Deconstructing the Complex Heroism of Severus Snape M
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University of Richmond From the SelectedWorks of Scott .T Allison 2018 Deconstructing the Complex Heroism of Severus Snape M. Lawrence, University of Richmond Available at: https://works.bepress.com/scott_allison/75/ 5 Turn To Page 364: DeconsTrucTing The Complex Heroism of SeVerus Snape m. laWrence On October 10th, 2016 at 11:49 p.m. -- a few ironic hours after I had determined that the next day I would finally sit down and write the introduction to this chapter -- my friend texted me. In rapid succes- sion, she sent three frantic messages: “The amount I love Harry Potter is insane.” “Like actually.” “This is the series that got me through my childhood.” 88 Her wine-inspired words are not atypical of my age group. We love Harry Potter. Other groups read the books, saw the movies, maybe bought some memorabilia. But we grew up with the characters. We, the Millennials, forged a relationship with a franchise in a way that no other age group could conceive. Through sheer luck and serendipity, we were born at exactly the right time and Harry Potter was published at exactly the right time for all of us -- the readers and the char- acters -- to develop in real time with each other. Our relationship is more than just identifying with a character in a book at a certain critical period of our lives, because our identification with Harry Potter lasted fourteen years. We identified with Harry and his friends at every period of our lives. Childhood, pre-teenage years, adolescence, emerging adulthood, and finally adulthood -- we were Harry, and Harry was us. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione were dealing with their first crushes, so were we. When they were trying to navigate the complex social structure of the preteen world, so were we. When they were desperately in need of a role model, when they were lost fifteen-year olds in need of a guidance figure, so were many of us. When they reached full emotional maturity and independence, we finally reached that point in our lives, too. As a generation, we were born at a crossing point. We experienced the turn of the millennium. We were exposed to digital technology as children, but were not raised on it as our successors have been. We saw the rise of Facebook and also the fall. We love nostalgia but, as the first line of adults of the technology age, we are forced into being on the cutting edge. We are a completely unique generation, yet uniqueness is inherently interwoven with a certain “aloneness”. We are unable to identify with either the generation directly before us or the generation directly after us. The only people who we can truly relate to are other Millennials. But this social isolation and in-between life, at times an impediment, has given us chance to experience what no other cohort in history has -- lives that develop concurrently because of a common denominator that is universally influential. It may seem small when compared to the sheer number of experiences a full life encompasses and compared to every phase that comes and goes in the cultural timeline of an entire generation. But we got Harry Potter. No one else did. Of the roughly 7,500 generations of human beings, that franchise belongs to us. It’s 89 completely, irrevocably, unconditionally ours. Harry is a Millennial and he and his world belong to us. All of this is meant to say, to emphasize, how important the Harry Potter fran- chise is to my generation. My friend’s texts, declaring how Harry Potter got her through her (abusive) childhood, are a poor, pale, shadow of a portrait of how we have been influenced. Our paths were changed by seven books, eight movies, and a small cast of characters. And although Harry James Potter is the protagonist, the namesake, the character one would assume to influence those paths the most strongly, he is not. That honor goes to a hook-nosed, greasy- haired, batlike man with black eyes who bullied students and invented curses that lacerated faces, but held the ultimate redemption story. The Harry Potter franchise as a whole has influenced us in a way no other -cul tural phenomenon has influenced anyone, but when examined, that greasy- haired man is the nucleus of that influence. Harry Potter changed us, but Professor Severus Snape changed Harry Potter. The prince’s Tale It took 1,084,170 words, 4,234 pages, 198 chapters, and 10 years for the Harry Potter septology to be released. And for ten years, 195 chapters, and 4,164 pages, readers were lead to believe that Severus Snape was the antagonist. Not the main villain perhaps -- that role going to Lord Voldemort or Sirius Black or Bartimaeus Crouch and so on -- but a constant, ever present, malevolent presence. In his earliest incarnations, Snape was almost a pantomime of a vil- lain as the (fittingly) acrimonious Potions Master who lived in the dungeons and swirled around in black cloaks. He bullied students (particularly the natu- rally shy and nervous ones), passively insulted fellow professors, happened to always have his nose in whatever suspicious activity was occurring at the time and, as a rule, reeked of cynical bitterness. However, as the series pro- gressed and the characters and the readers aged into adulthood, Snape began to emerge as a far more complex character. This chapter will begin with an examination of Snape’s life, before moving on to an examination of his questionable heroism, or perhaps questionable 90 villainy. As we progress with this initial section, it is important to clarify one facet of the life of Severus Snape. After his initial and rather simple introduc- tion, Snape’s history was presented through non-linear flashbacks. During the study of his life history, events will be presented in the order they are revealed in the series, i.e. not chronologically. Such a non-linear narrative may be difficult to follow, complex to understand, but why should someone’s story be any less complex that the person it shaped? The poTions masTer Snape’s original role was simply that of diversion. He was the mean teacher we were supposed to think was the bad guy, so that the Shyamalan revelation of the real bad guy’s identity would be that much more shocking. The issue with being a red herring, however, is that herrings don’t need a backstory. They have a purpose and they do not exist outside of that purpose. Snape did not have a life outside of being the Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the first two entries in the book series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling, 1997) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling, 1998), this delegation to “predictable tropic character" rang especially true. He was introduced to Harry during the opening ceremonies as a professor who glared at him with black eyes from the Teacher’s Table. The next interaction consisted of Snape drilling Harry -- recently introduced to the wizarding world after eleven years of child abuse, terrified and out of his element -- about subjects which they, the first-years, had not yet been introduced. When Harry couldn’t answer, Snape began ridiculing him for his ignorance and laziness, asserting that Harry’s celebrity status made him arrogant, all in front of his classmates. Snape appeared to delight in bullying these children, choosing clear favorites, and distributing punishments to those he disliked as frequently as he could. He advocated instituting more severe punishment systems and specifically targeted Harry and his fellow Gryffindors. As the series progressed, Snape slowly moved out of that trope, but only in the direction of “bitter coward”. His role in the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling, 1999), was merely to be obsessed with the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, a reasonable, calm, and caring man named Remus Lupin. 91 In his obsessive desire to defame Lupin, Snape came across Harry’s enchanted map, “The Marauders Map”, which showed the actions of every individual in the castle. Unable to get the map to behave itself, Snape demanded that it reveal its secrets. In response, words appeared on the surface: “Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business." "Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git." "Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor." "Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.” The words were a bit insulting and Snape was clearly angered by them, but coming from the creators of the map, The Marauders -- who are portrayed as positive, if a bit mischievous figures -- served only to reinforce that Snape was an undesirable and is undeserving of respect or admiration. Eventually Lupin, presumably as a result of Snape’s interfering, is revealed to be a werewolf and is removed from his position at the order of the school board. After Lupin’s departure, Dumbledore revealed to Harry that Snape and Lupin were school- mates -- along with James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew -- and that the bitterness and resentment toward Lupin came from an episode in which the foursome saved Snape’s life. One book later, we witness the resurrection of Lord Voldemort and the unsur- prising revelation that Snape used to be one of Voldemort’s greatest and most outspoken supporters.