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This is a bit different so we'll see how it goes.
I have seen Snape compared with all sorts of different characters in literature: Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, Childermass from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, even Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy and the Little Prince (but of course). Is he a classic anti-hero? What separates Snape from his fellows, makes him unique? When you read other novels do you find similarities to Snape or other Potterverse characters? (Wikipedia has a list of literary anti-heroes, including dear Severus, here.)
I have seen Snape compared with all sorts of different characters in literature: Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, Childermass from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, even Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy and the Little Prince (but of course). Is he a classic anti-hero? What separates Snape from his fellows, makes him unique? When you read other novels do you find similarities to Snape or other Potterverse characters? (Wikipedia has a list of literary anti-heroes, including dear Severus, here.)
Unfortunately, our Sev did not have a Aslan to save him. Aslan, who laid down his life just so Edmund would live. It's one of the (many, many) things that annoy me about the Potterbooks: on the surface it *looks* like Harry Potter is Rowling's Aslan, but Harry does *not* lay down his life to save others, but to kill his enemy (and even the lowest suicide bomber terrorist is willing and able to do *that*). Quite contrary, it is *Severus* who plays both the role of Edmund *and* the role of Aslan. Severus, who laid down his life so an unpleasant boy would live. He didn't gave his life for Harry because he loved Harry, or even liked him. He didn't gave his life, even, for 'the greater good' or because Harry was the 'Chosen One' (which is, frankly, rubbish). He didn't do it flashy in some self-aggrandizement, like Dumbledore, to avoid torture and to gain a ostentatious marble monument. He did it, simply, because he wanted to save Lily's child. He couldn't save her (even though, in my opinion, she didn't deserve his love) but he could keep her son safe.
I'm afraid I never read much Dickens, but I believe that the plot of 'A tale of two cities' has a character like Severus (I'll check wiki)
Ah, yes, Sydney Carton. His famous last line, giving his life for the husband of the woman he secretly and unrequited loved, is *so* Severus Snape: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Jean Valjean also comes to mind...
Gosh, have to stop here, lookit the time! Have to catch my train!
- The idea of sacrificing yourself for a higher good (in Smiley's case his country, in Snape's case Dumbledore), even if it means being seen as "the bad guy" by some
- The possibility that this "higher good" could turn around and sacrifice YOU at any time, because once you get into the world of double-agents you become expendable
Admittedly Smiley does nothing "objectively" bad as far as I remember, but twist him a little more, give him a little more bitterness, and he could be a Snape type.
Alison
I just read The Chocolate War and my god does Brother Leon have a Severus streak in him (or vice versa since Leon came first) but I don't think I could actually say it was intentional. It's more the 'nasty school teacher' template.
And I don't agree that Edmund was a thoroughly nasty little boy. Well, he was a bit of a stinker in LWW. but grew to be the kindest and fairest-minded of the children. I like Edmund!
However, over and above all of these, the clearest literary model I saw in Severus Snape was Aragorn. Both "look foul but feel fair', and both show through their actions who and what they really are -- and that we shouldn't judge by appearances.
Snape's not an anti-hero. He's a hero.
Not to mention an unattainable love interest from whom he spent long periods of time apart (although Aragorn got there in the end).
Pity he didn't get the gift of the Numenorean blood to choose the hour of his death.
Word on the hero bit!
But, as I keep saying, we still have Snape, and he is quite definitely a hero. To me, Harry himself comes closer to being an antihero, but I may have my definitions wrong. ;)
I agree that Narnia's morality is superior to the Potter books, if only because the Potter books are deeply, *deeply* immoral.
However, I can at least respect the Narnia books because they take one specific religio-moral framework and STICK TO IT in all its implications, whatever you think of that framework itself. Rowling's work, on the other hand, is some sort of self-contradictory mish-mash (Dan Hemmens has an article on this, the one about the doctrine of the Calvinists) that ends up sending messages fundamentally opposed to the ones it's claimed are being sent. It's infuriating. (Prejudice against Muggleborns is bad, but it's ok against Muggles and poor halfbloods; our choices determine our character, except that your House is the final determinant of your moral status; love means wanting to kill your enemies and get revenge; Unforgivables are gallant for some people and unforgivable for others; verbal bullying is to be condemned but tying someone up, hanging them upside-down and stripping them is just good fun....oh, and being gay is fine, except that it leads you to ally yourself with genocidal maniacs, so it's not fine. ARG!)
LOTR characters
Persistently, doggedly, in the face of absolute despair doing the right thing, doing his duty, while his father (figure) ignores him in favor of the flashy favorite.
And passing the temptation of power with barely a glance--which I do think is one of Dumble's reasons for not letting Severus know about the Elder Wand, that he thought--wrongly--that Severus would be tempted by it.
Re: LOTR characters
Jackson did a hatchet job on both Faramir and Denethor, as well as getting the source of the tension between them entirely wrong. But even movie-Denethor is far preferable, as a person, to Dumbledore. Book-Denethor is heartbreaking, precisely because he is capable of remorse, AND sincerely patriotic. Dumbledore is just chilling, IMO.
Oh - and Tolkien lets Faramir live happily ever after, with a woman worthy of him. Just one more reason why he is miles and miles above Rowling in morality, compassion and artistic integrity.
(I am sorry for rambling so much when all I meant to say is that I love your comparison. ))
HP canon is full of anti-heroes
Then there are characters like Arthur Dent, Yossarian or Rincewind - they are very average people who are thrown into a threatening situation, and apparently all they want is to come through it alive. You wonder how much they are willing to sell out for their survival, but then it turns out there is someone they are surprisingly(?) very loyal to, like Rincewind to Twoflower, or they realize there is a limit they do not feel comfortable crossing, like Yossarian's regret over making the deal with Cathcart and Korn. They discover the hard way what it means to care about something beyond personal survival. Perhaps the young Severus, before Lily died, was in this group, if he joined the DEs because he felt threatened by the Marauders and their supporters higher up (ie Dumbledore). We may also include disillusioned DEs like Regulus, Draco and at some point Lucius. However I don't think I see this group represented much on the Light - you know, those accidental heroes, those that were merely trying to survive but end up saving 5 kids and a cat from a burning building. The closest would be Slughorn's participation in the final duel with Voldemort, or maybe Aberforth's joining the fight after years of very limited participation in Order activities. Had Mundungus done anything praiseworthy he would have belonged here.
A different category are the likes of Vetinari, those who do good by stealth. That's adult, post-Lily Severus, though because of Harry's POV it takes very attentive reading to see the good he does. I suppose Albus Dumbledore belongs here too, or at least he would want to be included. Terri makes an excellent case for Draco Malfoy - there was so much he could have told the Carrows about the DA and how it operated, but chose not to.
Then there are the deeply flawed heroes - those who faught for a good cause but were rather nasty people: James, Sirius, Remus (well, he was pleasant, but such a weakling), at least half of the Weasleys, Hermione, Harry... (I know, Rowling thinks otherwise, what do I care).
- Oryx
Re: HP canon is full of anti-heroes
Alison
Re: HP canon is full of anti-heroes
Re: HP canon is full of anti-heroes
I think Harry is anti-hero material too, or at least quite a gray character, mainly because his fundamental motivation seems to be vengeance. He's more interested in that than saving and protecting his friends, or setting the record straight. He's not on a truth-quest, at least not in the later books. He's not on a quest for the Holy Grail. He's not even exactly Mr Humble Ordinary Guy who is just seeking love and acceptance.
Dumbledore makes clear in 6 that his chief, burning motivation is vengeance on the guy who killed his parents. So I think that grays him a bit.
But once you get into terms like 'hero' 'anti hero' you are getting a bit technical I suppose, and tastes and theories change after all.
Re: HP canon is full of anti-heroes
His fundamental, chief motivation, as far as we can tell, is vengeance. He wants to kill the guy who killed his parents. He's not on some sort of truth-quest - at least not in the later books. He's not searching for the Holy Grail. He's not a romantic hero. He's not mr humble ordinary guy just looking for love and acceptance. He's not even primarily interested in saving and protecting his friends.
By Book 6, his driving, burning motivation is vengeance. He wants to kill Tom, and as many of Tom's DEs, as he can. That grays him a bit, I think.
Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.
“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”
“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?”
“Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Snape. He stood up. “You have used me.”
“Meaning?”
“I have spied for you, and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you.
Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter – ”
Snape looks horrified, he is shocked and feels used. It’s only my interpretation, of course, but “raising him like a pig for slaughter” doesn’t actually imply approval either. Despite all this he continues to “be Dumbledore’s“, as Harry later tells Voldemort. That’s not heroic. Hero worshipping, maybe?
An anti-hero? In my view, they think for themselves and make their own decisions. Sadly, Snape ended up as the “I was only following orders (given by a man/portrait who used me and whose methods I didn‘t approve of)” type.
I did finally find another character that I think more like Snape than any other. It is Ewen in Nicholas Stuart Gray's "The Seventh Swan". Since few will have heard of it, I'll give a bit of info. Here are some quotes from Amazon reviews:
"Alasdair is the seventh swan-brother from the famous fairy tale, left with a swan's wing instead of one of his arms because his sister was unable to finish that last shirt in time. He is a young Scottish lord in this novel, incredibly handsome but shrouded in self-pity and the immaturity that comes from having such a strange "childhood". Since he lacks his sword-arm, he has a bodyguard, Ewen, a gruff mercenary who is both more kind and more haunted than he seems."
"I first fell in love with this book when I was in the seventh grade. I'm now 26, married, with a degree in English, and this is still probably my all-time favorite book. Ewen was the first character from a novel that I ever wanted to pull out of the pages and marry. :) And it was the first novel I ever read where everything did not end happily."
"Philip Pullman recently said that the big,important themes are dealt with in childrens' books. This proves him right. Love and attraction, keeping and breaking faith, fear and courage, and learning to live with, but not be bound by, your limitations, are among the themes of this magnificent story that redeems the often-cutesified term 'magical' and reminds us that faery is a dangerous place. I've read this book over and over again and every time it moves me to tears. If you can handle grown-up magic and real emotions, you must read it."
Ewen, the mercenary body guard of a very Harry-ish young lord is almost like Snape with a Scottish accent. This is an out-of-print book. If you can find it, you should get it. It's really quite moving. Whitehound recommended it to me and I rediscovered Nicholas Stuart Gray, whose "Over the Hills to Fabylon" was a childhood favorite. That, too, has a Snapish character in Conrad, but his story is not nearly so close to Snape's as Ewen's story in The Seventh Swan.
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