Severus Snape

[Khaos]

Severus is a complex character with many layers and, as we learned over the course of the series, a lot more depth than most believed at first glance. I thought maybe we could discuss his character in this thread - well, mostly because I really want to discuss his character haha!

Let me ask this to start a discussion, because I have been wondering: After he'd gone through so much, J.K. decided to let Professor Snape die when he was finally understood by the one character who'd distrusted him, and advocated against him from the get go. Do you think his death was a character redemption for all the horrible things he'd done as a Death Eater, allowing for his memory to go down in history in a positive light, or do you think there would have been another solution possible? One which would have been equally (or maybe even more) redeeming?

[Helen E Potter]

Yes Severus  Snape did not make it easy to like the way he treated  any of the Students that were not in Slytherin I think part of Snape loved Harry because he is Lily's Son but he let the fact that James Potter was his dead  won so he hated Harry . When you read the Prince's tell in the Deathly Hallows  you  Severus got on the wrong side of James and his friends when James said he wanted to be in Gryffindor  and Professor said well be brawny rather than smart . I talked a bit about  Severus's death in a discussion  I started on Voldermort  . I might be wrong but I think if  Severus  had   not died he and Harry might became friends.

[Resonance]

Do you think his death was a character redemption for all the horrible things he'd done as a Death Eater. . .?

No.  It was his life thereafter that redeemed him.

It was his on-going choices to behave in the ways that proved his remorse was genuine.  It was the discipline and commitment to choose the opposite of the evils of his past.  His own evil, and the greater evil he had allied with, were so extraordinarily hateful and destructive that true restitution, true proof of good character, could only be demonstrated by bravery and loyalty to an opposite degree.

do you think there would have been another solution possible? 

In fanfiction and role play, of course.  But it's thoroughly unbelievable if it asserts that good character is possible without discipline and sacrifice proportionate to the degree of kind or noble character attained.

I care about deeply understanding what JK Rowling actually wrote.  Irrespective of how fictional-fantastical her characters and wizarding world are, the psychology-morality in her stories is blazenly real.

[Helen E Potter]

When you at it like this Severus did not make  it is to like him he even made the person he  loved most Lily Evens  by calling her a Mud Blood when she tired to help when James and Sirius were  being unkind to him .  In one feel sorry for Severus but  then  when he was being unfair I  do not like him  do not feel sorry him here a couple  thing Severus did that made dislike him . Now in  Harry and the Philosopher's    Stone  Severus  take points of Gryffindor because did not help Neville  then in the Prisoner of Azkaban he takes points of Gryffindor because Hermione helped Neville ,  he  took point of Gryffindor  because said Harry was late DADA class when  the class were all sat down . he took point  for Hermione  knowing the answer  to what he was asking the class . Not to list the times when he took point from Gryffindor when Draco Malfoy  was being mean to Harry , Ron and they did same thing back to the him Severus  let Draco get away with every thing bad he did when he takes point whole Gryffindor do not get  with any thing .

[Resonance]

I doubt few would disagree with what Helen's examples illustrate: on the level of mundane daily interpersonal living, Snape could be mean and unfair, and abuse his authority as a teacher.

By the time Bk7 concluded, we all understood a lot more about the childhood privations and neglect/abuse, and the horrible bullying from James and Sirius during a chunk of his Hogwarts years.  Yet admirable character isn't built by hiding behind the past as excuse-justification, but by rising above past (and, often, present) circumstances instead of devolving to the lowest common denominator.

It's often the case that those who succeed or sacrifice on the larger stages of life -- such as risking one's life to save the wizarding world from torture, lies, enslavement, et al. -- can be downright ignoble on the level of how they treat some or most people . . .

. . . Sirius, for example, could both remind Harry that one can best judge a person by watching how they treat those of lower, rather than higher rank, and nevertheless treat Kreatcher shabbily out of resentment toward his own family -- only to have that become the means by which Voldemort obtains the info to lure Harry and Sirius into a situation that kills Sirius.

And Snape simply is damaged.  We can admire his sacrifice and the skill and intense discipline that required, but think poorly of a lot else about his behavior, including, maybe, the obsessive-possessive (needy?) way that -- perhaps -- he loved Lilly.

But here's something that is too easily overlooked: being strong in the face of crappy treatment, like what Snape dished out to Harry, is a hugely valuable life skill -- and Snape knew Harry would need to be tough in many ways in order to succeed in whatever his special task would become.

And, no, I don't believe Snape's bullying and unfairness was an act soley for the purpose of toughening up Harry. 

I do believe he was loyal to Lilly and his promise to Dumbledore, and impressive in his endeavors to do the dangerous work that he performed nobly -- and was inexcusably unpleasant in certain of his interpersonal relations and abusive of his authority as a teacher.

But he did suffer remorse and perform the ultimate in restitution to redeem his early association with evil. That is profoundly admirable.