Why Severus Snape Is Cooler Than You or Your Cow
It’s the age-long question (…well, “age-long” since 1997 at least): Is Severus Snape a good guy (with attitude problems), or should we all hate his guts? Well, buckle your seat belts, kids, ‘cause I’m gonna take you on a ride. Severus Snape is the most complex, well-written, thought-out character in the whole Harry Potter series—and yes, I mean more than Harry Potter. We all know JK loves hidden easter eggs and untold traditions and backgrounds, e.g. Sirius Black AKA Dog Black the Black Dog, so I personally double triple check basically everything that seems a little too obvious, and we were given so much of Snape’s background for unnoticeable reasons. So let’s delve in, shall we?
The first thing I want to analyze is Snape’s psychology. In order to do so, we will look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In his theory, Abraham Maslow says to be a “fully functioning person” or to have a “healthy personality” one must first fulfill 5 levels of needs: psychological, safety, emotional, esteem, and self-actualization. Psychological needs—oxygen, food, water, body temp., etc,—are the base of this hierarchy. Snape's psychological needs are met, however they are done so minimally. In the books it’s revealed that his childhood home was dingy and run-down and his Hogwarts robes were second hand. While he had everything he needed, he was most likely not comfortable in his environment.
After psychological needs comes safety needs. An average child will show insecurity a lot more often than an adult will. Add this common statistic to the fact that Snape’s father regularly beat his wife—therefore likely Snape himself as well—and you can safely assume that, no, Snape’s safety need were definitely not met. As a matter of fact, Snape probably saw his situation not as a lack of safety, but as a presence of danger, or in other words, “negative safety value”. So far, Snape’s childhood has met 0.5/2 needs… feel sympathy yet? No? Okay then, we’ll keep going.
Next is emotional needs. Emotional needs includes love, affection, and belongingness. In this stage, people seek to overcome loneliness, isolation, and/or alienation. If you’re questioning whether or not Snape met these needs, well, you didn’t look very hard then. OBVIOUSLY Snape never overcame any of these, dare I say, ever. Of course he was lonely, he only had one friend after all. Isolation came from being a Slytherin who was best friends with a muggleborn, and feelings of alienation was the result of relentless bullying of the (aptly named) Marauders. According to Maslow, to finalize this stage you must give as well as receive love. This was never done and obviously so for many reasons, which will be explored later.
Needs for esteem come 77next in the hierarchy. For this, a person needs a healthy respect for themselves and others. We can safely throw respect for others—save for Lily—out the window given treatment from his father and the Marauders. After mistreatment from multiple sources, it’s common to lose self-respect if you even had it in the first place. When/if these needs are met, the person feels confident and valuable. If not, he or she feels inferior, week, helpless, and worthless. After a toll of 0.5/4 needs so far, I think there’s no question on whether or not Snape felt this way.
After the person in question is satisfied in all the former needs, they move onto the final step of self-actualization, or a person’s need to be and do that which the person was “meant to do” as prescribed by fate. It’s arguable that in the end, Snape did find what he was born to do at least in a sense. Not only was he gifted in potions, but he seemed to enjoy it as well. Now, that doesn’t quite mean this need was met. Actually, given the lack of criteria he’s met so far, he probably doesn’t even see this as his real purpose in life, which would explain why he spent the rest of his life trying to repent for his childhood/young adult mistakes. So technically, he didn’t really meet this need at all since it’s only him that matters in the instance anyway.
Therefore, the finally tally is *drumroll*… 1/2 out of 5… dang. That's one disappointing childhood. This goes to show that Snape has every psychological excuse to act like a jack ass. Sure that may not really excuse his actions; I don't think so either, but it fully explains why he did all those things and acted the way he did. After all, this amounts to 1/10 of any person’s needs. For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, that’s 10%… Snape had 10% of his total motivation.
Aside from his emotional malnourishment as a child, let’s talk about what happened in his Hogwarts years and soon after. First off he only had one friend… like, in his whole life… ever. That’s awful sad. He was exposed to some sort of abuse 365 days of his life, be it from his father in the summer or from the Marauders during school. He ruined the only good thing he had going for him through misguided, bling rage. His only friend, who he still loves, kicks him while he’s down and marries the head of his former bully-gang… and he still loves her… Then he has to go and be the reason she's killed. Of course he didn’t know that at the time, but when he finds out he hates himself more than probably anyone in the history of ever. If he hadn’t been nosey and told Voldemort that partial prophecy, Voldemort never would have went hunting for the Potters and therefore Lily would have never had to die for Harry. Conclusion: People commit suicide with 60% of their life fulfilled according to Maslow. They kill themselves on a lack of self-esteem (the 4th out of 5 stages). Snape had his measly 10% of a life ripped out from under him, torn to pieces, and fed to the werewolf that almost killed him. But he still fought for Harry—maybe it was for Lily, but he did it nonetheless, and that isn’t to be ignored on my blog.
Now that we’ve established why Snape was a jerk, let’s analyze if he actual was one or if he just used his dungeon bat facade as a coping mechanism (spoiler alert: it’s the last one). For one example, let’s take a look at this screen cap from Prisoner of Azkaban: Werewolf Scene
This is not the face of a man who just generally hates everything about life including all the cute little flowers and rainbows it comes with. It’s the face of a man who’s reliving the scariest moment of his life. And can we just take a moment to acknowledge that he instinctively ran to protect these kids. A true jerk doesn’t do that. They may save them from something threatening their life (which he still might not have done if he was the man he’s commonly accused of being), but Snape was smart. He’s seen this before. In the moment Lupin had just begun his transformation, so there was still not only the time the transformation took, but also the time it would take for Lupin’s werewolf form to come into awareness, assess the possible prey, then begin stalking—not attacking, wolves stalk towards their prey then attack when the timing is suitable. Snape knew he had this time too, knew they weren’t in immediate danger, so he took the short amount of time it would take to get there and jumped in front of not only three people, but three kids, and not only three kids, but three students, and not only three students, but the three students he referred to as the bane of his existence. This is the face of a man who simply doesn’t want anyone else to feel as helpless as he did. This is the face of a man who would die for his least favorite students because he doesn’t feel as though he has enough reason to keep living.
The second example I want to use is that Snape was not the bad teacher his students and most of his audience said he was. Mull over this: the students in books 1-5 actually did pretty well. The Slytherins did as well as you would expect any average student to do, Hermione did great even (until sabotaged); even Harry did okay sometimes. The only reason everybody else did so badly was because they were scared and intimidated. The Slytherins weren’t because Snape didn’t treat them the same way; he wouldn’t take points from Slytherin as often because of course he wants his house to win the cup (I’m sure he just loved Dumble’s meddling), and Hermione wasn’t as affected because she’s a freaking hard-headed badass. Then BAM! Everyone’s in their sixth year and suddenly doing terrible. From the Slytherins to Hermione, no one could get a single potion to goo right… except Harry. Harry Potter, the lucky lil lion who managed to get ahold of a hand-me-down book that formerly belonged to none other than our very own Severus Snape. “He made all these corrections, so he should have given these recipes to the students instead of the faulty text books,” grumbles the haters. Well haters, let’s revisit the Philosopher’s Stone shall we? Harry mentions that in his first potions class Snape “waves his wand and the recipe to a potion appears on the black board.” These kids bought potions books every year (most likely required for every subject) but never used them for potion making. Every recipe they used was put on the black board by Snape himself. He did that because he know the books were wrong. He did give his recipes to the students… So haha. In your invalid faces, haters! He didn’t want the students to make a potion with an incorrect recipe; people say he didn’t care about his students but he did. He gave those students better chances at succeeding with correct recipes. The comparison goes like this: food instructions, mean teacher=average grades, bad instructions, good teacher= bad grades. Even with the best students. Now tell me that Snape was a bad teacher.
Everyone has coping mechanism. This was Snape’s, and it’s way more common than it’s getting credit for. The number one reason for uncontrollable or aggravated anger in adults (or anyone really) is early exposer to the receiving end of the same anger. In other words: an eye for an eye. And it’s not as controllable as people claim it is.
Now that I’ve given my spill about Snape not being bad, just rude, I want to let it be known that Snape offers a parallel to so many characters. His reaction to his life is only one of many, many, many possibilities.
Harry: Both share…
Abusive households
Childhood bullies how thought he ,bullied, was below him, bully (harry beneath Draco for blood-status and Snape beneath James for his house)
Potential for Slytherin (only changed through early exposure to prejudice against—oddly enough—each others’ house)
Pressure to be in the house they were in from their families’ history in said houses
Difference: Harry’s was justice, Snape’s drive was his love for Lily
Draco:
Slytherin
Pressure to be a Death Eater
Prejudice against Gryffindor house
Difference: Draco was more fearful than Snape when given tasks by Voldemort
Sirius:
Abusive households
Slytherin raising
Difference: Stubbornness and the remaining Marauders
Luna: (Stick with me here)
An outsider
The “odd” and off-putting character
Confronted with an opportunity to be friends with the “popular kid” (Snape could have been friends with James if the latter had been more accepting and with the aid of Lily. It seems far fetched but then again Luna was pretty out there when she met Harry)
Difference: Luna was raised in a very different household…
*The comparison with Harry is much longer simply because of the amount of background we have.
Now, why is it that in the end Snape isn’t kind and obviously good like most of his counterparts when they were all so similar? Legilimency? Espionage? The “Greater Good”? ALL. Legilimency: Snape obviously couldn’t let Voldemort see him walking down the halls of Hogwarts handing out flowers with the Hufflepuffs… yeah, I want to see that Death Eater meeting too. Espionage: The tricky thing with Snape is the Dark Side thinks he’s spying for them and the Light Side thinks he’s spying for them. He has to keep up a constant shield, not letting anyone to close, not letting anything get out too far, and definitely not letting anyone know for certain what side he’s actually on. This allows him to get secrets from both sides. He’s the ultimate spy; he could probably start up his own army after all that. The greater good: Snape started out an actual Death Eater, then repented, then technically stayed with the Dark Side, but also technically stayed with the Light Side. He also uses this in his spying by using it as the perfect cover. Because while he “spies” for the Dark Lord, he’s actually with the good guys. He uses his dark past to blend seamlessly with the Death Eaters so he isn't discovered. He acts like a… ahem….a few choice words for the end purpose of helping the Light.
Now that we’ve (finally) reached the conclusion, let’s conclude. In this picture we see that he realizes—fully for the first time—that he chose wrongly and maybe realizes that choosing differently probably could have saved his relationship with Lily, saved her from death, and brought him a real family for once in his life—cause we all know lovey-dovey Lily Evans Potter would incorporate Severus into her family if it was the last thing she did. He finally sees everything he did wrong and regrets it with everything he has left. This man was very, very hurt and simply ill over that pain, but Severus Snape was not an inherently bad guy.