Obsession (Deathly Hallows Spoilers Ahead)

(Also read this.) 

Well.

I’ve become obsessed with Severus Snape.

When I first started reading Half-Blood Prince, and as I finished it, I was embracing the delicious possibility that he was Really and Truly Evil.

And I loved it. I absolutely loved that possibility.

I loved it so much that I didn’t really look for alternative meanings of his actions.

I wanted him to be really and truly evil, you see.

Because if he was, then that meant that JKRowling had pulled one over on us. That she had artfully set us up and yanked the rug out from under us.

Because up until that point, despite the magic of her magical novels, there was always a certain underlying frustration for me (and I think for most of us, if we’re honest).

Harry never going to Dumbledore when he should. (Oh, don’t be an idiot, Harry. Of COURSE you should go tell Dumbledore what’s wrong; there’s this little war going on and you’re in the middle of it and how bad a war can it be if an 11-year-old, 13-year-old, 15-year-old boy is honestly supposed to be figuring this shit out by himself in order to win it?)

And just as frustrating, the golden trio’s refusal to believe that Snape could possibly be working on the side of the good guys, even though Dumbledore explicitly trusts him.

These are actually false conflicts. As readers, we all knew that Harry should go to Dumbledore, damn it, but of course if he did, the stories (as constructed) wouldn’t work. We all knew that Snape had to be a good guy, and for the most part the Snape/Harry conflicts seemed juvenile. (I say all of this in hindsight and if I stopped and reread all the books I might have a different spin, but these are the feelings I carried away from the books.)

And so, the very idea that Snape might Truly Be Evil was delicious and tantalizing and oh how I wanted it to be true, just so that the arc of the epic would have tricked me, surprised me, brought me howling to my knees with “oh my god I can’t believe she did that, wow oh wow oh wow!”

She didn’t do that.

On the other hand, she did something much more profound.

You see, in the long run, Severus Snape is the moral center of the books and Dumbledore the manipulating, scheming villain. Snape is the one who is out there risking all again and again and again to protect ungrateful children, to right the mistakes he has made in his life. Snape is the one who is tormented by doubt and by rage but continues to put one foot in front of the other, doing the Right Thing because once he did a horribly wrong thing.

Snape is the most witty and intelligent character in the series. When confronted with the horrible truth that Dumbledore expects Snape to kill him, to kill his beloved father-figure (not to mention accept the hatred of the wizarding community for doing so) — his response slayed me:

“Would you like me to do it now?” asked Snape, his voice heavy with irony, “or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?”

When handed the most devastating task of his twenty years of servitude, there is that graceful moment where he uses his wit to shield himself from the horror of what lies ahead.

And, it is Snape who experiences and expresses the true horror of Dumbledore.

“I thought … all these years … that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”

Followed by…

“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”

And finally …

“You have used me.”

I clearly haven’t been obsessed with the world of Harry Potter or I’d already have delved into the fandom of fanfic, and if I’d done that, I would have known that many of the writers in fanfic have seen and explored the truth for many years and books. That Dumbledore wasn’t a benevolent father/grandfather figure with the best of the children at heart. Rather, he was a master manipulator and evil genius who willingly sacrificed pawns for The Greater Good, any pawns.

In fanfic I find a long history of acceptance that Severus Snape served two masters — and neither was a Good Guy.

And that Severus Snape is an unsung hero.

By the time I finished Deathly Hallows I wondered if JKR actually intended to reveal at the end that Snape was the hero and Dumbledore the villain all along. I wondered if she recognized that fact.

And I find myself wanting to scrawl it on concrete abutments and in alleys and in the darkest depths of the tubes, for people to stumble across and nod in understanding that at the end, there has to be hope:

“Snape lives.”

Because in the final analysis, I have to believe the most gracious gift she gave us was that no mention of body or funeral was ever made.

And Severus Snape was too intelligent a wizard to serve his two evil masters for twenty years without being prepared.

To spend months watching the Dark Lord feed enemies to Nagini without being prepared.

To be a potions master without having a vial of antidote with him at all times.

And I have to believe that when it was all said and done, he found a way to release his humiliating memories for the last time and let go, to let the stupid, idiot children step up to the plate and finally fulfill their destinies.

While he finally let go of the past and, having made his final sacrifice (his dignity), created a new life for himself.

I have to believe that somewhere…

Snape lives.

Source of art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry Potter Spells Trouble for Us All

Deathly Hallows spoilers.  You were warned. 

An assessment of why, “If literature truly reflects society, then the end of the Harry Potter series spells trouble for us all.”

Excerpts:

To be clear: This isn’t a critique of Ms. Rowling’s values. It’s a recognition of a disturbing trend in commercial storytelling and Western society.

~~~~~

Successful storytelling rests on a few basic principles. One of them is this: A story is about someone who changes, who grows through a moral struggle. What is Harry’s struggle? Exactly.

~~~~

Back to that first principle of storytelling: A story is about someone who changes. And, puberty aside, Harry doesn’t change much. As envisioned by Rowling, he walks the path of good so unwaveringly that his final victory over Voldemort feels, not just inevitable, but hollow.

Discuss.  Please?

Deathly Hallows (w/SPOILERS)

I’ve been pondering this for a few days and realized I’m not going to ever sit down and write a truly organized entry on my thoughts and reactions to a book that I pretty much loved.

But!

That doesn’t mean I can let it go.

So now I’m going to write some disorganized thoughts and reactions.

Let me know where you think I’m right and where you think I’m wrong.

First –

THE WEASLEY TWINS

Excuse me, but I don’t just know the Weasley Twins.

I am the Weasley Twins.

 

(Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.)

So I speak with authority when I say –

One: The wooden radio broadcast was genius, though I think they would have been in charge of it.

Two: Their actions in the battle for Hogwarts were lame, dreadful, sorely lacking.

Fred and George are all about razzle-dazzle and what’s more, they are freaking geniuses! Don’t you think they’d be doing more in that battle than, than, whatever they were doing?

And don’t you think Fred deserved at least as heroic a death as Dobby?

I don’t mean stop the story cold while we mourn and cry, but at least give a sentence and a heroic image of the guy doing something, razzle-dazzley and heroic, while he bites it.

And then?

And THEN –

Excuse me, but you know as well as I do what happened next. While Percy was crying into his frilly hanky –

George was mounting his broom and taking off with fire in his eyes, and he was out to avenge his brother’s death (which was probably sneaky and underhanded, anyway, and the equivalent of wizarding’s being shot in the back).

And while we’re on the subject of that battle –

LUPIN

Killed Greyback. He had to have. And we wanted to see it. We needed to see it.

And Tonks was at his side, holding off some other scurvy wizard bastard to give Lupin time to finish the job, even though he was hanging on by a thread, a mere thread, before he died, too.

And what’s more –

GRAWP

Was a total waste of trees in every book he was in.

And –

GINNY

Is a kickass witch with incredible powers and clearly Jo Rowling decided she couldn’t let any of the kids actually kill anybody (whatever) but she could have used Ginny, she could have let Ginny do something important — not get stuck in the nursery!

But –

NEVILLE’S GRAN

Was absolutely fabulous.

And –

NEVILLE

Turning into a badass punkass kickass hero was beyond fabulous, it was beyond my greatest expectations. We all knew he was going to finally step forward and be a hero but I never expected him to be so damn tough and wow, that really worked, even though we didn’t actually get to see him pulling it off and just heard about most of it after the fact.

But –

LUNA

My freaking dog in heaven, she not only broke my heart with her ceiling mural, but we wanted to see her do something totally “Luna” in the battle, and get the best of some Death Eater or other. In fact, I think I know what she did, now that I think of it.

I am pretty sure that if you look at the Malfoys and follow them on their quest to find Draco in the chaos, you will see Luna leading them along sweetly with her distracted smile, totally oblivious to all the carnage around her, until she reunites the happy family, and then conks them with a stunning spell, binds them with something else, and smiles hazily and wanders off looking for some other way to make herself useful.

Here’s the thing. I really think Ms. Rowling was under the impression that since she initially started off with arcs in mind for certain characters, by the time she got to the final battle she thought we really only needed to see those characters complete their arcs. She didn’t think we needed to see the characters she made us love later in the series strut their stuff. She may have even thought there wasn’t enough time and paper to finish off all the arcs.

But!

Just as there was room for two sentences (I think) about Trelawney and her crystal balls, and those two sentences brought a cheer to my heart –

And there was room for a sentence or two about Peeves doing his usual brilliant vandalism –

There was room for a sentence or three — a flash from one image to the next — of many characters.

And each of those characters doing something totally characteristic.

Why didn’t we see the Quidditch team soaring overhead in formation, knocking something around or through something?

Why didn’t we see Cedric Diggory’s father with vengeance in his heart going after somebody?

Why didn’t we see the characters we’ve grown to love and care for getting in their last licks before the ending?

There was room, there was plenty of room, I never heard or read a single word about, “Oh good gravy let’s hope she doesn’t make this one too long.”

I heard and read words about hoping it wasn’t overwritten, but not about length.

I wanted to see more of the grand finale.

Damn it.

And there is also the possibility that she feared that giving too many heroic moments and actions to too many characters would diminish the impact of what happened to Harry.

It would not have.

It really really would not have.

And don’t get me started about the time and pages devoted to wandering in the wilderness like the lost tribes of Israel. We honestly (honestly) didn’t need to read as much of that as she thought we did.

And then?

Oh good dog have mercy –

NINETEEN YEARS LATER?!?

Names?!?

We fast forward nineteen years to get NAMES?

The only moment worthy of its space in that entire dreadful fanfic epilogue was Harry’s line about Snape and Slytherin.

And yes, that was nice, really nice.

But REALLY!!!

But still, I held on, I kept reading with hope in my heart because I knew what was coming ….

I mean, I really thought I knew what was coming.

And I was wrong.

But listen.

How cool would it have been (not to mention a nice bookend-ing moment) if there on Platform 9 3/4s we’d seen Dudley putting his little mullet-head on the train?

Not a friendly, “Howya doin’, Dudley?” but instead, let Dudley and Harry exchange cool nods, barely covering their discomfort, but we’d see that even if Dudley is still a Dursley — he has a bit of clue.

I dunno.

To me, that would have been the perfect ending.

Not an ending that told us who had kids and named them after whom, but an ending that hinted at character and story and left us filling in the blanks with unexpected pleasure instead of unexpected confusion.

(Sidenote: A really good epilogue doesn’t try to fill in the kinds of details she gave us — who had how many kids and what they were named. And it doesn’t even really fill in all the blanks, as she does on NBC this Sunday, according to articles. Those details are as likely to annoy as to irritate. “What, he works for the ministry? She’s a lawyer? Do what?!?” An epilogue hints at lives that have continued, gives you what you needed, that he’s happy, and hints at a couple of unexpected twists and leaves you with a lot more to think about and a lot more questions, but the kinds you could spend hours musing over and discussing with your friends, not flat facts that end all what-ifs with cast-in-stone answers. At least, that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.)

Now. If you want to read a couple of reactions to Deathly Hallows that are much more thoughtful than mine, go here and here.

You’ll like what you find.

And lest it got lost in my mutterings –

I really loved the book.

It surpassed my expectations of what I thought it would be, and even where it went in the direction I thought it would, I was still unexpectedly satisfied and sometimes even surprised at the way it happened.

It’s a wonderful book and a wonderful series and I will definitely be reading it off and on for the rest of my life.

Thank you, Jo Rowling, for everything.