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Sep. 21st, 2005 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneIt comes to my attention that this journal has been severely neglecting two of its favorite subjects.
I don't think that Snape is evil, I really don't. My dad has pretty much persuaded me that he isn't even really on the fence: that in his Occlumency lessons, and even through the end of HBP, he's doing everything he can to teach Harry what he thinks he needs to know to fight against Voldemort. Note that I say 'what he thinks Harry needs to know'. Snape isn't omniscient. And I would guess that he's a heck of a lot more fallible than Dumbledore. And we know that Dumbledore can make mistakes. Ipso facto, Snape can misjudge a situation. As far as he knows, one can only hope to stand against the Dark Lord if one shuts down one's emotions. Certainly, it will help. Certainly, it would have helped had Harry been able to shut out Voldemort during OoP. But I have a feeling that Harry's reliance on emotion will be key in the Final Confrontation (omt).
So, that was a rather long digression. The point I wished to make was that I definitely espouse good!Snape. I also, as is very clear, am a partisan of Richard. I don't believe that he was evil, either. In fact, I've made some comparisons between Richard and Snape in this very journal. But, really, all of those comparisons relate to my perceptions of the characters, not to the characters themselves. Snape and Richard, as I see them, are very little alike, if at all.
The similarity, however, is between an ambiguous to evil Snape and what we might call evil!Richard or Shakespearian!Richard.
Examine:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Couldn't this be Snape speaking just after Voldemort's first fall? Everyone's celebrating, everyone's cheerful and happy and relieved. Dedalus Diggle is sending up shooting stars in Kent, etc. etc.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
This is Snape exactly. He's been tolerated as long as the war was going on: he was useful, as a spy. But no one really liked him. He didn't really have any friends. I doubt whether anyone in the Order really trusted him to begin with. Assuming they even knew he was one of them. And, certainly, no one is going to be inviting him to any celebrations. He's bitter, he's angry, he's hurt, but he's too proud to admit that he's been slighted. So he mutters to himself, all alone, in the shadows.
So I've been putting a fairly benign spin on it so far. Really, you could read the connection as describing an evil Snape. Look at the whole play. Look at the next line: "Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous." This is Snape who has tricked his way intoEdward's Dumbledore's good graces. He's playing the loyal supporter as long as it furthers his own desires for power. No, I am not suggesting a correspondence of plot. Even as far as character, Voldemort is a more suitable match for his Richard. But I am interested in Richard and Snape. When they are both evil, they are not dissimilar.
Oh, and, incidentally, Snape Castle (owned and possibly inhabited by Richard), is fairly close to Hadrian's Wall, which was repaired by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who died in the City of York.
Today has been a fairly good day. In spite of my forgetting my Latin notebook and having to sprint back to my dorm to get it. That was actually okay, because I did it in five minutes, actually making it back into the classroom before the professor arrived.
We talked about Cicero's explanation for the entirely weird grammatical rule of tacking "cum" onto the end of the first and second person pronouns instead of putting it before them, as one would with any other noun. Apparently, when you say it, you get something incredibly obscene with the first person plural. And, assuming it was what it looked like, it is incredibly obscene. The cognate being one of those words that I have never heard spoken and have been shocked by on the rare occasions when I have seen it written. So, anyway, I am all in favor of moving the preposition. Not that the Ancient Romans asked me, or anything.
I don't think that Snape is evil, I really don't. My dad has pretty much persuaded me that he isn't even really on the fence: that in his Occlumency lessons, and even through the end of HBP, he's doing everything he can to teach Harry what he thinks he needs to know to fight against Voldemort. Note that I say 'what he thinks Harry needs to know'. Snape isn't omniscient. And I would guess that he's a heck of a lot more fallible than Dumbledore. And we know that Dumbledore can make mistakes. Ipso facto, Snape can misjudge a situation. As far as he knows, one can only hope to stand against the Dark Lord if one shuts down one's emotions. Certainly, it will help. Certainly, it would have helped had Harry been able to shut out Voldemort during OoP. But I have a feeling that Harry's reliance on emotion will be key in the Final Confrontation (omt).
So, that was a rather long digression. The point I wished to make was that I definitely espouse good!Snape. I also, as is very clear, am a partisan of Richard. I don't believe that he was evil, either. In fact, I've made some comparisons between Richard and Snape in this very journal. But, really, all of those comparisons relate to my perceptions of the characters, not to the characters themselves. Snape and Richard, as I see them, are very little alike, if at all.
The similarity, however, is between an ambiguous to evil Snape and what we might call evil!Richard or Shakespearian!Richard.
Examine:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Couldn't this be Snape speaking just after Voldemort's first fall? Everyone's celebrating, everyone's cheerful and happy and relieved. Dedalus Diggle is sending up shooting stars in Kent, etc. etc.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
This is Snape exactly. He's been tolerated as long as the war was going on: he was useful, as a spy. But no one really liked him. He didn't really have any friends. I doubt whether anyone in the Order really trusted him to begin with. Assuming they even knew he was one of them. And, certainly, no one is going to be inviting him to any celebrations. He's bitter, he's angry, he's hurt, but he's too proud to admit that he's been slighted. So he mutters to himself, all alone, in the shadows.
So I've been putting a fairly benign spin on it so far. Really, you could read the connection as describing an evil Snape. Look at the whole play. Look at the next line: "Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous." This is Snape who has tricked his way into
Oh, and, incidentally, Snape Castle (owned and possibly inhabited by Richard), is fairly close to Hadrian's Wall, which was repaired by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who died in the City of York.
Today has been a fairly good day. In spite of my forgetting my Latin notebook and having to sprint back to my dorm to get it. That was actually okay, because I did it in five minutes, actually making it back into the classroom before the professor arrived.
We talked about Cicero's explanation for the entirely weird grammatical rule of tacking "cum" onto the end of the first and second person pronouns instead of putting it before them, as one would with any other noun. Apparently, when you say it, you get something incredibly obscene with the first person plural. And, assuming it was what it looked like, it is incredibly obscene. The cognate being one of those words that I have never heard spoken and have been shocked by on the rare occasions when I have seen it written. So, anyway, I am all in favor of moving the preposition. Not that the Ancient Romans asked me, or anything.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 12:37 am (UTC)As for myself, I don't think good or evil applies to Snape. He is amoral. He will do what is necessary to see that he gets business done. In HBP, business required Dumbledore's death. But he is also setting his sights on Tom Riddle on book 7. Because now he has Harry where he wants him, guardianless and enamored of the HBP book. Harry loved that book and the person who wrote it. Snape will use that against him. I wrote another essay about that which I will upload in the future.
But I like what you wrote! It never occurred to me that Richard lived at Snape castle. Wow!
This doesn't bode well for Snape's survival. My kingdom for a horse!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 01:17 am (UTC)Myself, I don't think Snape has a chance of surviving Book 7.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 03:27 pm (UTC)There is a ban in place regarding the study of dark magic. Maybe Snape would like that ban removed. That certainly could have been one of the promises Tom gave his followers. But Tom would never have wanted to train an army of powerful dark wizards. What if they turned against him? The ban is just fine where it is and Tom was lying about trying to change it. Snape would know that by now. We also know that Snape arrived as a student at Hogwarts with extensive knowledge of the dark arts. It must have been frustrating to discover that he couldn't go on with his dark studies and I doubt the Snapes had money to send him to Durmstrang.
We also know that he and other DE's wanted Harry to be a powerful dark lord to take Tom's place. Who's to say they still don't want that? And Snape would love to be the advisor to a baby dark lord. A baby he knows inside and out.
I think Snape was at Hogwarts specifically to await Harry's arrival.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 05:38 pm (UTC)Right now, it looks to me that Snape is the focal point of this whole fiasco regarding the prophecy. They have all been his agents, DD, Tom, Harry, etc. The one thing he may not have counted on was having feelings for Lily. Yeah, I think JKR will go down that melodramatic road.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 02:41 am (UTC)It seems to me, though, that you are placing too much credit with Snape as a mastermind. I doubt that he has had anywhere near the security of influence that you hypothesize. Snape's position has been precarious: he's been playing both sides, trying to make himself as indispensable as possible to both DD and LV. And now he's had to come down on one side…
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 08:25 am (UTC)On a side note, I am now incredibly curious about the obscenity resulting from following normal grammatical rules with the first person plural in Latin.
And what exactly does "cum" mean? (Sorry, random question.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 04:25 pm (UTC)as in Magna cum laude; "with great praise."
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 09:37 pm (UTC)I really should have known that. *feels sheepish*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-25 07:15 am (UTC)Obscene?
TELL MEEEEEEEE.
Banana must know, or she will die of curiousity!