Guest post: Good Snape/Bad Snape, by t’wife
John H Tuesday 17th July, AD 2007
Jeremy at Eating Words has posted some sensible predictions for the final Harry Potter book, in response to the questions posted by Travis Prinzi at Sword of Griffindor. I’m not remotely qualified to answer these myself, so I asked my wife – our resident Harry Potter expert – to give her answers.
The only question that Emily decided she wanted to answer is the first one, relating to Snape’s allegiance. Emily is a vehement proponent of “Good Snape”, even if that leaves her feeling like Elijah in the cave at times (“I alone am left!”). Here are her thoughts on this, and responses from other Potter scholars are invited in the comments. (NB: if you’ve not yet read Book Six, then this post contains major spoilers.)
My sole question is this: I just don’t get it – what’s the actual objection to Good Snape? All the evidence is for it. Rescued Harry from the Cruciatus curse as he fled (What Dumbledore Would Have Wanted), failed to take Harry to Voldemort (WDWHW), rescued repentant Malfoy (WDWHW), killed Dumbledore (despite feeling “revulsion” at it) and thus maintained his cover (WDWHW), acted only after reading Dumbledore’s mind (WDWHW), refused to help Umbrage (WDWHW), tried to teach Harry occlumency (WDWHW), sent the Order of the Phoenix to the Ministry of Magic after Harry’s tip (WDWHW). Plus he saved Dumbledore’s life after Dumbledore was injured decommissioning the ring horcrux.
If Snape is Bad Snape, then none of these was necessary to maintain his cover. And if Voldemort knew about any one of them, he would have had Bad Snape killed summarily.
The only objection to Good Snape I can see is he killed Dumbledore. But given Dumbledore (a) sought his own death in place of Harry only slightly before this, and (b) is utterly unfazed by the prospect, then if Dumbledore doesn’t mind dying, why should we object?
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As for me: well, I agree with my wife, of course
. “Good Snape” is an appealing theory because it has a strongly Christian flavour. As Jeremy points out, it’s not that Snape is really a pleasant person; it’s that despite his many flaws as a person, in the end he makes the right choices (very C.S. Lewis). Which is why it’s good that the question is concerned with his allegiance rather than his character.
I quite agree with the Good Snape reading. Besides all of the above, there is the fact that the narrative misdirection is classic Rowling. We see things from Harry’s perspective and Harry continually jumps to false conclusions. On the surface of things, the evidence seems to point clearly towards Snape being evil, which probably means that his allegiance is actually in the right place. The final book will probably reveal how we have been misreading the signs all the way along.
We also still do not know the reason why Dumbledore trusted Snape implicitly. When this is revealed I doubt that Snape’s allegiance will be in question any more.
I also agree. But I guess a lot of the tension in book 7 would be about Harry’s disagreement with a “good Snape”.
Well, someone’s gotta make this a challenging discussion.
There are two fairly strong lines of evidence for Evil Snape.
1. He’s a sadistic teacher, and Rowling has actually used the word “sadistic” to describe him. Does Rowling really want a “sadist” defined as “good”? Is that the kind of message she wants to send her readers?
2. Rowling has admitted that she is writing “shades of evil” in her story. An Evil Snape would fit this nicely, particularly as it relates to Machiavelli Snape theories.
There. I tried.
Honestly, I think she’s set this up so that either a Good Snape or Bad Snape reading will work. The biggest problem I have with a Bad Snape reading is that it seems it would do harm to the lessons of trust and forgiveness that she’s trying to teach through Dumbledore. That said, I am hung up on his “sadistic” behavior. My conclusion is that Snape, while being a nasty, awful guy, will turn out to be loyal to Dumbledore, but for intensely personal reasons. Hence, he’s not “good” (like Dumbledore is good), but he’s at least on the right side in the war on Voldemort.
Travis: thanks. The whole reason for posting this was in the hope it would generate challenges rather than just an amen chorus from the 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to the Bad Snape theory.
My conclusion is that Snape, while being a nasty, awful guy, will turn out to be loyal to Dumbledore
That’s exactly where me and Emily stand on this. “Good Snape”/”Bad Snape” is a slightly misleading way of expressing the question, because it is more a question of allegiance and ultimate loyalties than of being morally admirable. As I mentioned in my first comment, this is a very Christian perspective.
Another reason why I don’t think too much stress should placed on Snape’s “sadism” is that to do so can miss a point of fundamental importance about the Harry Potter books: their genre. While usually regarded as “fantasy” – which they are – they are also “school stories” in the line of Billy Bunter, Jennings & Derbyshire, even Molesworth, and the Sadistic Teacher is an essential feature of that genre.
Looked at in that light, Snape’s sadism actually supports “Good Snape”, because it would be entirely characteristic of Rowling to be working on the premise of “What if the Sadistic Teacher – one of those who ‘are always very ferce and keep thousands of KANES chiz moan drone’ – turned out to be on the right side after all?”
Snape as the good Sadist sounds like a character from A Wrinkle In Time or something…
JohnH– the school story genre is not as prevalent this side of the pond, I think. Never heard of the books you listed. There tend to be incompetent teachers in children’s lit here, but rarely sadistic ones… at least in the books I read as a child!
More “Bad Snape” arguments:
“The only objection to Good Snape I can see is he killed Dumbledore. But given Dumbledore (a) sought his own death in place of Harry only slightly before this, and (b) is utterly unfazed by the prospect, then if Dumbledore doesn’t mind dying, why should we object?”
Sounds to me uncomfortably like an argument for assisted suicide. I really have trouble turning deliberate, calculating murder into something that is within the legitimate operations of the Order of the Phoenix’s methods — even if the murderee approves of it as a tactical necessity.
Travis is correct about the prevalence of misdirection, in previous books, with Harry getting things wrong all the time. But have you noticed that in Book Six the pattern is reversed? Harry suspects Malfoy, and turns out to be correct. He then turns out to be correct with Snape too.
One thing Snape did that was NOT “what Dumbledore would have wanted” was that he grossly mishandled the Occlumency lessons — something that lead virtually directly to Sirius Black’s death. Reading Book Five over again, I find myself very open to the idea that Ron too may have been right that Snape was deliberately intensifying Potter’s openness to Lord Voldemort’s mind in order to set up the ensuing events.
Finally, an odd little thing which may be just one of those “errors” in Book One. The first time Harry Potter’s scar ever twinges is when he sees Snape. Sitting next to Professor Quirrel, true, but it is definitely Snape’s glance that caused his first twinge. Could this really be a mistake, unplanned from the start?
Links to examples of school stories for the sake of N. American readers: Tom Brown’s Schooldays (probably the original example of the genre), Billy Bunter, Jennings (loved those when I was about eight or nine), Molesworth (the Wikipedia page is essential reading, lots of funny quotes in there). See also this brief article on the genre itself.
CPA: Some interesting arguments there. Will pass those back to the resident Potter expert for her thoughts. But I don’t think Dumbledore accepting his death is an argument for assisted suicide – more an example of laying down one’s life for a greater cause.
And to expand a bit on why Snape killed Dumbledore, the Halton family theory is not that Snape did it simply as a calculated act to keep his cover. I agree that that would be inconsistent with the Order’s values. However, while can’t remember the name of the spell – will have to ask the RPE – IIRC Book 6 makes a great deal of the spell by which people agree (or are forced? Can’t remember) to obey somebody else on pain of death. Our theory was Snape had bound himself by that spell to both Dumbledore and Voldemort, and thus found himself in an impossible dilemma which was only resolved by Dumbledore effectively instructing Snape to go ahead and kill him.
A couple things in response to CPA:
1. Any theory that Snape is still good but “killed” Dumbledore on the tower has got to be linked to the “Stoppered Death” theory – that Dumbledore was already “dead” because of the ring horcrux destruction, but was being “stoppered” by Snape potion. Hence, Snape’s AK-ing Dumbledore on the tower was simply allowing the already-dying state of Dumbledore to finish its course.
2. The change-up in the misdirection with Malfoy is really quite ingenius! Yes, that makes the whole thing interesting. Rowling knew we weren’t falling for narrative misdirection through Harry anymore, so she made him right about Malfoy. But is this an even more complex attempt at misdirection? We’ve learned not to trust Harry, and then she goes and gives us a reason to trust him. In other words, she needed to rebuild our trust in Harry after his huge blunder in Order…but only so she can fool us with Snape.
Thanks for some great comments, folks. I’m going to close the comments on this one, though, to reduce the risk of spoilers creeping in over the next 48 hours.
Comments are back open again (now we’ve finished the book!).
http://fathermckenzie.blogspot.com/2007/07/halton-thou-shouldst-be-comboxing-at.html
Hi Tom – I think I left a comment on that post but it appears to have been modded into oblivion. Or perhaps it’s still in your mod queue?
The comments on this post are now closed, as the thread was getting heavily spammed. If you would like to make a comment then please use the Open Discussion thread linked at the top of the page.