severus Snape on Eyore's blog.

At the risk of sounding like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, I am going to say "both of you (Pat and Torill) are right." (at one point in a group two characters consecutively express two opposing opinions, both of which Tevye replies to by saying they are right, and a third character interjects, "wait ... he is right, and he also is right? they can't both be right!" ... to which Tevye replies, "you ... are also right." which, from what I have been able to get a feel for in my wanderings in such regions, is actually a very Jewish approach to handling "inconsistencies" ... the movie/film does a very good job of bringing out a very traditionally Jewish "hermeneutic" in a richly humorous way in a lot of places)I myself am officially in the "good Snape" camp (on which I, like a good many of us, could be simply entirely wrong) but NOT in the "nice Snape" camp, or more accurately here, the camp of "the fact that Snape is a white-hat at core and working for the main goal of that camp (and, I would guess, doing so rather effectively, for that main goal of that camp) THEREFORE all of his actions contribute concretely to that goal, or are at least neutral and do not contribute in any fashion at all the goal of the black-hat camp." It is my opinion that that is pert of the richness of Rowling's work - the breadth of character and the way in raises very real-life issues.There are two incidents that come to mind that correspond to the 2 things that seem to me to be the major factors in this one. The first is what I would call the "true grit" factor. In favor of what we might call Snape's, um (for lack of a better handle) "philosophy of education" there is the argument that "it's a rough world and if they (these kids) are going to be able to endure the kind of battle the dark lord and the DEs are definitely going to throw at them, they are going to need thick skin to do it ... 'and he says there's no need to bring protective gloves' (HBP 236)." I think we see some of this in other characterizations in the works. When Ginny confronts Ron after he and Harry happen upon her kissing Dean, she is somewhat brutal on him (HBP 287-288) ... she goes pretty hard and pretty obviously for a pretty sure insecurity. The thing is that, in order to handle the battle ahead, she is going to need to be that tough ... as will Ron (insecurities such as his can provide a pretty decent weapon for DEs, in whom I think we have seen as much of a predilection for taunt as an auxiliary weapon as for magic as a main weapon, which can have a negative impact as we have seen in psychological factors impacting a witch like Tonks' magical powers [assuming she isn't Bella with poly-juice, which I will grant is possible, but for my tastes the PJ party of "everybody is a poly-juiced DE in HBP" got a little out of hand]Now, the second thing to note on this first point is that it can seem a gray area. Even given what I just said (or maybe precisely because of the import of that toughness) ... it is rough and can be brutal .. in fact in the Ginny and Ron instance I just noted, it's fairly harsh for Ginny herself, "who sounded close to tears now." (HBP 288).In regards to Snapes favored approach to "educating" students other than those from house Slytherin ... I think that Torill's points are ones that deserve real consideration. I'm not saying that I think they're "definitively canonically right" in a way that you can point to canon instances and say "see ..." Rather, they're like the real world, they're a judgment call - not a light or insignificant judgment call, but a judgment call. I think this is part of JKR's depth and greatness as a writer is her ability to bring out nuanced areas of issue like this. Like I said, the kids will need to be tough and a decent argument can be made for Snape validly and intentionally being the catalyst for necessary calluses (and Harry definitely has certain very acute sensitivities ... such as his heightened experiences of/reaction to the sensation of apparating, versus say Fred and George who are [in #12 GrimPlace in OotP, I believe] popping in and out of Ron and Harry's bedroom just for the fun of it). But "the truth," I would argue, also requires taking into account the concerns Toril brings up ... the rips on Hermione's teeth in the instance cited, and there are places in POA that seem to me, regardless of the level of misdirection in Harry's limited omniscient perspective, to at least greatly support (if not prove) Lupin's statement in HBP that "Snape hated James!" ... evidenced in the fact that, even taking into account the limited omniscience, that Snape really would like to see James' buddy Sirius get soul-snogged (if we take DD at Harry's word [i.e., if we accept some reliability/accuracy in the view from atop Harry's shoulder, as John Granger puts it], DD straightforwardly seems to admit in the "DD's denouement description" scene of OotP, that there is some real deep-seated animosity there ... and in regards to its effect, it is a contributing factor, although obviously not, by far, the only factor, in Harry's poor performance in occlumency, which leads to Sirius being in the MOM that night)On that matter I will say that I think Granger's notes on "narrative misdirection" and "limited 3rd person omniscient" seem to be pretty unarguably the case, but that I don't think that that means we can disregard everything (which I'm not saying that JG is saying that ... just that it is sometimes entirely easy to follow that that, or any observation, to an extreme that does not mirror reality) ... and I'm not sure I buy the "scripting" at the level it seems to me would be necessary for everything that has occurred to be "on DD's orders ... for intentional lessons for Harry to learn." In other words, I think that when Snape jabbed Sirius about "staying safe" at #12 GP it seems to me like a genuinely uncharitable taunt and that there is some accuracy/truth in Harry's feeling that the taunt had concretely contributed to Sirius making the rash dash to the MOM (a feeling that is noted, at least from his perspective, as coming from a process involving longer and more in depth deliberation than his usual, sometimes rash, judgments [HBP 161]).ANYWAY, on to the second of the two instances/points that I spoke of: the efficacy of Snape's teaching. Somewhere in HBP(I think several places but I'm not sure on that), Harry notes/says that he has learned more from the HBP's potion book than Snape managed to teach him in 5 years. This, again, is, I think, meant to be a hard judgment call for the reader to make, as to whether or not he is right in that (and that this creatively mirrors the difficulty of nuances and judgment calls in real life, where there are many "gray areas" ... not that the truth itself is gray, but that the discernment of it is genuinely very tricky business at times). There is a consideration that without Snape's caustic presentation/persona it might be easier for Harry to connect with the basics of potions or other magic that it really would help him to have a better grasp of going into the final sequence of fighting Voldy. On the other hand, Hermione would have a very strong case to make that Harry did not really learn from the HBP potions books - that Snape actually had the insight to make those brilliant annotations to potions processed but all Harry really got out of his use of the book in potions class was helpful shortcuts, not any real further understanding of the magic involved (as evidenced in the fact that we the reader, at least adult readers of a certain level of learning, can at least discern the age-old principle of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" in Golpalott's 3rd law [HBP 374], whereas Harry interiorly admits, via the narrator, that he couldn't understand a word of it). I suspect that the book will come back into the story (whether the book itself actually "onscreen" or not I don't can't guess) in such a way that we find out that, not to sound to aphoristically trite, Harry actually "learned more than he learned" (that in the process he took in certain information from which he will only later realize and appropriate certain principles and understandings that are helpful in the fight against Voldy, and thus contribute to the meaning of the works as a whole as literature) ... but I think Hermione's (hypothetical) point (that at this point in time Harry has not really learned anything from the prince)deserves genuine consideration too.(it is kind of ironic: Hermione's hypothetical point [meaning that I didn't actually see her say this particularly but it is close enough to her actual "canon" thoughts and statements that I would have to put it closer to "canon" than to being my own "deductive work" ... which is admittedly usually not very clever, not to mention not very concise] would yield that Harry actually underwent more of the valid learning process from Snape as potions master, which might seem to undercut Toril's reading of Snape's character in the books ... but that is only in relation to the subject of potions itself and Hermione really does not ever, that I can remember, give a definitive thumbs up OR down on Snape's efficacy in teaching potions in the classroom [and from his treatment of her, she would have genuine reason to give a thumbs down at least in some respects], and thus if you take her comments on the prince being a "dodgey character" as applying in general to Snape, she agrees more with Toril's assessment of Snape's character ... although it seems to me possible that we may find out in book 7 that some of the annotations came not from Severus Snape but from Eileen [Prince] Snape: evidence in favor of this would be the conspicuous mention of the publication date of the book - obviously Snape did not purchase the book new, and probably not used from another source, but from his mother. Specific mention is made of the books date as being 50 years ago [Lupin suggests looking up the date in "a very frosty Christmas" and then Harry finds it is 50 years old] but not mention is made of the date of the Eileen prince picture in the prophet, but it is "very old" [paper yellowed by age - HBP 537] and so it is at least possible, if not probable, that she fits the 50 yr time frame. There is also Hermione's intuition, earlier somewhere in HBP, that the handwriting looks more like a girls. Evidence against this would be that some of the work [particularly Levi-Corpus] seems fairly certainly to be Severus' work, yet there is no indication given anywhere that I remember of Harry noticing a difference in handwriting anywhere in the annotations. One way or another, I strongly suspect that at the very least, EP was the original owner of the book and that the 50 yr time frame will be significant. First that she was indeed at Hogwarts 50 yrs ago and that this relates to the repeated mention [most particularly in regards to the COS pairing with the other 50 yr old book, Riddle's Diary ... making another books 2 and 6 pairing, which have been noted by a number of people, although with varying structural interpretations] that Riddle was at Hogwarts 50 yrs ago ... I think that, whether through Snape himself or through Hermione's search through old Prophets in the library, Eileen Prince/Snape will be a source of some important information or other on Riddle/Voldy. This also ties into the main debate of the present debate between Pat and Toril in this post, lest I get too divergent [I know I'm divergent, just trying to keep at least a little on course], in that Eileen's being a contemporary of Riddle places the age difference between Voldy and Severus as distinctly that of father-son. I think we will find out in book 7 that Snape has some "father issues" and that part of the magnetism of Voldy for Snape [whether Toril be right and he has never stopped succumbing to that pull, and thus continued to be a bad guy, or Red Hen be right that he never was a bad guy at all and it was all simply part of DD's plan to draw Voldy out ... at least that is how some of RH's comments in the recent Who Killed Albus Dumbledore seemed to read to me ... and thus he has always resisted that magnetism] ... these father issues would be right up the alley of Voldy, who is obsessed in a love-hate relationship with his own parentage.So, again, on both these counts, I think there is a validity in both perspectives: seeing Snape's valid and concrete positive role in the fight against voldy, but also not "flattening" his character in light of that. And I think the possible ambivalence lends a real-world breadth to the works that is part of what makes them so great as literature.But then, "I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron." (HBP 197) Methodological Consideration: Just wanted to add a note here concerning the way I cite stuff above. My aim is not to "proof-text." In considerations like the above I'm mainly offering passages that I think contribute concretely to discernable tenets in JKR's writing and constructing of her world (ie the "Potterverse"), characters and narrative events (which seems to me to be a main question in the difference of responses to the canon-character of Snape, such as between Pat and Toril's responses ... the question of "what exactly is the nature and effect of this thing we call 'Professor Snape? ... taking into consideration that he has several inter-related goals to fulfill: the direct war on Voldemort, but also the education, including the formation, of youth who will go on to engage themselves in that war, either effectively or poorly ... and symbolically in what that fictional war literarily represents, i.e. the war against evil in the real lives of we the readers." ... and the questions of "how well does he do each of these tasks and how do the tasks impact each other?"I am also not a detective writer ... to be honest, I am nowhere near clever enough. However, I also don't prize clever detective work in isolation of other "what does the work mean on a moral/foundational level" considerations ... but I also don't think such detective work meaningless or "trivial ... quaintly and pleasantly trivial, but trivial at best, none-the-less." I think it is integral to symbolist literature (and Granger does much better job of expounding the nature and wonder of symbolist lit in The Hidden Key ... than I ever could) that the "deeper meanings" play out in the concrete material details of the plot (which is, I would argue, a very "Incarnational" with a capital eye nature in great literature). And I think there is real virtue in the kind of careful detective work and attention to detail some have and practice on the works (I say "real" in contra-distinction to what I would call a concept of "mechanical" virtue, as in "yeah ... you serve a purpose, but simply a mechanical one in digging up raw material for the people who can analysze the 'deeper meaning' etc").On the other hand, I think some of the theories get kind of extravagant ... which is what I was getting at in comments above about the level of concrete "scripting" that it seems to me would be necessary on the part of Dumbledore to make them plausible(which I believe you, Pat, mentioned recently over on the HogPro blog in comment concerning some theories that would simply require a very heavy level of "manipulation" on the part of Dumbledore)I think the plot elements and possibilities uncovered by the detective work have to have some congruity with "meanings" that take into account the psychological realism and real breadth of character that are part of JKR's genius and part of the meaning of the works(meaning characters in the plural ... with Harry not being the only character development we ever see ... via the changes in the observations of his limited omniscient narratorial input) ... Tolkien notoriously distrusted "drama" as a genre in general and had beefs with Shakespeare in particular ... but JKR is not JRRT - and she is a noted fan of Shakespeare. On the one end I think not giving the detective work not only its value for predicting plot elements, but moreover its dignity as a legit part of the broader literary enterprise would be to get into what Tolkien rightly criticized as "allegory" (and slight the full literary value of good detective writing done by greats such as GK Chesterton and, as mentioned by JKR herself, Dorothy Sayers). By the same token, at the other end of the spectrum, to limit the consideration of the works to only the detective work on plot prediction etc would be to limit the value of the works to the level of mere "cipher" literature (I'm drawing those definitions in part from Granger's very thorough and good exposition of symbolist literature via the categories of Eastern Orthodox Iconography in The Hidden Key to Harry Potter ... an Excellent example of a work [which I will not refer to as "literature"] that is "mere cipher" in nature is Dan Brown's controversial "novel," as evidenced, for me, in the fact that, having recently read it, I must say that I have encountered better characterization and dialogue in some first-person-shooter video games).Anyway, that is, in any event, my take on it.