I can always go back to responses and discover there were things I meant to address and somehow forgot or things that I apparently could have addressed more clearly to better communicate my point. Especially on a day when you find yourself doing a lot of writing or responding to a lot of people.
In all fairness, I’ve spent decades of my life studying literature and the various critical theories that go into that discipline so identifying tropes, coding, and other conventions are likely a bit more second nature to me at this point in my life where for other people certain links between certain details may never even have crossed their mind (not to say someone needs to go out and get a Ph.D in English or literary theory to be able to write thoughtful meta about their favorite characters, books, or shows; I’ve read meta by many people on this site who don’t share my professional background and some of their conclusions blew my mind). Then there are people like my friend @idealistic-realism00 who are able to recognize the same tropes from a position of experience. It really does highlight the nature of white privilege in a lot of ways, in that I’m only able to recognize certain details in literature as a result of the formal training I received in college. I basically had to learn to how to recognize the different ways race may be represented (i.e. symbols, tropes, coding, etc.) in works of literature where for so many readers of color it is very much a part of a wider racial consciousness when it comes to both historical narratives and contemporary literature of the Western canon. What many people outside of the Snapedom may not realize in the Harry Potter community is that Snape has some very complex character coding (not just in terms of race but also gender, lgbtq+, etc.) and that has led to a great deal of diversity among his fans. His character’s coding opens him up to many different interpretations (for instance, trans!Snape has a popular following in the Snapedom and some dedicated fans have written very convincing essays about it). I recently shared an absolutely fascinating discussion about this very topic if you’re interested in learning more about the literary traditions Rowling was drawing upon. In addition, I also did a bit of critical analysis on some other tropes and a few of the possible underlying moral philosophies that are specific to Snape should you decide to read them, you’ll find my contribution at the very bottom.
I do want to be clear, the point I made about the age of Snape and Draco was not made to dismiss Snape’s behavior as an adult. Unfortunately, it would seem this was an occasion where I failed to clearly communicate my point so I apologize for any confusion. Rather, I made the point of age to draw attention to what has become an unfortunate double-standard from people who would seek to condemn Snape’s decision to become a Death Eater as unforgivable and irredeemable while also excusing Draco on the grounds of his age. Commonly, when comparisons between Snape and Draco come up, the crux of the argument seems to be “Draco deserved redemption because he was a teenager when he took his Dark Mark.” and “Snape is an adult with a Dark Mark so he’s worse because I’m not really giving much thought to when he became a Death Eater just that he’s an adult character who became one.” Importantly, in the context of those arguments, the attention given to Draco’s age has very little to do with conversations about bullying. It is merely a glaring double-standard some people seem to have that the act of Draco becoming a Death Eater should be excused because of his age while ignoring the details we can infer from canon that tells us Snape would have roughly been groomed into joining the ranks of the Death Eaters around the same age ranges (i.e. sixteen and up) as Draco Malfoy. So, on the one hand, readers empathetic to Draco to are suddenly more sensitive to the issues of adolescent cognitive development (i.e. that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which influences our impulse control and rational-thinking among other things, doesn’t finish its development until roughly our mid-twenties) and that becomes Draco’s defense; while, on the other hand, Snape’s own age of induction is omitted (as are the differences in his and Draco’s power-privileges) and they fall back to more black-and-white “There is no excuse for wanting to be a Death Eater!” arguments again where his character is concerned. When taken into consideration in light of the difference in coding between Snape and Draco, that double-standard becomes decidedly more of an issue for me.
Beyond that, it’s just an insincere argument many people make in bad faith because they’re unwilling to acknowledge their own biases and how they’ve allowed them to influence their character analysis (they want to like Draco but they’ve also locked themselves into a paradox where they’ve gone on record saying people shouldn’t really like Snape because he did bad things but Draco has also done bad things, so they rationalize it by making Draco more of a victim of circumstance and Snape even more of an exaggerated villain). As a result, any time someone compares Draco with Snape to possibly suggest Draco was more of a victim and more “deserving” of redemption (because of his age), I always make a point to remind people that Snape would canonically have become a Death Eater somewhere in his later teens and that he also defected at age twenty-one (a point still well before his cognitive development would have been completed) for a bit of context. At most, we can argue that Snape was likely only a loyal Death Eater for around four years (i.e. if he joined at the exact age Draco did then we could argue five, however, Draco was widely considered young to be a Death Eater and there were special circumstances surrounding his becoming one, so it’s possible Snape did not receive his Dark Mark at Draco’s age, it’s even possible he didn’t receive it until after Hogwarts and when we see him in the Hog’s Head he was still more of an errand-boy in the spirit of Stanley Shunpike and the Dark Mark was his reward for delivering the prophecy to Voldemort, which would certainly have been a dark irony). However, as I have illustrated in other discussions, Rowling sought to make a point within her narrative (particularly through Harry, who she has dismiss the argument of “I was young and didn’t know any better!” by drawing attention to his own age and the fact he is able to recognize the rightness or wrongness of certain choices on two separate occasions in the series; once to Lupin when he tries to defend the actions of James and Sirius and once to Hermione when she tries to use Dumbledore’s age to excuse the revelations about his ideas of Muggle subjugation he shared with Grindlewald) that even when we are young the choices we make can still have a lasting impact on the lives of other people for good or bad and that our choices do come with consequences, so we should always be mindful of that. Importantly, the Harry Potter series is a coming-of-age story or bildungsroman, which means that certain thematic messages do apply and one of the ones most common to that genre of storytelling is that of generational empowerment.
Harry’s choices are what allow him to save his world and to occasionally get into trouble (e.g. trying to fly a car to Hogwarts); the Marauders’ choices vary from them fighting to better their world to leaving a former classmate with lasting trauma as a result of their bullying; Snape’s choices as a teenager led to the death of his closest friend while his choices as an adult contributed to Harry’s saving of the wizarding world; and Draco Malfoy chose to espouse blood prejudice but he also chose to show mercy to his enemies (it’s significant that both Harry and Draco choose to disarm using the spell they learned from Snape in their second-year dueling club, Expelliarmus, rather than escalate things to a point of violence and I’ve also written a bit on that significance before). Indeed, when viewing the trial of Barty Crouch Jr., Harry is struck by how young Barty Crouch Jr. seems, and his desperate pleas to his father inspire sympathy in Harry even knowing he stands among the Death Eaters who were accused of torturing Neville’s parents until they were just one step under complete catatonia. However, by the conclusion of the book, Harry discovers that Barty Crouch Jr. was a loyal follower of Voldemort and that he helped to mastermind the entire scheme that led to Voldemort’s revival. This was a deliberate choice on Rowling’s part and she often plays with the themes of age and accountability in the Harry Potter series. Ultimately, her message to her young readers is both cautionary and inspiring; the choices young people make can have power and impact (just as much as adults), and while age can certainly be a factor when we make the wrong choices we must not allow age to become an excuse or a way to get out of taking accountability for the consequences. The only way we learn and grow (at any age) is to take accountability for our mistakes and to keep holding ourselves accountable (at any point in her narrative where characters fail to do this there are always consequences) to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over.
That being said, while it is true that Lucius’s failures were a major factor in Draco receiving the Dark Mark, we should not treat them as the only factor. As early as the second book, Draco is openly parroting the rhetoric of blood prejudice he’s learned from his parents and cheering for the possibility of a Muggle-born genocide at his school. In the fourth book, Draco is quite comfortable (even entertained) hanging back and watching from a safe distance as his father and some other Death Eaters march through the camp-site in full Death Eater regalia levitating a family of Muggles and terrorizing the people who came for the Quidditch World Cup. In the sixth book, Harry finds him in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express with his friends boasting about his induction into the Death Eaters and hinting at the special mission that Voldemort has assigned him. Importantly, even if Lucius had not fallen out of favor, we can argue it would have been very likely that Draco and Harry would have found themselves on opposite sides of the war.
So, while it is true he was made into a Death Eater as part of a greater plan to punish Lucius for his own blunders when we say Draco was “forced” it certainly isn’t an inaccurate assessment but it also does give more of the impression Draco was brought kicking and screaming to receive his brand against his will. That goes a long way towards how we might perceive his character. In that scenario, Draco is a helpless victim who does not want (and maybe never wanted) to become a Death Eater. A more measured reading of Draco would be that he likely had nurtured ambitions or even expectations of becoming a Death Eater at some point in a more distant, hypothetical future following Voldemort’s return in his fourth-year (the boy who so often spoke about his father and emulated his parent’s blood prejudice may have just seen it as a given he would follow in Lucius’s foot-steps as if it were something of a birth-right) but that the circumstances in which he became one were not at all what he had imagined they would be. The most interesting thing about Draco’s character is that he is thrust into the center of things immediately and is quickly confronted by the reality of what an ideological war looks like; up to that point it had all been lip-service for shock-value but once the stakes were real and Draco found himself assigned the task of murdering someone and later even found himself casting the Cruciatus on people Voldemort was questioning under his orders that is when we begin to see the cracks forming in his resolve –I suspect that through the deterioration of his parents alone, Draco was beginning to realize that their ideology was unsustainable and self-destructive.
Draco as a character is a very good example of the role indoctrination can play in the continued propagation of generational prejudices. Draco learned from his parents the same way they learned from their parents (e.g. Abraxas Malfoy was a piece of work and apparently even conspired to assassinate a Minister of Magic for their blood status). This provides us with an interesting contrast with Snape because where Draco may want to emulate his father in becoming a Death Eater and he echoes the rhetoric he learned from his parents, Snape’s reasons for becoming a Death Eater may well have been rooted in internalized prejudice as a result of his negative feelings about his Muggle father, who Rowling implies may have been abusive. It is far more likely that Snape was groomed to become a Death Eater by members of his house (e.g. the narrative strongly suggests Lucius Malfoy may have been a significant influence) and that they were able to capitalize on his growing sense of disenfranchisement while at Hogwarts (in this way the Marauders’ bullying and Dumbledore’s inaction up to Sirius’s prank where he makes the choice to threaten Snape with expulsion to secure his silence and safeguard his position at Hogwarts may all have played a role) and the fact that Snape did not have the social connections or status needed to secure successful entry into their world post-Hogwarts. The psychology that goes into the two extremes, we see reflected through the characters of Draco and in Snape is endlessly fascinating and I have always found it unfortunate that people here are so often more focused on trying to compare one to the other to make a negative case of who “deserved” redemption more. Understanding the factors that can render young people vulnerable to radicalization is actually one of our best means of combating it, so we should be having more conversations that look at the effects of generational indoctrination and the practice of psychological grooming.
In terms of who “deserved” a redemption arc more, I think that statement misses the point of what purpose redemption arcs are supposed to serve within a narrative. I also believe I understand why you struggle with Snape’s redemption arc now. However, before I delve into that I’ll address the former issue first. So, when people argue that x character “deserved” a redemption arc, it has always struck me as a rather curious declaration. To me, it suggests that the person making the argument believes that a character is entitled to redemption and our forgiveness because they’ve satisfied certain terms and conditions they have arbitrarily decided upon (i.e. the character did all of x, y, and z so I think that’s enough for them to be considered redeemed and one of the “good guys”). Indeed, this post examines the Christian hegemonic assumptions that appear to go into many people’s perceptions of redemption arcs, but the gist of it is that there are people who connect ideas of redemption to the belief that people who do bad things must do so because they are naturally morally corrupt. As such, the act of redemption is also the act of purging themselves of that inner evil or corruption. Alternatively, the idea that people can be capable of doing bad things without possessing an inherently evil nature and that the focus of redemption is not necessarily about purging oneself of corruption so much as it should be on addressing the faults in one’s character that allowed for the choices they made and atoning for the damages their actions have caused is frequently overshadowed by this concept of corruption/redemption/purging of evil. As the post I have linked you to above illustrates::
While Christianity has redemption, in Judaism, the vehicle for character transformation is atonement. Books can be written about the differences between the two, but for the sake of brevity, redemption is fixing who you are, and atonement is fixing what you’ve done. People do bad things because they are messy, finite and human. The task of atonement is to repair the damage you’ve done and return to a place of clarity. Sometimes, there is no making up for what you’ve done, so you find a way to live with that yet still strive to do better. The surest proof of atonement is having the opportunity to make the same mistake as before but choosing differently.
Interestingly, in literary criticism what may determine a successful character redemption arc runs the gamut and while some classic examples of redemption arcs are steeped in more problematic literary traditions that can feel quite dated (e.g. the “bad boy” who wins the love of a “pure and virtuous” woman who formerly rejected him as his reward for reforming his ways) I would argue that the idea that a character is either entitled to (or deserving of) redemption on the basis of how successfully they transition from “innately bad/amoral” to “purged of all evil/all good” is honestly quite reductive as a moral philosophy in terms of how inaccurately it reflects the many complexities of human nature and the many factors that may go into the “why” of what compels people to do some of the things they do. This over-emphasis on the Christian hegemonic perception of a redemption arc functioning almost as a reward for the character fulfilling a set of expectations that have been decided on by the person casting their judgment is decidedly limiting in terms of promoting a greater understanding (not to mention the apparent objective of such redemption arcs is to see a character undertake a transformation as an act of purification all for the sake of being able to absolve them so they may be counted among the “good”; as such, the focus is on what the character gains by redemption rather than what impact this character’s journey to redemption has had within the story).
Ultimately, I would argue that from a moral and philosophical perspective redemption arcs are most compelling when the point is not that they are something “deserved” or something the character is presented as being entitled to but when they are exactly the opposite; in that, the focus of the character is on atonement for atonement’s sake (born out of a genuine sense of remorse and a desire to take accountability) rather than the pursuit of any moral gratification or the expectation of forgiveness at the end of their journey. A good example can be found from comparing the classic Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol with the recent movie adaptation that aired on FX last Christmas. Significantly, where in the original telling by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer’s redemption arc culminates in those he had wronged forgiving him and embracing him as a beloved member of their community the FX’s movie adaption took a far more gloomy turn (note: there is much that was controversial about the movie and I would agree that some of the criticism was not only understandable but also quite valid, however, I do think quite a few of the creative choices made were rather interesting and worth a closer examination). Ebenezer’s crimes against humanity are far more detailed and the damage he has inflicted is deep enough that in some instances he knows it cannot be undone and forgiveness may not even be a possibility. By the conclusion of the film, Ebenezer rejects the idea of redemption in the sense that redemption would function as a reward for him making the choice to be better, and he sets out to atone for his actions because he has recognized the need for accountability and not out of any expectation of forgiveness or personal gain. In short, Ebenezer is redeemed by the fact he has taken accountability for himself and chosen to live the remainder of his life atoning with the understanding that some of the harm he has caused cannot be undone. It is his decision to continue to atone, in spite of this fact, and in the absence of forgiveness even that makes his redemption effective.
That is not to say Dickens’ Ebenezer was not also redeemed, however, the FX adaptation may reflect the current zeitgeist. Where access to social media can make it easy to find a platform to harm others with hate speech, cyberbullying, or just to end up on the wrong end of a call-out post accused of being problematic and the MeToo movement has brought issues of workplace harassment, violence against women, and rape culture further into the public consciousness, the question we all find ourselves asking is who gets to come back from it when they cross a line, what does redemption really even look like, and how can we tell when a person’s public apology is even sincere? Overall, the FX adaptation strives to answer that question by presenting us with the very worst version of Ebenezer Scrooge we might imagine, introducing new elements into his backstory that appeal to our sense of pathos and might tempt us to try to excuse him for all that he’s done, and then resoundingly slapping down the very idea of doing so with clear condemnation, before Ebenezer himself declares that he does not expect forgiveness or believe it is deserved; only that he must live out the rest of his days atoning for damages he has done in his world. The message is clear, Ebenezer’s redemption comes not from the fact he is forgiven by the people he’s harmed or through any promise that his community will embrace him as surely as they do his book counterpart. His redemption comes through his conviction that the only response he can possibly have to being confronted with the evidence of all the harm he has done is to go out into the world and try to make it right.
I think this person makes a valid point when they argue that they believe a successful redemption arc happens when redemption seems impossible to deserve yet the character continues to persist and strives to make the difficult choices necessary for atonement. Many of our most compelling redemption arcs have come as a result of clever writers bringing their characters to a place where you’re certain they’re beyond the point of no return only for them to find their way back anyway through sheer remorse and a genuine need to make right what they have done. Notably absent in those types of redemptions arcs is the suggestion that the character is motivated by some belief or expectation that their actions will result in forgiveness or improve their own circumstances. They act not because they are thinking of themselves but because they are compelled by a desire to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.
The redemption arc of Severus Snape reflects very similar principles. Indeed, it is successful not only because it satisfies the structural terms of Rowling’s chiasmus in coming around full-circle, as I have argued here (note: I replied to this particular thread twice with different arguments to different responders so it isn’t a mistake in my links if you’re taken to the same post twice I’m just citing the two different replies I made on the same thread) but it is also successful because of the manner Rowling has chosen to present the reader with Snape’s redemption. Importantly, you appear to be focused on the idea that Snape’s redemption arc was ineffective because of his conduct as a teacher. Your expectations are set on a character transformation/redemption of the Christian hegemonic variety, wherein Snape would have completely purged himself of all moral failings and impurities before he was allowed to be redeemed. The problem is that Snape’s redemption arc has nothing to do with his classroom behavior. The two can actually coexist in the same way that James being a bully does not invalidate the fact that he died a heroic death protecting his family. The former does not disqualify the latter, they merely exist together as two different facets of his character. The acts that made redemption necessary for Severus Snape had nothing to do with the fact that, as an adult, he would later abuse his authority as a teacher. As such, his redemption arc is focused entirely on Snape fixing the aspects of his character that led to him becoming a Death Eater and revealing parts of a prophecy that led to the death of Lily and James Potter. To quote from my arguments in the post I linked you to above:
By the Battle of Hogwarts, Snape is not only a man who proactively resists the use of the same kind of prejudiced language he once used as a young man, such as Mudblood, when he can afford to do so without revealing his true loyalties and ideological shift (e.g. when Phineas Nigellus referred to Hermione as “the Mudblood” to dehumanize her) but he has also learned the importance of doing the right thing, even for people he may not personally care about and/or may even greatly loathe (e.g. conjuring stretchers for Sirius and Harry, protecting Harry throughout books 1-7, saving Remus Lupin’s life during the Flight of the Seven Potters, etc.). That is why Rowling felt it was important to include in the memories Harry witnesses a scene between Dumbledore and Snape where Snape seems appalled to learn Harry must die for Voldemort to be defeated and seems to insist it’s only because of his decision to protect him as penance for Lily. Importantly, Rowling has Snape immediately contradict his own words in the same memory and not long after denying he doesn’t care that Harry will die for Harry’s sake. In the face of Snape’s accusation (”You’ve been raising him like a pig for slaughter.”) Dumbledore defends himself by asking who Snape had watched die recently and the answers he gives reveals the truth of the changes that his character has underwent from twenty-one to that very moment: “Lately, only those whom I could not save.” With those few words, the reader discovers that Snape has learned to value and defend human life not just when the life in question matters to him but because life itself has an intrinsic value to him.
This is also proven when he ultimately chooses to remain steadfast against Voldemort, even after learning that boy with Lily’s eyes he believed he had dedicated his life to protecting must die. He could have chosen to return back to Voldemort once he learned Harry was meant to die, he could have warned Harry to save himself, or he could have just attempted to flee like Kakaroff and make a new life for himself. However, as he once told Dumbledore, Snape is not like Kakaroff, he is “no such coward.” Snape does not die selfishly or cowardly, indeed, the moment he lays eyes on Harry he stops trying to staunch the flow of blood from Nagini’s attack and fulfills the final task that Dumbledore gave him to arm Harry with the knowledge he needs. It is his last act as Harry’s teacher and as Dumbledore’s spy and through it Snape’s redemption arc is completed by coming full circle (as part of a beautifully crafted chiastic parallel on Rowling’s part); where he once imparted information to Voldemort that led to the death of the Potters he now has given their son all the information he needs to win the war and stamp out Voldemort and the lasting darkness he threatens to unleash on their world.
SIgnificantly, Snape’s efforts of atonement are not out of any expectation of personal gain. He even asks that Dumbledore not reveal “the very best of him” as part of the terms of his service. Most compelling, however, is the fact that Rowling writes Snape with the subtle suggestion that he does not believe he is deserving of redemption for his actions and is not acting because he is motivated by the idea his efforts will be rewarded. When he insists that Lily remains his sole motive for what he does, Rowling contradicts this in two key ways to show the reader that Snape is either not giving himself credit or unaware of his own transformation. First, as I argued above, when asked by Dumbledore who he has watched die, Snape’s answers (”Lately, only those whom I could not save”) exposes the moral shift in his character from a selfish young man who once only thought to protect a person he cared about without giving much thought to her family or how she would feel surviving them to a man who has come to value life as an intrinsic thing he must protect. Secondly, by introducing the complication that for Voldemort to be defeated Harry must die, Rowling forces Snape to choose between a form of atonement that is motivated by a personal desire for self-gratification (i.e. protecting Lily’s son as catharsis for failing to protect her) and an atonement which will allow him to do the most possible good (i.e. making sure Harry has the information he needs so Voldemort can be defeated). Where in the past, Snape cared only about Lily, the reader knows he is truly redeemed by the end of Harry Potter because he was presented with the opportunity to make the same mistakes that led to his need to atone and he chose differently.
His redemption arc was never about what kind of teacher he was while at Hogwarts. It was always about the greater role he played in both wars and the choices that he made. This is what Rowling meant when she described Snape as all grey. He reflects a far more complex idea of what it means to be human, neither saint nor devil. Evil is not necessarily an innate quality in people and not every person who does bad things does so because of some inherent moral corruption. Sometimes people do bad things “…because they are messy, finite, and human.” Which is why the Marauders could be bullies without being villains in her story and why Dudley, an antagonist bully, was still capable of showing humility and acknowledging Harry in a positive way without Harry being forced to just “get over” the years of bullying and forgive him right on the spot. Rowling wrote these characters as dynamic and, in spite of the strong Christian leanings in her narrative, she mostly veered away from the hegemonic ideas of redemption we have discussed (I say mostly because she still couldn’t get around Voldemort as “born evil” in the Satan archetype vs. Christ-figure mythic that underscored her narrative) and focused far more on an idea of redemption that is more relatable and allows for human error. We have this inclination as humans to try to rationalize when people do bad things; sometimes we do this by agreeing the person must just be morally corrupt or evil, sometimes (and more problematically) we blame their actions on things like mental illness. Historically, people of color were often accused of being more violent or dangerous and we still see variations of that which contribute to police violence and anti-immigrant xenophobia (e.g. consider Trump’s 2016 speech about how immigrants were “rapists” who brought drugs and crime into the U.S.).
The truth, however, is that people do bad things for a myriad number of reasons. Sometimes they do “bad things” out of a feeling of necessity or desperation (e.g. a person living in poverty who steals to feed their family), sometimes they do bad things out of ignorance to the fact it’s wrong, sometimes they do bad things because they have been taught to believe they’re not bad (i.e. indoctrination), sometimes people do bad things because the world has done bad things to them, and sometimes people do bad things because they want to and they don’t care who they hurt. There are a lot of reasons that a person may do something and one of the most difficult things to realize is that not every person who has done a bad thing (or even several bad things) in their life is a bad person because of those things nor is every person who has done good necessarily a good person just because of the fact they have done good things. There are plenty of wealthy people like the Kochs who have dedicated portions of their wealth to philanthropy (which is good) but that does not erase the harm they have done by pushing their regressive political agenda through lobbying and even by throwing money at academic institutions to ensure they teach from whitewashed textbooks that soften historical events such as slavery or misrepresent science entirely. Ultimately, Rowling’s philosophy on redemption is something far more sophisticated than the idea that bad people make bad choices and there is no coming back from that. Her heroes are flawed, her villains are dynamic and her message is clear: redemption is possible for anyone who may want it and be willing to atone.
This is why Harry even offers Voldemort a chance to atone and to avoid making the same mistakes that destroyed him once before. She wanted her young readers to understand, if the very worst of the wizarding world has the option of atoning then they can too, regardless of how much bad they may feel they have done or how hopeless it might seem. Indeed, I would argue that the worse our actions are the more necessary atonement becomes. In Snape, we see that even if we mess up in a big way and it seems there is no coming back from it, we still must try. Snape didn’t deserve his redemption because Rowling wanted Snape to earn his redemption. He did this by holding himself accountable for the worst choices of his life and he dedicated almost two decades of his life to atoning for them for no reason other than because he felt compelled to repair as much of the damage he had caused as he could.
As I said, Snape’s character redemption can coexist with all of Snape’s many faults because the point was to broaden our understanding of morality, encourage a more complex kind of empathic awareness of each other, and dispute the idea that only certain kinds of people “deserve” redemption because redemption is something we can all proactively earn by atoning for the harm we have done and striving to do better (i.e. to not make the same mistakes again when the opportunity presents itself). Overall, we can look at Snape’s character faults in context of his redemption but not as a disqualification for his redemption. Indeed, Snape as a bully is an equally significant part of his characterization because it reflects a cycle of behavior. As a victim of bullying himself, we can look at the institutional response from the teachers and Headmaster of Hogwarts, and when we do we see a clear pattern of failure and even abuses of authority. Mainly, Snape’s bullying was never addressed until Sirius’s failed prank, wherein Snape as the victim was silenced under threat of expulsion by Albus Dumbledore. Two of Snape’s bullies would have appeared to have even been rewarded from his perspective, in that Dumbledore made Remus a prefect and James a Head Boy. Snape’s own Head of House ignored him and dismissed his potential due to his lack of social connections and impoverished class status. Ultimately, we can see the evidence of Snape’s disenfranchisement while at Hogwarts and a model of authority that leaned towards what would have seemed like evidence bias (i.e. favoring of Gryffindor) and abuses of authority (again, threatening to expel Snape if he told anyone about Lupin). From that, we must ask ourselves how much of Snape’s own behavior is unusual or a reflection of a culture of institutional biases and abuses of authority. This is something that I wrote about at length very recently and you’ll find I more thoroughly discuss the issue of adult bullying in Harry Potter, some of the deeper complexities we can find when we examine Snape as a bully, and my issues with fandom’s double-standards when it comes to their willingness to tolerate similar or worse behaviors in other characters. Importantly, nowhere in my response do I attempt to excuse bullying in any character, rather I merely strive (as I always do) to provide some additional context for consideration and promote a greater understanding of how external forces can influence the choices people make, the way we behave, and our perceptions of our environments.
When it comes to Draco, I believe that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child went a long way towards expanding on the suggestion of redemption for Draco that Rowling’s epilogue hinted at. Unfortunately, Cursed Child has been much maligned in fandom so not everyone has given it a chance, which is unfortunate because I believe it had a lot to offer. In fact, much of the content that fans labeled “OOC” (particularly Harry’s struggles with Albus-Severus and navigating fatherhood and his own survivor’s guilt post-War) struck me as a more realistic exploration of the kind of people you might expect these characters to have developed into once stripped of the more childish Dahlesque style that the YA series was written in. In my opinion, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child simply matured with its audience and it provided us with a more honest look into these characters sans all the slapstick to soften the blow. Draco, in particular, stands out and I honestly liked him and the self-awareness he seemed to have developed as an adult. So, if you haven’t yet read the screen-play of Cursed Child or seen it live I would recommend doing either if only because of what it does for Draco –a lot of his redemption can be found there.
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
areudirty
dededos
izzy806
