Revision: This book review has been revised.
This is the first of a two-part review of the Borders special release, The Great Snape Debate (available in Borders and Waldenbooks stores), by Amy Berner, Orson Scott Card, and Joyce Millman. The book is divided into two sections, each arguing the opposite point of view about Snape.
I began with “The Case for Snape’s Guilt.” Composed of 5 chapters, 4 by Amy Berner, 1 by Joyce Millman, it presents the Evil Snape argument. It’s important to note that the authors did not collaborate in an effort to put together one cohesive argument. Each chapter is a separate essay, and while they are structured to form a start to finish argument, each chapter represents the individual author’s work.
As far as overall strengths go, we can start by noting some excellent Rowling quotes employed in the case against Snape, particularly in the first chapter (Berner). Rowling is quoted in 2004 as being completely baffled that anyone likes Snape (p. 2); as calling him a “deeply horrible person” in 2000 (p. 25); and, though the quote is not specifically related to Snape, as attempting to write “shades of evil” into the story.
In an interesting section, Berner argues that Evil Snape is a far more interesting storyline than Good Snape, pointing out, as some have here at SoG, that there really would be no surprise in a Good Snape turnout (pp. 25-26). For the Evil Snape argument, Berner believes that Snape would be a great villain, whereas Voldemort is in the background and almost caricature-like. Snape, then, is sort of like Voldemort’s “Saruman” – the one we expect we can rely on, because the wise old wizard trusts him, who is ultimately self-serving and evil (p. 27).
My favorite chapter of this half of the book, and easily its strongest, is Joyce Millman’s chapter on “Snape the Villain.” Drawing parallels between Snape and Milton’s Satan (p. 36), Gothic villains of the Romantic era (p. 37), and “sympathetic,” “charismatic” villains of more recently literature (p. 38) help to set a literary context and precedent for Evil Snape.
Perhaps one of the more helpful insights offered in the case against Snape is the observation that “Snape’s shame is the key to his personality” (p. 41). While Harry, Snape, and Voldemort all had lousy upbringings, Millman argues that comparing Harry and Voldemort is not helpful, since Voldemort seems almost genetically programmed toward evil, whereas Snape is presented differently and as a much more authentic counterpart to Harry. There are weaknesses to this argument, but the basic insight – that we have in Snape a very clear example of someone who made bad choices as a result of a difficult life – is helpful to the discussion.
Despite its strengths, there are a few glaring weaknesses in the Guilty Snape half of the book. Though Rowling’s attempt at “shades of evil” is adequately covered later on, Berner notes in the first chapter that “those who follow Voldemort are evil, and those who fight against him are good” (p. 3). This kind of simplistic definition of evil doesn’t even make it through the rest of her own chapter. Thankfully she remedies the problem later in what is her best argument (that Snape fits well as another “shade of evil”), but one wonders why the overly-simplistic definition of evil is used to introduced the argument against Snape.
By far the book’s weakest section is its dependence on what might be the worst reading of Dumbledore I’ve yet to come across (Berner, pp. 4-10). To be blunt, Berner sounds a whole lot like the Ministry of Magic in Order, describing Dumbledore as an inept fool who believes absurd stories, “cries wolf,” and regularly makes gigantic errors in judgment. He is portrayed as power-hungry, creating a sense of awe about himself for his students because he can’t get respect from the rest of the Wizarding World, which is rightly skeptical of him. Berner even employs a simplistic readings of the text in the argument against Dumbledore, charing him with fault in hiring Lockhart as DADA teacher, whom CoS clearly describes as being the only one who wanted the job (besides Snape, of course).
(Is my love for Dumbledore and need to crusade against anyone who thinks he’s not so great showing?)
Another weakness I find in “the case for Snape’s guilt” is Berner’s belief that an Evil Snape reading necessitates Snape’s being beyond redemption. She argues that Snape just “doesn’t have it in [him] to follow…a path” to redemption (p. 29), and that if Snape is evil, then Snape, not Voldemort, is “the foe that Harry defeats,” the one he will face at the end (p. 30). This gets into matters of opinion, of course, but I have a hard time believing Rowling would put anyone (except Voldemort himself) beyond the realm of redemption.
The Evil Snape argument ends with a description of the problems with Slytherin, and half the chapter (again by Berner) is spent explaining why Umbridge is evil and making the point that you don’t have to be in Slytherin to be evil. One wonders how this advances the argument at all.
This half of the book could have easily been improved with more analysis of Snape’s character and Rowling’s quotes and less time re-telling what happened in the books from an Evil Snape point of view. One example (among many) is the Berner’s assertion that “Snape continues to respectfully refer to Voldemort as his ‘Dark Lord’” (p. 47). While Harry raises the same point against Snape in their occlumency lessons, and it is certainly a point to consider, the subtle use of the word “his” is slightly misleading, since Snape never referred to Voldemort as “my Dark Lord,” but only “the Dark Lord.”
“The Case for Snape’s Guilt” has it strong points, but most of them aren’t points that you couldn’t already find insightfully made even in the comments section on this very website. It’s a quick read, and the strong points are worth the time, but just be prepared for some of the more frustrating aspects that I’ve documented.
In any case, you’ll get a laugh out of some of the comical end-of-chapter vignettes added by Millman.
Review of “The Case for Snape’s Innocence” to come, and an overall recommendation section will be included..
Note: Each half of the book contains a semi-pointless chapter arguing that the choice of Alan Rickman to play Snape supports the Evil or Good Snape readings. Since this carries no weight with the argument (best to stick to Rowling’s canon, I believe), I’m not even going to review those chapters as part of the assessment of the argument’s strengths and weaknesses. (They are, of course, fun to read if you’re a big Alan Rickman fan like myself.)
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{ 165 comments… read them below or add one }
Does Dumbledore refer to him as the Dark Lord? I gotta go back and read. I *cringe* everytime I see the preview for OotP and movie Dumbledore refers to him that way.
Granger’s recent book summarizes large chunks of the Snape debate in a manner that seems far more insightful, given your review. I don’t agree with him on everything, especially his notion of how and why symbols work and postmodernity’s critique of rationalism and Englightenment thinking. But his argument about an alchemical narrative and the summary of the Dumbledore/Snape arguments in the end are both quite interesting.
I saw this book and passed on it–now I’m glad I did. This sounds like a really reductionist reading of Snape, who has to be one of the most morally ambiguous and compelling characters in recent literature.
I’m fairly certain he does. I’ll have to go back and check now…
Dave, that’s just the thing…there is some really good stuff in the middle. It’s just surrounded by some really reductionist statements that are maddening. I went from hating it to loving it to thinking, “meh, I’ve already heard most of the strong arguments from seriously_black right here.”
We’ll see if the other half of the book is better.
spider, I don’t remember Dumbledore referring to Voldemort as the “Dark Lordâ€, as it seems to be a term that is primarily, though not exclusively, used by the Death Eaters. Yet Snape calling him that isn’t a strong argument for him being evil, imo. If it was, Snape wouldn’t use the term constantly in front of Harry, he’d be more cunning than that, I suppose. Plus, RAB addressed his letter “To the Dark Lordâ€, at a time where he obviously wasn’t on Voldemort’s side any more.
Appears I was mistaken on that point. Nevermind about DD calling LV the Dark Lord!
Thanks for the review – it makes me glad I chose not to buy that book! I opted for Janet Batchler’s “What will Harry Do?” (so-so) and Louis CasaBianca’s “Defogging the Future” (quite good) instead.
CasaBianca suggests that we start our analysis of Snape’s character by asking ourselves “what does Snape want; why does he want it, and what is he willing to do to get it?”
I think that the theory of Snape as the “Real Villain” or “Saruman-like” kind of falls apart on this question. No matter where his loyalties lay, Snape has not acted much like a wannabe-Dark Lord in the books. He definitely didn’t spend Voldemort’s 14 year absence gathering followers, setting byzantine plots in motion, terrorizing the Muggles, or otherwise establishing himself as a rival to Voldemort. I just don’t see any hints that Snape wants those things.
His motivation seems to come from much more personal sources: his hatred of the Marauders; his hatred of Harry; some personal sense of courage; working out his issues by bullying schoolchildren.
From memory Dumbledore always calls Voldemort “Tom” to his face. Not allowing Tom a victory on that score and reminding him that he knows him of old and how he slipped in the orphanage.
Matthew
Apparently I was stronger on the negative points than I intended to be. (I have a tendency to do that). I do think the book is worth a read, and I’ve still got the other half to go.
I found the other half slightly more convincing, but probably because I believe (or hope) in it more.
My favorite arguement against the “Snape being good is too predictable” comment is that this is not only being written for the readers, but also to influence the reactions and revelations of other characters, most importantly, Harry. While it may not be a surprise to us, it most certainly will be for Harry.
Travis wrote: the authors argue that Evil Snape is a far more interesting storyline than Good Snape, pointing out, as some have here at SoG, that there really would be no surprise in a Good Snape turnout
We have to remember that Snape’s loyalties have turned out to be a central issue in the 7-book storyline. So it’s likely that JKR decided on the answer in the early 90s when she was first constructing the plot. So she’s spent 6 books dropping hints that have to support the final outcome.
Maybe Good!Snape seemed like a more surprising plot twist from her perspective at the beginning of the tale. Or maybe she just never imaged millions of readers scouring the books for clues and sharing their theories over the internet!
At any rate, I’d still say that Good!Snape would surprise a healthy percentage of the Book 7 readers. Maybe not the ones who’ve read the books multiple times and have read up on all the theories (i.e. us!), but surprising to everyone else.
It’s funny, that the strongest argument of the anti-Snapes is in Good Snape not being a surprise. It would come as a surprise for them, wouldn’t it? For me, Evil Snape wouldn’t make the character or storyline any more interesting. Plot twists are good, but they also have to be consistent with the rest of the story.
If Snape turned out evil, I would find it less credible, that he saved Harry in Philosopher’s Stone. After all, he seemed to have a sense of moral obligation towards James, who once saved his life. Therefore I don’t see why he would have wanted Voldemort to kill James in the first place, which is what Harry accuses him of. It’s not just a plot device leading us to think about Snape in a certain way, it tells something about his character.
And Rowling already surprised us by Snape having been a Death Eater and having killed Dumbledore. She made him an extremely interesting and controversial character already, otherwise there’d be no book on the great Snape-Debate, and I expect her to surprise us in the final book. But not just by revealing Snapes true loyalties, there’s so much we don’t know about him yet. Maybe she’ll reveal some crucial information about him, that nobody could have guessed.
I can tell you now, a lot of those who aren’t part of the online fandom, flat out believe Snape to be evil. No ifs and or buts. Every single HP fan that doesn’t go online, that I know, believe the guy is as evil as they come. So I’, guessing if he is redeemed, it will come as a shock to most.
Just my cent worth.
Michael, that’s true, especially for the younger readers. I’ve discussed HP with several apprentices and probationers in my place of work, they’re all fans and they’re all for Evil!Snape. (Just my limited experience, not representative, of course.) It’s mostly the grown-ups who see the ambiguity in Snape, and books like The Great Snape Debate are written by adults who are familiar with the online discussion.
They are only a small (or maybe not so small) percentage of Rowling’s readership. She’s got many child- and teenage-fans, who don’t take part in the quite sophisticated discourse, that is going on here at SoG. Many of them will be surprised if Snape turns out good. Those who argue, that Evil!Snape would be an unexpected plot twist, somehow admit that Good!Snape would be the more consistent and credible outcome on a closer reading.
Therefore, I don’t think they’re having a strong point.
Absolutely. And believe it or not, those who I have asked are all over 18, and are all old enough to see that ambiguity. I don’t think they are for evil Snape but certainly believe it to be more plausible after book six. And that’s fine. IF Snape is good, I’m sure it will make reading book seven all that more enjoyable.
I personally think Snape, being the true Slytherien that he is, is actually playing both sides. It will help to explain everything much easier, i.e his helping the DE kill Amelia Bones.
And whilst I’m at it, as Travis has discussed in his Podcast before, it will be HOW Snape redeems himself that will be the most delicious outcome to see unfold. So again for those who think Snape IS evil, IF we see a redeemed Snape, they will also be getting a juicy HOW and WHY.
Michael wrote It will help to explain everything much easier, i.e his helping the DE kill Amelia Bones.
That was Emmeline Vance and I think, she’s still alive. It’s one of my favourite theories, don’t get me started.:)
Oh please GET STARTED! I’d LOVE to hear this! Emily Vance was introduced in book five. Jo has this thing where somethings that were big in say book one, were big in three, and those in three were big in five. Like wise for the even books. If she keeps to that, Emily (being introduced in five) could be back in seven. AND I believe books three and seven will mirror one another. What if Emily is the person who was suppose to be dead, that is actually alive?
I know that made NO sense but you got me all excited Mia. I know it will be of topic explaining it so email me or add me to your MSN. My addi is tennis_trihard@hotmail.com. I’d loveto correspond with anyone interested. I don’t often speak to older HP fans. This could be awesome.
I have to agree with Michael. The vast, vast majority of readers are not geeks mining the books and interviews for patterns and hints that would support a Snape-loyal-to-Dumbledore theory. They are taking the events at the end of HBP at face value and concluding that Snape had been pulling the wool over Dumbledore’s eyes and finally revealed his true loyalties.
Janet Batchler had written on her blog that after HBP, she was driving a carfull of her son’s tween friends, and to the last one, they believed Snape murdered Dumbledore, therefore Snape was evil. Case closed. They couldn’t even entertain the idea the there could be more involved than a superficial reading of the events on the tower. She has also said, and I agree with her, that Rowling is going for a major literary twist with the story, and the revelation that Snape has been good all along will be–for most readers–a stunning twist along the lines of “Luke, I am your father” from Darth Vader.
She predicts that most readers will not see that coming, and I agree. Even among the geeks like us who frequent HP discussion boards, there’s no consensus that Snape has been loyal to Dumbledore although the majority of HP geeks (about 2/3 in one poll on Leaky IIRC) believe that Snape has been loyal to Dumbledore all along and remains so, despite events at the end of HBP.
It’s difficult for fans like us to know the opinions of the HP readership at large, but I think it’s a solid assumption that a majority of them finished reading HBP with the same conclusions as Janet’s son and his friends: Snape cast an Avada Kedavra at Dumbledore and then fled with Draco; ergo, Snape is evil and betrayed Dumbledore. And that, I believe, is exactly what Rowling wanted her readers to believe in order to set them up for a major twist in book seven. After all, Rowling said, “So much of what happens in book six relates to book seven that I feel almost as though they are two halves of the same novel.†There is something “unfinished†about book six because unlike the first five books in which Dumbledore gave an explanation of what really happened, we were left at the end of HBP stunned and there was no wise old sage explaining events to us. Methinks Dumbledore’s explanation of what happened in book six is going to come (in the form of memories, a letter, whatever) in book seven.
Martin, don’t want to derail this thread, but I owe you an explanation about Emmeline Vance: I think it’s Amelia Bones’ death that is really covered, Emmeline’s is merely hinted at. It becomes most obvious in the HBP-chapter “The Other Ministerâ€. They discuss the circumstances of Amelia’s death in detail, but Emmeline: “That one happened just around the corner.†That’s about all the information we get.
It also is Amelia’s death, not Emmeline’s, that’s confirmed by Dumbledore. I fear, poor Amelia had to die in order to make Emmeline’s death more credible.
Back to topic: I don’t see Snape as a satanic figure or a charismatic villain. That description would much more apply to Voldemort who, in his youth, was good-looking and charming. Snape is portrayed as an unpleasant, unattractive and “deeply horrible†character, in Joanne’s words. I believe she never meant him to be attractive in any way.
Sorry Michael for getting your name wrong.
Mia,
She must be really puzzled, then, about the never ceasing fascination he holds for her more mature fans.
I go back to my original suggestion of Snape as an anti-hero: having none of the external or internal attributes associated with the hero, but forced, through some combination of circumstance, character and destiny, to unwillingly, resentfully and bitterly do the right thing at considerable personal sacrifice.
Michael and Felicity raise and important point. As we take Harry Potter discussion to brand new levels of Geekdom on sites like this one, there are countless readers who don’t go near sites like this, and I’d agree (as I argued in another thread some weeks ago) that the majority of those believe in Evil Snape.
I’m revising this book review tonight. I have to correct some mistakes and careless word choices.
Michael,
I think you’re right about books 6 and 7 really being one large narrative. The absence of Dumbledore’s end-of-book summary always comes as a revelation to Harry about what has really been happening, about the details that Harry has been seeking to put the full, behind-the-scenes story into full view.
We’re left without that at the end of HBP. Instead, we get a roundtable of speculations from the Weasleys, Lupin, and others — which is interesting, considering the major plot of the books as been training Harry in the fine art of speculating.
Are they right or wrong? We don’t know. But we, like Harry, are now stuck teasing out the clues to make decisions based on what we “know”.
Reyhan, yes, I think “anti-hero” describes him much better. Looking like an overgrown bat doesn’t make him Count Dracula.
It is by no means only on the internet that Good!Snape devotees are in the majority.
Borders has been running a Snape Friend or Foe campaign for months and giving anyone who orders the book a chance to request a sticker for their Snape orientation. From day one, Good!Snape has been winning hands down.
I do not think that it is only internet savvy geeks who order books from Borders.
Similarly, a colleague of mine who runs the English faculty at a comprehensive (students aged 6 to 18) and got a resoundingly Good!Snape outcome.
It’s everywhere.
Well, I’m officially confused. I’m getting different stories from different places.
Don’t be confused, Travis.
It is exactly as Rowling has wished it to be and it is not possible to know until The release date. I think I get it about 12 hours before you.
Hehe
Matthew
Oh shut up.
Hee. Oh but I’m sure a lot of adults can see Snape is good too. My aunt, not a fandom ‘geek’ told me to watch out for Good Snape well before I came to the fandom. But I was trying to say that there are large numbers of fans out there who think he’s simply bad.
I get my copy 8:30am Central Ozzie time… I’m going to head down to the bead, and stay in my car, heater blazing (as it will be winer) and read away. But that’s beside the point
Snape’s his own agent I think. And even if he does redeem himself, he’ll only have done it as he knows it will have helped him, or it may have been appealing at first to him, and then he turned GOOD for a hole five minutes to help Harry destroy Voldie.
I don’t believe Snape is good. He’s a wretched man/teacher who is taking out his unhappy past on children. However, I DO believe in redemption. Remember the song, ‘Amazing Grace’? Grace can save any wretch. Snape is not beyond redemption. Voldemort has already sold his soul by breaking it up. HE is beyond redemption. Perhaps JKR will be expressing her beliefs and her faith in Book 7 by redeeming Snape. I hope so.
Likewise. I wonder what MADE Voldemort the way he is. it seems unfair fro him to be that way even from a child. Where were his CHOICES?
Michael, that’s been one of the biggest complaints about Voldemort’s character.
I think we need to remember that one of Rowling’s pet peeves is people who underestimate children. As such, Tom Riddle Jr’s decisions prior to Dumbledore’s finding him (at age 11) would have value and consequences. Choices to hurt animals and other children created in him the desire for control and power that was already quite evident by age 11.
Michael,
You might as well ask why it is that some people do bad things and others do good.
Childhood abuse, victimization, neglect and so on are more likely to increase the chances of future antisocial behaviour. But the overwhelming majority of people who have bad things happen to them as chidren don’t grow up to do bad things. Most grow up to be well-functioning people. Most of those who are adversely affected get depressed or anxious, or drink or do drugs. They don’t go on to hurt others, become mass murderers or megalomaniacal would-be world dominators.
There is also the question of temperament, the neurological stuff we are born with. Some people are more reactive to negative stuff. Some are easily frustrated or angered. Some are less able to self-regulate. Some are more callous. Some are risk takers.
If you get a reactive, impulsive child interacting with an environment that doesn’t reinforce control and accomplishment but neglects and punishes arbitrarily, you get conduct disorders. Even so, most kids grow out of it. There are other combinations which can lead to bad outcomes.
Riddle grew up in an orphanage, it’s true, and probably didn’t get as much attention, love and reinforcement as he would have in a more loving setting. But that in itself doesn’t explain why he went so bad. He was probably less demonstrative than the other kids, so he probably got even less attention and love than the others. He probably grew up feeling undervalued, unappreciated, but also feeling superior to those around him because he could do things the others couldnt. As his powers developed, rather than use them to help others or do things that would mark him out to be special and get more attention and gratitude and respect, he chose to keep his powers secret, and dominate and intimidate others secretly. Sounds to me like he never wanted to be loved. Just feared and respected, and ultimately, worshipped.
If we were going all psychological, we’d say he probably suffers from a Narcissistic Personality Disorder – egocentric, having a strong sense of entitlement and superiority, and reacting with rage to any perceived challenges to his sense of superiority.
It’s a choice we all have to make. How are we going to relate to others in the world? He’s not the first to choose to relate from a position of superiority, contempt and ruthless egocentricity. He just has the capacity to do more damage than most.
Yes but even as an infant, he was ’strang’. He grew up in an Orphanage, a place Harry could not find a lot of fault with, other than the fact that it was gloomy. Otherwise the children were fed, clothes and looked after well. The people working there seemed like nice, respectable people who would not do wrong buy their kids… so why even as an infant, was he ’strange’. There are one million think Jo needs to answer in seven, and I doubt this is even going to be one of them.
That was ‘Strange’ by the way.
His “strangeness” as an infant was probably due to the fact that he was not very emotionally expressive, not very reactive to either negative events or positive events, not very responsive to people, more interested in objects, not very cuddly or maybe even rejecting being held or cuddled. As he grew older, he probably showed no empathy or concern to others’ distress. May have laughed to see others hurt. And hurt them himself. Starting with animals.
All these are traits that non-wizarding babies exhibit too. The fact that he is a wizard just increases how much damage he can do.
There is a lot of the “nurture” side of the debate in play here. If you’ve listened the PubCast on the Psychology of Voldemort – Tricia’s comments on “mirroring,” and the difference between Harry’s and Tom Riddle Jr’s first year of life are insightful.
And we do have a couple of psych PhD’s around this site who might have some really helpful things to say here…
How about an MA psych who works with violent offenders?
That works, too.
This is interesting. I had a little difficulty in understanding the PubCast on Voldemort’s psychology acoustically, but I’ve read the Mugglenet editorial on malignant narcissism and found it very informative. The symptoms described really seem to apply to Voldemort. Unlike Harry, he never mirrored himself in the loving glance of his mother. And even though Harry has no conscious memory of his parents, he experienced their love and acceptance in his early childhood.
What seems typical of Riddle is the creation of a grandiose self in compensation to his own sense of deficiency. He often refers to Lord Voldemort in the third person, so I wonder if he completely identifies with him.
I’d very much like to read a comment by a psychologist on this.
Seriously_Black—
I don’t know where you’re getting your information about the Snape pro or con bumper stickers. I searched the Borders website and found no information at all, so I sent an email to the Borders Info Desk about an hour ago asking for the percentage of Deathly Hallows buyers who were selecting “Trust Snape†bumper stickers. I got the following response a few minutes ago:
Dear Maureen,
Thank you for contacting Borders with your questions.
Unfortunately, the stickers are given out by the individual stores. The stores do not currently keep track of which customers have chosen which sticker. You may wish to contact your local store to see if they have any additional information in regards to the percentage of customers choosing one sticker over the other. You may obtain the contact information for the Borders stores in your area by going to the Store Locator link at http://www.Bordersstores.com. Or, you may click on the URL below to go immediately to the Store Locator page:
http://www.bordersstores.com/locator/locator.jsp?tt=gn
Alternatively, you may call our Store Locator at 1-888-81-BOOKS.
I hope that this information is helpful. If you should have any other questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Taylor
Borders Customer Care
http://www.bordersstores.com
***
So the customer service personnel at Borders have no idea what percentage of buyers are choosing pro-Snape versus con-Snape bumper stickers.
Second, just because Borders is offering a choice of two stickers doesn’t mean buyers are taking one. And even if that information were available (percentage of buyers taking a sticker and percentage of bumper stickers chosen within that group), there is no way to know if the chosen sticker reflects the opinions of all the intended readers for that purchase or what. Since the purchaser is shelling out $21 for the book months before the release date, the purchaser is likely to be an adult and possibly buying the book for multiple readers of unknown ages; we couldn’t know if the bumper sticker choice reflected the opinion of one or more adult readers or of a minor in the household or of the older of two or more minors in the household, etc.
I do believe Janet is correct in surmising that younger readers (Rowling’s target readership) are far more likely to have taken the events on the Astronomy Tower at face value than older, more experienced readers, who would be more sensitive to nuances in the text.
So as interesting as it would be to know what percentage of DH buyers pre-ordering from Borders are choosing which bumper sticker, that information could not be projected to describe the opinions of the total population of people who have completed books 1-6 and intend to read DH.
Ohhh S_B,
Burn…
Matthew
And nifty research Felicity!
Matthew
Felicity, I would not expect the customer service department at Borders to either know or provide useful information – and I agree that in any case it would not necessarily represent whole of the readership of the Harry Potter series. I did not suggest that it did – merely that it was not exclusively internet geeks.
FWIW, while I can’t vouch for the veracity of third-hand information, I believe that the source of the information I heard was not related to any count of the number of stickers given out in stores, but related to the volume and frequency of re-orders for the two batches of stickers.
That aside, that was not the only point I made, nor the most significant. I referred (or attempted to – my sentence was incomplete) to a poll conducted among students of a comprehensive school, in which, of the students who had read the book (HBP), almost two thirds were inclined toward a Good!Snape reading. Again, not internet geeks (although there may be a few among them) and not your “older, more experienced readers, who would be more sensitive to nuances” either.
I do not suggest that either of the things I referred to is conclusive proof of anything – nor representative of any particular total population. However I see little basis for the self-congratulatory claims here and elsewhere, that it is only some elite “in-the-know” cognoscenti that has been able to “catch on” to the possible Good!Snape implications of the story line.
What’s particularly odd about this form of elitism is that we are beaten over the head with Good!Snape outcomes all the way through the series until book 6, as I’ve pointed out previously. It’s hardly subtle and nuanced, as you contend. On the contrary.
I hardly think it’s “self-congratulatory” or arrogant to point out that there is a mass of Harry Potter readers, many of whom are not well-versed in literature, and then the geeks like us. It’s not to insult one group and swell our own pride that this distinction is made. It’s just a matter of fact, and in some ways, self-deprecating (we’re GEEKS).
In any event, all there is to Snape’s character is “subtle and nuanced.” That’s why we’re still arguing over this, and why I’ve temporarily pulled my horse out of the race to sit back and consider Snape some more.
Hey S_B,
You can’t distantiate yourself from the source of your information by calling it “third hand” once you find out it may be wrong. It’s not cricket.
For what it’s worth, I believe JKR shares your dismay at how vehemently we elitist cognoscenti (I love the sound of that word!) hang on to our Good Snape view. She has killed our beloved Headmaster, and put the smoking gun in the hands of old greasy hair and dingy underwear Snape, and still we proclaim him the anti-hero of the millenium and write volumes about his story arc. What does an author have to do to make us believe the Potions Master is a bad ‘un, just so she can astound us at the end by showing he fought valiantly on the side of the angels?
I’m wondering if Rowling’s not “dismayed” primarily because there are so many Good Snape advocates when she doesn’t want there to be. I mean, in one interview, she tried to answer a question about Snape, and it just degenerated into an incredulous, “Why do you love Snape?” She was shocked when one person noted a redemptive pattern to Snape.
But then I keep coming back ’round to Rowling’s being a great writer and surprising us every time we think we’ve got it figured out.
That was my point, Travis. She doesn’t want us to guess. She thought that we’d give up on our Good Snape view when he AK’d Dumbledore. She can have no idea of how many hours we elitist cognoscenti – I so much prefer that term to geeks, don’t you? – spend obsessing about these things.
But I agree with you that she has it in her power to surprise us still. I’m expecting four major plot twists myself.
“Geeks” is shorter
You’ve got to think that when she planned this all out back in the 90s, she had no idea that it would have created this kind of following.
In the flurry of activity following Felicity’s detective work, I almost lost track of a stunning piece of information: how does Matthew get the book 12 hours before Travis? Matthew, are you in Australia too, as well as Michael? I’d thought Australia would be 12 hours behind but they’re ahead !!!
That is totally depressing to those of us who live in EST-US. Anybody from Wellington, NZ? How about the Marshall Islands? Even worse.
I have to remember not to go this site after 11 am on the 20th. Not that any of us would post spoilers. Would we?
Mind you, the Hawaiian or Samoan cognoscenti get the worst of it: they’ll be the last to know.
The answer to the question which has confounded mankind since the beginning: Cain or Abel? Uther Pendragon or King David? Bad Snape or Good Snape?
Reyhan, cricket or not, the information came to me from a source I regard as reliable and I believe it. However I do not personally work a Borders nor at the printers that produce the stickers for them, nor the warehouse that manages their distribution – and neither (as I understand it) does the source. While I did not make such a claim, I think it’s reasonable to be forthright about that.
I would have thought it would be “not cricket” to fail to acknowledge the context, rather than “not cricket” to acknowledge it. But then I also acknowledge that you are entitled to take whatever view you please on the matter.
I should add, Reyhan, that I have *not* “found out that it may be wrong” as you put it. As far as I can see, Felicity’s information has no bearing either way on the information on which I based my original remark.
Moreover, since Borders have their entire pre-publicity for Deathly Hallows invested in ramping up the mystique surrounding Snape’s loyalties, I would hardly ecpect their customer service department to be found giving out information to suggest that it is anything other than hanging delicately in the balance. I’m only surprised that others here seemed to expect they would – and to conclude that if they didn’t, it must settle the matter.
On the contrary, I do not think anyone would expect their customer service phone support staff to either know or, if they knew, to openly divulge such information to a cold caller. But, as always, YMMV.
Pax vobiscum, Magister S_B. Absit invidia.
Well, maybe a little invidia.
Ttravis, there is a great deal to Snape’s character that is not at all “subtle and nuanced”. He is in fact a rather boldly brushed character that is unmistakeably heroic (he saves the day on more than one occasion) and unmistakeably nasty.
Anyone would have to be reading the books with their eyes closed not to notice the contradiction. Moreover the Good!Snape theme is pounded out, reinforced book by book and explained patiently by Dumbledore – right up until the closing chapters of 6.
The idea that you have to have an internet connection and a lot of life experience to figure out that Good!Snape is a possibility is what strikes me as bunk (and I mean that in the nicest possible way).
Yes S_B,
I’m in Australia too.
I know exactly what you mean by not looking at this site around the date of Deathly Hallow’s release. I don’t want any chance of any little bit of the story be revealed before I read it.
I like to read each word and savor a book. The skimmers can fly through a book and get the general gist but I cannot do that. It mught take me 5-6 days to get through it. I wount look at any HP sites in that time but I’ll be disappointed to miss any discussion.
Oh, the humanity!
Matthew
Well, four our of four people I’ve asked between 14 and 17 in the Northern German Lowlands believed Snape is evil because he killed Albus Dumbledore.
Rowling didn’t poll when she started writing the books 15 or so years ago, like Travis pointed out. So I don’t think the percentage of readers who think Snape is good or evil is a valid argument either way.
I go straight to the last page, to figure out what happened. Then I skim backwards to get the skeleton of the plot, skipping the dialogue for the most part. Once I’ve identified the “meaty” bits, I devour them. Some time later, I may read the whole thing. I confess that the whole sub-plot of Ron’s Quidditch career is still pretty vague for me. I don’t fault the moviemakers for excising it from the next movie. It’s a rare book that I read front to back, every single page, every single line, first time.
I don’t want to miss the discussion either. But that comes after. The main thing is the story.
I can’t post a comment without making mistakes, I wrote our instead of out in the last one and used “think†twice in the same sentence. Maybe I should think twice before I submit a comment. This is so embarrassing!
Reyhan, I will have a hard time, not to read the last page first when book seven comes out. I feel like I’m 8 years old, I get so excited!
S_B, the Good!Snape pattern is reinforced by Dumbledore throughout the books but Evil!Snape is reinforced by Harry. Perhaps those readers who have grown up with Harry, and who identify with him, simply believe that Dumbledore was wrong and Harry was right all along.
The weakness in the Evil!Snape argument lies in that it necessitates Foolish!Dumbledore. So probably it isn’t Berner’s failing to make that point, it’s the weakest spot in the case against Snape.
Mia, I’m happy to agree that the percentage of readers who think Snape is good or evil is not a valid argument – but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read Good!Snape advocates (here and elsewhere) stating or at least implying otherwise.
Notwithstanding that, I shall endeavor to take it as a compliment that you regard me as aligned with the young, who can’t help but view Snape as evil because they identify so strongly with Harry. Perhaps the rest of you are identifying too strongly with Dumbledore or even Snape.
Nevertheles I’m afraid that Foolish!Dumbledore is prety much a foregone conclusion, whether Snape proves to be evil or not. Unfortunately, he has allowed a recidivistic sadist (confirmed as such by Rowling herself, whether he’s an active Voldemort henchman or not) to abuse Hogwarts students for more than a decade. A pretty dubious judgement call even if the guy is useful in the fight against Voldysocksâ„¢.
Voldysocks is, of course, that quaint storytelling hybrid which neatly combines Goldilocks with mouldy socks, producing a character of charisma, allure and intrigue, who is nevertheless uniformly foul and repugnant. ;P
Chortle, chortle.
S_B, you’re killing me… Now we’ve got one recidivistic sadist with greasy hair, one malignant narcissist with mouldy socks, and Albus Dumbledore is played by Michael Gambon, and as if that isn’t bad enough…
Where do I get these Trust Snape bumper-stickers?
Well, I had something to say many posts ago, but the conversation has moved on, and my posts never showed up. Guess it doesn’t really matter–can’t quite remember what it was anyway.
I was hoping, speaking of Gambon, that he would be better this time, but now there is that clip of him telling Harry not to fight him because “you can’t win”. Huh? What’s with that–Dumbledore would never say that!
And now you have all depressed me with the realization that I’ll need to wear earplugs on the 20th when I’m at day camp, in case some idiot parent goes on line or listens to the news and decides to share–AND I’m on the west coast, so add another 3 hours to my wait.
Oh, and I’ll read straight through, then re-read more slowly the next week. The last three books I looked at the chapter titles before I started reading, but that was it. However, I was looking to see how long a chapter was in OotP, and saw the start of the chapter where Harry is shocked because Sirius is dead. I hated knowing that ahead of time, so I haven’t done that since.
Reminds me of the time I was reading a really good mystery and decided to read the last few pages. Once I knew who-dun-it, it spoiled the whole book and I haven’t done that since.
Pat
Pat, if your comments aren’t appearing, you’ve got to e-mail the blog master for several reasons. As Travis said in the Housekeeping post, he’s concerned how many comments are “disappearing” and that people may be giving up without letting him know. He needs to know the extent of the “disappearing comment” problem.
As well, your comments are always well thought-out and worth reading, and it would be a shame if you deprived the rest of us of them.
But it does make me feel a smidge less depressed to know that there are cognoscenti out there who’ll get the book after us folk on EST-US time. Wear those earplugs. Better still, take the day off.
BTW, technically, Snape is not a sadist. He’s just a very angry and bitter man who is cruel to the son of the man he hated. To be a sadist, you need to get turned on by hurting other people. And I don’t mean just mentally.
Ah well. He’s a sadist, but trustworthy.
I work at a bookstore, so maybe I get a chance to peep into the book before release. Then I’ll go answer some questions on the internet. Watch out for the Giant Squid!
No, seriously. I don‘t think Snape is a sadist. A bit recidivicious, maybe. But after all, he could have messed up Lupin’s potion and he had no reason to make excuses for Karkaroff, who would have turned him in, in cold blood. He can be helpful when needed and if I or one of my family members were ever hit by some terrible curse, I would turn to him.
Pat, I enjoy reading your comments as well, it’s a pity they didn’t show up.
Comment from Doug
seriously_black said:The idea that you have to have an internet connection and a lot of life experience to figure out that Good!Snape is a possibility is what strikes me as bunk
I don’t think you necessarily need that, but you do need at least have enough reading experience to notice JKR’s narrative misdirection. When people like Felicity or Janet Batchler say that younger readers often believe in Evil!Snape, it’s because those readers probably haven’t read broadly enough or taken enough literature courses to notice the contradictions you talk about. Certainly not all Evil!Snape proponents are in that camp, but it seems to me a good number are.
At a minimum, I think you have to read carefully enough to notice the Harry Filter. And then you start to realize that Snape has done a lot of good things, he’s just done them all when Harry wasn’t paying attention. Or when Harry was so angry at Snape that his perceptions overwhelm the reader. Certainly not every reader of the books analyses them that deeply.
Anyhow, I think Travis nails it by saying “I’m wondering if Rowling’s not “dismayed” primarily because there are so many Good Snape advocates when she doesn’t want there to be.” If JKR had decided on Snape’s loyalties after reading some opinion polls following the release of HBP, I’m sure he’d turn out evil, because I’m sure she wants to surprise as many readers as possible. But she locked herself into the Snape storyline more than a decade ago, and has now written more than 3000 pages that have to support that storyline, no matter how much misdirection she employs.
Perhaps we’re oversimplifying a bit in the way we frame the question. After all, what do people mean when they say they think Snape is “good”? Does it mean he’s really loved Harry and all the HW students all along and that we’ll find out his nastiness is nothing more than an act to fool the dark side? I seriously doubt it. If we’re simply referring to his alignment being to the side of good, of his loyalty to further DD’s cause regardless of his personal feelings on other matters, then yes, I believe that’s possible.
And maybe I’m the biggest loser of all, but I’m inclined to believe Snape is aligned with the side of good based on his exclusive love of two people — DD and Lily. It seems that if Snape had possessed a deep (though unrequited) love for Lily, it would answer a lot of questions, such as his remorse over revealing the part of the prophecy to LV which resulted in Lily’s death, and which also could have persuaded DD of the genuineness of Snape’s repentance.
So far, I can’t think of a whole in the Snape-was-in-love-with-Lily theory; anyone care to point one out?
Oops — Sorry! I meant “hole”, not “whole”. It’s getting late…
Hi Legilimency,
There is, maybe, a rather oblique shadow across your theory.
AFAIK, Rowling has not commented on it directly, but there is an exchange which would seem rather odd if it were to emerge that Snape was deeply in love with Lily. It comes from the Lydon WBUR Radio interview in October 1999. Here’s the relevant snippet:
“…one of our internet correspondents wondered if Snape is going to fall in love?
JKR: Yeah? Who on earth would want Snape in love with them, that is a very horrible idea. Erm …”
Interestingly, the idea of Snape being in love seems to take Rowling by surprise and she reacts with a “eww – urk” kind of knee-jerk. Which is not at all what I would expect if Snape being deeply in love with Lily was a central thesis of the back-story.
If the Snape-Lily thing were an essential hinge-point of the plot, Rowling would have given quite a lot of thought to the dynamic of the connection, requited or otherwise, between them – and I think she’d have had a more thoughtful and reflective (and perhaps more interesting) comment to make about what it would be like to have Snape in love with you. She’d have thought about it at some length.
When you look at the way Rowling responds to questions about things she’s thought about at some length (like the redemptive pattern question that follows, for instance), and then look at how she handles this question, I think you’d have to conclude that this one comes off as a left-of-field question, not one of the goes-to-a-central-issue kinds of questions.
As I said it’s oblique – it hinges on the way you read Rowling’s manner and choice of words. But I’m afrraid it does leave me thinking that a Snape-loves-Lily scenario is unlikely.
seriously_black, I don’t think that quote alone makes an unrequited love unlikely. Of course it’s a horrible idea, and Lily would have thought so as well. But one can’t help wondering what Snape must have felt as he was bullied and humiliated by the Marauders, and Lily consistently stood up for him and called James all the things that he really was, and Snape knew he was.
What a shocker for Snivellus when, after all that, Lily chooses James.
S_B,
Another fine example of ROwling completely side-stepping the question. “Will Snape fall in love?”
“Who’d want Snape falling in love with them.”
No answer at all from her
Matthew
S_B — Thanks for the info. However, I think, for now at least, I’m inclined to agree with Matthew — that it was really no answer at all that Rowling gave to the question. In fact, it kind of seems like she was completely dodging the question. (Answering a question with a question is always a great way of deflecting!)
And if Snape being in love with Lily really is a central (especially surprise) element to the story, all the more reason Rowling would want to deflect people from thinking about it.
One more thing: The question about Snape falling in love was posed in the future tense; the love-angle I’m referring to would be buried in the past, regarding a woman who is long-dead. So the truly relevant question would have to be, “Has Snape ever been in love?”, not whether he will fall in love in the future.
Sorry — not trying to pick apart your thoughts; these are just some things that came to mind as counterpoints.
Travis — My point exactly! Snape, who has never received any affection or kind treatment from anyone save DD has this nice, pretty redhead sticking up for him. It doesn’t seem at all a stretch to me that he would form a deep emotional attachment (obsession?) to her. In order to protect his pride, I doubt he’d have ever let on about his feelings for her to anyone except maybe DD at some point. Of course Lily would never have been romantically interested in Snape, and Snape was probably smart enough to realize this, so he kept it to himself.
If the tragedy surrounding Lily’s death is in fact the reason DD is inclined to believe Snape’s repentance is genuine, then it would also explain why he would not tell Harry the reason why he trusted Snape — I’d imagine Snape would have sworn DD to silence on that point, because he is determined to protect himself from being humiliated by Harry.
Another thing I think we must remember: Snape the boy was not necessarily as bad as Snape the man. After all, Lily thought he was worth sticking up for — my guess is the tragedy of that whole situation had a huge hand in helping Snape go from bad to worse.
And I also think you’re right about the shocking effect Lily’s choice of James would have had on Snape — how he must have been devastated! Kind of fits the picture very nicely when we think about the intensity of Snape’s hatred for Harry, doesn’t it? I mean, yes, he could just hate Harry on the grounds that Harry is the son of his former rival, but couldn’t it be even more than that? Harry would be like a living, breathing, walking, talking reminder to Snape that he so completely lost the one girl he ever loved to his most hated enemy.
I agree with Matthew and Legilimency – JKR’s answer was a great dodge. Ingenuous. Too ingenuous. Just what you’d expect if this was one of the rabbits she’ll be pulling out of the hat in DH.
Travis makes an interesting point. Lily is nice to Severus. Severus starts to believe that maybe she isn’t like everyone else. Starts liking her. Maybe more. And then she turns around and falls in love with the same arrogant sob she was putting down a year ago.
Can you imagine how Snape might have felt? The shock, the rejection, the incredulous rage?
Maybe I was wrong. He didn’t hate James and love Lily. He hated both of them. We’re back to the power of the obsessive love that Dumbledore talked about.
From that perspective, a lot of what is happening to Harry now is the fall out from what happened between James (and Sirius) and Severus and Lily so many years ago. Sins of the father stuff.
I’m thinking that in order to undo the old hurt and restore good order, Harry needs to hear the truth about what happened. He could get it from his mum, and I think that’s possible. But a more interesting way of finding out is from Aunt P. who was, after all, a bystander. She may be able to tell him more about his mother and “that awful boy”, the one who told Lily about Dementors and Azkaban.
When I review part 2 this weekend, we’ll get into the Snape-Lily connection, as Joyce Millman makes a few interesting points on the matter.
Or Harry could get the truth about Lily and Snape from…Slughorn? After all, he was their Advanced Potions professor. And didn’t JKR say that we’d find out something very important about Lily in book 6? As far as I can tell, the one big revelation about her was that she was a potions genius, which could mean that she was working somewhat closely with Snape — they’d have had at least one class together where James was maybe not present.
There has to be some connection between Snape and Lily, I think. In PoA Lupin mentioned that Snape seemed to be jealous of James, affiliating it to James’s talent in the Quidditch field. But that can’t have been the sole reason for Snape’s jealousy. Slughorn said that anyone who met Lily would have liked her. So I guess, Snape liked her as well, maybe more than that. It may also be significant that Snape never talks about Lily, only about James.
Possibly he liked, or even loved her, while she just pitied him, trying to be kind. And he couldn’t support her pity.
I don’t think it has to be a love angle. It could just be that Lily was truly a friend to the outcast Snape, and having one friend who wasn’t Death-Eater-bound, would have had a different influence on Snape.
I’m more inclined to think that Snape and Lily, both excellent at Potions, worked together as lab partners, either because Slughorn assigned them to or because they chose to. People who excell in a class don’t usually chose a partner who isn’t on their level.
For Snape to find out later that the information he passed along to Voldemort that resulted in the death of the one true friend he may have had could very possibly be the reason for Snape’s remorse and for his turning spy against Voldemort.
The thing that always stands out for me whenever Snape is verbally attacking James and Sirius, or even Lupin, is that he never once says anything against Lily. Harry makes that assumption that Snape also hated his mother and was glad to see her dead as well, but Snape never says anything like that. Nor does Lupin rush in to say that Harry has made an accurate assessment of how Snape felt towards Lily. (In HBP, Lupin is silent when Harry is giving his very skewed version of what happened on the Tower and in the past with Snape and James and Sirius–likely because he’s in shock and lost in his own grief over Dumbledore’s death.)
I’d thought about the idea of Snape being in love with Lily, but I just think it’s more likely that it was just a very close friendship. The loss of a friend can be just as devastating–especially a friend like Lily, who we are told was kind and compassionate. Imagine what that must do to Snape every time he looks at Harry–reminded of the bully he hated when he sees the resemblance between Harry and James and the friend he lost when he sees Lily’s eyes looking back at him out of Harry’s face.
And if it was friendship, then it’s not surprising that Rowling thinks it’s a horrible idea to have Snape in love with anyone–though I do agree that she didn’t answer the question that was asked, and once again, the interviewer let her off the hook and didn’t try to get the answer by rephrasing the question. She is good at that, no doubt.
Pat
I would only disagree with you on one count, Pat. If it was only friendship between Snape and Lily, then why would Snape be so protective of the past? Why not just mention that he and Lily were friends? No, I think there has to be a pride angle in there somewhere, for Snape to be hiding this like he seems to be. Unrequited love is the only thing I can think of that could produce that effect.
Oh, and I guess I do sort of question one of your other points — the idea that the loss of a friend could be as painful as the loss of a love. In some ways it could, but it other ways I think it couldn’t be — there wouldn’t be the humiliation angle, for instance, that Snape would’ve felt at Lily falling in love with his rival instead of with him. There is a longing and an ache that one feels when one is romantically drawn to another that one does not feel towards someone who is just a friend.
Well, that’s a good point about his being so protective of the past. However, Lupin didn’t mention it to Harry either and he had no reason to hide it from him. That generation seem to be a very secretive lot, though I’m not sure why.
The reason I think the friendship could be a more painful loss is that I think that would have been a real thing that Snape had, while if he were just secretly in love with Lily and she didn’t remotely return those feelings, he would realize he was losing something he never had. The loss of a friend–and that to me implies that the friendship was two-sided, and possibly his only real friend, would be so devastating. I think of Lily as the only person, other than Dumbledore, who may have treated Snape like a real human being, who cared about him, listened to him, laughed with him (that’s a stretch, I’ll admit *wink*)–and losing that kind of companionship would, I think, be very hard for someone who was such a loner in all other aspects of his life–as a child, a student/teen, and as an adult.
At any rate, there seems to have been something between them that has kept Snape, even in his most angry moments with Harry, that has kept him from ever making disparaging remarks about her.
But then finding out that Lily was in love with James, no matter what Snape’s feelings for her were, would be more than Snape could stand–what a blow that must have been.
Pat
Snape once attacked Lily verbally, in that worst memory scene. And I thought that might be the reason that made it his “worst†memory. Maybe it wasn’t the humiliation he experienced from the marauders, but the fact that he insulted the only person who defended him. Remembering an event in which you’ve been hurt by others may be painful, but remembering yourself having hurt someone who cared about you makes you really ashamed even years later.
Yes, Pat, I see the sense of what you’re saying — losing something that you really have as opposed to something that never really was. But don’t you think it would be kind of hard for Snape not to have fallen in love with Lily? I mean, if he really liked her as a person and she was pretty and they were just teenagers and she was the only girl he knew…he have to be a really, really strange boy if he was never attracted to anyone. Lily kind of seems like the only candidate, you know?
Also, for plot purposes, I think it would be more of a bombshell to find out Snape was in love with Lily than that he was just friends with her. It would be more heart-wrenching, and more of a shock for the readers to find out that a character they perceived as so incapable of love was once himself in love.
And I was thinking about what you said about Lupin not saying anything to Harry. But if Snape’s love for Lily was something he kept entirely to himself, then Lupin wouldn’t know about it anyway. So there’d be nothing to tell.
Or maybe Snape’s love for Lily was something they all knew about but don’t talk about because something happened during their last year that they don’t like to think about.
Did Harry get to see all of Snape’s worst memories in the pensieve before Snape stopped him?
“Who’d want Snape falling in love with them.â€
comment from Rowling was cited by korg20000bc, but the more obvious side-stepping interview has to be this one:
ES: Was James the only one who had romantic feelings for Lily?
JKR: No. [Pause.] She was like Ginny, she was a popular girl.
MA: Snape?
JKR: That is a theory that’s been put to me repeatedly.
ES: What about Lupin?
JKR: I can answer either one.
ES: How about both? One at a time.
JKR: I can’t answer, can I, really?
ES: Can you give us any clue, without misleading us [Emerson misspoke; he meant “without giving too much awayâ€] –?
JKR: I’ve never, to my knowledge, lied when posed a question about the books. To my knowledge. You can imagine, I’ve now been asked hundreds of questions; it’s perfectly possible at some point I misspoke or I gave a misleading answer unintentionally, or I may have answered truthfully at the time and then changed my mind in a subsequent book. That makes me cagey about answering some questions in too much detail because I have to have some leeway to get there and do it my way, but never on a major plot point.
Lupin was very fond of Lily, we’ll put it like that, but I wouldn’t want anyone to run around thinking that he competed with James for her. She was a popular girl, and that is relevant. But I think you’ve seen that already. She was a bit of a catch.
(end citation)
She says a substantial amount about Lupin’s feelings and completely sidesteps the Snape question.
I love that interview. She does seem to give a lot of information, but nothing we couldn’t have figured out on our own. She’s so good at that. I guess it comes of knowing what she wants to do with her characters and realizing what bits would ruin the story if she blurted them out in an interview.
Legilimency, I do agree with you in part about Snape loving Lily secretly. I just hesitate to go there because I’m trying to stay away from shipping, so mutual friendship seems to be a safer path. And I wasn’t clear about my comment about Lupin. I didn’t mean that I thought he knew anything about Snape and Lily, just that he never told Harry all those times they were together, in class and during tea and during Patronus lessons, that he (Lupin) had been good friends with James and Lily. He barely said that he knew them, and it always seemed to me that he would have realized that Harry would want to know things about his parents’ friend. Nothing to do with Snape. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
Back to Snape, though. In the Occlumency lesson when he tells Harry that fools who wear their hearts on their sleeves are easy prey for the Dark Lord–that always sounded a bit too personal to me. Instead of being just a warning to Harry, it sounds to me like Snape is speaking from personal experience and that his personal affection (whether friendship or love)for someone put Snape in the position of being vulnerable to Voldemort. Having that person be Lily is a nice tidy way to tie up some loose ends, IMO.
Pat
Pat, I do believe that Snape was speaking from personal experience, he’s been with Voldemort long enough to know how manipulative he is. One cannot be in Voldemort’s company and let their feelings show. Dumbledore said something similar to Harry about not letting Voldemort realize that there was a close relationship between the two of them. He’d use it as a tool to destroy Harry, just like he used his love for Sirius and his disposition to help people.
I’d certainly wish for Snape that he enjoyed a mutual friendship with Lily, because he didn’t seem to have had any other friends. But I’m not sure if Lily could have wanted this after Snape insulted her by calling her a filthy little mudblood. That’s not a way to treat a friend anyway and I don’t think he ever apologized, even if he regretted it later. If there ever was a chance for him to make friends with Lily, I’m afraid he completely spoiled it.
So I’m more inclined to believe that he liked, or even loved her, without telling her about it. It isn’t much of a stretch for me, because after all Lily was a very likeable and loveable person. If that was the case, Snape would’ve lost something he desired but never had, just like you’ve said.
Pat — Now I understand better what you were saying about Lupin. He is very tight-lipped, isn’t he? I’ve wondered about that, too. Same sort of thing with Sirius. It seems like they could both be telling Harry a lot more than they do. Sometimes I think JKR did this simply for plot purposes, but it would be far more interesting if there was a real reason behind it, like DD not telling Harry about the prophecy and Snape’s involvement in passing it to LV.
But that brings me to another question that’s been bugging me for some time — why doesn’t Harry ask a lot more questions about his parents from all these people that knew them so well? I mean, he doesn’t even ask what they did for a living! That has always seemed a bit unrealistic to me. Maybe it’s like that for plot purposes only, but that would be disappointing.
shadowquill — Thanks for posting that interview — wow! Some very intriguing dodges going on there, for sure.
Legilimency has made some really important points here. I am inclined to say that a friendship between Lily and Snape is unlikely, while an unrequited crush on Snape’s part would be very natural for a teenage boy in his situation, as well as something that could develop into an intense enough feeling of love to really mess Snape up good.
I’m also as troubled as Legilimency is about the lack of questions asked by Harry. He was certainly conditioned to not as questions by Petunia, but the fact that he hasn’t even asked what his parents did seems quite unrealistic to me.
I think it is unrealistic that he hasn’t asked any very basic questions, such as “what did my parents do for a living”, as well. It is very, very strange. The only question that he ever asks on his own (without it being the topic of the conversation) is whether it had been Voldmort, the one who gave him his scar, that had killed his parents. Very weird.
And he does seem to absolutely adore his parents, with or without any information about them. All that I can remember that Harry knows is:
His dad was an animagus.
His dad was awesome at Quidditch.
His dad was friends with the Marauders.
His dad’s wand was good for Transfiguration.
His dad hated the Dark Arts.
His dad stopped bullying people (except for Snape) during his 7th year. Lily didn’t know much about the exception.
His mom was astoundingly good at Potions.
His mom’s wand was excellent for Charms.
His mom disliked James’s bullying.
His mom stuck up for Snape at least once.
His mom was friends with Remus Lupin.
His mom is Petunia’s sister (obviously).
His mom thought James was a bully until 7th.
His mom and his dad started dating in their 7th year.
His mom and his dad defied Voldemort 3 times.
I, too, have wondered why Harry isn’t asking about his parents and why his parent’s friends are offering so little. I recall JKR saying something about more information on Lily and James, as well as Harry’s grandparents. I assume she refers to James’ parents since Lily’s are muggles. I’m not sure if she said which. I’ve never read a thing about whether any of them are alive or not. That may be pertinent to the story. If James’ parents are/were purebloods, were they like Sirius’ family? But then James’ hated the Dark Arts. Hmmm.
By the way, where’s Seriously_Black these days? I haven’t been up on my reading of this website of late, so there may be an explanation in here somewhere regarding that. I am missing those thought-provoking posts. Hope all is well with s_b!
Travis, I am not a lit major or a masters candidate, by a long shot, but I still enjoy Sword of Gryffindor more than any other HP website. You and all of the folks contributing in here are part brilliant, part aggravating, and always thought-provoking! It’s definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the HP books. Thanks to you all.
I’ll be a little sad after Book 7 comes out and all the hoopla dies down.
Do all witches and wizards work for a living?
We know that a lot of them work for the Ministry, and that they get paid – not enough, obviously, in the case of Arthur Weasley. We know that they own stores (e.g. Ollivander and Flourish and Blotts and Madam Malkin) and pubs (Madam Rosmerta, the goatloving Dumbledore brother), teach school, run buses (Stan and Ernie and the Knight Bus). And we know that without wizard gold, they wear shabby clothes (Lupin, Ron) and may go hungry (Merope?).
But Lucius Malfoy doesn’t seem to have a job, even though he doesn’t lack for gold. And it doesn’t seem that Harry would have to work for a living (assuming he survived the war). Perhaps the wizarding world is like ours: wealth is inherited and the independently wealthy don’t have to work?
Yes, I believe the wizarding world is like our world, in that some folks don’t have to work for a living. The Malfoys probably inherited their wealth.
I agree that Harry has asked very few questions so far, not just about his parents, but in general. He never asked Dumbledore about the core issues, why he obviously knew everything about the events in Godric’s Hollow, about his scar and his strange relationship with Voldemort. He never questioned Hagrid or Dumbledore about Tom Riddle, to whom the diary belonged, etc…
Perhaps there are some things he didn’t want to know about his parents. He’s idealized them and simply assumed that they were wonderful persons. When he finally found out some truth about his father, it was a painful truth. Maybe he wanted his parents to remain what they were in his imagination. This is one possible explanation I can think of, though it may not be sufficient. He should have asked how James and Lily trice defied Voldemort, for example.
I guess that Harry just isn’t a very inquisitive person and that he needed to mature before he was ready to explore his own roots and identity. (?)
I am tempted to ask: how many stories have people read in which the fact that a character doesn’t say or ask something is essential to the story? And were those stories not principally about character, and relationships?
This is not that kind of story. This is in the young adult fantasy, adventure, mystery genre.
Perhaps JKR didn’t want to reveal such information through exposition, fearing “plot dump” and the “idiot lecture”, as per the quote from Wikipedia:
“Exposition is a literary technique by which information is conveyed about events that have occurred prior to the beginning of a novel, play, movie or other work of fiction. This information can be presented through dialogue, description, news reports, flashback, or even directly through narrative.
When the presentation of exposition becomes awkward or wordy, it is sometimes referred to by the pejorative expressions plot dump and info dump. In written fiction, the term is additionally used to indicate giving information by exposition rather than revelation through action and dialogue; if such passages are well-written and intriguing, they may be described as “info-dumping” with no pejorative intent.
More realistic but still somewhat crude is the “idiot lecture”, in which a character who knows nothing is used as an excuse to give extensive backstory.
Stories which are concerned with the unearthing of a secret past rarely avoid plot dump sequences.”
Or perhaps the information has no bearing on the plot, as is the case of Harry’s grandparents who are neutral, plot-wise.
Or perhaps, the information has a great deal of bearing on the plot, and will be revealed in due course at a point where it will have the maximum dramatic effect.
I was re-reading scenes with occlumency lessons and was struck by a weird thought. It still gives me shivers.
In the little snippets of Snape’s memories, the “hook nosed man”, “cowering woman”, and crying “boy” are not identified in any way beyond very vague description. Most assume that these are memories of Snape’s childhood, but could the hook nosed man actually be Snape shouting at his wife and child?
It gives me the creeps to think about it, since I’m such an advocate of theories that oppose this thought, What if the “hook nosed man” is really Severus, not Tobias? After all, Rowling did say that a few Hogwarts professors are married, but that their identities are confidential information.
I don’t see how it would serve the plot in any way, unless Snape was revealed to be a loving father. Hmmm.
Shadowquill, don’t be thiking those thoughts, man. That one gave me shivers as well.
Snape, a father? What happened to the child? What happened to the woman?
How can Snape die a villain’s death or a hero’s death if there’s a little Snape and a Mrs. Snape to be looked after?
Do you realize how much it would complicate things?
No, no, no, no, no.
Exactly. I said it was creepy. Just a nastly little theory that popped into my brain that I felt obligated to share. Lets set it aside, since there isn’t any other evidence and it give me shivers.
I think if the father was Snape, Harry probably would have recognized him. No, no, Snape was the child… but it’s an interesting idea, Shadowquill, it never occurred to me.
Speaking of hooked nosed people and very vague description – Snape and Madam Pince are described in a similar way in HBP. And she wore a thick black veil at Dumbledore’s funeral, hiding her face. Can it be that she’s his mother and that Snape isn’t a loving father, but a loving son?
Mia, follow this link for “The Irma Pince Theory”: http://whysnape.tripod.com/hbp/pince.htm
It’s odd, but I like it!
We discussed that one at length on the Leaky Forum, and I quite like the idea. One of the things that I noticed was that Madam Pince is often mentioned doing something or other is scenes that follow Snape doing something or other–not necessarily related. It’s as though Rowling is showing a connection even though there doesn’t seem to be one.
And one of the things that came up was that when Snape decided to leave the Death Eaters, they wouldn’t have let him go quietly. After all, Regulus was killed when he made the same decision. So if Snape did get away successfully, wouldn’t the DEs go after any family that he had–like his mother? We don’t know when Pince came to Hogwarts, but she does like books–and Snape’s house is full of books.
Hmmm, it’s a fun idea to play around with, at the very least. And I actually like that one better than the idea that Snape was married and had a son–except said wife and son being killed could also have been a final reason he decided to leave the DEs and Voldemort.
It just seems that we haven’t really heard the reason he left, or we haven’t heard all of it anyway.
Pat
Rena, thank you for the link!
Pat, I also like the idea and I believe that Voldemort would go after Snape’s family when he found out his true alliances (if he is with Dumbledore). Therefore his relatives would have a very good reason to live under a false identity.
When I first read about the theory I thought it was laughable that someone, who’s real name is “Princeâ€, would call herself “Pinceâ€. It seems so glaringly obvious. But then again, maybe that’s the trick.
And why would she hide her face on Dumbledore’s funeral? She wasn’t so close to him, yet appeared like a grieving widow. It really does look as if she didn’t want to be recognized by anyone.
Surely Snape never left the Death-Eaters- as far as they were concerned. He’s still as loyal to Voldemort as ever as far as they know. He’s still in good standing with them and, as seen on the tower to, held in a kind of awe by them.
I think Spinner’s End very appropriate for Snape. I think he’s like a big spider weaving his complex plots and woe to the fly who is caught- Death Eater or anyone else.
Matthew
The idea of Madam “I am Prince” has a kind of sordid fascination to it.
I think it works, despite the fact that Snape wasn’t really in trouble with the DEs – in the time after Voldemort’s temporary setback, they were all scurrying around claiming they’d been imperiused and generally distancing themselves from Voldemort, so Snape working at Hogwarts would have been seen as cover rather than betrayal. However, if Snape has been DD’s mole for all those years, it makes sense that they would hide his only surviving relative in the safest place possible – near her son and the greatest living wizard.
No, the only real objection I have to the theory is the matter of the dingy underwear. If she was his mother, don’t you think that she would have kept a better eye on his laundry? Unless, of course, she wasn’t herself much into cleanliness, which would explain everything.
However, every new theory about hidden relationships makes me think of JKR’s statement about the “unlikely pairing at the heart of it all”.
If Madam “I am Prince” is Snape’s mum, is that the pairing we’re talking about? Not likely, it’s not such a central relationship.
Is there something about her past, perhaps, which needs explaining? What was that fight that Harry saw in the pensieve about? Was Tobias Snape just your run-of-the-mill wife abuser, or did he have something real to be upset about?
Also, while I’m on the subject of unlikely pairings, I want to say that I’ve been thinking about a Lily Evans – Severus Snape link. Not the unrequited class reject falls for the Prom Queen kind of relationship we’ve conjectured about. But the real thing.
Think about it. Snape is probably the most skilled wizard of his generation. He is intelligent, knowledgeable and powerful. He is a whiz at potions. Lily Evans is the most skilled witch of her class. She is gifted in potions. She also sees things in people that others do not. And then there is James Potter. He is all surface – class jock, good looking, vain about his appearance. He is not particularly good in school, devoting his energies to hanging out with his friends and getting into trouble.
Which one do you think she would go for, the intelligent, loving girl who can see into people?
I am thinking that she chose Severus. He was her firs choice. I’m also thinking that she didn’t throw him over for James Potter, class jock. She threw him over for something he did, which showed her a part of him that she could not accept.
I think I’ve got it.
Snape falls in love with Evans. She falls in love with him. His attraction to the Dark Arts makes him join the Death Eaters. She finds out. She is devastated, and ends the relationship. Potter, who’s also in love with her, is there to offer a shoulder to cry on. One thing leads to another, they marry, have Harry.
Aside: it’s also quite possible that Potter is the one who tells Evans about Snape’s affiliation, hoping it will turn her against him. Which it does. Which makes Potter a bit of a rat, actually, and helps explain why Snape hates Harry as much as he does.
As his first offering to Master, Snape carries to him half of a prophecy he overhears at the HOg’s Head. Voldemort actions the prophecy and Snape discovers, to his horror, that it concerned Lily Evans now Potter, whom he still loves. Overwhelmed by remorse, he goes to Dumbledore and offers to wash his dingy underwear. Dumbledore stops him from such a reckless act, but tells him he can make up for the evil which he’s helped bring about by working for the good side. Snape accepts the offer.
Oooh, I agree. It fits nicely. And as far as the Irma Pince = Eileen Prince theory, I’ve already been interested in that one and I think it works really well. She makes a brief appearance in every book, and I find her appearance in HBP the most intriguing. Couple that with Dumbledore’s offer to Draco, to hide his parents, possibly serving as a hint to us readers that Dumbledore has put people into hiding before (and possibly for very, very similar reasons), and we’ve got an interesting present/past parallel. Eileen was probably at school when Tom Riddle was, and yet we haven’t heard anything of her loylties yet. I’m betting she may have been the Slytherin black sheep, seeing as she married a muggle!
This is my first post, although I have been enjoying this site for a few months, having found it via John Granger’s HogPro blog. Travis, thank you so much for maintaining such a wonderful site – with school, work, a lovely wife, and a new baby, I don’t know how you have time to do this too, but I’m glad you do.
Reyhan, I love your posts, and they often make me laugh out loud. But I have to say that I just can’t see Lily falling for Snape. Yes, she’s an intellectual, yes, she’s good at potions too, and yes, she was probably kind to Snape, but I think that’s where it ends. Even a smart, kind, loving girl like Lily would (I assume) want a guy with some sort of personality, and Snape has none. I mean, after they were done talking about the latest potions homework, then what?! But I admit, if you’re looking for unlikely pairings, that surely is one of the most unlikely.
And if your theory is correct and James is the one who warned her, I wouldn’t think of him as a total rat, exactly. I know what you mean, that it would have been to James’ benefit, but you also would have to give James credit for making sure that a decent girl didn’t wind up casting her lot with a Death Eater. With no personality.
Thanks for letting me join in, and as others have mentioned, I miss reading S_B’s comments!
And so far as James telling Lily of Snape’s Death Eater activities, what if…oh boy. What if Snape was already working for Dumbledore as a plant among the Death Eaters long before we first thought, but he couldn’t prove anything to Lily lest he betray his position? And so, he’s forced into allowing the mistaken accusation and watching Lily run off and marry James. Ouch. Not that we have any evidence that Snape was working for Dumbledore before the prophesy crisis, but imagine if that had been the case? Snape having to preserve his role as a double agent and lose the love of his life would be really dramatic.
After all, Dumbledore refers to Snape’s turning to the good side as “returning”. Maybe it was literal. Maybe he had already been working as a spy, but one only known to Dumbledore, and once James ran off with Lily lost his temper and decided to really work for the Death Eaters.
Mrs Weasley, I understand your opinion of Snape as someone merely interested in work or studying, but I think we have not yet seen his interests beyond the classroom. His house was full of books, so I would guess he loves to read. And Lily clearly was amazing at Potions, so I would bet that she would actually enjoy talking to someone with a similar passion. People who excel in a field are often passionate about it, and I don’t doubt that Lily would, in fact, enjoy discussing school work with Snape. Of course, that is my opinion as well.
And welcome aboard, by the way!
The more the merrier!
Shadowquill, thank you for the welcome. And I absolutely agree with you that Snape and Lily probably had a lot in common. I guess I also just have a hard time seeing when a Severus-Lily romance would have fit in, time-wise. They obviously weren’t an item in their 5th year, and by 7th year she was with James (wasn’t she?). I guess they could have squeezed it in during their 6th year, but still . . . Wouldn’t Harry be horrified to find out that his mother was once in love with Snape?!
Also, it saddens me to think that Snape would treat Harry so cruelly if he once loved Harry’s mother. Okay, so he didn’t like James, but Harry is half Lily too.
Snape’s hygiene, on the other hand… that is really what appears to be the road block in my mind. Since he’s a book character, and I’m not up-close and personal with him in real life, it is easy to ignore his greasy hair and yellowed teeth. Nevertheless, his hygiene either went down hill after she lost interest in him (which is quite possible), or she really, REALLY cared for him.
That aspect of his character is what makes me think a friendship or an unrequited love on Snape’s part are the most likely scenarios.
And yet, I can’t help but recall Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera. In the novel the Phantom’s flesh literally smelt and felt like that of a corpse, and Christine was still simultaneously repulsed and attracted because of his talents and (somewhat creepy) adoration and devotion to her.
Hello and welcome Mrs. Weasley, I’m also quite new to this site.
Snape and Lily did have something in common, at least they shared an unusual talent in potions. But I can’t see Lily being attracted to Snape, she may have tried to treat him nicely, but he ticked her off by insulting her. I think it’s not unlikely that he would be so nasty to Harry even if he once liked his mother, because after all he seems to have been really nasty to her, as well.
Harry’s presence must have been a constant reminder of his guilt and as he cannot cope with it, he takes it out on the boy.
It needs a shift in perspective to see Snape and Lily Evans as lovers, certainly. It came to me yesterday, as I was driving. Put the hygiene and even the sarcasm in the background. Put his intelligence, skill and power in the foreground. Add to that his courage. Think of him putting himself between the children and the werewolf in the movie PoA.
Then try to imagine how he would be if he loved somone. Think of how he was with Narcissa, and then multiply it.
Evans would have seen all that.
Gosh, I don’t know, Reyhan – I just can’t envision it. I mean, he was actually pleasant to Narcissa, which is very un-Snape-like, but the degree to which I would have to multiply that to come up with someone that Lily could love (while overlooking the hygiene, sarcasm, etc.) is – infinity, I think! By the way, when do you think this Severus-Lily pairing could have existed?
Also, with regard to Snape putting himself between the children and the werewolf in the movie POA – I don’t know that that truly reflects the real Snape, as that was added by the director (who also gave us Michael Gambon as Dumbledore – ’nuff said). But I must say that I find it charming that you envision Snape to be capable of being loved by Lily!
You’re quite right, Mrs. W., that was in the movie, not the book. We’ve debated that point somewhere in this blog, asking the question: would JKR – who does have some say in the making of the movies – have allowed Kloves/Cuaron to show the character doing something clearly against his nature? I think the answer was, probably not.
And I must say that it’s a really low blow to bring up the casting of Gambon as Dumbledore into this – or any – discussion.
My apologies. I absolutely didn’t mean to offend.
Reyhan, I think Mrs. Weasley only wanted to point out that we cannot always rely on the portrayal of the characters in the movies. It certainly wasn’t meant as a low blow against your argument.
In my opinion, even IF Lily saw the best in Snape, she did that because she was such a kind person. And she probably would have liked him, had he been equally kind to her. But at least in the one scene where we saw the two of them together, he’s been mean and offensive to her. He was relatively pleasant to Narcissa, probably because he pitied her, but nevertheless he’s a particularly unpleasant guy in general.
I just don’t see how Lily Evans could have fallen in love with him.
I don’t think we’ve had a clear enough picture of teenaged Snape (nor teenaged Lily) to say whether Lily could have honestly loved him.
Sirius Black is not a neutral witness, and that’s who’s given us the impression of Snape as a nasty, greasy git up to his eyeballs in the Dark Arts. Yet even Harry (!) finds him a sympathetic figure in Snape’s Worst Memory. He might not have been as unlikeable as adult Snape.
All that said, I do place a pretty high probability on some version of Snape/Lily – just because it can tie up so many loose ends in one knot. But if pressed, I too think that “unrequired love” is the more likely way for JKR to write it.
er, make that “unrequited love”
I think Snape was probably a bit more pleasant in his youth and much less bitter. I believe the bitterness set in after James married Lily. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure he was just as bitingly sarcastic and rough around the edges, but I suspect that his behavior varied depending on his company. I’m sure he doesn’t behave towards Lucius Malfoy as he behaved towards James!
I know that drawing parallels to other novels is risky business, but I find myself always mentally referring back to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff was never the epitome of cheery loving goodness, but looking at who he was at the beginning of the novel and then near the end is shocking. People can change, and I suspect Snape’s internalization of his bitterness, jealousy, and anger, transformed him for the worse. We really can’t tell what he was like then. All we know of his school days was he had a prickly personality, knew lots of hexes, was bullied often, and was extremely dedicated to his studies.
Personally, I was shocked at Snape’s behavior towards Narcissa. I never would have thought a distressed person, beautiful or no, would soften him, since all evidence found elsewhere shows he has no tolerance for those who “wear their hearts on their sleeves”. I don’t find it out of character, merely a pleasant change of pace.
No need to apologize, Mrs. W. I was just pointing out that the casting of Gambon is so awful that using it as an argument is bound to win any debate, regardless of any other point made. It’s a trump card, it’s the argument to end all arguments, it’s the final word.
Doug and shadowquill, it’s true, we don’t know exactly how Snape was as a teenager. Yet, he’d already invented the Sectumsempra in his OWL-year (we saw him using it on James in the memory scene). So there must have been a lot of bitterness and anger in him when he was younger, I believe.
Yes, definitely. I’m really just contemplating the intensity of that bitterness and anger, and how obvious it would have been to a girl Snape liked and behaved nicely towards.
With or without James telling Lily of Snape’s Death Eater connections, Lily would probably become frustrated with Snape’s constant distrust of others. I can imagine both James and Snape thinking: she likes him better than me. That is why I think a friendship may be the most likely situation. James would be jealous of their friendship and suspicious that it is something more, Lily would reassure James that it isn’t, and Snape would be wishing for a more romantic relationship with her, all the while watching Lily become more and more enchanted with James.
My bet is on friendship + unrequited love.
Alright, how’s this for a completely “unlikely pairing” (don’t anyone DARE quote me on this anywhere – I’m having fun):
Irma Pince is Eileen Prince, and the unlikely pairing is Dumbledore-Prince.
Does that mean that the “heart of the matter” is the scene where Dumbledore first confronts young Snape?
“No, Severus, I am your step-father!”
Well… as long as Severus isn’t Dumbledore’s stepfather on polyjuice potion…
But I will feel cheated if Irma Pince is not Eileen Prince and if there isn’t at least some connection between Lily and Snape. I guess I’ve made up my mind about quite a few characters and pairings, perhaps I shouldn’t read book 7.
I’ve just entered in to this website and discussion. What’s all this about Snape’s hygiene anyway? He had dingy underwear as a kid. That doesn’t mean he himself was dirty. Washing clothes in certain types of water makes it dingy. Ever seen the clothes people wash in rivers?
Same for greasy hair. You can be clean all over and still have greasy hair. Genetics, not hygiene. Now the teeth, well, can’t comment on that. Bad genes once again?
Perhaps Snape’s family was extremely poor and couldn’t get all the necessities of life. Maybe they were worse off than the Weasleys. Remember how Tom Riddle’s mother, father and brother lived? Of course, they probably were dirty and disgusting. I think Snape was better than that.
All this being said, I still don’t believe Lily was in love with Snape. They may have been ‘friendly’, and Snape could have had a crush on her, even loved her, but I think she had more pity on him than romantic love. He seems to have resented her pity and thrived on it, too. A truly weird guy.
Travis, you’re a better man than I. I thought of the Dumbledore and Madam “I am Prince” Pince pairing back when I proposed the Evans/Snape relationship, but I didn’t have the parts to bring it up.
And Doug, I wasn’t thinking “Severus, I am your step-father”. But reason prevailed. Given their respective ages, the DD/Prince pairing would have been even more inappropriate than Snape’s emotional abuse of his charges.
And Pip, I compeletely agree with you that the hygiene issue has been given way too much importance. But if you go further back on this site, you’ll find a heated discussion on the moral implications of dingy underwear and greasy hair.
BTW, I just saw part 3 of The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. I don’t think OotP is facing too much competition from that quarter for the best of the most anticipated movies of summer award.
Oi. There’s too much too review on this site. I still think Snape experienced poverty as a child. Compare him to Draco Malfoy’s upbring and and decide which has more reason to be angry and defensive. Malfoy’s father is a DE because it further his self-serving beliefs. Snape is lashing out at those who kept him down-trodden. Being a DE probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
By the way, do you think JKR had a lot to say about who played each character? Alan Rickman seemed an odd choice to me at first, and it’s changed how I feel about Snape. Was that intentional? Love to know. Guess we’ll find out in July.
I’d love to know how much say she had in Alan Rickman getting the part as well, Pip! Personally, I think he plays the role exactly as I imagined, his tone and demeanor are as I pictured them. The only huge difference is the physical appearance. (For some odd reason I always pictured Snape’s hair reeeally long. And Rickman certainly wan’t given yellow fake teeth for the role!) Alan Rickman is unquestionably more attractive than the Snape of the novels, and he has his own little fangirl (well, fanwoman) following to boot!
As for the comments I made about Snape’s hygiene earlier, I’m not criticizing Snape half as much as I’m criticizing the prejudices of the world. The sad truth is, most girls don’t feel comfortable dating someone with greasy hair or poor hygiene, and I was merely adding it to possible arguements against Snape/Lily. But you’re right, greasy hair does not necessarily mean bad hygiene. I suppose most people take his yellowing teeth and greasy hair as an implication of it, but it isn’t necessarily the case.
I actually think that making Snape evil would be boring, not the other way around as he killed Dumbledore we would expect him to be evil, and that outcome would just be blahhh. Being a Slytherin “those cunning folk…” he is probably working both sides.
PS: In response to those who think younger readers are out of it, I’m only 13
But wouldn’t “working both sides†be some version of Evil!Snape? It would be just as bad as “working for Voldemortâ€, just a bit more selfish, imo.
I think working both sides is too obvious as well. We’ve seen him doing that throughout the whole series, and Harry wouldn’t be very surprised by that revelation. Even if we thought that Good-Snape is not a surprise either, at least Harry would be absolutely shocked. Seeing how Harry handles such a revelation is the juicy part of the story, not necessarily the revelation of Snape’s loyalties in itself. That’s why I think Good-Snape is most likely. Since there are people arguing for both Good and Bad Snape, and since there are many who would be unsurprised by either, the effect it has on the story (and on Harry) is what makes the revelation important. Therefore, I think Good-Snape is the most likely outcome.
Going back to unlikely pairings, how about this one?
Evans/Snape – but Petunia Evans, not Lily.
I know JKR has said that Petunia is a Muggle, not a witch nor a squib. But perhaps Petunia met Snape through Lily (perhaps he is even “that awful boyâ€). Perhaps they were an item for a while, which may explain why Petunia seems to know so much more than she lets on about the wizarding world, and why she knows Dumbledore. This could be yet one more reason that Snape would dislike Harry – besides being the son of his nemesis, he’s the nephew of his former love. This could also be another reason why Petunia has such a dislike of the wizarding world.
I don’t see it, Mrs. Weasley.
Petunia has an over riding need for antispecticly clean countertops. Snape is not that much into soap products.
Petunia is described in such terms as to make her a very unlikely object of anyone’s desire. Almost as unattractive as Madam Pince, in fact.
The only way they could have met was through Lily. But if Snape was spending time with Lily, what are the odds that he would have paid any attention to her charmless Muggle sister?
I know love is said to be blind, and perhaps Petunia had more personality when she was younger and didn’t mind as much about germs, but still.
Once again, nothing was said about Snape being unclean all over. Just his teeth and hair are mentioned. And those could be genetic problems.
Teeth, hair *and* underwear, Pip (as per Snape’s worst memory).
Filthy underwear is not generally considered a genetic problem.
Hey S_B, welcome back. We missed you sorely. Whether as a wise and insightful member of a loving family, or as a skeptical and critical member of a dysfunctional one, your absence was felt.
I hear you, Reyhan. But perhaps Petunia’s thing for cleanliness developed as a result of her break-up with Snape?
And I agree that Petunia is described as unattractive, etc. – but so is Snape. I tend to think their teen-aged selves were probably somewhat like their middle-aged selves. But perhaps both of them had more personality then. Anyway, based on what we know of them, I could see both of them holding a grudge against each other (and their “world”) well into adulthood.
I don’t really believe a word of this, by the way – just having fun thinking of “unlikely pairings”!
Hey seriously, it said dingy, not dirty. Dingy clothes can get that way with hard water. Try doing your families laundry with well water.
Pip, I don’t know what book you read, but as far as I can tell, neither the US nor the UK editions use the word “dingy” to describe Snape’s underwear.
Instead, it is described as “greying” – and for what it’s worth, I grew up in an area with hard water and our underwear was washed until it fell apart, but it *never* became grey.
But in fact, that’s beside the point. The scene in question takes place near the end of term (after exams) when all the students will have been at Hogwarts all year, so their washing will have been done using school water and school facilities. If Snape’s underwear was grey as a result of washing, then other students’ underwear would presumably be exactly the same color. I think we can assume from Lily’s comment – “I’d wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus” – that that is not the case and that the color of Snape’s underwear was directly related to his lack of personal hygiene.
Hi Reyhan,
Thanks for the welcome!
As I’ve commented elsewhere, I’ve been wrestling deadlines recently and that is likely to continue for a while. But all the same it’s good to see that enthusiastic debate is in good supply on SOG.
I’ve read speculations on Petunia/Snape before, and although they are interesting, I feel that there is a lack of even implied evidence. Just for fun, however, one tid bit of information used to support Petunia/Snape was the spiders in Harry’s cupboard under the stairs. If Petunia is so cleanly, why does she permit spiders to exist in her house? Snape is often described like a spider, twitchy and all that. It is a real stretch, and I don’t give it much credit, but I found it an amusing connection.
Well, seriously_black, I grew up in the country and we used well water to wash our clothes. It was hard water and it made our white clothes dingy and gray. Snape’s family may have been poor like mine and that’s why his clothes were graying. When bluing came along, and we could afford it, we had whiter clothes.
Snape’s family may have been poor. We’re not told that or any particular details of his family life. It’s only a thought based on my own life’s experience. And it’s a nitpicky detail, I admit.
My problem is everyone referring to Snape’s ‘hygiene’ problem in connection with his love life. JK Rowling never said he smelled or appeared unclean, did she? I think this obsession with germs and appearance is an American thing. As for his love life, I seriously doubt he had one. (excuse the pun) He’s too creepy.
Instead, it is described as “greying†– and for what it’s worth, I grew up in an area with hard water and our underwear was washed until it fell apart, but it *never* became grey.
Well, like with Snape himself, I guess it depends on whether his underpants were originally black, white or some “shade of greyâ€.
I think if he never washed his hair and clothes or brushed his teeth, he’d smell bad and Harry would have noticed that, as Snape came occasionally very close to him…
My thinking too, Mia. And according to a physician friend of mine, yellowing teeth can be affected by what’s in the water, too, and not necessarily poor teeth brushing habits. But then this is a book, not the real world.
Snape must be a guy who doesn’t care about his appearance, not one who is hygenically challenged.
Still, he ain’t a looker, so I doubt the ladies were too interested in him in that respect. He is intelligent and a powerful wizard. That might work for some.
Yeah, definitely. I’d say that as a person, Snape’s disregard for appearances tells more about him than any possible hygenic issues anyways. He values talents and cleverness, not appearances.
Which, on the flip side, makes me doubt that Lily’s beauty would have had much to do with it either, as I’m sure that Narcissa and even Bellatrix at one point qualified in that department, along with other girls at Hogwarts. I’d say that Snape was attracted to her for her kindness to him, her intelligence, and her common interests.
Now, I know this observation of mine will be contravercial, and it is clearly meant as a generalization and stereotype…but from personal observation it seems to me that a guys’ appearances are slightly less important to girls at that age. At least at high school level, that is. I’d attribute it to horror-mones.
I don’t think that Snape’s appearance would have put Lily off much considering how obnoxious she found handsome Mr. Potter for all those years.
Urk, never mind. It didn’t come out quite right on the page. I’m not sure how to phrase it…
Depends on the maturity of the young woman. Most teen females like a handsome face. Mature females searching for a mate can look past the outside if the male is a good provider.
Snape is still creepy. I just can’t accept that Lily returned any deep feelings. She was a good person—not a saint.
I’m wondering if the relationship between Snape and Lily would have been like Harry and Hermione. Platonic but loving, you know? I can’t help but remember the hillariously serious scene in Goblet of Fire during which Krum confronts Harry about his feelings for Hermione and Harry has to work hard to keep from laughing.
shadowquill, it would have been good for Snape to be friends with Lily, but somehow I don’t see it. Harry would never have called Hermione a “filthy little mudbloodâ€, under no circumstances. This would probably end any loving relationship. And I can’t imagine that James ever regarded Snape as a rival for Lily’s affection. After all, he was the good-looking popular Quidditch captain and Snape was the unattractive little outsider.
I don’t know…
Put a teenage boy in a position like that and watch them lash out at anything including their best friends.
I’ve seen it.
Matthew
I’ve DONE it, and I’m a girl.
Well, not exactly to the same degree, but…it is certainly something kids do.
Then again, I actually think that he would be more likely to lash out coving up romantic feelings rather than platonic ones. Friendship is probably slightly less shameful than a crush so far as muggleborn Gryffindors go.
“covering up”, not “coving up”
Lashing out is one thing, but a racist insult like that? It was a really mean-spirited thing to say… I don’t believe most teenage boys or girls would do this to their best friends, even in a position like that.
Snape is a guy humiliated by other guys and he’s trying to save face. Pride can cause us to do and say awful things, even to those we care about. Machisimo at it’s worst.
I don’t get why people are debating over Snape being evil. I thought the HBP made it perfectly clear that he was. He explained that he pretended to be good on Voldemort’s orders and HE KILLED DUMBLEDORE! What greater proof is there than that?