So, Lupin was actually my favorite of the adult characters the first time I read the Harry Potter series as a younger girl (although I recall thinking he was gay even back then and I had to realign my reading of him as bisexual once Tonks came into the picture because I just cannot read him as hetero myself). Snape was up there on my list of preferred or favorite characters too but he wasnât at the top. That only happened when I became older and returned to the series with a new perspective and a few years experience with literary criticism under my belt. He shot right up to the top as I realized what an utterly complex, dynamic, and fascinating character Rowling had given us with Snape.
That being said, later readings of the series also really shifted my impression of Lupin as a character too (I would argue that while it made him less of the âpure cinnamon roll who can do no wrongâ it did make him more fleshed out as a character and a lot more intriguing). One of the interesting things about Lupin is the way Rowling presents him. He would have you think he was a mild-mannered, bookish personality yet, not unlike Snape, this man could be said to have a mask that he wears. Lupin is honestly a wolf in sheepâs clothing and Rowling gives us hints to the fact that appearances can be deceiving with him and that he is capable of having a âdarker side,â if you will. She does this very early on, in particular, we see the cracks in his mask when Peeves taunts him. She gives us some insight into who Lupin is as a character and how his outward amiability is something Lupin uses to disarm; his response to Peeves is passive-aggressive and done with a very flippant sort of air that underscores the edge Lupin has when he wants to show his teeth.
Similarly, when Snape enters the scene when he and Harry are in his classroom talking in a later chapter, we see a return of that flippancy and passive-aggression that underscore his personality. In contrast, Snape is very clearly wrong-footed; the cracks in his mask reveal his anxiety and he literally backs out of the room rather than turn his back to Lupin. Lupin, seemingly aware of this, delays drinking his potion, changes the subject on Snape to make a glib reference to the tanks he had installed when Snape lingers and presses for him to drink his potion, and waits until after Snape has left and cannot see him drinking his potion to actually drink it in an act that could be read as Lupin potentially baiting Snape (someone he did once bully) when confronted by the evidence of his discomfort by refusing to make any effort to put his mind to rest or assuage his anxiety. In this scene, Rowling is not just foreshadowing that Lupin is a werewolf but showing her readers that Lupin is being flippant about taking his potion in order to foreshadow him forgetting it entirely later. Sheâs also subtly providing us with a deeper, more complex glimpse into Lupin as a character by having him respond this way to Snapeâs discomfiture as the reader can interpret it in one of a few ways: Lupin is merely being petty and enjoys making Snape uncomfortable or his passive-aggression is also an expression of how Lupin copes badly (i.e. by being petty) with Snapeâs anxiety as a reminder of the âprankâ Sirius once involved him in without his consent. In either case, Lupin and Snape are not entirely removed from each other in being examples of adults who are shown to be flawed in the presence of Harry.Â
With the additional context of the antagonistic relationship the Lupin and his friends once had with Snape even the Boggart scene assumes additional meaning, as has already been noted by @deathdaydungeon. However, I would go further to observe that in a year that thematically explores the concept of time-travel, what motivates Lupin to enlist Neville that way may be read as an instance of Lupin regressing (as Snape does) back to the mindset of his youth in response to Snapeâs presence at Hogwarts and his unpleasant/unprofessional demeanor towards Neville (whom Rowling even has Harry symbolically link to Peter at one point). From a young readerâs perspective, Lupin certainly is doing something âgoodâ by bringing Neville forward and encouraging him to tackle his Snape-Boggart the way he did. However, from the perspective of an adult-reader and one in a similar position of authority with the same professional expectations and responsibilities Lupin would have had, I find that I must question the relative wisdom of Lupinâs choice. Compare his response to Snapeâs criticism of Neville (the potential motives of which Iâve analyzed more thoroughly here) with McGonagallâs de-escalation of the situation when Moody transfigures Draco in book four and youâre left with two very different examples of professionality and appropriate teacher-conduct in response to teacher bullying and/or cruelty.Â
Rather than address an issue of professional confuct with a colleague, Lupin does escalate matters by responding to Snapeâs bait and using Neville to humiliate him. Itâs significant that while Neville is the one whose fears determine his Boggart, Lupin is the one who instructs Neville on how to combat it. It is Lupin who tells him to âforceâ (the specific word Rowling chooses which has very important connotations, especially when you consider how they could relate to what weâve seen in SWM) Boggart-Snape into the most humiliating ensemble of womenâs clothing (a trend where Snape is concerned of characters insulting him by targetting his masculinity, which when you consider the dichotomous way gender is presented in this series does carry its own troubling implications) Neville can imagine and it is Lupin who presses Neville to go the extra lengths of including specific and embarrassing details like the big red handbag and the vultureâs hat, as âforcingâ Snape into the clothing of an older woman is not âcomedicâ enough it would seem.Â
After this, weâre told that Neville became even more of a target of Snapeâs with no further intervention on the part of Lupin. If this were truly about objections to Snapeâs behavior as a professional, Lupin could have addressed it directly versus passive-aggressively (as McGonagall did with Moody) or taken the issue to Dumbledore once it escalated but he does not. Instead, we have a case where it seems one teacher responded to another being cruel to a student by encouraging that student to humiliate that teacher and then he promptly leaves him to deal with the repercussions once heâs been made more of a target than he was before with no further mention in the narrative of Lupin attempting to do anything further to address it as an issue. I would argue that it is plausible to conclude Lupin was responding to Snape as he would have when they were students and, further, by involving Neville he was thinking in the same terms of school-yard retaliation that he and his friends once did when Snape struck back at them. Lupinâs actions werenât really the appropriate actions of a teacher so much as they were the passive-aggressive actions of a man who had regressed and fallen back into school-boy behaviors as much as Snape.Â
Moreover, Lupinâs confession in the Shrieking Shack and Hermioneâs disapproval truly lends us some insight into what narrative Rowling intended and how we were meant to respond to Lupinâs choices as readers. As Hermione is often her mouth-piece when it comes to addressing failings in the wizarding world, she condemns Lupinâs carelessness for what it is (just as she condemns Siriusâs behavior with Harry in book five for what it is) âselfishness. This gives us another side to Lupin, one that is far more complex and flawed than the mild-mannered academician he would have us see him as. Lupin, admittedly as a circumstance of his condition and his own anxieties of being the outsider, can be capable of remarkable degrees of selfishness and self-deceit. Heâs very much a man who has been wired for survival and his instincts when it comes to protecting himself and preserving what social connections he does have are strong enough he would gamble with Harryâs safety and the safety of the school just to avoid making Dumbledore aware of his betrayal of his trust and losing his esteem. Indeed, this awareness of his character faults further heightens the reality of how emotionally manipulative and hypocritical he was earlier in the year when he responds to Harry being found with the Maraudersâ Map by Snape by throwing his parentsâ deaths in his face and making him feel shame and guilt for his actions (this while Lupin has been attempting to deceive himself into believing not revealing Sirius as an Animagus is not endangering Harry).Â
Finally, there is much to glean of Lupinâs nature and his capacity for coldness and violence in how he responds to Peter being revealed to them. His readiness to join Sirius in committing a murder, in front of three thirteen-year-olds no less, is a sobering casting off of his mask. At that moment, we see the wolf with his teeth bared; we see the monster-in-the-man who can cross that line and murder without flinching in retaliation and revenge for betrayal. Sirius informs Peter he would have died before betraying James and Lily and Rowling shows us both he and Lupin are more than prepared to kill as a result of their betrayal. Yes, Lupin endured many lonely years of hardship following the deaths of Lily and James and, yes, Sirius was falsely accused and lost years of his own life yet the fact remains they are not just killing a stranger-spy âtheyâre gearing up to murder someone who they once called a friend.Â
To kill someone you know, laughed with, shared with, grew up with requires a very different set of nerves than it does to take revenge on a stranger on the opposite side of a war. Where we can observe that Snape would have been coming onto the scene with a long-standing hatred of Sirius âespecially while under the assumption it was he who betrayed the Pottersâ and even Sirius has had twelve long years in Azkaban to nurse his hatred of Peter, Remus likely once mourned Peterâs death and the loss of him as a friend. To be able to make that mental and emotional transition from regarding Sirius as an enemy and traitor and mourning Peter as a fallen friend to accepting Peterâs betrayal and conspiring with Sirius to murder him within the amount of time it took him to get from the castle to the Shrieking Shack cannot be underestimated. That was Lupin at his darkest, contrasted perfectly with Snape and his actions when weâre led to presume (partly because that is the persona Snape wears) that he is already dark, and it is through that contrast (i.e. between de-escalation with the intent of turning the guilty party over to the authorities and vigilante justice via murder) that Rowling most demonstrates for the reader that Lupin is far more dangerous and far more interesting than he would have us to believe. These days, that is why I appreciate Lupin as a character because he is not just the mild-mannered book-worm he seems âheâs the wolf in sheepâs clothing personified.
andulkaphoto
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
gummygunk
pixelskylines
prguitarman
