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(Including the Final, Definitive, Explanation of why Severus Snape couldn’t possibly be considered a Hero™)
Miss Manners once explained how a Perfect Lady can be a feminist. Someone had argued to the contrary on the grounds that a Perfect Lady always puts the needs of others first whereas a feminist asserts her own rights. “Ah,” said Miss Manners, “but of course a Perfect Lady must by definition be a feminist. Dear me, no, not to assert her own rights: to defend the rights of her fellow women.”
Harry receives revenge; he never takes it. But he does avenge others.
Revenge and self-defense are selfish, in the Potterverse, and only Bad People would stoop to them (or good people doing wrong temporarily). But if you’re defending or avenging someone else, anything goes. Anything.
Moreover a Good Person can tell instinctively who’s a Mean Person who deserves to be punished. And JKR sets it up so the reader (if not always the Good Person character) already knows the crimes for which the Mean Person is being punished, so we buy emotionally into the satisfaction of vengeance.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
In the Potterverse, that translates to other characters giving Harry vengeance on those who’ve hurt him while he stays morally pure and keeps his hands clean. After his vengeance is complete and his enemies have suffered enough, Harry can then nobly extend his hand in forgiveness. To Dudley, to Draco, even to Snape.
Meanwhile Harry performs the same service for others. Harry can’t manage the Cruciatus against those who killed his godfather or his mentor—but he can do it to Amycus, who never harmed Harry. In the Potterverse, that’s called being gallant. (Note that the few times Harry DOES attack someone on his own behalf, he’s wrong, he knows it, and he suffers emotionally and usually physically over his actions: blowing up Aunt Marge, attacking Draco with Sectumsempra.)
Harry’s Cruciating Carrow in Book 7 is just the logical extension of Hagrid’s giving Dudley a pig’s tail in Book 1.
Look at the pattern.
Dudley bullied Harry when Harry was helpless. Harry gets to watch Hagrid, the twins, Dementors, and Dumbledore all hurt Dudley; Harry then nobly saved Dudley from worse than death and magnanimously accepted Big D’s farewell.
Petunia and Vernon Dursley bullied Harry. Harry gets to watch them be terrorized by the owls and Hagrid, helpless to defend their son, threatened by Moody, driven out of their home… none of it his doing. The ones who had abused their power over him made completely impotent. But he doesn’t hex them himself, oh no!
Quirrell, in trying to hurt Harry, kills himself.
Gilderoy attacked Harry and Ron. Gilderoy’s own spell backfires on him, and Harry and Ron get to observe that he never, ever, recovers.
Umbridge hurt Harry. To defend Harry, Hermione sends Umbridge to be gang-raped by a herd of centaurs. Harry gets to see her afterwards in the infirmary, too traumatized to speak.
Marietta betrayed Harry; Hermione mutilates her.
Draco is mean to Harry. Draco is turned into a ferret and slammed repeatedly into a stone floor; Draco and his family are tortured by the Dark Lord; Draco’s best friend is killed by his own spell, and then Harry rescues Draco from its lethal effects.
Snape is mean to Harry, repeatedly. Mean Snape! Whenever Harry tries to get revenge directly, he’s slapped down. But Harry is privileged to watch Snape’s worst humiliation and defeat at the Marauders’ hands. Harry can’t touch Snape when dueling him, but he watches Buckbeak hurt him, and at the end, Harry actually gets to be inside Voldemort while Voldie kills Snape. Then Harry nobly approaches his dying enemy and saves the day by accepting his memories.
Voldemort is mean to Harry. Voldemort, of course, kills himself because his curse rebounds off Harry’s nobility.
Look at Harry’s own cruelties. He hexes Filch, but Filch is a sadist who has threatened (mostly impotently) every student at Hogwarts. He hexes Slytherins “to general applause”, because they’re all bad and nasty. Goblins cheat other wizards; Harry cheats them. Amycus Cruciates other students, but not Harry, and spits on Minerva; Harry Cruciates him.
Now look at the last battle: Bellatrix had destroyed Neville’s parents and Cruciated the boy… and Neville gets to watch Molly kill Bellatrix in defense of children. Dolohov had hurt Hermione; Flitwick kills him in front of her…. No one takes on a personal enemy (except maybe Hagrid going after Macnair, and even there Hagrid would be doing it for Buckbeak).
And Harry’s only vision of adulthood is to be an Auror: someone authorized and approved to use violence against others, not in self-defense, but to protect—anyone else.
How satisfying this is! As a Harry-identified reader, I get to have my cake and eat it too: I get full, physically-realized (usually described in sweet detail) vengeance against everyone who ever hurt me. I get to watch my enemies tormented physically and mentally, tortured, killed even. But my hands are clean: none of it is my fault.
Meanwhile nothing I/we do (hexing, permanently mutilating someone, setting up someone to be gang-raped, torturing, killing) besmirches us, because anything I/we are doing is in the gallant defense of others, and that can never count as bad.
Never. No matter what.
What a seductive version of morality.
It’s like that parable of Heaven and Hell: the tables in both are laden with delectable food, but the utensils are too long for anyone to feed themselves. So in Hell, everyone starves; in Heaven, everyone feeds the person across from them.
But in the Potterverse, the dish in “Heaven” is vengeance. Sauced with whatever degree of sheer cruelty one can stomach. Can you endure to perform Avada Kedavra and the Cruciatus? No? How about slipping a hungry, moronic child some Ton-Tongue Toffee? Pick the degree of pain and humiliation you’re willing to inflict, the degree you’re willing to witness, and enter the carnival where the people YOU hate are punished with no guilt to you! While you hex, torture, kill, people to whom you’re indifferent, also with no guilt for you. Because you’re doing it for others, not for yourself.
No one starves; no one goes without enjoying the torture-death of her enemies or the pleasures of sadism, as long as she accepts the basic rule: Feed one another!
How… nice.
Which of course is Severus’s problem. He’s not nice. He wants to take his revenge, not wait for another character to hand it to him and then make nice forgiving his enemy.
Which is why, per JKR, no one could possibly see Snape as a hero. He keeps wanting to settle his own accounts, whether with James or with Voldemort.
Just look at him at the end of POA, practically slavering at the thought of capturing Lily’s betrayer. Some might be misled by the fact that, unlike Sirius, Severus apprehends (who he thinks is) the traitor and turns him over to what passes in the WW for “justice” rather than trying to kill him directly. But if Severus were a hero™ like Harry, once he saw how much Sirius had suffered already in Azkaban he would have forgiven him and not gone after him.
Contrast Remus, who never went after Sirius and hid information that would have led to his capture, even while believing that Sirius was a traitor, a killer, and a present danger to Harry.
See, we thought that Remus was being irresponsible and weak, and putting saving face with Dumbledore above his responsibility to protect children; really he was showing how merciful he was. Sirius had already suffered, so a nice guy would forgive him. Severus may have been justified logically given what he knew, but the text conclusively proves that what Severus actually did was wrong.
(As Ann Rule said of Dickens, “Plot is the great moralizer.” JKR establishes that Severus was really wrong to pursue Sirius, Remus was right to shelter him, even though neither man could have known that on the facts they had at the time.)
Sirius and Remus show their true mettle by allowing Harry to persuade them to be merciful to Pettigrew (which in practice meant to substitute capturing for killing the traitor: what Severus was trying to do all along, but Severus was trying to do it to someone, Sirius, who had already been punished). And neither of them went after Pettigrew later, whereas Snape was mean™ to Wormtail when he had Wormy parked on him as a spy. He should have been nice to Wormtail and mean to someone else.
Moreover, in the Severus/Sirius hostility in OotP, Severus is motivated by his “schoolboy grudge”. Jeez Louise, being upset because someone tried to get you torn to bits by a werewolf and still asserts that you “deserved it” for the sin of wanting him to be expelled for the numerous crimes he had, in fact, been committing. How petty can some people be? Can’t you be satisfied by the fact that your enemy spent twelve years in Azkaban for an unrelated crime? Sirius, on the other hand, is equally eager to row with Snape—but he’s motivated by Snape’s mistreatment of Harry, so nothing he says or does is blamable. Got that straight, now?
See, what Severus should have been doing was be nice to Sirius (since Sirius had already suffered™) and taken out his temper by throwing Unforgivables at someone else’s enemies. Hermione’s, maybe, that would work. Filius’s, at a pinch. Because it’s not what you do, not what actions you commit that matter, it’s whether you’re doing it on your own behalf or unselfishly for others.
Now too we can understand why Lily and James put up such a spirited defense when Voldemort came calling. JKR had to avoid any slightest appearance that they might be defending themselves. Sure, James comes off as a feckless idiot, and Lily as exhibiting the “learned helplessness” typical of a long-term abuse victim, but what we’re meant to take from their behavior is that they are True Heroes™: they will do nothing whatsoever to save themselves but anything to save another, like throwing themselves ineffectually in the way of the danger.
(So in the movie version of POA, that visually dramatic scene of Snape throwing himself in front of the children—instead of doing something useful like, say, grabbing Hermione’s wand and blasting the wolf—is meant to show us that the director did want us to see Snape as a hero™.)
Now we come to JKR’s final indictment of Snape. Unlike James and Lily in Godric’s Hollow and Harry in the Forest, when Voldemort attacked him, Snape raised his wand in self-defense.
What more proof could we need that Snape was never a hero? No wonder the poor author is confused by all the Snape-philes out here!
...Yes, but that's not even half of it. Let's forget the weird hero-bias thing for a moment and focus on Terri's new insight alone, and this is how that second sentence should actually read:
In addition, Snape is a nasty non-hero *because* he (gasp!) never, *ever* tries to physically harm someone that hasn't attacked him first.
My God.
That's what it means to say personal vengeance is evil and impersonal cruelty is noble, isn't it? I mean, that's the logical conclusion of this patterning structure. Now I'm getting reminded of an observation from last fall (also by
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/10
...At the time, everybody thought (including Terri I'm sure) that this just goes to show how JKR is very bad at math and/or how she's abysmal at show-don't-tell. She's such a poor writer, with thought, that she ended up telling us one thing in her tale while completely failing to show it. Which assessment still holds, in a sense, because I'm sure this Authorized Cruelty Rule isn't *consciously* the authorial message of HP. But more and more we're starting to see that the "show" (not "tell") side of the narrative -- consciously structured or not -- is far from some incoherent mess of failed illustrations. While the mouth of the Potterian narrative is saying one thing (Love Cures All, Cruelty Bad, etc.) its hands seem to be moving with their own intelligence and showing us the opposite picture with complete clarity and coherency.
Snape as a "redeemed" non-Hero
Namely, he loves Lily and this love forces him to change sides, turning spy for Dumbledore and betraying all those people who had never lifted a finger to harm him (that we know of), which must have led to some of those people, at least, getting injured/dying in a sabotaged battle or being incarcerated by the Ministry. He held onto his love to bulldozer over his agonized morality, whispering to himself something along the lines of "this is revenge for Lily; it's because they hurt Lily; they *all* hurt Lily, even if those of them who never even knew her." What a wonderful virtue to make up for all the shortcomings of his intrinsic nature!
Re: Snape as a "redeemed" non-Hero
But, OTOH, Harry is actually quite vengeful in OOTP. He is determined to kill Voldemort because "He killed my parents". And Dumbledore approves this sentiment. Does Harry get to be personally vengeful because he's Harry, and special - the exception that proves the rule? Or is it that he's given up all thought of vengeance by the time he actually goes to face Voldemort?
Harry's vengefulness
As it did at the end: first he faced Riddle unarmed, and Riddle destroyed his own Horcrux. Then he faced Riddle armed with Draco's wand, and cast only Expelliarmus.
Now, in my opinion, casting an Expelliarmus against an enemy who's casting a killing curse WITH THE EXPECTATION THAT YOUR SPELL WILL CAUSE HIS TO REBOUND ON HIMSELF still counts as murder. (C.f. Bujold's Shards of Honor--the brand-new shields which passively reflect the enemy's fire back on itself were used brilliantly as offensive weapons before the enemy worked out what was going on. Of course that can only work once.) (And I assume that consideration is why Jo was so insistent that Lily didn't know that her sacrifice would make Riddle's AK ricochet off the baby and kill Riddle instead.) So Jo's somewhat inconsistent.
But I'm sure Jo's whole point in not having them cast simultaneous AK's is that Harry is too noble to murder, even Riddle. So Riddle, we are invited to understand, in effect kills himself--the universe offering Harry his vengeance again, not Harry taking it.
And notice tht it's not really any of Harry's doing that he just happened to have ended as the master of the Elder Wand--he resisted the temptation to go after it!
See, if you don't go after your vengeance or power, the universe will just dump it on your lap.
But what troubles me is, so if this is the supposed *nobility* of Harry, and if it's important that he's not willing to kill (which is a good moral message, after all), then the logical conclusion would be that he was so noble and brave and wonderful in HBP for his declaration to "be unafraid of dying and resolved to take down as many enemies as he can with him" *solely* because he was so willing to die. Right? I mean...
What is this anyway, a Kamikaze training program? It nauseates me that, even in smaller story arcs like Regulus' redemption, there's the pattern of a male character consciously choosing to die (since he knew for a fact that Kreacher could survive the Potion in the cave, even if it was torturous and it *was* a noble kindness on his part to decide to spare him) getting glorified.
Rebounding
"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know...? I am the true master of the Elder Wand."
....
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
... the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of circle they had been treading, maked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high... spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed...."
Oh, Harry didn't know, not for sure. He was betting his life, and the potential destruction of Voldie (a much more serious bet for all the other poor sods inhabiting Wizarding Britain) on the hope he was right.
But a Kamikaze training program--you might very well enjoy what I just posted on my private lj.
Or, sorry, no, enjoy is definitely not the right word. However, you might appreciate it.
Glorious victory and mundane death
You can't let Harry have a glorious victory, lady, and make Voldemort suffer his death "with a mundane finality" and have that word mean it at the same time! Either you want to make the scene climactic or you don't. You had the right idea in going for the latter, and then for some reason you couldn't help yourself from giving Harry his cake too...
I don't understand *why* this was such a strong imperative that it overrode all common sense, but if that's how this important scene ended up having neither of the two (both equally good) dramatic effects, it's a very unfortunate thing indeed. And it's unfortunate for JKR that she doesn't seem to have an editor who could speak up to her. (If they didn't even *spot* it OTOH that's a whole new level of unfortunate.)
Re: Rebounding
Re: Rebounding
So I can appreciate schlocky scenes on their own merits, without being distracted by movie precursors.
Um, did I call it an advantage? Maybe being distracted is more merciful, sometimes....
The nobility of impersonal cruelty
However, she says in relief, we all know JKR isn't that great on logic. There's something to that: notice that on several occasions, a Slytherin taunts a Gryffindor and the Gryffindor responds with a physical/magical attack, and the text presents the Gryffindor as being courageous/gallant. (Arthur and Lucius in the bookstore, Ron eating slugs after Draco calls Hermione a mudblood, Hermione hitting Draco, the kids initiating the attack in the Ministry of Magic, etc.) But--Our Heroes don't usually come off unscathed from these encounters, so they're not presented as unrelievedly A Good Thing. I think what we are supposed to be seeing there is that Slytherins are Cowards who try where possible to avoid initiating physical violence for fear of being hurt themselves, while the Brave Gryffindors have no fear of throwing themselves at their enemies.
But we do have also, in canon, several characters besides our beloved James and Sirius and the Weasley twins who make a sport of impersonal physical cruelty: among them Dudley, Tommy-boy, and Bellatrix.
So, she sighs with relief, I don't think Jo took the matter quite to its logical extreme. I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness Jo is not so great at logic.
Which, yeah, thank God! The prominent arcs (like Harry's Crucio on Carrow vs. his Sectumsempra on Draco, as you mention) are disturbing enough without the same pattern holding through and through...
I get your rationale of the Slytherins' pacifist non-action as being the narrative's attempt at depicting Self-preserving Cowardice. But I just don't get why that tendency extends to realms where lack of cowardice wouldn't be the interpretation at all if the physical attack were to happen. Like, in OotP Snape is incensed at Harry's breach of his privacy, and looks about to explode -- and then orders him out, hitting the wall above his head with a jar of cockroaches. That looks like a detailed description of a man holding back his impulse to strike a physical blow on Harry. As does the scene in HBP where he's so pained by Harry's exclamation "Kill me like you killed Dumbledore then!" (without knowing Snape has been ordered to do just that) that he looks like a dog trapped in a burning house, and yet he strikes out at the air above Harry.
There could have been a scene like these for the *good guys* -- I mean, I was counting on that to happen in the Prequel, seeing as we never got to see how James matured out of his bullying school days and, reportedly, got his head deflated. And we get a scene of him taunting a couple of Muggles completely unnecessarily and upending their car right there in front of them, to their helpless horror, supposedly for the Greater Good? Why couldn't we have gotten a James who was trying desperately to run from the Death Eaters without leading them towards any Muggles -- seeing as they saw Muggles as fine targets of killing? Or a James who was mourning one of his fellow fighters and yet kept himself from hurting a Muggle that did or said something extremely insensitive, not knowing there's a war on?
Sorry about the long pointless rant... I just don't get it.
Severus restraining himself
But you're right, both read as a man holding back his impulse to do real physical damage.
So I thought, once is interesting, two data points is enough to form a line; if this is a pattern for Severus, the other time we see him almost out of his mind with rage, in POA, we should see something.
And sure enough, when Lupin calls him a fool and styles hearing Sirius boast of almost having killed him a "schoolboy grudge", alll that Severus DOES is to immobilize Lupin, but it's DESCRIBED as an explosion of violence: BANG! Thin, snakelike cords burst from the ned of Snape's wand and twined themselves around Lupin's mouth, wrists, and ankles....
And then in the hospital when Sirius has escaped, BAM goes the door as Snape starts howling at Potter...
Too tired to go further with this! Except that I think we're supposed to admire someone following through with an impulsive attack (an appropriate object, like Hagrid-Dudley or Arthur-Lucius) more than someone restraining his impulse to attack.
Snape's lack of physical violence in PoA
"Give me a reason. Give me a reason and I swear I will."
He needs a reason. To excuse his attack on the Kiss-sentenced convict to the Ministry? I don't think so. He needs a reason to justify an attack (as an unavoidable course of action) to *himself.* It seems this way to me all the more because, see...
After this scene Sirius leviates the unconscious Snape (without reviving him first) through the tunnel and Harry gets the distinct impression he's bumping Snape's head into the ceiling on purpose. An unconscious man's head, mind you. The mental picture would make me ill even if it wasn't a beloved character of mine. Anyway, after that happens (which Snape doesn't know about) and the whole werewolf/dementor thing happens, Snape wakes up. Sees the three children scattered around him, and Sirius, whom he had threatened to give to the dementors without letting him talk to anyone. All of them unconscious. Nobody watching, or so he thinks. And what does he do?
Snape had regained consciousness. He was conjuring stretchers and lifting the limp forms of Harry, Hermione, and Black onto them. A fourth stretcher, no doubt bearing Ron, was already floating at his side. Then, wand held out in front of him, he moved them away toward the castle.
Not a single attempt to hurt Sirius while he's defenseless. (If there had been one, Harry would surely have noticed it, as he fumed about Snape's "filthy hands" on his Cloak.) Not even an attempt to oh-so-accidentally dip Sirius' stretcher into the lake, never mind making good on his previous threat and attempting to call down a dementor for a kiss, or tying the unconscious man to a tree and letting them have him at their leisure.
Even if it hadn't been for the contrastive example of Sirius' behavior getting shown just before this scene, I would have thought Snape's action here was incongruous with my image of him as "overly vengeful" and "cruel." Vengeful? He's "happy" to be the one to legitimately capture Sirius, but that's about it. He's content to follow legal procedure (never mind that the Ministry has given the dementors permission to dish out the kiss on the spot).
This is the kind of thing I don't get. Why do we consistently get pictures of Snape acting fair to people inferior to him in power or present condition, and then get consistent pictures of Harry, James and Sirius, etc. hurting or terrorizing people that can't fight back *at all* either due to lack of power (the muggle policemen) or lack of advantage (Carrow and the Goblin, both of whom Harry attacks with an Unforgivable from under the Cloak while they have no idea he's even around) -- and why oh why do we then get told that these Gryffindors epitomize "courage" of all things?? If only *one* of those things were different; if James etc. were no Saints but the guy who deserves to rot on the dusty floor, while Harry eats slave-made sandwiches and goes to bed, were constantly (or even *once* on-screen) acting even worse; if only our heroes' virtue were described as "cunning wits" or "getting the job done by taking on the dirty work," or *anything* but those particular words, "bravery" and "courage"...
Arrrgh. I just don't understand. At. All.
Re: Snape's lack of physical violence in PoA
The Sorting Hat really was a metaphor/plot device turned NIGHTMARE.