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QUOTE By Lost Centaur: At the start, Snape was odd, isolated, easy to pick on, the outsider, who is victimized and humiliated by a cocky, antagonistic group - who practice bullying on him. To which he in time lashes back in his own lone way, which was no doubt vindictive. But somehow, with the Marauders, being attractive persons generally, the bullying has sometimes been explained away as youthful acting out, developing group 'bonding', and harmless competitiveness, like team sports or something. Many teenage suicides every year are the result of this "normal" group cruelty, inflicted on someone "different", easy to target and with whom few can identify
What reference in the books or from JKR interviews do you have to base this idea on? I have provided JKR's quotes or book quotes for the points I am making and unless you can do the same, I don't think that it is fair to indicate JKR was intending to say anything of the sort with her writing in the series.
In my judgment, JKR did not intend to have either the hero's mother or father be despicable people who led others to become Death Eaters. On the contrary, she intended for them to be part of a first generation of heroes. From CCN/Time interview, 2007 (link is http:
//www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753_1695388_1695569,00.html)
QUOTE Question: "Why doesn't Fred appear in the woods at the end as well?"
JKR: "Do you know what? I never even thought of Fred coming back. That's how I always planned it, from when the first book was finished, that the three marauders and his mother would come back. There were four heroes as it were in the previous generation and one of them betrayed the others, and then there were the three. So I wanted Harry to be surrounded by his mother and James and Sirius and Lupin, all of whom had died in a way for him. You know Lupin had laid down his life in Harry's battle, he didn't have to come back, he didn't have to fight. James had died trying to protect the family; Sirius very obviously had died fighting along with Harry, and then his mum who most explicitly had died for him. I never thought of bringing Fred back at all. It was all the previous generation, and they were all strongly parental figures for Harry."
In her Pottercast Dec, 2007 Interview JKR had this to say:
QUOTE MA: "What about the three times-- The thrice-defying of Voldemort?"
JKR: "Of James and Lily?"
MA: "Of Neville's parents. Well, James and Lily, too."
JKR: "It depends how you take defying, doesn't it. I mean, if you're counting, which I do, anytime you arrested one of his henchmen, anytime you escaped him, anytime you thwarted him, that's what he's looking for. And both couples qualified because they were both fighting. Also, James and Lily turned him down, that was established in "Philosopher's Stone". He wanted them, and they wouldn't come over, so that's one strike against them before they were even out of their teens."
That doesn't square with either of Harry's parents having led people to become Death Eaters. If their behavior was as is being depicted in your last post, with the Marauders "group evil" mentality, they would have led a lot of people to becoming Death Eaters - not only Snape.
It also discounts Snape's choices which was something JKR indicated was an important feature of the series - how one's choices are important. No one caused Snape to follow a dark path, he chose it for himself; certainly the friends he chose and those he decided to tangle with influenced his life, but his final choices were his own. We cannot ignore the fact that Snape came to Hogwarts desiring to be in Slytherin, interested in the dark arts and with a arsenol of dark curses under his belt. He also declared that Lily had better be in Slytherin with him as he wanted to continue the friendship and carry her along with him on his dark path (which granted he did not see as dark). JKR made a point to show him as a bully when he was young (before Hogwarts), yet that is blamed entirely on Petunia for some reason - despite his assertion that she was a worthless muggle and being so vindictive, his magic caused a tree branch to fall on her and harm her. His chosing to retailiate with "stronger and darker magic to even things up" (Roonwit) says more about Snape's character than what others drove him to do. I don't care how much I was at a disadvantage in school fights, I'd never take a gun to school and start shooting my enemies, but that was Snape's mentality in my opinion.
QUOTE RoonWit: I don't think that is true. All she said was that Lily didn't hate James. That is a long way from saying that Lily had developed feelings for James.
She had Lily at the lake with her girlfriends, watching James play with the snitch he'd just gotten (Lilymentions this in her departing rant) and she spoke to no one except James the entire scene - except to tell Snape off. The interviewer assumed Lily hated James, apparently missing these clues, JKR said: "Did she really? You're a woman, you know what I'm saying" (Anelli, Mellisa; Spartz, Emerson (2005-07-16). "The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three). I am not sure why you interpret that comment as Lily didn't hate James - that is not what she said. She brought up the whole, you know how girls who like boys act - if you are a woman ideology.
Anyway, I am not here to convince anyone of anything, but my view is that Snape made his own bed and he had to lay in it; his friends (Mulciber, Avery, and Lily), his enemies (the Marauders), his parents, Voldemort, Lucius, nor anyone else molded Snape into the person he became; he did that himself. Harry had even more trauma in his youth than Snape and he turned out all right, simply because he made better choices despite his abusive childhood, lack of parents, lack of friends and the insecurity asociated with being thrust into an entire new world at 11 years old. We don't sit around giving credit to the Dursleys and Dumbledore for Harry's good choices, those most people agree were his own to make - yet for some reason, Snape is held out as special - a person molded only by the forces around him to make bad choices. And yet, when he turns his life around based on his emotions for Lily - no one credits Lily (after all, she dumped him as a friend) - instead, that is credited all to Snape and he is to be admired for making this good choice despite all of the bad Death Eater influences he was surrounded by (note - he had not 1 good influence around him at that time). Suddenly, Snape's surrounding influences don't affect him anymore - how can that be? I don't buy that whole argument myself. Just as his decision to turn to the good side was his own, so was his decision to walk down the dark path - influences around him not withstanding.
JKR on choice: "We can choose. The things go largely like you want them to go. You control your own life. Your own will is extremely powerful. " (J.K. Rowling for Release of Dutch Edition of "Deathly Hallows", 2007 - interview transcript available here at Leaky Cauldron)
This post has been edited by wickedboy: Jul 20 2008, 08:42 PM
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In Every Age, A Hero Rises...
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Jul 26 2007, 08:36 PM
