Snape and Sensibility

After recently finishing the series for the first time, I felt that the ending was just as I subconsciously wanted it to be. When looking back on the entirety of Deathly Hollows, the unnecessary deaths are what strike me as poignant. Charity Burbage is one that especially leaves me with a bad taste. Her last words, “Severus… please… please…” are haunting, and although Professor Snape is possibly redeemed (depending on which person in our class you ask) toward the ending, his ability to ignore this plea is disturbing. Anyway, most of the ending tied up nicely. I found Percy coming back to his family a bit too tidy of a tie-up, but again, it was subconsciously expected. As we discussed in class, I felt hat Rowling set the stage, and set up anticipation for the events that followed. Had the story not tied up the way it did, I would be left questioning why Rowling chose to introduce so many minute details, or “Easter eggs” when they turned out to mean nothing. Dumbledore and Snape, at the end of the series, both represented to me an overarching theme in the series, which was, as Sirius Black put it, “the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” Both characters start out seemingly, good and evil (respectively), but by Deathly Hallows Dumbledore’s past is up for debate in the Wizarding world. By the end, I felt that without Dumbledore’s past mistakes, it would have been unrealistic for him to become the character that embodies such goodness. Elphias Doge writes that Dumbledore “was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy”. Dumbledore needed to make mistakes, in order to grow as a character. Snape’s character, though sort of resolved in the end, doesn’t seem to grow as much. While his love for Lily sustained the test of time, he fails to look at the big picture and make moral decisions accordingly. We get glimpses of his childhood, but in the end, it’s only his love for Lily that drives him to make the choices he does.

Deathly Hallows is my favorite book of the series, if only for the “woods scenes” that Professor Heller mentioned in class. I thought it was really refreshing to see Hermione, Ron and Harry out of the formula they followed in the preceding books, and it made their triumph in the end even more rewarding for me as a reader.

Oh, and in the spirit of finals, I decided to make my very own Harry Potter meme!