Friday, June 6, 2014

Snape and the big moral questions...

J.K. Rowling's sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is aptly named. This book really is about Severus Snape, Hogwarts' enigmatic Potions (and now Dark Arts) teacher.

Central to the story is the overwhelming question: whose side is Snape on?

Ever since they met in book one, Harry and Snape have loathed each other. Slowly, over the course of the next four books, we discover the story behind that mutual enmity, an enmity that is rooted in Snape's own experience as a loner and outcast, tormented by Harry's popular father during their school years.

And, even more important, we receive hints in book five that for some reason (which will become clearer in the final novel) Harry's mother, Lily Evans, took on a somewhat protective, big sister role in relation to Snape at Hogwarts. We know at that point that James Potter and Lily are destined to marry, produce one child and then die at the wand of Lord Voldemort. We don't yet have a clear idea of how the relationships presented in Snape's own memory in The Order of the Phoenix (with James Potter and Severus Snape seemingly mortal enemies and with Lily Evans protective of the latter and involved in a conflicted relationship with the latter) result in Lily and James married and Snape on the outside looking in.

Further, we discover that Snape was, in fact, a Death Eater and still bears the Dark Mark on his arm.

On the other hand, we also know that Dumbledore trusts Snape no matter what anyone else says. And, to be honest, despite behaviour on Snape's part toward Harry that is downright abusive in some instances.

Rowling very carefully establishes this important question: is Dumbledore right to trust Snape or is this just another instance of the aging Head Master choosing to trust where trust has not been earned? Is Snape still Voldemort's man or is he truly loyal to Dumbledore?

In the sixth book, Rowling takes great pains to convince us of the answer to this question. Snape, she argues persuasively, is still Voldemort's man. Dumbledore is wrong to trust him and pays for his error with his life at the end of the book.

We begin The Deathly Hallows hating Snape as much as Harry does.

And then find out, at the end of the final novel, that Dumbledore was, in fact, right and Snape was truly loyal to the cause of right and good.

That's a fairly long introduction to the moral issue I really want to address in this post: now that we know that Snape is a good guy, how do we feel/what do we think when we go back and read The Half-Blood Prince and hear Snape tell Bellatrix and Narcissa: "The Dark Lord is satisfied with the information I have passed him on the Order. It led, as you perhaps have guessed, to the recent capture and murder of Emmeline Vance, and it certainly helped dispose of Sirius Black..."?

Snape is a good guy and yet he helped bring about the deaths of two other of the good guys: Emmeline Vance and Sirius Black.

At its heart, this is a moral question. Is it morally acceptable to sacrifice at least two lives in hopes of avoiding the deaths of many many more?

Of course, Snape could simply be lying at this point, taking advantage of the two recent deaths to strengthen his argument that he is loyal to Voldemort.

But I don't buy that. Snape could not possibly have convinced the paranoid and overly protective Dark Lord that he, Snape, was a loyal Death Eater if he was unwilling to play an active part in the deaths of members of the Order. We see even more evidence of this at the beginning of the final book.

So can we forgive Snape the deaths of Vance and Black simply because Snape turns out to be a good guy? Is it really acceptable to argue that "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one"?

Even further, is it appropriate for Snape to sacrifice others on that basis rather than just himself?

I have long believed that Rowling has a very strong cold-blooded side to her, at least in her writing. She makes it clear throughout these books that, in times of war, good people are going to die.

Cedric's death, for example, is not strictly necessary: he was, in fact, a "spare" in that graveyard scene, as Voldemort calls him. His sacrifice was intended to 1) cement Harry's good side, 2) introduce the fact of death to the looming battle, and 3) provide an ongoing challenge for Harry's developing personal life in the next several books. But it was not absolutely necessary to the plot of the book.

Further, Rowling kills off Hedwig at the start of book seven and the beloved owl's death is particularly meaningless. Hedwig is killed by an errant spell while trapped in her cage, riding in the sidecar of Hagrid's motorcycle. Her death is merely collateral damage. (As I have mentioned elsewhere, the film-makers rejected this meaningless death and actually revised the scene to make Hedwig's sacrifice heroic: she flies in front of a killing spell to save Harry's life).

But, for Rowling, Hedwig's death was a way to show us, very early in The Deathly Hallows, that this was going to be a very difficult journey. That people would die. If she could kill off a beloved animal so casually in the first pages of the book, we knew she was prepared to kill of any of our favourite human characters as the story progressed. By killing off Hedwig, Rowling set up her reader to take nothing for granted, to understand that anyone (including Harry, Hermione or Ron) could die.

And, of course, there is Dumbledore's willingness to sacrifice Harry to ensure Voldemort is killed in the end. Even Snape finds Dumbledore's coldblooded approach to Harry surprising and chilling. I don't have the passage in front of me but I believe Snape describes the Head Master's preparation of Harry for the final confrontation with Voldemort "like preparing a lamb for slaughter" or something like that.

Rowling is, as a writer at least, incredibly cold-blooded.

But, from a moral standpoint, can we forgive Snape for the part he has played in the deaths of a number of very good characters simply because he was doing it for "the greater good"?

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