While I've been sick with this nasty pneumonia, I've had the chance to tiptoe my way through the Harry Potter books again (a very little at a time), this time with a purpose.
As a screenwriter, I know the importance of set-ups and payoffs, of setting up everything that I as the writer want to have any kind of emotional punch later, of paying off anything that I may have set up, and of avoiding inadvertent set-ups that lead an audience to expect something that I'm never going to give them. I teach the importance of getting your set-ups and payoffs straight in Act One, using movies like Groundhog Day, Aliens, and Back to the Future. But this year I found myself referencing Harry Potter, for those enlightened students who had actually read the books.
And I said to myself, "Gee, someday when I actually have time, I should go through the HP books and actually study the set-ups and payoffs."
Well, the pneumonia gave me that time.
Now, of course, we can't know all the payoffs without Book 7 in hand. But that's part of what makes it fun -- after Book 7 is out, the exercise will just become a final exam question for Children's Lit 101. Now we get to speculate, see what the payoffs could be, try to guess which are the real set-ups deserving of payoff, and which are the red herrings.
As an example of what I mean by set-ups and payoffs, let's look at the Vanishing Cabinet. It comes to its full fruition, of course, in Half-Blood Prince where Draco Malfoy uses it to create a secret passageway into Hogwarts, allowing Death Eaters onto the grounds and ultimately resulting in Dumbledore's death.
If that Vanishing Cabinet had been tossed in to Hogwarts for the first time in HBP, we'd all be saying, "Hey, wait a minute! That's not fair!" But it wasn't. It was carefully set up, every step of the way. Let's take a quick look:
In Chamber of Secrets: First the Cabinet in Borgin & Burkes is introduced: Harry looked quickly around and spotted a large black cabinet to his left; he shot inside it and pulled the doors closed, leaving a small crack to peer through. [Chamber, pg. 50] Had he closed the door completely, would he have been sent magically to the other Vanishing Cabinet? Perhaps. (But, as someone cleverly pointed out, clearly Harry had read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and learned that one should never close a cabinet door completely behind oneself.)
Next, we meet its mate at Hogwarts: As Filch lowered his quill, there was a great BANG! on the ceiling of the office, which made the oil lamp rattle.... Harry didn't much like Peeves, but couldn't help feeling grateful for his timing. Hopefully, whatever Peeves had done (and it sounded as though he'd wrecked something very big this time) would distract Filch from Harry.... Filch was looking triumphant. "That vanishing cabinet was extremely valuable!" he was saying gleefully to Mrs. Horris. "We'll have Peeves out this time, my sweet--" [Chamber, 126-128, snipped].
We don't really notice the reference to the vanishing cabinet, because we're more interested in the moment at the revelation that Filch is a Squib. But the reference is there. And more: Not only do we know the vanishing cabinet exists, we know it's broken.
Onward to Order of the Phoenix: "Yeah, Montague tried to do us during break," said George. "What do you mean, 'tried'?" said Ron quickly. "He never managed to get all the words out," said Fred, "due to the fact that we forced him headfirst into that Vanishing Cabinet on the first floor." [Phoenix, 627]
And Montague stays "vanished" for quite some time, showing that the cabinet is still working at least a little bit, and it shows us, sort of, what it does.
Onward to Half-Blood Prince: We learn first that the cabinet's mate is still at Borgin and Burkes, in a throwaway of a line that could just be adding color: There in the midst of the cases full of skulls and old bottles stood Draco Malfoy with his back to them, just visible beyond the very same large black cabinet in which Harry had once hidden to avoid Malfoy and his father. [Prince, 124]
We next run in to the Vanishing Cabinet (which has acquired capital-letter status in the meantime) when Harry enters the Room of Requirement looking for a place in which to hide his Potions book: Harry hurried forward into one of the many alleyways between all this hidden treasure. He turned right past an enormous stuffed troll, ran on a short way, took a left at the broken Vanishing Cabinet in which Montague had got lost the previous year, finally pausing beside a large cupboard that seemed to have had acid thrown at its blistered surface. [Prince, 526] Harry doesn't realize the significance of the cabinet, doesn't realize that it's what he's been looking for all along -- and neither do we. But the set-up is there.
And the payoff comes at the end of Half-Blood Prince: In response to a question about how he managed to smuggle Death Eaters into Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy tells Dumbledore: "I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one's used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year." "Aaaah." Dumbledore's sigh was half a groan. He closed his eyes for a moment. "That was clever.... There is a pair, I take it?" "In Borgin and Burkes," said Malfoy, "and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was traveling between them, but he couldn't make anyone hear him.... Everyone thought it was a really good story, but I was the only one who realized what it meant --n even Borgin didn't know -- I was the one who realized there could be a way into Hogwarts through the cabinets if I fixed the broken one." [HBP, 586-587]
So we had set-up after set-up, most tossed away -- and we didn't realize what they meant. But when Draco explains, we can't complain that we weren't warned, because all the set-ups were there.
My plan is, over the next few weeks, to write up some of the set-ups and payoffs I've been working through. Some may seem obvious, some may seem speculative. But hopefully they'll be fairly complete (and will earn me some kind of geekdom award, I realize).
Here's the categories I've broken them down into:
I. Voldemort and his followers
II. Harry in Book 7.
III. Magical Creatures
IV. Magical Objects
V. Wizards
VI. Severus Snape
VII. Horcruxes
VIII. Magical Locations
IX. Spells and Potions
X. Draco Malfoy
If you have any thoughts you want to send my way on any of these subjects, feel free. If I don't already have them on my list, I'll make sure you get credit!
And as I continue to recover from pneumonia, perhaps I will get back to getting out of the house and generally having a life, and will have other things to blog about as well... Sigh....
Friday, September 30, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
QUOTH JO ROWLING.....
Someone passed on to me this very fun poem rewrite taking on the wackier and more hard-core of the Harry Potter fans and websites. The poem is written by Red Scharlach, and, given the name of this blog, I felt compelled to post it here.
(Red is a Brit, hence some of the rhymes that we Yanks might not think of as rhymes, as well as some of the less familiar slang. And for those not into hard-core Harry Potter fandom, "shipping" is the term used for discussions of the various romantic relationships in the books.)
Would that all such "homage" poetry/lyrics had the same high level of craft! Enjoy!
The Rowling
Based on Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "The Raven"
Once upon a website nameless, where folks bickered, long and aimless,
Over many a controversial plot-point of Potterian lore,
I observed their fights and snapping, and at each fresh burst of yapping,
I could feel the tension sapping, sapping all my patience sore.
"'Tis all balderdash!," I muttered, "sapping all my patience sore.
Fandom wank, and nothing more!"
Ah, each oldbie and newcomer bought the newest tome that summer;
Some had found Book Five a bummer, and its plot twists uncalled for.
Eagerly they all had waited -- Keenly they anticipated
That this volume venerated would improve what went before --
Make up for their disappointment o'er the book that came before --
Which they thought to be a bore.
But each tiresome, sad and silly posting by some halfwit filly
Chilled me -- filled me with most tedious whinings never heard before:
Though some found the book quite nifty, for each one who loved it, fifty
Seemed to think it sordid, shifty, and upon it scorn did pour
And they all exclaimed in anger as they on it scorn did pour
"OMG - plot holes galore!"
As I read, their gist grew clearer: "Rowling SUX!" they'd taunt and jeer her
"Though we loathe her use of adverbs, it's the shipping we deplore!
Harry can't end up with Ginny -- she's too ginger, she's too skinny,
And her voice sounds like a whinny -- she's a strumpet, she's a bore!
Yes, we all are sure Hermione is the girl he should adore --
Only she, and not some whore!"
How they bleated in confusion, "Our beliefs are no delusion!
Now we can't believe we ever liked her books in days of yore!
In Book Five she killed our Siri, now her sanity we query
Of these half-baked twists we weary -- sex-god Snape exists no more!
As for heinous Tonks and Remus - that must be the final straw!
OOC, and nothing more!"
As I scrolled on through this ranting, all their anger left me panting;
These and something like a million other grievances they bore.
But the drama was unending and their virulence unbending,
There was bitching and unfriending, legal threats and blood and gore
And it seemed that each new posting brought fresh horrors to abhor
As they cat-fought, tooth and claw!
As I read this drivel shocking, from outside there came a knocking.
"Bloody hell, it's J.K. Rowling! What's she doing at my door?"
As she stood in moonlight gleaming, I did wonder, "Am I dreaming?"
And my mind with thoughts a-teeming tried to guess what she'd come for.
Since I had no better notions, I just stared and gaped and swore:
"It's Jo Rowling! Zut alors!"
Though this author blonde was grinning, and her charming manner winning,
I stood thunderstruck and gazed upon her countenance in awe.
"Do not say you were out strolling, for the midnight hour is tolling.
Why on earth would J.K. Rowling just walk up and bang my door?
You're one very scary lady!" She stood laughing at my door:
"Do I look like Voldemort?"
Much I marvelled, and I told her, "Please, permit me to be bolder,
Could you answer several queries? There are matters to explore.
For your fans are disagreeing over what they think they're seeing
And right now your text is being combed for every tiny flaw.
Will answer and resolve these tricky issues? I implore,
J.K. tell us -- what's the score?"
When Jo Rowling smiled, assenting, I began my lengthy venting:
"Far too many of your reders spend too much time hunting for
Hidden flints and plot-holes squatting in your convoluted plotting!
But those twists and tangles knotting seem to me quite hard to draw.
How do you prevent them clotting?" Rowling smiled and stroked her jaw.
"I've been watching 24!"
"Now I know the Half-Blood Prince is dearest Snapey, it convinces.
He maybe an evil git -- but did he murder Dumbledore?
Why did Albus trust a traitor? Will it all be cleared up later?
Or is Snape a Muggle-hater in the pay of Voldemort?
Did poor Albus trust a traitor in the pay of Voldemort?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Tragic flaw!"
"Now, Ms. Rowling, I've heard leaking -- I confess, I was not peeking--
But since you and I are speaking -- what does R.A.B. stand for?
Tell me, who would dare to fiddle with the soul of Tom M. Riddle?
Does Mundungus have that locket? Is it stuffed inside a drawer?
Did the youngest Black purloin it? What's the crux and what's the hor?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Check the floor."
"So will Wormtail learn some mercy? And what will become of Percy?
And will Tonks and Remus live to wed, or are they both done for?
Will Lord Voldy draw and quarter all the Weasley sons and daughter?
Is a wholesale good-guy slaughter what Book Seven holds in store?
Will it end up in a bloodbath? Will folks die that we care for?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Si, senor!"
"Now my thoughts must turn to shipping -- 'twas a subject most found gripping
But when Harry snogged with Ginny, ships were broken on the shore!
Since he met her in the second book, has love with Ginny beckoned?
What about the crowd who reckoned that Ms. Granger'd be his squaw?
Is the matter finished now, or is there truth in what they saw?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "My word's law!"
"J.K.!" said I, "Tell me plainly! -- In this fandom, so ungainly,
Many speculate on Lily and the saintly guise she wore.
We know she was good at potions -- Did she also stir emotions?
Pray confirm my wildest notions -- James was not her only score?
Were there other beaus that Lily had? Snape? Lupin? Voldemort?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Can't say more."
"J.K.!" said I, "Tell me truly! -- In this fandom, so unruly,
When Book Sev'n arrives in bookstores or is pushed right through our door
Can you promise something trashy, something sexy, something slashy?
Will you pull out something flashy that these fangirls won't abhor?
All those strange, eccentric readers craving something more hard-core?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Goats galore!"
"How I've bored you with this madness -- Poor J.K.!" I sighed in sadness,
Best get back to your computer and resume your final chore.
Just ignore the online prattle -- let young Harry fight his battle
And we'll wait for something that will end the tale and close the door!
Fight the fight and write what's right, and we will wait for one book more!"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "I withdraw!"
So Jo Rowling, never griping, still is typing, still is typing
In her modest Scottish palace filled with kids and cash galore,
And the fandom, far from thanking, still is wanking, still is wanking;
Though they all deserve a spanking, still they wage their flaming war.
And the book that ends the saga shall be published -- less or more --
In June 2034....
(Red is a Brit, hence some of the rhymes that we Yanks might not think of as rhymes, as well as some of the less familiar slang. And for those not into hard-core Harry Potter fandom, "shipping" is the term used for discussions of the various romantic relationships in the books.)
Would that all such "homage" poetry/lyrics had the same high level of craft! Enjoy!
The Rowling
Based on Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "The Raven"
Once upon a website nameless, where folks bickered, long and aimless,
Over many a controversial plot-point of Potterian lore,
I observed their fights and snapping, and at each fresh burst of yapping,
I could feel the tension sapping, sapping all my patience sore.
"'Tis all balderdash!," I muttered, "sapping all my patience sore.
Fandom wank, and nothing more!"
Ah, each oldbie and newcomer bought the newest tome that summer;
Some had found Book Five a bummer, and its plot twists uncalled for.
Eagerly they all had waited -- Keenly they anticipated
That this volume venerated would improve what went before --
Make up for their disappointment o'er the book that came before --
Which they thought to be a bore.
But each tiresome, sad and silly posting by some halfwit filly
Chilled me -- filled me with most tedious whinings never heard before:
Though some found the book quite nifty, for each one who loved it, fifty
Seemed to think it sordid, shifty, and upon it scorn did pour
And they all exclaimed in anger as they on it scorn did pour
"OMG - plot holes galore!"
As I read, their gist grew clearer: "Rowling SUX!" they'd taunt and jeer her
"Though we loathe her use of adverbs, it's the shipping we deplore!
Harry can't end up with Ginny -- she's too ginger, she's too skinny,
And her voice sounds like a whinny -- she's a strumpet, she's a bore!
Yes, we all are sure Hermione is the girl he should adore --
Only she, and not some whore!"
How they bleated in confusion, "Our beliefs are no delusion!
Now we can't believe we ever liked her books in days of yore!
In Book Five she killed our Siri, now her sanity we query
Of these half-baked twists we weary -- sex-god Snape exists no more!
As for heinous Tonks and Remus - that must be the final straw!
OOC, and nothing more!"
As I scrolled on through this ranting, all their anger left me panting;
These and something like a million other grievances they bore.
But the drama was unending and their virulence unbending,
There was bitching and unfriending, legal threats and blood and gore
And it seemed that each new posting brought fresh horrors to abhor
As they cat-fought, tooth and claw!
As I read this drivel shocking, from outside there came a knocking.
"Bloody hell, it's J.K. Rowling! What's she doing at my door?"
As she stood in moonlight gleaming, I did wonder, "Am I dreaming?"
And my mind with thoughts a-teeming tried to guess what she'd come for.
Since I had no better notions, I just stared and gaped and swore:
"It's Jo Rowling! Zut alors!"
Though this author blonde was grinning, and her charming manner winning,
I stood thunderstruck and gazed upon her countenance in awe.
"Do not say you were out strolling, for the midnight hour is tolling.
Why on earth would J.K. Rowling just walk up and bang my door?
You're one very scary lady!" She stood laughing at my door:
"Do I look like Voldemort?"
Much I marvelled, and I told her, "Please, permit me to be bolder,
Could you answer several queries? There are matters to explore.
For your fans are disagreeing over what they think they're seeing
And right now your text is being combed for every tiny flaw.
Will answer and resolve these tricky issues? I implore,
J.K. tell us -- what's the score?"
When Jo Rowling smiled, assenting, I began my lengthy venting:
"Far too many of your reders spend too much time hunting for
Hidden flints and plot-holes squatting in your convoluted plotting!
But those twists and tangles knotting seem to me quite hard to draw.
How do you prevent them clotting?" Rowling smiled and stroked her jaw.
"I've been watching 24!"
"Now I know the Half-Blood Prince is dearest Snapey, it convinces.
He maybe an evil git -- but did he murder Dumbledore?
Why did Albus trust a traitor? Will it all be cleared up later?
Or is Snape a Muggle-hater in the pay of Voldemort?
Did poor Albus trust a traitor in the pay of Voldemort?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Tragic flaw!"
"Now, Ms. Rowling, I've heard leaking -- I confess, I was not peeking--
But since you and I are speaking -- what does R.A.B. stand for?
Tell me, who would dare to fiddle with the soul of Tom M. Riddle?
Does Mundungus have that locket? Is it stuffed inside a drawer?
Did the youngest Black purloin it? What's the crux and what's the hor?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Check the floor."
"So will Wormtail learn some mercy? And what will become of Percy?
And will Tonks and Remus live to wed, or are they both done for?
Will Lord Voldy draw and quarter all the Weasley sons and daughter?
Is a wholesale good-guy slaughter what Book Seven holds in store?
Will it end up in a bloodbath? Will folks die that we care for?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Si, senor!"
"Now my thoughts must turn to shipping -- 'twas a subject most found gripping
But when Harry snogged with Ginny, ships were broken on the shore!
Since he met her in the second book, has love with Ginny beckoned?
What about the crowd who reckoned that Ms. Granger'd be his squaw?
Is the matter finished now, or is there truth in what they saw?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "My word's law!"
"J.K.!" said I, "Tell me plainly! -- In this fandom, so ungainly,
Many speculate on Lily and the saintly guise she wore.
We know she was good at potions -- Did she also stir emotions?
Pray confirm my wildest notions -- James was not her only score?
Were there other beaus that Lily had? Snape? Lupin? Voldemort?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Can't say more."
"J.K.!" said I, "Tell me truly! -- In this fandom, so unruly,
When Book Sev'n arrives in bookstores or is pushed right through our door
Can you promise something trashy, something sexy, something slashy?
Will you pull out something flashy that these fangirls won't abhor?
All those strange, eccentric readers craving something more hard-core?"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "Goats galore!"
"How I've bored you with this madness -- Poor J.K.!" I sighed in sadness,
Best get back to your computer and resume your final chore.
Just ignore the online prattle -- let young Harry fight his battle
And we'll wait for something that will end the tale and close the door!
Fight the fight and write what's right, and we will wait for one book more!"
Quoth Jo Rowling, "I withdraw!"
So Jo Rowling, never griping, still is typing, still is typing
In her modest Scottish palace filled with kids and cash galore,
And the fandom, far from thanking, still is wanking, still is wanking;
Though they all deserve a spanking, still they wage their flaming war.
And the book that ends the saga shall be published -- less or more --
In June 2034....
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
TAKING A STAND
I was really proud of Cory this weekend. Seems he got into quite a discussion with a girl I don't know up at church whose parents feel the Harry Potter books are evil, and who won't let her read them.
Well, Cory didn't let it sit there. He explained to her all about how the Harry Potter books are really very Christian. He explained about how Voldemort is like Satan, and that we know when we read the books that he's evil, and that we aren't supposed to be like him, but we're supposed to fight him.
And he explained about how Dumbledore is like Jesus (okay, so he hasn't read that interview of J.K. Rowling's, so let's cut him some slack), because he's wise and generous, and because he gave his life to save Harry, just like Jesus gave His life to save us, and that he (Dumbledore, that is) even gave his life to save Draco, which is loving your enemies, which is what Jesus says to do.
And he talked about how the magic is just cool stuff that we wish we could do, or that we actually do with electricity, but wizards just use magic for it, is all. And he talked about how you learn to do the right thing from reading the books.
And he talked about how the Harry Potter books are completely different from Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy because Philip Pullman is trying to write to people to get them not to believe in God, and the magic in them is evil (I don't think Cory's read the books -- he started one, but put it down when I told him he couldn't read it -- I don't think he went back and snuck them...), but that J.K. Rowling isn't doing anything like that.
And he had this whole discussion without our ever having had a full discussion of the controversy surrounding the Harry Potter books, without me giving him lines to say. He simply heard someone say something that he knew was misguided, about something he knows about and loves, and he stepped up to refute the girl's argument. And from his account, did it quite logically, kindly, knowledgeably, and well.
So I was really proud of him.
Well, Cory didn't let it sit there. He explained to her all about how the Harry Potter books are really very Christian. He explained about how Voldemort is like Satan, and that we know when we read the books that he's evil, and that we aren't supposed to be like him, but we're supposed to fight him.
And he explained about how Dumbledore is like Jesus (okay, so he hasn't read that interview of J.K. Rowling's, so let's cut him some slack), because he's wise and generous, and because he gave his life to save Harry, just like Jesus gave His life to save us, and that he (Dumbledore, that is) even gave his life to save Draco, which is loving your enemies, which is what Jesus says to do.
And he talked about how the magic is just cool stuff that we wish we could do, or that we actually do with electricity, but wizards just use magic for it, is all. And he talked about how you learn to do the right thing from reading the books.
And he talked about how the Harry Potter books are completely different from Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy because Philip Pullman is trying to write to people to get them not to believe in God, and the magic in them is evil (I don't think Cory's read the books -- he started one, but put it down when I told him he couldn't read it -- I don't think he went back and snuck them...), but that J.K. Rowling isn't doing anything like that.
And he had this whole discussion without our ever having had a full discussion of the controversy surrounding the Harry Potter books, without me giving him lines to say. He simply heard someone say something that he knew was misguided, about something he knows about and loves, and he stepped up to refute the girl's argument. And from his account, did it quite logically, kindly, knowledgeably, and well.
So I was really proud of him.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
THE FINAL (?) WORD ON SEVERUS SNAPE
Clicking through this blog, I realized I hadn't yet posted the last part of Helen Ketcham's marvelously-thought-out essays on Severus Snape. This last essay (actually the second part of the one I last posted) looks at the characteristics of magicians "Generally Recognized as Evil," by using a comparison with Narnia. Hope you enjoy it, and thank you, Helen, for sharing your thoughts (which are currently posted in full on John Granger's discussion forum).
-----
Voldemort the GRAE
I believe we can arrive at a key piece of the truth about Snape by taking the long way around, detouring through another literary universe populated by magical folk: C. S. Lewis's Narnia. In the first book of the series, The Magician's Nephew, we can find what I think of as the field identification marks for magicians who are Generally Recognized As Evil (or GRAE, for short).
(Digory's Uncle Andrew:) "She had got to dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself."....
..."Rotten?" said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. "Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true; most right and proper... But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys -- and servants -- and women -- and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."....
....(Queen Jadis:) "Don't you understand?... I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?"
"It was rather hard luck on them, all the same," said [Digory].
"I had forgotten that you were only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny."
Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.....
....Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They re not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical....
....Uncle Andrew... seemed a little shrimp of a creature beside the Witch. And yet, as Polly said afterward, there was a sort of likeness between her face and his, something in the expression. It was the look that all wicked Magicians have, the "Mark" which Jadis had said she could not find in Digory's face....
And now, returning to Hogwarts, let us see what are the characteristics that Headmaster Dumbledore finds it worthwhile to emphasize to Harry when he tells him about --
Voldemort the GRAE Wizard
"Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was -- to use his word -- 'special.'"....
...."His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard.... And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."....
...."In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make ne nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination."....
...."...he showed his contempt for anything that tied him to other people, anything that made him ordinary. Even then, he wished to be different, separate, notorious."....
...."How soon Riddle learned that the famous founder of the House could talk to snakes, I do not know -- perhaps that very evening. The knowledge can only have excited him and increased his sense of self-importance."....
...."You call it 'greatness,' what you have been doing, do you?" asked Dumbledore delicately.
"Certainly," said Voldemort... "I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed--"....
...."I am glad to hear that you consider them friends," said Dumbledore. "I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants."
The common features are there. Digory, Polly, their narrator Professor Lewis and Professor Dumbledore are in basic agreement about what identifies a GRAE wizard: a sense of superiority, of being set apart from and better than other people, a belief that the rules of morality don't apply to them, a willingness to use one's powers to frighten, punish and control others, and to use other people as servants or tools.
Now, keeping in mind this Mark of the GRAE Wizard, look again at some of the barbs aimed at Harry Potter by Professor Snape:
"Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new -- celebrity."....
...."Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you?"....
...."So, the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry Potter..."....
...."So. Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences."....
...."How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter. He too was exceedingly arrogant... The resemblance between you is uncanny."....
...."Your father didn't set much store by rules either. Rules were for lesser mortals."....
We know more about Harry than Snape does, so we don't accept Snape's characterization of him. For example, we know that his experiences have left Harry feeling nothing but exasperation toward the whole idea of being a celebrity -- he's proof against that enchantment, at least. But to all appearances, however, Snape does sincerely seem to see the shadow of a nascent GRAE wizard darkening the character of the Potters, father and son:
"I didn't mean it to happen," said Harry at once.... "I didn't know what that spell did."
But Snape ignored this. "Apparently I underestimated you, Potter," he said quietly. "Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?"....
...."You dare use my own spells, against me, Potter? It was I who invented them -- I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so... no!"
And the fact that Harry doesn't look obviously evil wouldn't be as reassuring as you'd think. Remember how Dumbledore described young Tom Riddle:
"He showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew attention from the staff almost from the moment of his arrival."
It's significant, I think, that while Dumbledore admitted that Severus and James detested each other, he never endorsed the idea that Snape hated Harry. Snape doesn't like Harry, and he doesn't trust him -- when he gives him those searching looks, it seems as though he's always checking to see if Harry has finally crossed the line from schoolboy misbehavior to fullblown prideful evil -- but he never, ever lets up in his efforts to keep Harry away from the GRAE area.
Snape's insults and accusations against Harry are never random -- they are always directed against that same set of dangerous characteristics. He lances with sarcasm anything that looks like arrogance or a sense of superiority, of being above the rules. Snape's style of moral instruction isn't that of a good shepherd -- he's more like a good sheepdog. Biting, growling and giving that stare that says, "I'm the carnivore here and you're not!" he drives Harry away from danger and toward where the shepherd wants him to be.
When we think about that fiasco of Occlumency lessons, given in the hope of protecting Harry's mind from Lord Voldemort, we need to realize that Snape did seriously try to teach him, in spite of his feelings. He knew where his untouchably painful and reactive memories were, and purposely set them aside, out of the way, safely in the Pensieve, so that working with Harry would be possible. He didn't retaliate when Harry hit him with the stinging hex. He even gave him something like a word of encouragement after his first attempt. When did we ever see that happen before?
Nevertheless, it was a fiasco. Harry was not cooperating at all, even before his dip into Snape's pensieve. Harry may not have realized how serious an offense this was, since he was raised by Muggles and his only previous unauthorized pensievery had been at the expense of Dumbledore, who had had over a hundred years more experience than Snape in the matter of overlooking offenses. But if Apparating unvited into a wizard's home is the equivalent of kicking down the front door, then what would be the equivalent of a headlong pluge-without-permission into the midst of a wizard's most painful memories?
It really was more than Snape could be expected to bear. First James Potter and his friends deal him the original wound with all its shame, exposure ahd humiliation, then lookalike Harry walks in on Snape with his robes hiked above a bloodied leg -- exposure and humiliation again -- and finally Harry caps his trespasses by barging directly into his most private memories of the original shame. No, that wound hasn't healed yet, and won't if someone keeps gouging at it. Harry deserved to have something much less innocuous than dried cockroaches flung at him.
Still, Snape doesn't stop trying to keep Harry away from harm. After Harry uses Sectumsempra on Draco, Snape looks into Harry's eyes and sees his own old textbook, which he knows to be full of Dark spells in the margins. He moves immediately to get those Dark spells out of Harry's hands and when he fails (he could certainly have wrested the location of the book from Harry's mind, but apparently there's a limit to how mentally-invasive Snape is willing to be), he assigns a detention that seems intended to give Harry a chance to meditate on the transgressions of his father. I wonder whether, a few cards further down in the box, Harry would have come across a report of James stealing Severus's Advanced Potion-Making book? Or of James using some Dark spell against Severus?
At the end, in that last runnign battle out of Hogwarts, Snape forces the Death Eater to take the Cruciatus Curse off Harry, protects him by saying he's the exclusive property of Voldemort, and blocks him from completing any Unforgivable Curses. Evan at that charged moment, when Snape is in torment because he has had to kill the one man who truly knew, trusted and loved him, when he has been flayed and stripped raw of every source of comfort in his life, he is determined that Harry will keep his soul clean.
Severus Snape is truly a "Dumbledore man, through and through."
----------
Well, that's the end of Helen's essays. I hope at least some folks have found them as interesting as I did....
I'm heading back to bed now (and getting sick of it, I must say). I have been spending a little of my down time thinking through the various set-ups and payoffs in Harry Potter, and hope to jot down some thoughts about set-ups still to be paid off in book 7. No promises when, though. (After all, I don't know what malady will strike me next week!)
-----
Voldemort the GRAE
I believe we can arrive at a key piece of the truth about Snape by taking the long way around, detouring through another literary universe populated by magical folk: C. S. Lewis's Narnia. In the first book of the series, The Magician's Nephew, we can find what I think of as the field identification marks for magicians who are Generally Recognized As Evil (or GRAE, for short).
(Digory's Uncle Andrew:) "She had got to dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself."....
..."Rotten?" said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. "Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true; most right and proper... But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys -- and servants -- and women -- and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."....
....(Queen Jadis:) "Don't you understand?... I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?"
"It was rather hard luck on them, all the same," said [Digory].
"I had forgotten that you were only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny."
Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.....
....Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They re not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical....
....Uncle Andrew... seemed a little shrimp of a creature beside the Witch. And yet, as Polly said afterward, there was a sort of likeness between her face and his, something in the expression. It was the look that all wicked Magicians have, the "Mark" which Jadis had said she could not find in Digory's face....
And now, returning to Hogwarts, let us see what are the characteristics that Headmaster Dumbledore finds it worthwhile to emphasize to Harry when he tells him about --
Voldemort the GRAE Wizard
"Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was -- to use his word -- 'special.'"....
...."His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard.... And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."....
...."In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make ne nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination."....
...."...he showed his contempt for anything that tied him to other people, anything that made him ordinary. Even then, he wished to be different, separate, notorious."....
...."How soon Riddle learned that the famous founder of the House could talk to snakes, I do not know -- perhaps that very evening. The knowledge can only have excited him and increased his sense of self-importance."....
...."You call it 'greatness,' what you have been doing, do you?" asked Dumbledore delicately.
"Certainly," said Voldemort... "I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed--"....
...."I am glad to hear that you consider them friends," said Dumbledore. "I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants."
The common features are there. Digory, Polly, their narrator Professor Lewis and Professor Dumbledore are in basic agreement about what identifies a GRAE wizard: a sense of superiority, of being set apart from and better than other people, a belief that the rules of morality don't apply to them, a willingness to use one's powers to frighten, punish and control others, and to use other people as servants or tools.
Now, keeping in mind this Mark of the GRAE Wizard, look again at some of the barbs aimed at Harry Potter by Professor Snape:
"Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new -- celebrity."....
...."Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you?"....
...."So, the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry Potter..."....
...."So. Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences."....
...."How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter. He too was exceedingly arrogant... The resemblance between you is uncanny."....
...."Your father didn't set much store by rules either. Rules were for lesser mortals."....
We know more about Harry than Snape does, so we don't accept Snape's characterization of him. For example, we know that his experiences have left Harry feeling nothing but exasperation toward the whole idea of being a celebrity -- he's proof against that enchantment, at least. But to all appearances, however, Snape does sincerely seem to see the shadow of a nascent GRAE wizard darkening the character of the Potters, father and son:
"I didn't mean it to happen," said Harry at once.... "I didn't know what that spell did."
But Snape ignored this. "Apparently I underestimated you, Potter," he said quietly. "Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?"....
...."You dare use my own spells, against me, Potter? It was I who invented them -- I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so... no!"
And the fact that Harry doesn't look obviously evil wouldn't be as reassuring as you'd think. Remember how Dumbledore described young Tom Riddle:
"He showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew attention from the staff almost from the moment of his arrival."
It's significant, I think, that while Dumbledore admitted that Severus and James detested each other, he never endorsed the idea that Snape hated Harry. Snape doesn't like Harry, and he doesn't trust him -- when he gives him those searching looks, it seems as though he's always checking to see if Harry has finally crossed the line from schoolboy misbehavior to fullblown prideful evil -- but he never, ever lets up in his efforts to keep Harry away from the GRAE area.
Snape's insults and accusations against Harry are never random -- they are always directed against that same set of dangerous characteristics. He lances with sarcasm anything that looks like arrogance or a sense of superiority, of being above the rules. Snape's style of moral instruction isn't that of a good shepherd -- he's more like a good sheepdog. Biting, growling and giving that stare that says, "I'm the carnivore here and you're not!" he drives Harry away from danger and toward where the shepherd wants him to be.
When we think about that fiasco of Occlumency lessons, given in the hope of protecting Harry's mind from Lord Voldemort, we need to realize that Snape did seriously try to teach him, in spite of his feelings. He knew where his untouchably painful and reactive memories were, and purposely set them aside, out of the way, safely in the Pensieve, so that working with Harry would be possible. He didn't retaliate when Harry hit him with the stinging hex. He even gave him something like a word of encouragement after his first attempt. When did we ever see that happen before?
Nevertheless, it was a fiasco. Harry was not cooperating at all, even before his dip into Snape's pensieve. Harry may not have realized how serious an offense this was, since he was raised by Muggles and his only previous unauthorized pensievery had been at the expense of Dumbledore, who had had over a hundred years more experience than Snape in the matter of overlooking offenses. But if Apparating unvited into a wizard's home is the equivalent of kicking down the front door, then what would be the equivalent of a headlong pluge-without-permission into the midst of a wizard's most painful memories?
It really was more than Snape could be expected to bear. First James Potter and his friends deal him the original wound with all its shame, exposure ahd humiliation, then lookalike Harry walks in on Snape with his robes hiked above a bloodied leg -- exposure and humiliation again -- and finally Harry caps his trespasses by barging directly into his most private memories of the original shame. No, that wound hasn't healed yet, and won't if someone keeps gouging at it. Harry deserved to have something much less innocuous than dried cockroaches flung at him.
Still, Snape doesn't stop trying to keep Harry away from harm. After Harry uses Sectumsempra on Draco, Snape looks into Harry's eyes and sees his own old textbook, which he knows to be full of Dark spells in the margins. He moves immediately to get those Dark spells out of Harry's hands and when he fails (he could certainly have wrested the location of the book from Harry's mind, but apparently there's a limit to how mentally-invasive Snape is willing to be), he assigns a detention that seems intended to give Harry a chance to meditate on the transgressions of his father. I wonder whether, a few cards further down in the box, Harry would have come across a report of James stealing Severus's Advanced Potion-Making book? Or of James using some Dark spell against Severus?
At the end, in that last runnign battle out of Hogwarts, Snape forces the Death Eater to take the Cruciatus Curse off Harry, protects him by saying he's the exclusive property of Voldemort, and blocks him from completing any Unforgivable Curses. Evan at that charged moment, when Snape is in torment because he has had to kill the one man who truly knew, trusted and loved him, when he has been flayed and stripped raw of every source of comfort in his life, he is determined that Harry will keep his soul clean.
Severus Snape is truly a "Dumbledore man, through and through."
----------
Well, that's the end of Helen's essays. I hope at least some folks have found them as interesting as I did....
I'm heading back to bed now (and getting sick of it, I must say). I have been spending a little of my down time thinking through the various set-ups and payoffs in Harry Potter, and hope to jot down some thoughts about set-ups still to be paid off in book 7. No promises when, though. (After all, I don't know what malady will strike me next week!)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
BEHIND THE SCREEN -- GET YOUR COPY TODAY!
I have been derelict in not pushing the Act One book, Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film and Culture.
The book is a series of essays from Act One faculty and staff on the relationship between the church and Hollywood. It got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which is unheard of for religious books.
I am not pushing the book particularly because I have an essay in it -- frankly, I now feel I should have spent a little more time on my piece, which I sort of tossed off based on a talk we gave previously. And besides, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you saw the rough draft here. But I hear great things about many of the other essays (not having, ahem, received my free copy of the book yet, I have been unable to read the whole thing myself)...
(Just be sure you don't confuse it with the similarly titled book about the history of gays in Hollywood!)
Okay, I've done my good deed for the day. Go buy the book, and I'll go back to bed for now.
The book is a series of essays from Act One faculty and staff on the relationship between the church and Hollywood. It got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which is unheard of for religious books.
I am not pushing the book particularly because I have an essay in it -- frankly, I now feel I should have spent a little more time on my piece, which I sort of tossed off based on a talk we gave previously. And besides, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you saw the rough draft here. But I hear great things about many of the other essays (not having, ahem, received my free copy of the book yet, I have been unable to read the whole thing myself)...
(Just be sure you don't confuse it with the similarly titled book about the history of gays in Hollywood!)
Okay, I've done my good deed for the day. Go buy the book, and I'll go back to bed for now.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
A WALKING ONE-WOMAN EPISODE OF E.R.
...That's what I feel like right now. Because, as those of you who read Sarah's comment to the post below, yes, I do indeed have pneumonia.
Somehow it swept up and caught me while my defenses were weakened dealing with that black widow spider bite. Partway through the weekend it occurred to me that certain things -- coughing, shortness of breath, etc. -- probably weren't spider related.
So I called my doctor. Who sent me off to the E.R. I knew I must be in bad shape when I looked at the huge number of people in the waiting room -- and then heard my name called way ahead of all but one.
And they did lots of lovely tests. X-rays. Blood tests. And made me walk up and down the hallway in one of those skimpy gowns. (What sadist designed those, anyway?) And slapped an IV in me. And when the painkiller in the IV didn't touch the massive headache that seems to accompany my particular pneumonia, gave me an exceptionally lovely Vicodin to help out.
Aside from the Vicodin, the only part of the experience I can recommend was the very nice doctor who finally dropped in to see me (very efficient system, actually, with a physician's assistant doing all the legwork ahead of time), and called me "young." I don't remember much else he said, but I do recall that. Of course, he probably just meant "young-in-comparison-to-most-of-the-geezers-we-see-with-pneumonia." But still.
So now I'm home, taking my antibiotic (which made a huge difference), gulping on my inhaler, and drinking not-nearly-enough-yet fluids. And oh yeah, that lovely Vicodin.
Four days. Two weeks. Who knows? They can't tell me. I can tell I'm really sick when I sit down to start crossing things off my schedule -- and don't care.
But I can sit at the computer for a little at a time, so I will be able to do some blogging. So stay tuned for next week's amazing episode of: "How will her body break down next?!"
Somehow it swept up and caught me while my defenses were weakened dealing with that black widow spider bite. Partway through the weekend it occurred to me that certain things -- coughing, shortness of breath, etc. -- probably weren't spider related.
So I called my doctor. Who sent me off to the E.R. I knew I must be in bad shape when I looked at the huge number of people in the waiting room -- and then heard my name called way ahead of all but one.
And they did lots of lovely tests. X-rays. Blood tests. And made me walk up and down the hallway in one of those skimpy gowns. (What sadist designed those, anyway?) And slapped an IV in me. And when the painkiller in the IV didn't touch the massive headache that seems to accompany my particular pneumonia, gave me an exceptionally lovely Vicodin to help out.
Aside from the Vicodin, the only part of the experience I can recommend was the very nice doctor who finally dropped in to see me (very efficient system, actually, with a physician's assistant doing all the legwork ahead of time), and called me "young." I don't remember much else he said, but I do recall that. Of course, he probably just meant "young-in-comparison-to-most-of-the-geezers-we-see-with-pneumonia." But still.
So now I'm home, taking my antibiotic (which made a huge difference), gulping on my inhaler, and drinking not-nearly-enough-yet fluids. And oh yeah, that lovely Vicodin.
Four days. Two weeks. Who knows? They can't tell me. I can tell I'm really sick when I sit down to start crossing things off my schedule -- and don't care.
But I can sit at the computer for a little at a time, so I will be able to do some blogging. So stay tuned for next week's amazing episode of: "How will her body break down next?!"
Friday, September 16, 2005
PURGING THE TOXINS
My apologies for not blogging for a few days. I went on a lovely retreat last weekend with Act Two (the "continuation" program of Act One up in Santa Barbara. And during the weekend I felt this weird little frisson down my leg, clearly a bug running down it (ew).
And then Monday I was stabbed all down one side with the oddest pains I had ever felt -- not like muscle pains, these were like someone had a hot knife and was slicing into me. Intense horrible pain.
And as I stepped out of the shower, I happened to notice in the mirror a spider bite on my leg -- an immense one, almost 2 inches across, hard as a rock and terribly inflamed. And twisting around found two more on my back and another huge one on my foot.
And around about this time the high fever began. And the chills. And the sweats. And the extreme fatigue.
And I began to put two-and-two together (with a little help from the Internet)... and realized I'd almost certainly been bitten by a black widow spider.
And a few days later, as Lee was getting rid of the bronchitis he had been fighting for 2 weeks, it crawled over and opportunistically invaded my weakened system.
So I am a wreck. Not only have I barely been online, I haven't even cared about being online.
Here in California, people talk a lot about "purging the toxins" from their systems. By "toxins" they usually mean, oh, a McDonald's hamburger, or possibly that ultimate evil: bread.
But let me tell you, having real toxins in your bloodstream sheds a new light on the whole concept. I am sure there is a profound spiritual point to be made here -- something about sin -- but frankly, with a fever of over 102, I am not the one to make it right now. Someone else out there make it for me, okay?
All I can say is, the next time I'm approached by one those earnest size 2's in the Juicy sweats with the two-liter bottle of water explaining how she's on a strict regimen to purge the toxins from her tiny little body...
I will laugh.
And then Monday I was stabbed all down one side with the oddest pains I had ever felt -- not like muscle pains, these were like someone had a hot knife and was slicing into me. Intense horrible pain.
And as I stepped out of the shower, I happened to notice in the mirror a spider bite on my leg -- an immense one, almost 2 inches across, hard as a rock and terribly inflamed. And twisting around found two more on my back and another huge one on my foot.
And around about this time the high fever began. And the chills. And the sweats. And the extreme fatigue.
And I began to put two-and-two together (with a little help from the Internet)... and realized I'd almost certainly been bitten by a black widow spider.
And a few days later, as Lee was getting rid of the bronchitis he had been fighting for 2 weeks, it crawled over and opportunistically invaded my weakened system.
So I am a wreck. Not only have I barely been online, I haven't even cared about being online.
Here in California, people talk a lot about "purging the toxins" from their systems. By "toxins" they usually mean, oh, a McDonald's hamburger, or possibly that ultimate evil: bread.
But let me tell you, having real toxins in your bloodstream sheds a new light on the whole concept. I am sure there is a profound spiritual point to be made here -- something about sin -- but frankly, with a fever of over 102, I am not the one to make it right now. Someone else out there make it for me, okay?
All I can say is, the next time I'm approached by one those earnest size 2's in the Juicy sweats with the two-liter bottle of water explaining how she's on a strict regimen to purge the toxins from her tiny little body...
I will laugh.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
WE'RE NOT JITTERY!
L.A. had a mild power outage on Monday. You probably heard about it, because it was all over the national news. And I watched as the NBC News correspondent pronounced (several times in his report) that the citizens of L.A. are "jittery" about the power outage.
Um, no. Not really.
The news folk, it would seems, want us to immediately "go to" the concept that anything bad that happens is a result of terrorism. They want us to panic, even. And true, there was some low-level self-styled Al-Qaeda functionary who made an announcement for the anniversary of 9/11: "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne!"
Frankly, when I heard that, I yawned. How stupid is it to tell your victims that you're coming, when the power you hold over people depends on surprise.
And when I was driving through West L.A. and began to hear on the radio about the power out, I looked around, noticed that lights were on in all the shops I was passing (even though this was one of the neighborhoods that the radio news insisted was blacked out), and just kept driving. I didn't get "jittery." Frankly, L.A. has had so many power outs in recent years, caused by the likes of Enron making deals on stupid politicians' backs, that another blackout is no reason for anyone to be anything other than, well, resigned.
(And in fact, as the radio sent their correspondents out to the streets to report on the mayhem sure to be occurring, different reporters called in to say that, oops, actually all the drivers going through the blacked-out intersections were being very calm and polite. Shame on them! That's no way to get on the news!)
I asked virtually everyone I talked to in the next 24 hours if they were "jittery." And I have to admit, it was not unanimous. One person did confess to being quite jittery.
He arrived in L.A. from Washington, D.C. two weeks ago.
So here's a report back at ya, NBC News: L.A. had a massive power outage (that lasted all of 10 seconds in some places, by the way -- another fact that didn't get reported anywhere I heard). And we weren't jittery.
Um, no. Not really.
The news folk, it would seems, want us to immediately "go to" the concept that anything bad that happens is a result of terrorism. They want us to panic, even. And true, there was some low-level self-styled Al-Qaeda functionary who made an announcement for the anniversary of 9/11: "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne!"
Frankly, when I heard that, I yawned. How stupid is it to tell your victims that you're coming, when the power you hold over people depends on surprise.
And when I was driving through West L.A. and began to hear on the radio about the power out, I looked around, noticed that lights were on in all the shops I was passing (even though this was one of the neighborhoods that the radio news insisted was blacked out), and just kept driving. I didn't get "jittery." Frankly, L.A. has had so many power outs in recent years, caused by the likes of Enron making deals on stupid politicians' backs, that another blackout is no reason for anyone to be anything other than, well, resigned.
(And in fact, as the radio sent their correspondents out to the streets to report on the mayhem sure to be occurring, different reporters called in to say that, oops, actually all the drivers going through the blacked-out intersections were being very calm and polite. Shame on them! That's no way to get on the news!)
I asked virtually everyone I talked to in the next 24 hours if they were "jittery." And I have to admit, it was not unanimous. One person did confess to being quite jittery.
He arrived in L.A. from Washington, D.C. two weeks ago.
So here's a report back at ya, NBC News: L.A. had a massive power outage (that lasted all of 10 seconds in some places, by the way -- another fact that didn't get reported anywhere I heard). And we weren't jittery.
Monday, September 12, 2005
VOLDEMORT THE GRAE
The lovely Barnes and Noble Harry Potter chat room is closed, but many of the posters have shifted to another site to chat, and Helen Ketcham continues to turn out fascinating essays on Severus Snape, which I definitely think are worth passing on.
This particular essay is a tad long, so I will split it into two parts. Here's part one:
Voldemort the GRAE, or How the Essential Goodness of Snape May be Seen Most Clearly in the Rotten Treatment He Dishes Out to Harry Potter
When we look at the way Snape treats the students we know best, his behavior sticks in the craw. It's nasty, mean, and unfair.
And then, as I was re-reading the C.S. Lewis essay "The Weight of Glory," I had another one of those "Lumos!" moments. I saw that one reason we know Snape shouldn't be treating these people as he does is that we know things about them which he doesn't. The rightness of Snape's principles is being hidden from our view because he's applying those principles to a mistaken set of facts.
I realized this was happening when Hermione Granger met Professor Lewis. This is what Lewis said about glory:
Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than of heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?
What does this have to do with Hermione, always first with the answers to her teachers' questions? Is she a know-it-all crammed full of intellectual pride and clutched tight in the grasp of a hell-spawned competitive passion?
Well, no. Lewis offers another possibility:
I suddenly remembered that no one can enter Heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child -- not in a conceited child, but in a good child -- as its great and undisguised pleasure at being praised.... Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is, in fact, the humblest, most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures -- nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator.
Is Hermione motivated by what Lewis called "the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please" or the "deadly poison of self-admiration?" Well, what do we know about Hermione that her Potions Master doesn't?
One thing Snape does know is that he is Hogwarts' Most Hated Professor. He comes looming up behind Harry and Ron just in time to hear:
"Maybe he's ill!" said Ron hopefully.
"Maybe he's left," said Harry, "because he missed out on the Defense Against Dark Arts job again!"
"Or he might have been sacked!" said Ron enthusiastically. "I mean, everyone hates him--"
Snape has no reason at all to suppose that any friend of Harry's would regard him (again in Lewis's words) as someone to be "rightly loved and rightly feared," or that they would find any intrinsic satisfaction in having pleased him. This natural and proper relationship between a good teacher and a good student is foreign to his experience.
But Hermione is different. She begins by being well-disposed toward her teachers; respect and liking are her default position. As Ron says, "Honestly, Hermione, you think all teachers are saints or something." It's not easy for a teacher to earn Hermione's withdrawal of respect, although Sibyll Trelawney manages to do so. And her goodwill is persistent. Malfoy sucks up to Snape in his presence, but Hermione steadily defends him behind his back:
"Poisonous toadstools don't change their spots," said Ron sagely. "Anyway, I've always thought Dumbledore was cracked to trust Snape. Where's the evidence he ever really stopped working for You-Know-Who?"
"I think Dumbledore's probably got plenty of evidence, even if he doesn't share it with you, Ron," snapped Hermione.
"Git," said Fred idly.
"He's on our side now," said Hermione reprovingly.
And when Harry objects to the way Snape talks about the Dark Arts, Hermione says:
"I thought he sounded a bit like you.... well, wasn't that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?"
Unlike Harry and Ron, she not only wants him to be a better, kinder teacher than he is, but still holds out hope that he can be:
"I did think he might be a bit better this year," said Hermione in a disappointed voice. "I mean... you know... now he's in the Order and everything."
So... Snape does not know that when Hermione's hand goes up in class, she's reaching out for a right relationship with him...
Snape does not know either that Hermione lied during the Troll-in-the-Loo inquest -- that is, he does not know that she sacrificed something she truly prized, her good reputation in Professor McGonagall's eyes, for the sake of Harry and Ron, who until then had not even been treating her as a friend. And she was willing to lay her name as a good student on the line again when she offered to steal ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion from Snape's supplies, on the grounds that it would be better for her to get a blot on her blameless record than for Harry or Ron to risk expulsion.
Without these essential pieces of information, Snape can only see Hermione's hand-waving as an expression of vainglory, and he spurs that particular "passion from Hell" with relentless and sometimes breathtaking rudeness.
If Snape's horrible treatment of Hermione is rooted in a fundamental mistake, things get less simple when his perceptions are not altogether mistaken. Sometimes it is true that "something wicked this way comes."
Between what Sirius and James did to Severus on that fateful afternoon in their fifth year and what the Death Eaters did to the unlucky Muggle family at the Quidditch World Cup, there's not enough room to swing a Kneazle. Snape is not wrong to consider such doings evil. The difference -- the essential missing information -- is that Sirius and Lupin have had a few years to think things over.
"Of course he was a bit of an idiot!" said Sirius bracingly. "We were all idiots! Well -- not Moony so much," he said fairly, looking at Lupin, but Lupin shook his head.
"Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?" he said. "Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were out of order?"
"Yeah, well," said Sirius, "you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes... That was something..."
But when those words were said, the man who most needed to hear them was not in the room.
The fact that Snape does not know of their change of heart -- does not know that Sirius and Lupin now fully agree with him that what they did was unjustifiable -- has tainted all his dealings with them as adults. And even more has it tainted the way he thinks of James Potter and Harry, his lookalike son.
Dumbledore knows this perfectly well.
"Quirrell said Snape--"
"Professor Snape, Harry."
"Yes, him -- Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my father. Is that true?"
"Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive."
"What?"
"He saved his life."
"What?"
"Yes..." said Dumbledore dreamily. "Funny, the way people's minds work, isn't it? Professor Snape couldn't bear being in your father's debt... I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father's memory in peace..."
And after the Occlumency lessons end in a shower of dried cockroaches, Dumbledore says,
"I trust Severus Snape.... But I forgot -- another old man's mistake -- that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father -- I was wrong."
There are several odd things about these comments of Professor Dumbledore. At the time Dumbledore assigned the Occlumency lessons, he knew that Snape felt wounded by James Potter -- he may have mistakenly thought the wounds were healed, but he knew the wounds existed. And he knew that Snape was "hating [James's] memory in peace." Extremely odd indeed. Given the wounds, given the hating, what could possibly have made Dumbledore think that sending Harry to Snape for Occlumency lessons was a good idea? Or even safe? And how could wise old Dumbledore, the soul-friend, entertain for a moment the concept that someone could be "hating in peace"?
He has told us. He told us when he told the assembled Wizengamot at Harry's underage-sorcery hearing that even the best of wizards cannot always control their emotions. He told us when he calmly allowed Harry to rage around his office breaking things, even telling him that he wasn't yet as angry as he should be. He told us when he told Harry that it is our choices that matter. As with Harry, so with Severus: he accepts, untroubled, his most troubling feelings and pays attention instead to his choices. And by the evidence of those choices, Snape is Dumbledore's faithful disciple. He has learned not to return harm for harm, learned to extend to others the mercy he received. This is deep and ancient magic indeed.
It is also hidden. Forgiveness is sometimes spoken of, even in our Muggle world, almost as though it's -- well, magic. Just say the words, and everything is fixed: a Reparo spell for human beings and their broken relationships. In practice, however, forgiveness often fails of its ultimate goal, the restoration of relationship, and can work its healing only on the wronged person, the one doing the forgiving.
By choosing mercy, the Potions Master has decided not to make himself a living flask for the corrosive brew of bitterness and revenge. But because those who wronged him have never sent him the essential message: "I know I injured you, and I am sorry; I won't do it again," Snape is caught in-between -- a sort of Splinched forgiveness. He is extending mercy toward people he does not trust, doing good to those toward whom he still feels anger and fear -- protecting Harry from Quirrellmort and, as he believed, from Sirius Black the mass-murderer, brewing up perfect
batches of Wolfsbane for Lupin, even informing no-longer-a-murderer-Sirius, under cover of a sneer, that his animagus secret is no longer safe from Lucius Malfoy.
But this splinch is not only painful, it's dangerous. The temptation is always present to slide over from anger and fear into outright hatred and retribution. I wonder whether Snape didn't slip a little when he told his Slytherins about Lupin's "furry little problem." After all, it's a good thing to get a werewolf as far away from the children of Hogwarts as possible, isn't it? So easy to find an unassailable reason to do what your less noble inclinations are already suggesting.
Sirius and Lupin have only crossed paths with Snape a few times as adults. Harry, on the other hand, has been in close contact with Snape for years, and we have seen plenty of evidence of the way they interact. Back we come to the fundamental question: If Severus Snape is good, and is set upon doing good, why is he so horrible to Harry?
....More to come from Helen (the second part of this essay) on the qualities in a wizard that are generally recognized as evil -- some good stuff coming, so tune back in! Hope you enjoyed this.
This particular essay is a tad long, so I will split it into two parts. Here's part one:
Voldemort the GRAE, or How the Essential Goodness of Snape May be Seen Most Clearly in the Rotten Treatment He Dishes Out to Harry Potter
When we look at the way Snape treats the students we know best, his behavior sticks in the craw. It's nasty, mean, and unfair.
And then, as I was re-reading the C.S. Lewis essay "The Weight of Glory," I had another one of those "Lumos!" moments. I saw that one reason we know Snape shouldn't be treating these people as he does is that we know things about them which he doesn't. The rightness of Snape's principles is being hidden from our view because he's applying those principles to a mistaken set of facts.
I realized this was happening when Hermione Granger met Professor Lewis. This is what Lewis said about glory:
Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than of heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?
What does this have to do with Hermione, always first with the answers to her teachers' questions? Is she a know-it-all crammed full of intellectual pride and clutched tight in the grasp of a hell-spawned competitive passion?
Well, no. Lewis offers another possibility:
I suddenly remembered that no one can enter Heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child -- not in a conceited child, but in a good child -- as its great and undisguised pleasure at being praised.... Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is, in fact, the humblest, most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures -- nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator.
Is Hermione motivated by what Lewis called "the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please" or the "deadly poison of self-admiration?" Well, what do we know about Hermione that her Potions Master doesn't?
One thing Snape does know is that he is Hogwarts' Most Hated Professor. He comes looming up behind Harry and Ron just in time to hear:
"Maybe he's ill!" said Ron hopefully.
"Maybe he's left," said Harry, "because he missed out on the Defense Against Dark Arts job again!"
"Or he might have been sacked!" said Ron enthusiastically. "I mean, everyone hates him--"
Snape has no reason at all to suppose that any friend of Harry's would regard him (again in Lewis's words) as someone to be "rightly loved and rightly feared," or that they would find any intrinsic satisfaction in having pleased him. This natural and proper relationship between a good teacher and a good student is foreign to his experience.
But Hermione is different. She begins by being well-disposed toward her teachers; respect and liking are her default position. As Ron says, "Honestly, Hermione, you think all teachers are saints or something." It's not easy for a teacher to earn Hermione's withdrawal of respect, although Sibyll Trelawney manages to do so. And her goodwill is persistent. Malfoy sucks up to Snape in his presence, but Hermione steadily defends him behind his back:
"Poisonous toadstools don't change their spots," said Ron sagely. "Anyway, I've always thought Dumbledore was cracked to trust Snape. Where's the evidence he ever really stopped working for You-Know-Who?"
"I think Dumbledore's probably got plenty of evidence, even if he doesn't share it with you, Ron," snapped Hermione.
"Git," said Fred idly.
"He's on our side now," said Hermione reprovingly.
And when Harry objects to the way Snape talks about the Dark Arts, Hermione says:
"I thought he sounded a bit like you.... well, wasn't that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?"
Unlike Harry and Ron, she not only wants him to be a better, kinder teacher than he is, but still holds out hope that he can be:
"I did think he might be a bit better this year," said Hermione in a disappointed voice. "I mean... you know... now he's in the Order and everything."
So... Snape does not know that when Hermione's hand goes up in class, she's reaching out for a right relationship with him...
Snape does not know either that Hermione lied during the Troll-in-the-Loo inquest -- that is, he does not know that she sacrificed something she truly prized, her good reputation in Professor McGonagall's eyes, for the sake of Harry and Ron, who until then had not even been treating her as a friend. And she was willing to lay her name as a good student on the line again when she offered to steal ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion from Snape's supplies, on the grounds that it would be better for her to get a blot on her blameless record than for Harry or Ron to risk expulsion.
Without these essential pieces of information, Snape can only see Hermione's hand-waving as an expression of vainglory, and he spurs that particular "passion from Hell" with relentless and sometimes breathtaking rudeness.
If Snape's horrible treatment of Hermione is rooted in a fundamental mistake, things get less simple when his perceptions are not altogether mistaken. Sometimes it is true that "something wicked this way comes."
Between what Sirius and James did to Severus on that fateful afternoon in their fifth year and what the Death Eaters did to the unlucky Muggle family at the Quidditch World Cup, there's not enough room to swing a Kneazle. Snape is not wrong to consider such doings evil. The difference -- the essential missing information -- is that Sirius and Lupin have had a few years to think things over.
"Of course he was a bit of an idiot!" said Sirius bracingly. "We were all idiots! Well -- not Moony so much," he said fairly, looking at Lupin, but Lupin shook his head.
"Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?" he said. "Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were out of order?"
"Yeah, well," said Sirius, "you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes... That was something..."
But when those words were said, the man who most needed to hear them was not in the room.
The fact that Snape does not know of their change of heart -- does not know that Sirius and Lupin now fully agree with him that what they did was unjustifiable -- has tainted all his dealings with them as adults. And even more has it tainted the way he thinks of James Potter and Harry, his lookalike son.
Dumbledore knows this perfectly well.
"Quirrell said Snape--"
"Professor Snape, Harry."
"Yes, him -- Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my father. Is that true?"
"Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive."
"What?"
"He saved his life."
"What?"
"Yes..." said Dumbledore dreamily. "Funny, the way people's minds work, isn't it? Professor Snape couldn't bear being in your father's debt... I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father's memory in peace..."
And after the Occlumency lessons end in a shower of dried cockroaches, Dumbledore says,
"I trust Severus Snape.... But I forgot -- another old man's mistake -- that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father -- I was wrong."
There are several odd things about these comments of Professor Dumbledore. At the time Dumbledore assigned the Occlumency lessons, he knew that Snape felt wounded by James Potter -- he may have mistakenly thought the wounds were healed, but he knew the wounds existed. And he knew that Snape was "hating [James's] memory in peace." Extremely odd indeed. Given the wounds, given the hating, what could possibly have made Dumbledore think that sending Harry to Snape for Occlumency lessons was a good idea? Or even safe? And how could wise old Dumbledore, the soul-friend, entertain for a moment the concept that someone could be "hating in peace"?
He has told us. He told us when he told the assembled Wizengamot at Harry's underage-sorcery hearing that even the best of wizards cannot always control their emotions. He told us when he calmly allowed Harry to rage around his office breaking things, even telling him that he wasn't yet as angry as he should be. He told us when he told Harry that it is our choices that matter. As with Harry, so with Severus: he accepts, untroubled, his most troubling feelings and pays attention instead to his choices. And by the evidence of those choices, Snape is Dumbledore's faithful disciple. He has learned not to return harm for harm, learned to extend to others the mercy he received. This is deep and ancient magic indeed.
It is also hidden. Forgiveness is sometimes spoken of, even in our Muggle world, almost as though it's -- well, magic. Just say the words, and everything is fixed: a Reparo spell for human beings and their broken relationships. In practice, however, forgiveness often fails of its ultimate goal, the restoration of relationship, and can work its healing only on the wronged person, the one doing the forgiving.
By choosing mercy, the Potions Master has decided not to make himself a living flask for the corrosive brew of bitterness and revenge. But because those who wronged him have never sent him the essential message: "I know I injured you, and I am sorry; I won't do it again," Snape is caught in-between -- a sort of Splinched forgiveness. He is extending mercy toward people he does not trust, doing good to those toward whom he still feels anger and fear -- protecting Harry from Quirrellmort and, as he believed, from Sirius Black the mass-murderer, brewing up perfect
batches of Wolfsbane for Lupin, even informing no-longer-a-murderer-Sirius, under cover of a sneer, that his animagus secret is no longer safe from Lucius Malfoy.
But this splinch is not only painful, it's dangerous. The temptation is always present to slide over from anger and fear into outright hatred and retribution. I wonder whether Snape didn't slip a little when he told his Slytherins about Lupin's "furry little problem." After all, it's a good thing to get a werewolf as far away from the children of Hogwarts as possible, isn't it? So easy to find an unassailable reason to do what your less noble inclinations are already suggesting.
Sirius and Lupin have only crossed paths with Snape a few times as adults. Harry, on the other hand, has been in close contact with Snape for years, and we have seen plenty of evidence of the way they interact. Back we come to the fundamental question: If Severus Snape is good, and is set upon doing good, why is he so horrible to Harry?
....More to come from Helen (the second part of this essay) on the qualities in a wizard that are generally recognized as evil -- some good stuff coming, so tune back in! Hope you enjoyed this.
MY FOOTBALL HERO
I don't know whether to laugh or ... well, laugh surreptitiously.
Cory came home from school the other day and announced (with a straight face, no less!) that he was going to join the school's intermural football team.
Now, you have to realize that Cory is the third-smallest kid in his class. (He was the second-smallest, but clearly had a growth spurt over the summer.) He is all of 4'8" at best, weighs something like 90 pounds. There are kids in his class who are almost a full foot taller than him (they're all girls, but still...)
For Cory to play football competitively would be like Luna Lovegood joining the Quidditch team. Cory is quite a good snowboarder, not too bad at beginning tennis, but he is just not a team sports guy. He proved this during his rather embarrassing two years at AYSO soccer. Catching a ball is not his forte. Neither is throwing one, actually.
When he made this announcement, I did the best job of responding I've ever done in my life. I somehow managed to hold in the snort that was pushing to get out and just said, "Really?" In quite a calm and reasonable voice, if I do say so myself.
But he's quite serious about it. He will play center, thanks to a kind and thoughtful P.E. teacher who managed to find a role on the team for a kid who really can't handle the ball. He is proud of his football skills (such as they are). And he is committed to the two days a week practice it will require.
(I should say here that he didn't actually have to try out for the team. Our school is so academically oriented that most of the sports teams are filled by whoever volunteers. Clearly, this is not Texas!... A couple of years ago, we had girls playing on the football team -- they were some of the best receivers we'd ever had, evidently. I should also say that this is flag football. I wouldn't let a kid as little as Cory play tackle!)
So I'm actually rather proud of him. It's one thing to volunteer for the activities that make you look good, that come easy to you, that you know will win you a little bit of glory, or at least a compliment or two. It's another thing to step up into the public eye doing something you're really not that good at.
The only real question left is, will I be able to keep from guffawing the first time I see him in his full regalia?
Cory came home from school the other day and announced (with a straight face, no less!) that he was going to join the school's intermural football team.
Now, you have to realize that Cory is the third-smallest kid in his class. (He was the second-smallest, but clearly had a growth spurt over the summer.) He is all of 4'8" at best, weighs something like 90 pounds. There are kids in his class who are almost a full foot taller than him (they're all girls, but still...)
For Cory to play football competitively would be like Luna Lovegood joining the Quidditch team. Cory is quite a good snowboarder, not too bad at beginning tennis, but he is just not a team sports guy. He proved this during his rather embarrassing two years at AYSO soccer. Catching a ball is not his forte. Neither is throwing one, actually.
When he made this announcement, I did the best job of responding I've ever done in my life. I somehow managed to hold in the snort that was pushing to get out and just said, "Really?" In quite a calm and reasonable voice, if I do say so myself.
But he's quite serious about it. He will play center, thanks to a kind and thoughtful P.E. teacher who managed to find a role on the team for a kid who really can't handle the ball. He is proud of his football skills (such as they are). And he is committed to the two days a week practice it will require.
(I should say here that he didn't actually have to try out for the team. Our school is so academically oriented that most of the sports teams are filled by whoever volunteers. Clearly, this is not Texas!... A couple of years ago, we had girls playing on the football team -- they were some of the best receivers we'd ever had, evidently. I should also say that this is flag football. I wouldn't let a kid as little as Cory play tackle!)
So I'm actually rather proud of him. It's one thing to volunteer for the activities that make you look good, that come easy to you, that you know will win you a little bit of glory, or at least a compliment or two. It's another thing to step up into the public eye doing something you're really not that good at.
The only real question left is, will I be able to keep from guffawing the first time I see him in his full regalia?
Thursday, September 08, 2005
1 WEEK AGO.... 105 YEARS AGO....
I haven't blogged at all about Hurricane Katrina. Partly because, well, everyone else was. And what else was there left to say, amidst the horror and the blame? And because you all know how to contact the Salvation Army or the Red Cross already...
But also, partly, because I've seen it all before.
Lee and I spent a good chunk of 2004 writing a spec script about the Galveston hurricane of 1900. We spent months mired in research, reading survivor accounts, and looking at before-and-after photos and statistics. In terms of lives lost, Galveston was the biggest disaster of any kind to hit the U.S. -- bigger than 9/11, bigger than the Johnstown Flood... We won't know till the bodies are counted from Katrina whether it will surpass Galveston... but with high estimates of 12,000 dead in 1900, it's quite a large number to top.
So when Katrina headed for New Orleans, I held my breath. Because I knew all too well what could happen.
And the storm hit, and it was devastating, and it passed. And everyone breathed a sigh of relief and said, "It's over!" for a day or so. I even heard a local radio interview where the host was sort of laughing at a family who hired a limo to drive them out of town, and the woman who hired the limo was embarrassed, apologizing about how they thought it was going to be bad enough to justify what they did.
But while everyone was sighing in relief, I was still holding my breath. "No," I said back to the TV. "It isn't over. Not by a long shot." Because I knew what would come next.
So I wasn't surprised when the news turned bad. Or at the survivors stuck on rooftops and clinging to trees. Or at the lack of food, lack of water, lack of transportation, lack of communication. I wasn't surprised at the infants separated from their parents, at entire families wiped out, at hundreds of people who overnight lost everything they owned. And I wasn't surprised at the dead bodies floating face down in the street, or sitting placidly in chairs. Because there were many, many (many!) more dead bodies in Galveston.
(By the way, we kept our screenplay limited to the 36-hour period immediately surrounding the storm itself. Because as we read about the aftermath, we shuddered and said, "No one would pay money to sit through two hours of such horrors.")
There were some differences between Galveston and New Orleans. In New Orleans, they had warning that the storm was coming. In Galveston, even without the satellite radar and whatnot we have today, some people knew the storm was coming (Cuban meteorlogists issued some very strong warnings indeed, which weren't heeded because, well, they came from the Cubans). But the Weather Bureau refused to allow any announcements of the approaching hurricane, refused, in fact, to allow anyone to use the word "hurricane" to describe it.
So people went down to the beach to look at the remarkable sky as the storm approached, and to gawk at the beginnings of the storm surge building up in the Gulf (held back temporarily by strong north winds). And kids played in the streets as they filled with water. And a few hours later, that beach and those streets -- and most of those people -- no longer existed.
Another difference between Galveston and New Orleans? In Galveston, there was some looting. But hardly any. Because self-appointed bands of citizens went out with their guns and shot anyone who looted or vandalized. And, while this is hardly my preferred means of dealing with a situation, I have to say it was, um, highly effective.
Another difference -- Galveston after the storm was awash in dead bodies. Bodies everywhere. Piled in the streets, floating in the bay, hanging from trees. They began to stink within 24 hours. Unable to identify and bury them all, and with cemeteries still too wet to dig into, the citizens loaded the bodies onto boats and floated them out into the Gulf to sink them. But the Gulf washed them back onto shore within a couple of days. So they built huge pyres on the beach and burnt them around the clock.
They say they're preparing for 25,000 dead in New Orleans. But I don't know... The pictures that haunted me from Galveston are not anything like what I'm seeing in New Orleans, where the dead bodies seem few and far between in comparison.
But the real difference is yet to be seen. That's in whether or not New Orleans can recover.
Before the 1900 hurricane, Galveston was, hard as it is to believe today, the hot, prosperous, thriving town of the South. It was the no. 3 port in the country (behind New York and New Orleans). It was the no. 1 cotton port in the country. It was the no. 2 immigration entry point (after Ellis Island) -- Galveston was where everyone wanted to come, the perfect city, with an unlimited future ahead of it. Houston (now the 4th largest city in the U.S.) was just a wide spot in a swamp, and would never have become the city it did without the Galveston hurricane.
But after the hurricane, all that changed. Galveston rebuilt. They built a sea wall to protect against future hurricanes. They even raised the entire level of the island by 9 to 15 feet (jacking up all the surviving buildings to do so). But the business went elsewhere. The people went elsewhere. And the thriving city-of-the-future became little more than a vacation destination.
So as people talk about rebuilding New Orleans, I look, and I think back, and I say, "I don't know." If history repeats itself, New Orleans as a center of trade could be a thing of the past.
...In August 2001, FEMA held a training session to plan for what they considered the three most likely disasters to strike the U.S.: (1) A terrorist attack on New York City; (2) a super-sized hurricane hitting New Orleans; and (3) an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault affecting L.A.
Hm. Two out of three in exactly four years' time. Maybe I'd better go see just where that earthquake kit got stashed after we moved.... Because disasters do happen. And if we don't learn from them, then the disaster is even worse.
But also, partly, because I've seen it all before.
Lee and I spent a good chunk of 2004 writing a spec script about the Galveston hurricane of 1900. We spent months mired in research, reading survivor accounts, and looking at before-and-after photos and statistics. In terms of lives lost, Galveston was the biggest disaster of any kind to hit the U.S. -- bigger than 9/11, bigger than the Johnstown Flood... We won't know till the bodies are counted from Katrina whether it will surpass Galveston... but with high estimates of 12,000 dead in 1900, it's quite a large number to top.
So when Katrina headed for New Orleans, I held my breath. Because I knew all too well what could happen.
And the storm hit, and it was devastating, and it passed. And everyone breathed a sigh of relief and said, "It's over!" for a day or so. I even heard a local radio interview where the host was sort of laughing at a family who hired a limo to drive them out of town, and the woman who hired the limo was embarrassed, apologizing about how they thought it was going to be bad enough to justify what they did.
But while everyone was sighing in relief, I was still holding my breath. "No," I said back to the TV. "It isn't over. Not by a long shot." Because I knew what would come next.
So I wasn't surprised when the news turned bad. Or at the survivors stuck on rooftops and clinging to trees. Or at the lack of food, lack of water, lack of transportation, lack of communication. I wasn't surprised at the infants separated from their parents, at entire families wiped out, at hundreds of people who overnight lost everything they owned. And I wasn't surprised at the dead bodies floating face down in the street, or sitting placidly in chairs. Because there were many, many (many!) more dead bodies in Galveston.
(By the way, we kept our screenplay limited to the 36-hour period immediately surrounding the storm itself. Because as we read about the aftermath, we shuddered and said, "No one would pay money to sit through two hours of such horrors.")
There were some differences between Galveston and New Orleans. In New Orleans, they had warning that the storm was coming. In Galveston, even without the satellite radar and whatnot we have today, some people knew the storm was coming (Cuban meteorlogists issued some very strong warnings indeed, which weren't heeded because, well, they came from the Cubans). But the Weather Bureau refused to allow any announcements of the approaching hurricane, refused, in fact, to allow anyone to use the word "hurricane" to describe it.
So people went down to the beach to look at the remarkable sky as the storm approached, and to gawk at the beginnings of the storm surge building up in the Gulf (held back temporarily by strong north winds). And kids played in the streets as they filled with water. And a few hours later, that beach and those streets -- and most of those people -- no longer existed.
Another difference between Galveston and New Orleans? In Galveston, there was some looting. But hardly any. Because self-appointed bands of citizens went out with their guns and shot anyone who looted or vandalized. And, while this is hardly my preferred means of dealing with a situation, I have to say it was, um, highly effective.
Another difference -- Galveston after the storm was awash in dead bodies. Bodies everywhere. Piled in the streets, floating in the bay, hanging from trees. They began to stink within 24 hours. Unable to identify and bury them all, and with cemeteries still too wet to dig into, the citizens loaded the bodies onto boats and floated them out into the Gulf to sink them. But the Gulf washed them back onto shore within a couple of days. So they built huge pyres on the beach and burnt them around the clock.
They say they're preparing for 25,000 dead in New Orleans. But I don't know... The pictures that haunted me from Galveston are not anything like what I'm seeing in New Orleans, where the dead bodies seem few and far between in comparison.
But the real difference is yet to be seen. That's in whether or not New Orleans can recover.
Before the 1900 hurricane, Galveston was, hard as it is to believe today, the hot, prosperous, thriving town of the South. It was the no. 3 port in the country (behind New York and New Orleans). It was the no. 1 cotton port in the country. It was the no. 2 immigration entry point (after Ellis Island) -- Galveston was where everyone wanted to come, the perfect city, with an unlimited future ahead of it. Houston (now the 4th largest city in the U.S.) was just a wide spot in a swamp, and would never have become the city it did without the Galveston hurricane.
But after the hurricane, all that changed. Galveston rebuilt. They built a sea wall to protect against future hurricanes. They even raised the entire level of the island by 9 to 15 feet (jacking up all the surviving buildings to do so). But the business went elsewhere. The people went elsewhere. And the thriving city-of-the-future became little more than a vacation destination.
So as people talk about rebuilding New Orleans, I look, and I think back, and I say, "I don't know." If history repeats itself, New Orleans as a center of trade could be a thing of the past.
...In August 2001, FEMA held a training session to plan for what they considered the three most likely disasters to strike the U.S.: (1) A terrorist attack on New York City; (2) a super-sized hurricane hitting New Orleans; and (3) an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault affecting L.A.
Hm. Two out of three in exactly four years' time. Maybe I'd better go see just where that earthquake kit got stashed after we moved.... Because disasters do happen. And if we don't learn from them, then the disaster is even worse.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
ACT ONE IN NEWSWEEK
Monday, September 05, 2005
HOW TO READ A BOOK
In the midst of all the intelligent chatting about Harry Potter going on over at the Barnes & Noble site, and in the comment boxes here, I had a few conversations within this last week that sort of astonished me.
I talked to a mom of three who has read all the books out loud to her kids, so is familiar w/ the story from the beginning. And I also talked to a screenwriter friend who picked up the books fairly recently, again working his way through from the beginning. And also a chat with a doctor friend who started reading Half-Blood Prince at midnight on release day.
And not one of them had a clue that there could be more going on in the story that meets the eye.
Specifically, all of them accepted at face value that Snape was evil, that was and always had been a Death Eater, and that he killed Dumbledore with malice aforethought. While they all were upset at this, it never occurred to them to think even one level deeper.
To leap from books to music.... I remember when we bought the Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over" CD. Most of it is a greatest hits concert tour. And at one point, they go into a long extended instrumental riff. They could be going anywhere with this riff -- except that it starts with a chord progression of Bm - F#m - Em.
Now, I am far from musically sophisticated. But the second I heard that progression, I said to myself, "Cool. 'Hotel California.'" And a minute or so later, the instrumental riff resolved into the well-known guitar opening to 'Hotel California' -- and the crowd went crazy.
And I remember thinking, "Huh? Why are they reacting now? Didn't they realize when they heard those particular chords in that particular order that 'Hotel California' was coming? Didn't any of them realize?" But apparently they didn't, because even with the sound cranked, there isn't a shred of audience response. The clue, as it were, was screaming in their ears... and they didn't get it.
Putting these two experiences together, it made me wonder: What do we need to do to teach our kids how to really read? Not just on the surface but a couple of levels down, at least.
Because I'd like everyone -- not just the initiated, not just the specially trained, not just the gifted -- to be able to get a clue.
I talked to a mom of three who has read all the books out loud to her kids, so is familiar w/ the story from the beginning. And I also talked to a screenwriter friend who picked up the books fairly recently, again working his way through from the beginning. And also a chat with a doctor friend who started reading Half-Blood Prince at midnight on release day.
And not one of them had a clue that there could be more going on in the story that meets the eye.
Specifically, all of them accepted at face value that Snape was evil, that was and always had been a Death Eater, and that he killed Dumbledore with malice aforethought. While they all were upset at this, it never occurred to them to think even one level deeper.
To leap from books to music.... I remember when we bought the Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over" CD. Most of it is a greatest hits concert tour. And at one point, they go into a long extended instrumental riff. They could be going anywhere with this riff -- except that it starts with a chord progression of Bm - F#m - Em.
Now, I am far from musically sophisticated. But the second I heard that progression, I said to myself, "Cool. 'Hotel California.'" And a minute or so later, the instrumental riff resolved into the well-known guitar opening to 'Hotel California' -- and the crowd went crazy.
And I remember thinking, "Huh? Why are they reacting now? Didn't they realize when they heard those particular chords in that particular order that 'Hotel California' was coming? Didn't any of them realize?" But apparently they didn't, because even with the sound cranked, there isn't a shred of audience response. The clue, as it were, was screaming in their ears... and they didn't get it.
Putting these two experiences together, it made me wonder: What do we need to do to teach our kids how to really read? Not just on the surface but a couple of levels down, at least.
Because I'd like everyone -- not just the initiated, not just the specially trained, not just the gifted -- to be able to get a clue.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
CHECK OUT GUEST BLOGGER DAN
While good friend Barb Nicolosi slathers herself in sunscreen on her cruise ship this week, Dan Ewald is guest-blogging for her over at Church of the Masses.
Dan is such a funny blogger, I think he should have his own blog. (I like to see people other than myself dribbling away as much of their productive time as possible!)
We know Dan all too well, as he worked for us as our part-time assistant for a couple of years. We think this gives us the right to take full and total credit for all his funniness. He learned it all from us. Trust us on that.
Anyway, go check him out. And hurry! This is a limited time offer.
Dan is such a funny blogger, I think he should have his own blog. (I like to see people other than myself dribbling away as much of their productive time as possible!)
We know Dan all too well, as he worked for us as our part-time assistant for a couple of years. We think this gives us the right to take full and total credit for all his funniness. He learned it all from us. Trust us on that.
Anyway, go check him out. And hurry! This is a limited time offer.
Friday, September 02, 2005
WEAR YOUR SUNSCREEN!
They say that if you had one bad sunburn, bad enough to peel, as a child, your risk for skin cancer goes up dramatically.
Well, I had at least 3 or 4 peeling sunburns every summer. I spent the whole summer peeling, in fact, all the way through high school. And the first time I went to Hawaii, I managed to get a second-degree sunburn (really ewww, you don't want to know).
But I've always beat the odds. I go to my dermatologist every year or so for a full-body check (sometimes not quite that often, she's quite expensive!), and she looks over all the little weird spots, and scrapes a few off, and biopsies them, and then calls me and says everything's fine. And every couple of years she puts me through this treatment using a chemotherapy cream (essentially) to burn off all the pre-cancerous spots on my face, and I look like The Thing for a couple of weeks, and everything's fine.
But not this time.
I went in to see her in July, with a little spot on my cheek that actually hurt (that was new). She scraped, biopsied, the usual, and I went home, expecting it to be nothing.
And then she called and said, in her sweet girly Southern voice, "Well, we have the least little problem to deal with."
Turns out the little owie on my check was a squamous cell carcinoma. But the way she made it sound, it would be the easiest thing in the world to deal with. So off I went to a dermatologic surgeon.
Not so easy to deal with, as it turns out! It seems that in the month it took to actually get the surgery appointment, the thing more than doubled in size. So instead of a little scraping and freezing and scraping again, they dug a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in my face with a scalpel.
Okay, not the Grand Canyon. Really only the size of, say, a subway station. A subway station filled with blood.
They got it all the first try, thank God. (There was a woman in the waiting room going back for the third scalpel-dig on her nose -- all quite a contrast with the giggly 30-somethings there for their Botox shots -- and what do 30-somethings need with Botox anyway, I'd like to know?)
So now I'm all patched up, with stitches running up half my face, and there will be a scar. We don't know how bad, but I'm buying the cocoa butter and the vitamin E and the aloe vera now. And then I'll start pricing laser resurfacing, which of course insurance doesn't cover (because it's okay to walk around with a scar on your face, but not okay for anyone to have 'erectile dysfunction' -- that insurance will cover!).
All this to say: WEAR YOUR SUNSCREEN! 50 SPF if you can. Even to walk the dog. Even to take out the trash. Even on an overcast day. And slather your kids with it! Up one side and down the other and who cares if they grumble!
This public service announcement has been brought to you by the gaping hole on the side of my face.
Well, I had at least 3 or 4 peeling sunburns every summer. I spent the whole summer peeling, in fact, all the way through high school. And the first time I went to Hawaii, I managed to get a second-degree sunburn (really ewww, you don't want to know).
But I've always beat the odds. I go to my dermatologist every year or so for a full-body check (sometimes not quite that often, she's quite expensive!), and she looks over all the little weird spots, and scrapes a few off, and biopsies them, and then calls me and says everything's fine. And every couple of years she puts me through this treatment using a chemotherapy cream (essentially) to burn off all the pre-cancerous spots on my face, and I look like The Thing for a couple of weeks, and everything's fine.
But not this time.
I went in to see her in July, with a little spot on my cheek that actually hurt (that was new). She scraped, biopsied, the usual, and I went home, expecting it to be nothing.
And then she called and said, in her sweet girly Southern voice, "Well, we have the least little problem to deal with."
Turns out the little owie on my check was a squamous cell carcinoma. But the way she made it sound, it would be the easiest thing in the world to deal with. So off I went to a dermatologic surgeon.
Not so easy to deal with, as it turns out! It seems that in the month it took to actually get the surgery appointment, the thing more than doubled in size. So instead of a little scraping and freezing and scraping again, they dug a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in my face with a scalpel.
Okay, not the Grand Canyon. Really only the size of, say, a subway station. A subway station filled with blood.
They got it all the first try, thank God. (There was a woman in the waiting room going back for the third scalpel-dig on her nose -- all quite a contrast with the giggly 30-somethings there for their Botox shots -- and what do 30-somethings need with Botox anyway, I'd like to know?)
So now I'm all patched up, with stitches running up half my face, and there will be a scar. We don't know how bad, but I'm buying the cocoa butter and the vitamin E and the aloe vera now. And then I'll start pricing laser resurfacing, which of course insurance doesn't cover (because it's okay to walk around with a scar on your face, but not okay for anyone to have 'erectile dysfunction' -- that insurance will cover!).
All this to say: WEAR YOUR SUNSCREEN! 50 SPF if you can. Even to walk the dog. Even to take out the trash. Even on an overcast day. And slather your kids with it! Up one side and down the other and who cares if they grumble!
This public service announcement has been brought to you by the gaping hole on the side of my face.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
SEVERUS SNAPE AND THE LONG WAR
Helen over at the Barnes and Noble book chat group keeps turning out these fascinating essays on Snape... and since I want to preserve them (the chat room shuts down in a few days), I'm going to keep posting them here. Hope you all are enjoying them!
Helen's already written on Snape's childhood and Snape as a teacher. Here's her take on his role in the continuing battle:
Good Snape, Part III: Severus Snape and the Long War
In the first part of my series on "good Snape," I laid out my reasons for believing that young Severus may have joined battle even before he entered Hogwarts, defending his mother and himself against his abusive Muggle father, Tobias Snape.
In the second part, I mentioned in passing the scene Harry saw in the Pensieve during his Occlumency lessons with Snape, the episode on the after of his DADA O.W.L. exam called "Snape's Worst Memory." It deserves a closer look.
Harry looked around and glimpsed Snape a short way away, moving between the tables towards the doors to the Entrance Hall, still absorbed in his own exam paper. Round-shouldered yet angular, he walked in a twitchy manner that recalled a spider, and his oily hair was jumping about his face. [...]
"All right, Snivellus?" said James loudly. Snape reacted so fast it was as though he had been expecting an attack: dropping his bag, he plunged his hand inside his robes and his wand was halfway into the air when James shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
He walked in a twitchy manner... He reacted so fast it was as though he had been expecting an attack.
Fans have speculated that this description might be a clue that Snape was a spider animagus. I see it as a clue that his difficult life has left him hyper-vigilant, nerves continually keyed-up to detect signs of danger. He reacted so fast because he was expecting an attack; he had been attacked before, many times, both at home and at Hogwarts. For Harry, the beginning of each school year meant returning to sanctuary, safe again from the Dursleys. In Order of the Phoenix, we learn from Sirius that James continued to hex Snape whenever he could, even into their seventh year while he ws dating Lily. There was no haven at Hogwarts for Severus.
And yet, if the bullying had been so unremitting that it left a schoolboy with much the same nervous reactions as a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, if it had happened before and would happen again, what made this particular episode "Snape's worst memory"?
What if this is not the memory of the worst thing that ever happened to Severus, but the memory of his worst choice?
But too late; Snape had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James's face, spattering his robes with blood. [...]
"You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus."
"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"
Lily blinked. "Fine," she said coolly. "I won't bother in the future."
Not only does he lash out with a vile epithet at Lily Evans, who, whatever their relationship or lack fo one, had been moved to come to his defense, but he also uses what appears to be a form of Sectumsempra. This is a boundary being crossed. It is as if a boy scuffling and wrestling with his classmates on the playground were suddenly to pull a knife. This may have been the turning-point, and it is only too easy to see the influences that might have turned him.
Judging by the date of the Advanced Potions text, Lord Voldemort was almost certainly in his last years at Hogwarts when Eileen Prince was beginning her studies there. She would have seen him from afar and seen him at his best, as the humble, talented, handsome, admirable Tom Riddle, Head Boy from Slytherin House -- and whatever she told her son about him would have been filtered through a schoolgirl's adulation. After all, she was probably a Slytherin too.
Between the grim and well-known Muggle reality of Tobias Snape, doing everything in his power to shame and oppress his magical wife and son (abusers always say the same things, too -- can't you hear sometimes, in the adult Snape's speech, distant echoes of those old standards "You're nothing special!" and "Stop your blubbering or I'll give you smething to cry about!" and other paternal endearments of that sort?) and the romantic vision of Lord Voldemort, defender of the purity of wizarding folk, there was not much choice.
And then there was James Potter, relentlessly and gratuitously harassing Severus. If that swollen-headed barbarian hated the Dark Arts so much, then they must be worth a further look. And so, perhaps, young Severus reached for greater power, power enough that he need never be shamed again, and, in reaching, placed himself into the hand of Lord Voldemort.
Out of the cauldron and into the fire. Remember Snape's words during the Occlumency lessons:
"Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!" said Snape savagely. "Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily -- weak people, in other words -- they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!"
It finally occurred to me to ask: And Snape knows this -- how? What was it really like, to be debriefed by the Dark Lord?
Think about that for a while. And shudder.
Occlumency and Legilimency
Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater. However, he rejoined our side before Lord Voldemort's downfall and turned spy for us, at great personal risk.
Occlumency and Legilimency are a rare branch of magic. They're not part of the regular Hogwarts curriculum, and by their very nature they have to be taught in one-on-one tutoring sessions with someone who is already adept. In fact, we only know of four people who have mastered these disciplines: Dumbledore, Voldemort, Slughorn, and Snape.
Of these three possible instructors, it must have been Dumbledore who taught Snape to be a "superb Occlumens." Voldemort had no compunction about using Legilimency to strip his victims of their secrets, but for him, the distinction between victim and follower was not a large one. He would never have tuaght his follwers anything that might make them less subordinate to him. And it doesn't seem likely at all that Dumbledore would have farmed out the task to Slughorn, who was not a member of the Order of the Phoenix and who seems not to ahve bothered paying much attention at all to Snape when he was his student -- who, despite his brilliance at Potions, lacked the charisma or the connections to catch Slughorn's eye.
For Dumbledore, Snape the young Death Eater presented both a tremendous risk and a tremendous opportunity, but Dumbledore never valued anyone only for his or her potential as a tool. I believe it was not only for Snape's usefulness as a spy, but also for his own sake as a person that Dumbledore asked for, and received, access to his most deeply-buried thoughts and feelings in the course of their Legilimency lessons. Dumbledore needed to have absolute confidence about the motivation and principles of someone who would be putting, not only himself, but others working against Voldemort, into danger by going into the presence of the Dark Lord as a spy. And he would know that it wasn't good for a man to be left alone with such memories of horror, shame and guilt as Snape brought back from his time with the Death Eaters.
Taking into consideration the approach to Legilimency that Dumbledore would follow, I cannot imagine how Snape's loyalties could be in doubt thereafter. How could he fail to recognize the difference between the surgeon who probes deep to clean out the shrapnel and putrefaction, and the man who tosses the grenade at you in the first place?
We can compare what Dumbledore does for Snape to the work of a physician, or a therapist, or a confessor -- and what all of these professions have in common is their responsibility of confidentiality. Dumbledore, having probed, also teaches Snape how to guard the integrity of his mind and steadily refuses to tell anyone else what his grounds are for trusting Snape. He will not allow any second guessing. He places a bandage of privacy over Snape's wounds, so that no one else can prod at them while they heal. He does for Snape, in fact, what he has also done for Neville and for Lupin --
Harry did not answer. He knew exactly why the subject of people who were in St. Mungo's because of magical damage to their brains was highly distressing to Neville, but he had sworn to Dumbledore that he would not tell anyone Neville's secret. Even Neville did not know Harry knew.
[...]
"You remember the conversation we had, headmaster, just before - ah - the start of term?" said Snape, who was barely opening his lips, as thought trying to block Percy out of the conversation.
"I do, Severus," said Dumbledore, and there was something like warning in his voice.
"It seems - almost impossible - that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when, you appointed--"
"I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it," said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn't reply."
In a moral sense, if not a magical one, Dumbledore protects all these people by acting as their Secret-Keeper. And they deeply value his trust in them. Lupin said, "Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me," and when Snape confronted
False Moody, he said, "Dumbledore happens to trust me... I refuse to believe that he gave you orders to search my office!"
Althought Snape isn't a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of man, I think we can see a glimpse of how much he values Dumbledore's trust when he confirms to Harry that he is indeed Dumbledore's spy -- Dumbledore's man -- among the Death Eaters, and a "curious, almost satisfied" expression crosses his face.
More coming (the last? not sure...) from Helen on Snape's learning curve as a teacher...
Helen's already written on Snape's childhood and Snape as a teacher. Here's her take on his role in the continuing battle:
Good Snape, Part III: Severus Snape and the Long War
In the first part of my series on "good Snape," I laid out my reasons for believing that young Severus may have joined battle even before he entered Hogwarts, defending his mother and himself against his abusive Muggle father, Tobias Snape.
In the second part, I mentioned in passing the scene Harry saw in the Pensieve during his Occlumency lessons with Snape, the episode on the after of his DADA O.W.L. exam called "Snape's Worst Memory." It deserves a closer look.
Harry looked around and glimpsed Snape a short way away, moving between the tables towards the doors to the Entrance Hall, still absorbed in his own exam paper. Round-shouldered yet angular, he walked in a twitchy manner that recalled a spider, and his oily hair was jumping about his face. [...]
"All right, Snivellus?" said James loudly. Snape reacted so fast it was as though he had been expecting an attack: dropping his bag, he plunged his hand inside his robes and his wand was halfway into the air when James shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
He walked in a twitchy manner... He reacted so fast it was as though he had been expecting an attack.
Fans have speculated that this description might be a clue that Snape was a spider animagus. I see it as a clue that his difficult life has left him hyper-vigilant, nerves continually keyed-up to detect signs of danger. He reacted so fast because he was expecting an attack; he had been attacked before, many times, both at home and at Hogwarts. For Harry, the beginning of each school year meant returning to sanctuary, safe again from the Dursleys. In Order of the Phoenix, we learn from Sirius that James continued to hex Snape whenever he could, even into their seventh year while he ws dating Lily. There was no haven at Hogwarts for Severus.
And yet, if the bullying had been so unremitting that it left a schoolboy with much the same nervous reactions as a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, if it had happened before and would happen again, what made this particular episode "Snape's worst memory"?
What if this is not the memory of the worst thing that ever happened to Severus, but the memory of his worst choice?
But too late; Snape had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James's face, spattering his robes with blood. [...]
"You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus."
"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"
Lily blinked. "Fine," she said coolly. "I won't bother in the future."
Not only does he lash out with a vile epithet at Lily Evans, who, whatever their relationship or lack fo one, had been moved to come to his defense, but he also uses what appears to be a form of Sectumsempra. This is a boundary being crossed. It is as if a boy scuffling and wrestling with his classmates on the playground were suddenly to pull a knife. This may have been the turning-point, and it is only too easy to see the influences that might have turned him.
Judging by the date of the Advanced Potions text, Lord Voldemort was almost certainly in his last years at Hogwarts when Eileen Prince was beginning her studies there. She would have seen him from afar and seen him at his best, as the humble, talented, handsome, admirable Tom Riddle, Head Boy from Slytherin House -- and whatever she told her son about him would have been filtered through a schoolgirl's adulation. After all, she was probably a Slytherin too.
Between the grim and well-known Muggle reality of Tobias Snape, doing everything in his power to shame and oppress his magical wife and son (abusers always say the same things, too -- can't you hear sometimes, in the adult Snape's speech, distant echoes of those old standards "You're nothing special!" and "Stop your blubbering or I'll give you smething to cry about!" and other paternal endearments of that sort?) and the romantic vision of Lord Voldemort, defender of the purity of wizarding folk, there was not much choice.
And then there was James Potter, relentlessly and gratuitously harassing Severus. If that swollen-headed barbarian hated the Dark Arts so much, then they must be worth a further look. And so, perhaps, young Severus reached for greater power, power enough that he need never be shamed again, and, in reaching, placed himself into the hand of Lord Voldemort.
Out of the cauldron and into the fire. Remember Snape's words during the Occlumency lessons:
"Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!" said Snape savagely. "Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily -- weak people, in other words -- they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!"
It finally occurred to me to ask: And Snape knows this -- how? What was it really like, to be debriefed by the Dark Lord?
Think about that for a while. And shudder.
Occlumency and Legilimency
Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater. However, he rejoined our side before Lord Voldemort's downfall and turned spy for us, at great personal risk.
Occlumency and Legilimency are a rare branch of magic. They're not part of the regular Hogwarts curriculum, and by their very nature they have to be taught in one-on-one tutoring sessions with someone who is already adept. In fact, we only know of four people who have mastered these disciplines: Dumbledore, Voldemort, Slughorn, and Snape.
Of these three possible instructors, it must have been Dumbledore who taught Snape to be a "superb Occlumens." Voldemort had no compunction about using Legilimency to strip his victims of their secrets, but for him, the distinction between victim and follower was not a large one. He would never have tuaght his follwers anything that might make them less subordinate to him. And it doesn't seem likely at all that Dumbledore would have farmed out the task to Slughorn, who was not a member of the Order of the Phoenix and who seems not to ahve bothered paying much attention at all to Snape when he was his student -- who, despite his brilliance at Potions, lacked the charisma or the connections to catch Slughorn's eye.
For Dumbledore, Snape the young Death Eater presented both a tremendous risk and a tremendous opportunity, but Dumbledore never valued anyone only for his or her potential as a tool. I believe it was not only for Snape's usefulness as a spy, but also for his own sake as a person that Dumbledore asked for, and received, access to his most deeply-buried thoughts and feelings in the course of their Legilimency lessons. Dumbledore needed to have absolute confidence about the motivation and principles of someone who would be putting, not only himself, but others working against Voldemort, into danger by going into the presence of the Dark Lord as a spy. And he would know that it wasn't good for a man to be left alone with such memories of horror, shame and guilt as Snape brought back from his time with the Death Eaters.
Taking into consideration the approach to Legilimency that Dumbledore would follow, I cannot imagine how Snape's loyalties could be in doubt thereafter. How could he fail to recognize the difference between the surgeon who probes deep to clean out the shrapnel and putrefaction, and the man who tosses the grenade at you in the first place?
We can compare what Dumbledore does for Snape to the work of a physician, or a therapist, or a confessor -- and what all of these professions have in common is their responsibility of confidentiality. Dumbledore, having probed, also teaches Snape how to guard the integrity of his mind and steadily refuses to tell anyone else what his grounds are for trusting Snape. He will not allow any second guessing. He places a bandage of privacy over Snape's wounds, so that no one else can prod at them while they heal. He does for Snape, in fact, what he has also done for Neville and for Lupin --
Harry did not answer. He knew exactly why the subject of people who were in St. Mungo's because of magical damage to their brains was highly distressing to Neville, but he had sworn to Dumbledore that he would not tell anyone Neville's secret. Even Neville did not know Harry knew.
[...]
"You remember the conversation we had, headmaster, just before - ah - the start of term?" said Snape, who was barely opening his lips, as thought trying to block Percy out of the conversation.
"I do, Severus," said Dumbledore, and there was something like warning in his voice.
"It seems - almost impossible - that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when, you appointed--"
"I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it," said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn't reply."
In a moral sense, if not a magical one, Dumbledore protects all these people by acting as their Secret-Keeper. And they deeply value his trust in them. Lupin said, "Dumbledore's trust has meant everything to me," and when Snape confronted
False Moody, he said, "Dumbledore happens to trust me... I refuse to believe that he gave you orders to search my office!"
Althought Snape isn't a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of man, I think we can see a glimpse of how much he values Dumbledore's trust when he confirms to Harry that he is indeed Dumbledore's spy -- Dumbledore's man -- among the Death Eaters, and a "curious, almost satisfied" expression crosses his face.
More coming (the last? not sure...) from Helen on Snape's learning curve as a teacher...
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