fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2329 ]

[ SECRET POST #2329 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2329 ⌋

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Well, I'm not sure about the value of human life thing.

In PoA Snape still thought Sirius was the traitor who sold out Lily. In the Shack scene, he was clearly in no rational state of mind and he really believed Lupin was a traitor, too. So naturally, he thought they deserved the kiss.

In DH, on the other hand, he tried to save Lupin because he now knew he was on the same side. So it's not really a change in moral thinking but in the amount of information Snape has (I think Snape did grow morally, but not so much between book 3 and 7).

The Burbage episodes (and possibly the unexplained Emmeline Vance episode) shows that Snape was OK with sacrificing a human life for the greater good (him remaining a double agent)- like Dumbledore and unlike Harry.

There's a big difference between being "OK with sacrificing a human life for the greater good" and recognizing it as a necessity.

No, there isn't. Snape doesn't know the end result but he believes in Dumbledore's "greater good" plan and is "OK with" regarding sacrificing people to it "as a necessity." It's not really a "needs of the many" type of decision because the needs of the many are not fulfilled until much later in the story and it's impossible for Snape to predict whether all the "necessities" will ever by worth it. The "end justifies the means" approach is never a necessity, but it's the one Snape and Dumbledore choose.

The fact that JKR constructs the plot in a way that allows Harry to never "be OK" with sacrificing random people and for his foolish bravado to nonetheless still work in favor of the greater good is another thing.

Perhaps we have different definitions of "OK with." Because I see "OK with" as "has no problem with; letting people die is just fine and dandy because look what we'll probably get out of it!"

It conjures up an image of "I enthusiastically approve!" to which, again, I think is wildly different from "I hate this, but it's the only way (that I can see) to help the greater good."

Whether or not the ends actually or ever justify the means is irrelevant. Clearly, they thought they did (or would, because you're right they can't predict the future), and maybe that's a position you disagree with, and that's OK. But it doesn't mean the decisions they made didn't weigh on them.*

*Yes, I realize speaking about them as if they are real can sound kind of crazy, but it's the easiest way to talk about it, and part of the beauty of fiction is it's ability to exploration of deeper discussions more accessible.

Yes, you're right, the stupid "be OK with" phrase was misused on my part. I used it as "accept as necessity" rather than "enthusiastically approve," which is why I didn't really see the distinction that you mentioned.

I do think that the extent to which the decisions in favor of the greater good weighed on Snape is still subject to speculation.

That's fair. Such is the fun of varying interpretations and our own personal coffee filters of experience and thoughts.

Sorry to barge into a comm I'm not a member of - and late to the party at that! - but a friend of mine pointed me to this thread because she knew I'd find the Snape-talk interesting.

I do think that the extent to which the decisions in favor of the greater good weighed on Snape is still subject to speculation.

I love fic that pokes at all the possibilities on the moral spectrum, especially during Snape's last year, but in The Prince's Tale, when Dumbledore says (rather slightingly), "How many men and women have you watched die, Severus?" I think JKR means us to catch the change of heart implied by the response, "Lately, only those whom I could not save."

Open to interpretation, of course, but I think it's evidence that Snape would have prevented those deaths if he could. The whole point of his remark is to admit the contrast between his prior attitude and how he feels now. It doesn't soften his personality or absolve him in any way, but in that moment he wrong-foots Dumbledore, who's just made these deaths sound like part of a game. Snape may still be petty and angry, driven by revenge and remorse, but he's no longer so self-centered about it. After so much loss and struggle - perhaps especially after watching Charity Burgage die - he's learned to value human life. It just took him 37 years to get there. And he dies before we find out whether that change of heart would have lasted.

Welcome! And I agree with pretty much everything you've said. Something else that I think is worth noting is that in Deathly Hallows, where torture has become the punishment du jour from the Carrows, what's Snape doing? Sending kids into the forest with Hagrid. Some kid I don't remember commented on the joke being on Snape with that one, because HAGRID, but I have a feeling Snape knew exactly what he was doing.

Thanks for the welcome! :)

Considering the gravity of the crime, the punishment Snape assigns the would-be sword-snatchers is suspiciously superficial (heh - say that five times fast), and it plants a clue directly under the reader's nose. Presumably Snape couldn't always shield the students - not to mention he's got plenty of other problems on his plate - but he's also rather passive about allowing the DAs to wreak what little havoc they can. The risk he takes in sending Neville, Ginny, and Luna off with Hagrid is that one of them (not Hagrid) might start to wonder about this weird leniency and watch for other signs that the headmaster's not quite what he seems.

Actually, the fact that Snape knows who the members of the Order are and yet leaves McGonagall and Flitwick unharmed is another big honkin' clue for the reader that the characters fail to take into account. Neither of these clues necessarily has any bearing on Snape's opinion of the horrible things he does or is forced to condone, but I do enjoy stories that examine his private reasons and his coping mechanisms during that final year.

Sorry! I can go on for paragraphs about this character if I don't watch myself, so I'd better stop here.

"leaves McGonagall and Flitwick unharmed is another big honkin' clue for the reader"

It should also be a big honkin' clue for McGonagall. It really boggles my mind what the woman was thinking - all throughout DH (sending kids into the Forest is her trademark) and at the end of HBP, too. She started the books as Dumbledore's right hand and Snape's friendly rival and, well. I like DH fics that fix this because it needs it.

Yes, exactly. I think JKR skims over this because she needs to draw our attention away from the fact that none of the Order members bothers to ask, "Hey, why hasn't Snape smashed our organization to pieces? Or turned McGonagall over to Voldemort?" Minerva was Dumbledore's deputy, she'd known him for longer than Snape had been alive, she must have put up with years of being party to his schemes, and it never once occurred to her that Snape was acting on Dumbledore's orders? She's not stupid, so that big a lapse always requires a bit of suspended disbelief. Or, as you say, a fix-it fic.

Hi and thanks for the quote - it does reflect a change of heart. In the exchange, Snape also comes across as morally better than Dumbledore who argues that watching people die is what they do in this job and Snape rejects it with But of course we try to save them first. Saving innocents also seems to have been Snape's personal initiative rather than something Dumbledore told him to do, which is nice to see. It's a pity that they don't pursue this further. The length of the period "lately" refers to is unknown and tantalizing to consider.

Instead, Snape reverts to the "All for Lily" argument but just the fact that he's eventually willing to go along with the plan of sacrificing Harry proves that he's gotten to a point where he acknowledges the existence of other human beings whom this might help. (It also shows that Snape really bought into Dumbledore's plan and that he's perfectly willing to follow him to the point of giving up his original "meaning of life" of protecting Harry. Snape lays all his damaged cards on the table with Dumbledore.)

So yes, Snape did change his outlook on "watching people die"- but as you suggested, it probably wasn't until the last year of his life and I also think it must've been after the Burbage episode.

About that - I believe that the fact that in his opening scene, Snape watches Charity killed by Nagini and in his closing scene, he is killed by Nagini is no coincidence. It's JKR being ironic and also punishing* Snape for taking the reasonable spy approach in the situation rather than pulling "a Harry" and trying to help Charity. So not much charity on Snape's part yet at that point, which didn't bode well for him.

*I don't mean "punish" in the sense that I think JKR hates Snape. I think she loves Snape, why else would she write him as the best character in the books? What I mean is that it makes sense for Snape to die at then end, especially in the context of a kids' book - his hands are just too dirty. Although it does elevate him into a misunderstood martyr status in the eyes of some people, which does the character a disservice imho.

Argh, how stupid that I typo'd Charity Burbage's name.

The Prince's Tale is a whirlwind of snippets, all witnessed in external snatches (a concept I still find baffling, since memories ought to give you an insider's view), and since they're meant to motivate Harry, we can only infer what Snape would have thought of anything by that point. But I'm sure death was much on his mind. It's not openly addressed in their discussions, but the subtext is that Snape signs his death warrant by agreeing to kill Dumbledore, even if he didn't have the Unbreakable Vow hanging over him. So he's staring mortality in the face; I imagine the nearness of death and his time back in the Dark Lord's fold would give him a revulsion against the pervasive contempt for human life. After all, Snape is no longer the ambitious, unsocialized, selfish youth who took the Mark. He's had years of living with himself and his grief, and he's old enough now to find the deaths of innocents unjust and personally harrowing.

But yes, he's totally Dumbledore's man, even when he rails against Dumbledore's tactics. He shows very little initiative of his own. He could have refused to help carry out the plan that dooms Harry, but where would that have left him? He has no scheme to put in its place, and no one would believe him over Dumbledore or rally to his cause.

The Lily reveal was a huge disappointment to me, precisely because it diminished Snape's ambiguity and reduced his reasons for turning against the DEs to a creepy romance cliché. But "only those whom I could not save" and his cry of "And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?" allow something more complex to bleed through the cracks (and his agonized concern for his soul suggests to me he hasn't killed before).

I think Snape watching Nagini swallow Charity (she was fortunately already dead via merciful AK by then) is definitely foreshadowing, but I don't feel the poetic justice of it, so to speak. I read it as Snape being tested and unable to do a thing by virtue of his role as double agent; to me it's the most terrible scene in any of the books because of Charity's helplessness and her begging and Snape having to sit unmoved. Risking exposure at that point in the plan would have jeopardized everything, and anyway, after fulfilling his promise to kill Dumbledore, he would probably have felt there was no turning back, no matter how much horror he was forced to condone.

Hmm, I don't agree that JKR loved Snape. Fans' reactions to him took her completely off guard, and she had to be persuaded that he had achieved something of a hero's - or at least an anti-hero's - status. And it wasn't surprising that he had to die, because the morality of the series was fairly simplistic, despite fandom theories that wildly overanalyzed the books in search of hints and symbols that presumed a more sophisticated outcome. Snape would have been a bleak, messy, difficult, unassimilated sort of moral pariah to allow into the postwar world - which is why I wish she would have let him survive. He'd have represented the unresolved, the unfixable mistake, the incurable outsider. It might also have quashed the impulse to give Snape a nobility makeover. But his fate was pretty much determined by the nature of his sin (betraying his only love), long before he acquired the burden of Dumbledore's death and guilt by association with torture, murder, and child abuse.

(Also, sorry about the treatise. I get longwinded sometimes.)

No need to apologize for getting long-winded, I'm just psyched to discuss Snape again (he's been my favorite HP character since I was 11, which is, well, a long time ago). However, although I read and re-read the books all the time before DH, the final book was a disappointment to me and I had to struggle to re-read it - and that was years ago again. That shows in my false projection of the manner Snape's death over Burbage's - so sorry about that, although I guess we're all lucky it wasn't the other way round and Nagini didn't swallow Snape, too ;)

Talking about faulty memories - the Pensieve is one of those many incredibly powerful devices whose mechanism doesn't make much sense except MAGIC!. JKR created so many of these and then failed to meaningfully integrate them into her world - and then moved onto the next flashy thing. The Prince's Tale is a wetdream for every Snape fan, but it's also one of the most contrived, convenient and lazy chapters I've read. JKR traps herself in Harry's POV and for some reason, she needs to have him witness, solve and decide absolutely everything. The "some reason" is of course the fact that he's the protagonist, but I think she's taking it to a point where she does a disservice to her own story (the Order becoming passive and stupid, the McGonagall issue, Voldemort waiting around all the time, inexplicable break in culminating action with flashbacks, all so that Harry can take time and absorb it all.)

And I think it's this exclusive focus on Harry that prevents JKR from exploring any sort of aftermath of the Second War. She gives her hero what she always imagined as his happy ending and just ignores everything else - because it was never significant. All the themes and theories that the readers inserted into the books are revealed as non-existent, which makes sense in retrospect because - as you say - they were never really there (or were there as a superficial note, rather than a deep concern that would need to be addressed). JKR is great at decorating her world with quirky and interesting stuff, but she fails at world-building. So no post-war Snape for us because JKR brought the story to a complete full circle (boy without family gets family) and Snape would be an unnecessary disruptive element, "the incurable outsider" as you put it. I agree that it would be awesome to have him survive, though.

I stopped following JKR's interviews after the Dumbledore is gay, wait, you didn't know? fiasco, and it honestly doesn't concern me much what she says about Snape that's not in the books (maybe she just wants to keep the debate going - or wanted to, five years ago when this was still a thing ;) ). But I think that someone who gave Snape, a secondary character that could've stayed in the more caricature-like phase, some of the best lines in the books, fleshed-out background and believable motivation and who had her golden boy Harry assert him as brave in the wish-fulfillment fantasy called the Epilogue -- well, that someone must like Snape a lot. JKR was deliberately misleading before DH (for some reason she thought she had to keep the Snape as red herring trope going throughout every book) and basically, she said a lot of bullshit after DH. I think the books would've been a lot better if she wrote the entire septalogy before publishing it (no interaction with fan theories etc.), but that's just crazy.

Yeah, the only person Snape personally killed was Dumbledore, everything points in that direction.

And about Snape's lack of options - Like Aberforth in DH, I'm just exasperated with Dumbledore's "all for the Greater Good" motto and while this is what the books are based around and Aberforth's way is discredited by the extremely unlikely occurrences that lead to Harry winning and living in the end, I'm a sucker for "fuck your grand plan, you omniscient manipulator" kind of scenario. So I suppose I'm going to be forever disappointed with Snape's "You used me! But Lily! Ok, you're the boss" reaction.* The ability to let go of saving Lily's son for the sake of others shows growth on Snape's part, but also meek submission to one's fate that needs to be fulfilled (it's the same with Harry at the end). I'm not a fan of meek submission.

*I'm now thinking of an AU scenario where Snape takes the "fuck you" path and kidnaps Harry so he can keep him safe from the impending slaughter :D

(Ok, this comment is a monster and I think I've had my Snape fix now ;)

Edited 2013-05-21 14:37 (UTC)

Oh my gosh, I didn't expect to see you here at all. Hi and welcome! Membership is open so feel free so add your two cents whenever you want! :D

d <3

*waves* Hello, whoever you are! This is a new and tempting place, and for my own good I should stay away from it, because I've already got a long list of ways to keep myself from ever doing anything constructive. I've become a world-class champion at procrastination, and fandom gossip is distressingly addictive.

♥ for the warm welcome anyway. :)

Sorry for not sending you a card again or messages, rl has been keeping me busy busy! I meant to check back for bb after scanning through the books but things happened and, well, I lost track of time.

Like now -- I'm running late for work. Oops! Ttyl?

d <3

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[ SECRET POST #2329 ]

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