Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

Loving someone doesn't mean they are required to love you back. It also doesn't mean you have to stop loving them, just because they don't return your feelings. He loved her unconditionally, IMHO. Nothing in canon shows us that he ever stalked Lily. Snape was redeemed because of his ability to love, I think.

Snape chose to protect Harry because he loved Lily. However, before Snape killed Dumbledore, Dumbledore told Snape that Harry was going to have to die, and Voldemort was going to be the one to kill Harry. Snape chose to continue to spy for the Order and against Voldemort for over a year, up until his death, but it was no longer for Lily and Lily's son, since he knew Harry was going to die. Snape could have refused to kill Dumbledore at that moment, and simply gone into hiding, because his initial reason for spying was gone. However, Snape did not. He stayed for the wizarding world. It was because it was the right thing to do. It was no longer about protecting Harry because he was Lily's son.

Snape was not a perfect character and had his fair share of flaws, but I don't see his loving someone, just because she did not love him back, as being one of them. If he had stalked her, that would be a different situation, but I see nothing in canon that shows he did. If I am missing something, please share it. Love is a feeling, and we do not choose who we love, IMHO. We are only responsible for our actions.

My opinion.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I never thought of it like that... Always wondered why he added that since he was in Slytherin. Still, I don't remember it being too many moments when he was as blood-obsessed as most slytherins appear to be. Except for that one time he spoke to Lily with the wrong name (if one wants to keep their friends). Unless I got everything wrong...

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

No, you’re quite correct. We only see one time when Snape actually uses the word mudblood and it’s during a time of extreme stress. And we see one time while as headmaster Snape corrects Phineas’ portrait when he uses the word. When he is a child he reassures Lily that her being Muggle born won’t matter. Most of Snape’s supposed views on blood bigotry stems from his association with Slytherin, Death Eaters and Voldemort (ie, if they believe that doctrine, then he must also.) I think if he truly espoused those views, he would have gotten over his love of Lily, which clearly wasn’t the case.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

We only have one use of the word "mudblood" by Snape in the text, but Lily says "You call everyone else of my birth that, why should I be any different?" I take this as an indication that he did use the word fairly regularly at that time in his life. Whether he did it because that's how he really felt about blood purity, or because that's what all his Slytherin friends did and he was just blending in, is a different question -- and a volatile one as we all know.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

It could just be her commenting on the fact that he used it at all. If you use a name commonly used for an entire group against one person, you might be seen as calling all people of that kind off as bad. Even though you don't really mean that. You could just as well say "I like dogs", and still not neccessarily mean that you would absolutely love to play around with a dog raised for hunting and killing. At least that is how I see it.

Still, Snape was constantly surrounded by people who said that half-bloods were not of the same value so it is very possible that he was more or less affected by them... At least as an easily moved child or teenager. I can't remember reading any full description of his parents so I have no idea what he was raised to believe. People often mirror their parents when it comes to basic views.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I think canon makes it clear that Snape used the word, just not in Lily's hearing. If you use a racial epithet frequently, does it matter if you are bigot or not in your heart if your actions to a minority are those of a bigot? The insulted minority will have a problem knowing if deep down you are a bigot or not. Your words and actions are the only thing they have to go on.


Problem is, it wasn't Snape's parent insulting his fellw students, and an insult is an insult even if you are aping your despicable friends. I have a problem with Snape aping the few students in Slytherin that we know became Death Eaters. I refuse to believe that fully 25% of the student population were racially bigotted.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I wasn't saying it was Snape's parents. My thoughts were that if we knew more about Snape's parents, then maybe we could be more sure about what his real thinking in this is.

And maybe snape was a little bit unsecure, considering the bullying, which could be the reason that he aped the people that would be the safest to ape since he'd spend the most time with them. Still, I agree a little with you. Reason is not the same as a good excuse and one should speak their own mind, even though that is hard for some when under a lot of pressure.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

Maybe he was, still doesn't show his attachment as being healthy. IMO, it was very unhealthy and I could buy into his loving her unconditionally if he had even once been show to have respect for choices in life.

IMO, Snape was coerced into protecting Harry and he resented it. IMO he proved this resentment with every insult and unfair peice of treatment he dished out to ~Harry every chance he got. I'm not impressed by Snape's great love for Lily. If he loved her he woulldn't have been so cruel to her son, and he was cruel.

No Snape is not a perfect character. Rowling is too good a writer to write the 'Perfect Character'. He has many, many flaws. One of his many, many, flaws IMO is his inability to move on. He dwelt on his 'love' for Lily and used the 'love' as his reason to live. IMO, he had no wish to live any other way. I find it very pitiable. He was an intelligent, talented man who could never show any gowth in his character. He was limited by his crippling anger. He was a 'small' man who did the right thing for the wrong reasons, IMO. That makes his kind of pathetic in my eyes. My opinion.

IMO, his real thinking doesn't matter. His actions speak for him.

There is one incident of bullying that we are shown. I'm sorry I don't believe that Snape was bullied all the time. His actions that we see as a student don't look much like someone who can't walk across a playground without harrasment. He followed the Marauders around and he went to the Whomping Willow willing enough on Sirius' sayso. So I'm not buying into the poor little bullied Snape. He invented Levicorpus and it was used by all the students. Now he inventedit, to get out into pretty public use he had to be the one who used it first. I wonder who on?

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I believe he was bullied quite frequently since they had a bad name for him that everyone seemed to be rather familiar with.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I don't see him as having been coerced. Dumbledore told hm that, if he loved Lily, he should spy on Voldemort to help keep her safe. He did, but she died. Then Dumbledore told her that, if he loved Lily, he should protect her son, who still lived. He agreed to that. When he found out Harry had to die, he still chose to spy on Voldemort, to save the world. He made those choices of his own free will.

Snape could not move on because he believed he made a terrible mistake and he chose to atone for it. It was his love for Lily that kept him in a position I don't believe he particularly liked (teaching) and that kept him working for the Order and spying against Voldemort, until that last year, when he was able to psychologically move past that and work to bring down Voldemort for the good of everyone (see my previous post). I see working to save the son of someone you loved as being very admirable, even though that son also reminded him of someone he did not like - he held on to the dislike as well. His tenacity was a double-edged sword.

Myself, I'm not sure I would have thought well of Snape's character if, after Lily died, he decided to leave Hogwarts, find a bride, have a couple of kids, and remain a death eater. It is sad that he chose instead to give up a chance of happiness with someone else in order to protect Harry, but he did make that choice. That last year is especially sad, when he knew Harry had to die, but Snape chose a life where he'd be headmaster over a school which thought he wanted Dumbledore to die, where he'd loose the respect of his fellow staff members (and canon to me appears he had a good relationship with them) and practically isolate himself while working with DD's portrait to try to save the wizarding world. Yes - very sad.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

We may be bandying semantics a bit, but I think, from my reading, it would be more accurate to say that he was more in love with Lily than actually loving. An infatuation, if you will, but an extremely long-lived one.

And like many infatuated people, his perspective was one-sided and egocentric. By that I don't mean that he thought he was better than anyone else (although he might have thought that as well), but that he thought of his actions and those of others primarily in terms of their impact on him personally. I think this rather explains his treatment of Harry; Harry represents the cause of his losing Lily, rather than an independent human being. (EDIT: Wow, that was totally unclear. I meant that Harry resembles James, who represents the cause of his losing Lily.)

Of course, in truth, Lily was never really his to lose in the first place, but an infatuated person often has trouble seeing something like that. Snape, like many an intelligent but socially awkward boy, felt that Lily should have and would have been attracted to him by virtue of his cleverness and the crowd he hung around with, and naturally that was never really going to work. It wasn't going to work because relationships don't work long-term like that, but Snape probably thought it didn't work because of James.

That love, or infatuation--what you may call it--was as many say a transformational one, but not in the way that many people mean it, I think. In my opinion it didn't transform him so much as it transformed how he saw the world. Because of that feeling he had, he saw the world as revolving around Lily--or more accurately, as revolving around his conception of Lily. To the end, I think, he still saw his duty to Dumbledore and Harry as really a mere reflection of his genuine duty to Lily's memory. Whence his final words.

It might not matter to one's evaluation of his actions (although that too is debatable--there is the notion of forming intent), but there's more at hand than that. This thread is, after all, about character analysis, and it would be interesting to know his real thinking in order to better understand his motivation. We come, in part, not to condemn but to comprehend.

That's an interesting question. Even just in the development of that spell he would have had to try it on various objects and, eventually one assumes, animals.

Incidentally, I don't know that I find the fact that we have only one incident of bullying as very indicative. We only have one explicit instance of him using "mudblood," too. We infer from Lily's riposte that he used it other times, but that's no more convincing to Snape supporters than the intimations of his being abused and bullied (e.g., in Harry's exploration of Snape's memories upon using the Shield charm, I think?) are convincing to Snape detractors. I suspect Rowling wasn't more definitive about this because there was no reason to be; she was satisfied to permit innuendo to swirl about her one crucially ambiguous character, to enhance his ambiguosity. (That's a word, folks, look it up. So's gullibilitude. :) )

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

That sounds very stalkerish. Stalkers usually only concentrate on their feelings, not on the feelings of the 'object' of their affections. I have always felt that Snape's feelings for Lily did slide into this area, but that's my opinion. I'm not an expert in stalkers, but I have never been impressed too much by Snape's Great Love.

I just find that creepy beyond belief.


But his actions are all we got. That is the only thing we really have to judge his thought pattern.



That's an interesting question. Even just in the development of that spell he would have had to try it on various objects and, eventually one assumes, animals.

As far as the spell goes, I think Snape would not have used it in public till he had perfected it. I know I'm hard on him, I just don't see a lot to admire to tell the truth. That isn't to say I don't appreciate him. He is amigous, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. With greasy hair, yellow teeth and a big hooked nose. I really should be kinder to him about the hair, greasy hair is a pain.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

That's fair, although I think by that metric a goodly proportion of teenaged boys are stalkerish. But to be honest, I'm not that interested in people's good/bad evaluation of Snape, because I think that tells more about the people evaluating Snape than about Snape himself. That's why I think...

...his thinking would be interesting--because we don't, by and large, see much of it. I don't think that Westyane meant that we should give more weight to his real thinking, only that it would have been nice to see some more of it.

And ultimately, I don't see the need to judge his thought pattern or anything. I just want to understand it, to the extent that we can. Slowly, I hope, people can come to a consensus about what his character was like--but then it's up to each individual person to decide whether that character was good here or bad there, admirable now or creepy then. That depends too much on our own personal make-up to hope, realistically, for any kind of consensus on.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

We're nearing Christmas, so I expect we'll see the usual holiday craziness soon. So let me remind you of how you should post in LS and especially in this thread.


Moderation. That's not just something I do, that's also something I expect from you when voicing your opinions. Try to see the shades of grey and, even if you don't see them, your posts should reflect this more non-confrontational approach to literary analysis. After reading the discussion for who knows how many years I can assure you all that you won't convince people who don't share your opinion of Snape to see him differently. Make your argument but make it politely and remember that this is not a war zone and that you won't win a prize for snarkiness and smugness.

If you cannot play nice, you're not going to play at all. Consider yourselves duly warned! :)

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

All teenage boys? Wow what do I have to look forward to with my son? I have to say that I've never seen this type of behaviour in the vast majority of teenage boys I've known. All the stalkers I've heard about have usually been a lot older.

The big problem like I said before with trying to second guess Snap'se thought patterns is that we never get a close look atthem. We only get what he says, and what he does. That's it. Sometimes his behaviour is a clue to what he is thinking and sometimes it isn't. And if you can tell what times those are, you are a better mindreader than me.

I think you are bound to be dissapointed in your quest for understanding. The truth, as far as I can see it is, sometimes Snape behaved badly, sometimes he behaved admirably. I have to say I think he behaved badly many more times that he behaved admirably, but that's just me. Like Elizabeth 1st, I'm not interested in cutting a window into his soul, I'm happy to judge him by his actions and his choices. Those we get and that's enough for me.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I'm trying not to be snippy, but please be careful in representing what I say.

(a) I didn't say "all" teenaged boys. I said a goodly proportion.

(b) I didn't said "stalker," initially; you added that word. I said "infatuated." And yes, many teenaged boys are infatuated with a girl at some point, and when they are, they are a bit narcissistic, and think only of how they want to be close to the girl, and do not really treat the girl as a proper person. In my opinion, that does not make the boy a stalker--maybe I should have been clearer about that point. I only said that many boys were "stalkerish" by that metric (emphasis added) to illustrate that I felt that was an overly expansive definition of "stalker."

I don't have a moral issue with you equating infatuation with stalking (if you do so), but please don't assume that I equate them, also, or that infatuation as I've described it is generally deprecated by all or even most people. (In adolescents, anyway. Snape's feelings in adulthood are of course a different matter for discussion.)

Again, I'm not saying we get a lot of his thoughts. I'm saying it would be nice to get more of his thoughts.

Obviously. However, I find that judging a person gets tiresome quickly, so I prefer not to go down that route. And I've found that we have been able to get to some consensus on some non-judgmental aspects of his character; those are the things I enjoy, and I certainly haven't been disappointed in that regard! :)

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I will be careful in return in my reply. I misrepresented what you wrote and I apologise for that.
Back to your post,
A. What exactly is 'a goodly proportion'? 10%, 25%, 50%. That's still a lot of teenage boys. I have to say if I was to put a number on the teenage boys I know who would qualify for that kind of behaviour I wpould have to say, 0. But it's been a while since I had a romantic relaintionship with a teenage boy.

B. I don't know if Snape would have qualified as a stalker, but I do find his behaviour 'stalkerish'. He seems to dwell unhealthily on his feelings for Lily and he doesn't seem to be interested in living his life for any other reason except indulging those feelings.

Well I don't think I equate infatuation with stalking. I don't even think that the teenage Snape had yet gone into that type of behaviour. As I said earlier it seems to be the behaviour of older men, just like the age Snape is in the books.



We don't get any of his thoughts. We get what he says and what he does.

As a fictional character IMO judging his words and actions are all we can do. We can judge harshly, we can judge dispassionately or we can judge indulgently, but in the end I think judging is what we do.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

Oh, I don't know? Somewhere between a clear minority and half? I guess if I had to put a number on it, I guess I'd throw out something like a quarter?

I think it's important to keep in mind that this is not something you'd normally find in a relationship. It might be a precursor to a relationship, but as often as not the target of the infatuation has no particular feelings for the infatuated person (boy or girl), so it never gets that far. And normally, one grows into an ability to have more balanced relationships (either in addition to infatuation, or instead of it), so it's a temporary thing that often doesn't get seen at all.

Hmm...I'm not sure I would entirely agree with that. I would agree he never got past his feelings for Lily (now coming onto 15 years after her death), and it was a great constant in his life, but as to how much he dwelled on them day to day? They clearly evinced themselves in his treatment of Harry, but I'm not sure they were in the forefront of his mind if Harry wasn't there. He was evidently able to teach effectively, if rudely. (I certainly would not have enjoyed having him as a teacher.)

I guess I would say I think of that differently. I think I would say that behavior that is ordinary or at least not wholly unexpected of teenaged boys (horsing around to get a girl's attention, having pervasive and intrusive thoughts of her throughout the day, and just generally having an immature perspective on her as simply an object of affection) becomes considered inappropriate when grown men engage in it.

I think we're talking past each other, so let me try to be more explicit. I am absolutely agreeing with you that we get little (not quite none, I think) of his thoughts. I and Westyane are merely wishing that we had more, that's all.

At the risk of raising the temperature, I would agree that it is what you do, but I do not think it is what everyone does, and certainly I do not agree that it is what I try to do (in this thread). Thus, for instance, I think we can agree he was infatuated with Lily, and that this infatuation led later to various actions on his part (his treatment of Harry, his doe Patronus, and even his protection of Harry), but at that point, I will let the matter rest. I try to assess his behavior descriptively, in other words.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

And this is one reason I don't see it as infatuation. Severus and Lily knew each other as friends before they arrived at Hogwarts. They were friends for 5 years while they were attending the school - "best friends" was his description. They did have a relationship. She wasn't a schoolmate he admired from afar.

If he had not been drawn to the Dark Arts and had friends such as Avery and Mulciber, it may have developed into something more than friendship on her part, i believe.

I see Severus as not having had many normal interactions with a large number of people. He seemed cutoff and isolated. I suspect his home life wasn't a happy one and he responded by shutting himself off. Because of this, I don't think he truly understood people and their reactions. I don't think he always knew how to express himself until much later in life. It was his own social isolation which probably caused him to misjudge Lily's reaction to Mulciber and Avery. IMHO, I believe he thought Voldemort would accept Lily once he saw how exceptional she was, as incorrect as that would have been. His completely misjudged many things. But for several years, he had an actual relationship with Lily.

He also trikes me as someone who holds onto his feelings over a very long time, and has a high level of focus. This serves him well in some areas, such as spying and Occlumancy. It also means he continues to love, and he continues to hold a grudge. He's very tenacious.

My opinion.

Re: Severus Snape: Character Analysis Reboot v.6
 

I'm curious as to what in canon makes you think this.