Comments | strange_complex: Just how nasty is Severus Snape? The case from The Prisoner of Azkaban

strange_complex

Just how nasty is Severus Snape? The case from The Prisoner of Azkaban

Jan 26, 2005 21:53

On Monday night, I finished reading Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. I had a couple of questions in mind when I started reading this book. One, about how Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, was quickly and easily answered. The other was already bigger when I first asked it. It hasn't been completely resolved by reading the book, but I now ( Read more... )

prisoner of azkaban, alan rickman, j.k. rowling, snape, harry potter, legilimency

Comments 24

thebiomechanoid January 26 2005, 22:32:01 UTC

Having never read an entire harry Potter book - I must say, you are VERY well informed!

Xx

strange_complex January 27 2005, 09:15:59 UTC

You should give 'em a shot: I won't say it's high literature, but there's plenty of food for thought there.

dakegra January 26 2005, 22:39:04 UTC

that was absolutely fascinating, thankyou!

:-)

strange_complex January 27 2005, 09:16:22 UTC

I aim to please!

damien_mocata January 27 2005, 02:43:51 UTC

The world loves a bastard :D

What's Snape's motivation? swisstone January 27 2005, 10:37:44 UTC

There are a lot of people in this world who get fixated on the idea of someone's guilt, and will then refuse to acknowledge any contrary evidence. Such people also tend not to be keen on any delays to the legal process, viewing them as a waste of time. This is how most miscarriages of justice happen - people get fitted up because the police and the courts actually think they were guilty.

What I'm trying to say is that Snape's actions as you describe them (I haven't read the book) aren't necessarily motivated by malice, but by narrow-mindedness. As far as he's concerned, Black's guilt has already been established, so what's the point in wasting time with spurious attempts to deny that?

Re: What's Snape's motivation? strange_complex January 27 2005, 10:57:56 UTC

Well, as I've argued above, I think it goes a step further than simple narrow-mindedness. If you read the book, you'll find that his reactions to any suggestions that he might be wrong about Black are violent and extreme: in fact, he comes across as virtually insane in the latter chapters in the book because of the extreme nature of his refusals to allow anyone to suggest that Black might not be guilty.

Also, if you haven't read the book, you might not know about the history between Snape and Black which gives Snape a great deal of malicious motivation for maintaining his narrow-minded stance. Black (also with Remus Lupin, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew) taunted Snape relentlessly when they were all at school together, including tricking him into a situation in his 6th year when he would have come face to face with Lupin in full werewolf form, and hence almost certainly died - had James Potter not got cold feet and pulled him out at the last minute ( ... )

meerium January 27 2005, 12:38:44 UTC

(yeah, i know the icon's one of yours, i just couldn't use anything else!)

i'm thoroughly enjoying reading your thoughts as you go through the harry potter books! i enjoy reading them for pretty much the same reasons as you, and find these aspects of the books fascinating. i also recommend a lot of the articles on the red hen site - quite a lot of interesting food for thought there.

strange_complex January 27 2005, 12:56:43 UTC

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it! Even though I haven't actually read books 4 and 5 yet, reading book 3 in the light of what I know from web-sites and friends is revealed in the later books is really cool.

As for Red Hen, definitely - I am slowly working my way through it, reading an article here and there in a lunch break.

And I am always glad to see Snape icons, wherever they've come from!

meerium January 27 2005, 13:18:03 UTC

oh yes, and i also share the alan rickman issue! film snape, you so *would*. book snape, euuuwww no. i think i read on joanne rowling's site that she's finding it quite funny that people are claiming to fancy both snape and lucius malfoy, when it's clearly 'them as portrayed by fochsy actors' that people are lusting after. i guess also, it's why a lot of people actually can write snape/hermione fanfic.

strange_complex January 27 2005, 13:33:44 UTC

Entirely! Book-Snape = greasy, long-nosed, generally nasty. Film-Snape = damn sexy! (Alan Rickman's wig doesn't look greasy to me at all).

There is a picture somewhere out there of JKR holding a sketch she did of how she imagines book-Snape, in which he really looks not attractive at all. But I can't seem to track it down for you just now... :(

Thread 9