| Re: Snape
**** SPOILERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*************************
(for anyone who STILL hasn't finished the book!)
Snape isn't an evil character , he never has been. Just because he didn't like Harry , because he can see him behaving like his father did , ambivalent to authority ,doesn't make him bad.Snape never does anything to harm Potter , or put him ain any meaningful danger - he can do that quite capably himself - quite the contrary he tries to help Harry
He certainly is authoritarian in nature , and the way he attempts to keep the natural order of things by protecting the establishment from those who would destabilise the status quo (ie Voldemort and his Deatheaters) , is in keeping with the way that he attempts to keep order at Hogwarts with his disciplining of Harry and his friends
I do agree that Snape is a tragic character - losing the girl of his dreams is largely down to his own actions , and driving her into the arms of the boy who bullies him equally so. Never likely to become headmaster at Hogwarts , or indeed hold any meaningful post due to his insular nature (his only 'friend' outside of Slytherin perhaps being the caretaker) his only concern is to revenge himself on the man who ended the life of his one and only love - a revenge that he knows is almost certain to end in failure and death for himself.
I have mixed feelings about his end - an heroic death , with everyone able to see how brave and noble and true he really is , would not be in keeping with either Rowlings' potrayl of Severus , or indeed with the character of the man himself. I had few doubts that , regardless of the queston of his true loyalty , that he would survive the final volume - death is , quite often , the fate of many tragic characters in novels
His ending is as tragic as the majority of his life has been. With no heroic struggle , no grand exit , no noble last words. Left alone with perhaps the one person in the world still alive with whom he has any meaningful kind of relationship , his passing was far more poignant for me than Dumbledore's ever was |