Image copyright Warner Bros.
In 2016, in honour of Severus Snape’s birthday, J. K. Rowling wrote: “Been wondering how to mark Snape’s birthday without starting an argument. Here’s to him, the big hero/bully. He really was the best/worst.”
She was, of course, joking about the constant discussions in the Harry Potter fandom regarding the Potion Master’s dubious attitudes. This is, nonetheless, a fairly recent argument between Harry Potter fans- and it speaks to fandom culture as well as the ever polarising social and political “discourse” denying the existence of a grey area.
Back in 2007, when the seventh and final Harry Potter book came out, there was nothing but grief and regret once “the truth” about Snape was revealed. The character had already acquired an icon status that few in the series had managed to, when in 2011 the last film came out and - greatly due the late Alan Rickman’s breath-taking performance- there was yet another wave of sympathy for Snape as those who had not read the book realised Snape was with the good guys all along.
For months the tragic demise of an unlikely hero was all the rage in the Harry Potter fandom, once again. Alan Rickman was constantly sexualised. Memes about Snape were flooding the internet. Sad head-canons (that is, a theory about a character that can neither be proven or disproven- such as “Snape died a virgin”) were invented at the speed of light. Someone stamped his face on a box of popular maxi-pad brand “Always”, in reference to his undying love for Lily Potter, and so on.
Despite that, the internet’s love did not last forever- slowly at first and then through a wave of commentary that flooded Reddit and Tumblr circa 2014, the internet decided that Snape was “Problematic”. Apparently, they hadn’t noticed it before.
The condemnation of his actions was indeed reasonable- Snape spent his entire life hung up on a woman who had chosen someone else, still thinking he was the better man; Snape resented James for being a bully and yet bullied his students as an adult when he was supposed to know better; Snape “abused” his students to the point that he was Neville’s greatest fear; Snape mistreated Harry simply for being James’ son; Snape had been a Death Eater; Snape might have changed allegiances but he did it for all the wrong reasons; in that Snape would still be evil if not for his toxic relationship with Lily to which he felt entitled; etc.
While those are mostly good points, I want to focus on the last ones: to which degree do Snape’s motives for making the right choices really matter?
How strange it seems that a generation brought up on these books still manages to miss the whole point of a narrative with morally dubious characters. Snape is either good or evil to those people- never both, never neither. Severus Snape, the Half-Blood Prince, is always only the half we are willing to see.
Of course, this blinding perspective does not only affect characters in novels- society’s inability to conciliate facts with its own ideologies makes for a most abstract compartmentalization of shattered truths.
It seems eerie to us that a character as unsympathetic as Snape should have also been the one to do so much good. It is so beautifully strange, though; that he was the deciding element, the missing piece that got Harry to, symbolically, acknowledge and accept the evil inside himself.
Harry’s journey is intrinsically connected to Snape’s. What the shallow criticism online cannot grasp is that whether or not a character in a work of Literature is likable is beside the point. Characters aren’t imaginary friends; it doesn’t matter if you like them or not. Raskolnikov isn’t likable. Emma Woodhouse is utterly unlikable. Holden Caulfield might be liked, but not likable, not at all.
There is some sort of blatant moralism permeating criticism as of lately dictating that books and films and tv shows should have good messages. That characters should be role models- and they shall not rest until there are no more “problematic faves”, just clear bad guys and good guys.
In case you haven’t noticed, I am talking about the online pseudo-left- you might not have picked up on it because stupid leftists and stupid rightists sound very much alike. Two extremes, I guess, will always meet in the ends of our world, since our world is round.
That’s not to say that fiction cannot present us with a message- but good fiction will present us with much more than that. One who reads seeking confirmation for one’s beliefs does not read at all. A person who starts a review listing “problematic” things in a book should work for the censorship department. We are allowed to like fiction about bad people, or not so bad people, or- God forbid- morally grey people. It is tiring and boring to think of a world in black and white- or, as we the kids say, cinnamon rolls and problematic faves.
So, after having read with my own eyes the phrase “Snape apologist”, I realised people were focusing on ridiculous issues that are nothing but beside the point. Who cares if a character is problematic? If everyone was acting exemplarily why even bother writing a story?
The most interesting thing about Harry Potter- or any book- is not the answers it provides us with; but the questions it encourages us to ask ourselves.
So perhaps it is time for us to move beyond such questions as “was Snape a hero or a villain?” and ask ourselves why we feel the need to fit him- and every single character we meet- into one of these boxes.
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The internet’s obsession with Snape can easily be understood- he is, after all, a fascinating character- Harry Potter, however, had always been clear about the world not being made up solely of heroes and villains. The titular character’s inclination towards evil-doing (even if it, in the end, a lot of that was due to his literally having a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside him) is the proof of that. Throughout the series, we get the message loud and clear: it is not our abilities that determine who we truly are, it is our choices.
The most blatant examples of Harry’s own struggle with this dichotomy is during his second and fifth years. In Chamber of Secrets, after finding out he has some abilities that are intricately associated to the Dark Arts, being told by the Sorting Hat that he should have been sent to Slytherin, and accused by the entire school of opening the Chamber-petrifying a number of people- Harry starts to doubt himself.
Part of him believes that he is capable of it- and this the film does not show, though it certainly attempts to in a scene that did not make the final cut, in which Harry looks on dramatically and asks his owl, Hedwig, “Who am I?”. Needless to say cutting it was the right call.
The subtlety with which the book handles Harry’s persisting doubt- the feeling he is not in control of himself; that he might be inherently evil- was quite an achievement.
In the Order of Phoenix, Harry has a dream in which Arthur Weasley is attacked by a snake- which was, in fact, happening at that very moment. Convinced that his dream was real, he rushes to Dumbledore and manages to get help for Arthur, who survives. What Harry does not specify, nonetheless, is that; in the dream, he was the snake- it was from its point of view that everything happened.
While this impression is partly explained in the same book, for a moment Harry is lead to believe he hurt someone he cared about because of some unquiet bloodthirst inside him. Once again he wonders if he’s a bad person.
He shares these concerns with Sirius, who in turn assures him that the world is not made up of good people and Death Eaters.
Order of Phoenix is described by many as the point where his teenage angst hits maximum levels, lashing out at anyone who offers help. The part of Harry that is Voldemort might not have been Harry himself, but it is certainly a powerful allegory. In addition, the ways Harry chooses to deal with it often cause him to hurt others- and that is his own fault.
It is disturbing to think that most of the good guys in this series mean well often their decisions lead to disasters; Harry’s decisions included: in that same book his unwillingness to learn how to control his visions leads to Sirius’ death. That had everything to do with Snape being his private tutor.
The Harry Potter series is built around the great dichotomy of Good and Evil- a dichotomy being the principle under which linguistical concepts operate; in order for there to be “good”, there must also be the opposite. Words exist only in contraposition with others; they are defined only by relation to others. In other words, a thing is defined by what it is not- ergo it is not able to mean anything on its own.
If this thought-process sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same one behind the central conflict of Rowling’s series: the bond between Harry and Voldemort. In the final book, we learn that as long as Harry is alive, so is Voldemort; given the piece of Voldemort’s soul that lives inside him. At the same time, Harry’s blood runs through Voldemort’s new body thanks to the ritual, in the fourth book, which allowed Voldemort’s spirit to re-enter a body. The consequence of that is one that he didn’t anticipate: Harry’s bound to Earth by the blood he took. That is one of the reasons why, even after sacrificing himself, Harry is allowed to come back.
To many this explanation sounded rather complicated, so much that the film chose to focus on a ridiculous catfight sequence instead- it is actually in perfect tone with the theme of the series. In the end, no longer it was “one cannot live while the other survives”; it was “one cannot die while the other survives”- a cycle that was broken only by Harry’s selfless sacrifice, which killed the piece of Voldemort inside him.
This is all to say, however; that the Harry Potter series was never about either/or type characters or situations- and that is what made it a worldwide success. It was always about both. Characters such as Snape were neither good nor bad; they were both- and that scares the crap out of some people.
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I can still remember being introduced to Harry Potter. My parents took me to a Blockbuster-type video place that was not Blockbuster because I don’t remember us having it in Brazil until much later. Anyway, we had a double feature of the first two movies.
When I went to see the third film, however, I developed an unlikely fear of Peter Pettigrew. It was even more unlikely because I had never been afraid of villains before (I had been angry, I had been at times merciless in my condemnations of villains’ actions, and I occasionally rooted for them; I actually always hoped Tom would finally catch Jerry- and Coyote the Roadrunner, and Sylvester Tweety. It was just really agonizing to see those little arrogant animals play with their predators’ feelings).
Nobody understood my fear of Wormtail- such a minor, pathetic spirit! Why were Wormtail and his unthreatening servility scarier to me than both Bellatrix’s performative evil-doing and Voldemort’s frigidness?
The fact is, though; Voldemort and Bellatrix are simply part of a tradition of allegoric evil. Pettigrew, however, is someone you’ve met before. You might even know him- he is not exactly evil. Simply he is a man- or a rat- out for himself, selfish and cowardly in every way, circling around the most powerful without any shame or loyalty.
Pettigrew is one of the most realistic characters in fantasy literature- precisely because people as unscrupulous as him exist everywhere (mainly in Politics). He is to me the most fascinating villain in Harry Potter, because he translates directly into what Hannah Arendt called “The Banality of Evil”. Arendt coined it when talking about Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi whose trial she attended, leading the philosopher to a shocking realisation: “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous”. Later on, she added that “The phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”
Arendt was disconcerted that everyone at Eichmann’s trial had been attempting to achieve some sort of catharsis- as if Lucifer incarnate, or Hitler, was the one on trial. And yet it was incongruent to see a small, shallow man answering for the great acts of evil he had committed.
Eichmann’s case reminds me always of an equally unsettling tale- that of Sigmund Freud’s escape from an occupied Vienna. The Nazi official assigned to him, Anton Sauerwald, read his books and decided that such a brilliant, sick old man must be spared. Not only did Sauerwald fail to report the terrible state of Freud’s finances; he actually helped him and his family to escape Austria. He got them passports and visas. How? Apparently, Sauerwald was quite similar to those modern-day Nazis who complain about their friendships with people of colour ending “over politics”. Agree to disagree? It so turns out this is a true mentality- the fact that Sauerwald agreed with the Holocaust apparently did not mean “individuals could not help other individuals”, as he later put it.
However one chooses to view it, Anthony Sauerwald walked free from the Nuremberg Trials- Anna Freud wrote them a letter.
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Snape is presented to us as an unlikable villainous character; while Pettigrew is first introduced as a Neville Longbottom-type kid who tried his best and failed. He was never as smart or cool as the other Maraunders; he was just allowed in because, as we’ve learned, Wormtail goes through great lengths to prove his secretly flexible devotion (Voldemort of course never fell for it; he dumped him as his second in command as soon as he had more than a team of two). Snape’s allegiance, on the other hand, changes only once- but remains questioned for a long time. And never forget that Pettigrew was a Gryffindor, not Slytherin.
Snape and Wormtail are polar opposites; they are disconcerting in inverse trajectories.
There is this hypnotic symmetry to the Harry Potter series which makes it especially fascinating to obsessive-compulsive minds such as my own. The third and fifth books mirror one another quite tragically. The second and sixth deal with the very same questions. And the seventh is an epic re-enactment of the first.
We have all been properly fooled by J. K. Rowling many different times, in many different ways. The ruse she pulls in Deathly Hallows, however, is particularly crafty because it is the exact same ruse we fell for in The Philosopher’s Stone.
In the first book, we are warned never to suspect Snape ever again- and the subsequent books spend a great deal of time making us question this. By the point he kills Dumbledore, there is no question in our minds that Snape is Evil.
So why exactly do we fall for that? John Granger’s Harry Potter’s Bookshelf offers a mind-blowing analysis of Rowling’s plan: the first five books had taught us that when dealing with this world, our first guess is always wrong- and, in Harry’s case, all guesses are wrong.
We ‘d spent Philosopher’s Stone thinking Snape was helping Voldemort while Quirrell got his way. In the second book, the wrong suspect is Draco Malfoy, and so on. By year six, not even Ron and Hermione believe Harry when he again decides that Malfoy is up to something. Here’s the catch, though: we know for a fact that Harry is right, for the first time ever, because we had been granted access to certain plans Voldemort had for Draco by the Harry-less first chapters. So it is reasonable to assume that, because Harry was right about Draco (prime suspect of opening the Chamber once upon a time), he must have also been right about Snape all along (prime suspect of being “evil”).
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I liked Snape even before his “tragic” past was revealed to us- while some people appear to think that one can only enjoy characters who are also “good people”, there was something in every single Snape scene that rang so deliciously arrogant I sort of wished I had teachers like that. Obviously I understand his methods were wrong- yet there is a feeling of hurt pride in everything that he does equivalent to that of acclaimed professors teaching undergraduates (at least Snape tries)- which to me is hilarious.
In the end, Severus Snape’s redemption is difficult for people to accept because they see redemption as repairing one’s mistakes.
Most redemption tales start out as redemption tales, announcing themselves as such- readers are disconcerted at Snape’s for how quickly it forces them to change their minds. But I guess that’s also how Snape felt, when he changed his.
Not only that, but we equate change in character to change in personality, and seem to prefer the overly sentimental to the subtle and quiet- Snape however went on being himself, snapping at others, resenting children for their parents. He had to live with himself and all that remorse. Perhaps he was self-righteous, but to be fair that was the one thing he had going for him. Snape felt sorry for himself but he was sorrier for Lily. His existence was simply remorseful. If he blamed the demise of his relationship with her on James Potter, it was only because he blamed himself for everything else. And how utterly human it is; this lingering bitterness- perhaps in order for him to make the right choices- the most important ones- in spite of it; he must succumb to it when it came to minor decisions.
Nobody wants to tell a love story out of this, simply a story of Snape’s love as a peculiar force nurtured individually, and around which the whole of him grew. Maybe it wasn’t an honourable enough reason for you, but it was certainly strong enough to change his entire worldview.
Regardless of his reasons for doing what he did, though; the part he played was essential to defeating Voldemort. Snape did good, and the weight of his choices is not dictated by his inclinations.
Brazilian author Beatriz Seelaender has had her stories and essays published on websites like Psychopomp, Inverted Syntax, The Collapsar, Soft Cartel and many others - in addition to a column for Maudlin House. In print, her work has been featured in magazines such as High Shelf, AZURE, Cagibi, and The Gateway Review. "A Kidney Caught in Quicksand", a story published by Grub Street in 2017, earned Seelaender recognition from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in the categories of experimental fiction and humor writing. In 2019, Seelaender won Hidden River Arts' Sandy Run Novella Award.