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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.)
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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