On the nature of Snape
We’re at roughly 27 hours to Harry Potter madness, which will mean, among other things, that we’ll never again have to experience Washington Post thumbsuckers about how mass cultural phenomena surrounding children’s books are bad for literacy. For the next few hours, all the Weasleys, Neville Longbottom, and Draco Malfoy are all still alive, we don’t know where the last horcrux is, and we can imagine that somehow J.K. Rowling will make the frigging house-elves not seem like a total waste of everyone’s time. And Snape is in a quiet Schrödingerian box: neither good nor bad until publication makes him so.
For my money, the great Snape debate is the most interesting thing to surround HP7, because Snape is the most interesting character. The two main camps I’ve encountered both argue about his moral stance based on the positioning of Dumbledore. Snape is either good, because Dumbledore trusted him so implicitly; or Snape is bad, because otherwise Dumbledore remains perfect and infallible. The second is a more interesting argument, I think, but I’m unconvinced. Rowling, unlike Diana Wynne Jones, an author she’s frequently compared to, has never seemed willing to wholly cast aside the notion of wise and powerful parental figures (I hope to come back to discussing DWJ in this regard).
I’m not willing to make arguments based on Rowling’s abilities at crafting narrative arcs (see “house-elves”), but it seems to me that the most notable moment in HP6 was not just Dumbledore’s death at Snape’s hands, but how it happened: Snape, in my reading, killed Dumbledore not simply because Albus was in pain, but in order to spare Draco Malfoy. Say what you will about Snape, but his loyalties to Slytherin have never seem questionable; I’ll be both surprised and disappointed with Rowling if it turns out that this wasn’t an important maneuver to keep Malfoy’s hands unbloodied, if not as part of a larger plan, then out of simple moral kindness.
One of the things that Rowling has done genuinely well in these books is make Snape genuinely nasty. He’s not just petty; his pettiness has a weirdly regressive quality, forcing him to forever lash out against his childhood tormentors by punishing the son of the chief among them. But Rowling surely understands that being a vindictive ass does not equate to being capital-E Evil, and here’s her chance to show it.
I’m a sucker for redemption narratives and three-sided plots (I rooted for Destro when I watched G.I. Joe!), so maybe I’m reading something into her book that’s not there. But there are few enough remaining spots for Rowling to demonstrate moral and narrative complexity in what’s surely going to be her life’s great work, and I’ll be shocked if she lets this pass her by.
5 Comments
I'm in agreement with you. There was a recent big argument for Bad Snape making the rounds, on the basis that he's essentially very Machiavellian. A lot of it was grounded in the themes from the first book (well, throughout, but stated most plainly in the first book) of Voldemort's love of power vs. Harry's parents', and Mom's in particular, power from love. But if you take those as the two basic camps of the whole series, I don't see how Snape can be Bad. If he is, then we're left with a world where no one can change, and the good guys are good just by virtue of the fact that they only beat up the bad guys. It's Voldemort's world, he just didn't win out (presumably; Y-K-W winning would definitely be a twist).
Link to this comment | 7:53 AM | July 20, 2007
Nice seeing those spoiler tags working. I'm sorry I don't have more time to comment on this, but I too will be very disappointed if Snape's story gets wrapped up in a simplistic way.
Link to this comment | 7:59 AM | July 20, 2007
I too fear it will get wrapped up in a simplistic way - there's been enough polyjuice potion and other sorts of doubling throughout the series that I would not at all be surprised to learn that the events at the end of book 6 were carried out by some sort of fake Snape.
Link to this comment | 11:14 AM | July 20, 2007
I have just finished HP7. Before I read it, I was thinking that if Snape were evil, he would "well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand."
Link to this comment | 5:46 PM | July 24, 2007
Having finished HP7, I'm a bit torn about Snape's death. One one hand, I'm disappointed that his death was not more heroic, nor one where there was direct reconciliation between him and Harry. However, such an ending would have been utterly out of character for him and would have been maudlin, no matter how Rowling would have crafted it. Snape cannot ever tell Harry to his face what he had done, but he letting him into his thoughts via Pensieve was even more intimate than any other means.
Snark, I'm impressed that you were spot-on with Snape's motivations; did you also have a clue regarding the effect that Lily had on Snape and how that shaped his decisions?
Link to this comment | 11:50 AM | July 27, 2007