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I had some thoughts reading the recent shipping manifestos, particularly the H/D one and this thread here, which has some great stuff in it. Anyway, it related back to some other recent discussions and got me thinking about relating to Slytherins and the fact that
The HP books aren't heavy on character-development in general--which isn't an insult. The books work with archetypes. But we obviously "know" the main characters better than other characters. They're more fully-fleshed out archetypes with the different sides those archetypes have. More importantly, we see them in lots of situations with lots of different people in lots of different moods. That's why, obviously, we can talk about them more. It's funny because I really can probably talk far more about flaws in the Gryffindor characters than the Slytherin ones, even though the Slytherins are more flawed, because we just don't know the Slytherins. There's very little to say about most of their flaws because we really don't get them. We can see them behaving badly but we don't know why they do it as individuals, really. Not everyone is a snob for the same reasons, or racist the same way. One boy defends his father from a different place than another boy does.
I try to piece together some hints about Malfoy from things like his opening scenes and the way his father speaks to him, but even with those things we don't in any way have a complete sense of this person. So the best you can do is figure out that he is hurt by Harry's rejection and things like that. The rest we have to fill in for ourselves because we don't have scenes where Malfoy explains himself or interacts with people in a very revealing way. Occasionally Malfoy will have flashes of personal revelation in dealing with Harry, but usually he's pretty well-covered. I guess that's why I find the flashes interesting. Still, it's not a lot and probably only seems like more because the rest of the Slytherins get nothing at all. It's not that there's never any reason given for their acting the way they act (although often there isn't, or the reason doesn't quite seem to cover it), it's just that it doesn't seem part of a larger personality. By personality I just mean...well, Ron's got a personality, for instance, and it's not defined by being the youngest son or jealous of Harry. It's just his Ron-ness. [insert other characters in place of Ron there, obviously] It seems particularly odd for Malfoy not to have any hints of this since he's supposed to be this recognizable face in Harry's year at school, yet he's a sort of bizarre creature instead. Even if Harry isn't his friend, you'd think there's be some sense of him.
But what of Snape? The thing is, I don't think Snape gets it much either. I mean, Snape is, I agree, one of the most interesting characters in canon, and perhaps the most complex. But he isn't a particularly developed character, where we see him change; we don't have many personal details about him that explain his actions. We know he hated Harry originally because of his history with James. We know he used to be a DE. It seems he was once close to Lucius. His parents fought.
But still, what we've got are blurry snapshots with no explanation of how he got where he is. We don't know exactly how he came to join the Death Eaters, or what he did there, or why he left. We only see him interacting with Harry, whom he doesn't like, and who doesn't like him, and who doesn't spend much time wondering why Snape is who he is. Really, I'd say we get more insight into Remus and Sirius, despite their having smaller parts. Harry knows what Sirius would do in many situations, sometimes Sirius and Remus both tell us how they feel or explain their own actions. We see them with each other, we know something about their families, and we see them with friends. I think sometimes it's easier to feel their flaws because they're set in a full personality.
And I think that's why maybe it's easier to talk passionately about their flaws. See, I don't know how people speak about the flaws of a lot of the bad characters, since they just seem to be defined by them. Snape and Draco we can a bit, but even there we don't have a wider context for it, and it's the wider context that makes it interesting. Even JKR, as we know, jokes about Snape being a "horrible person." It's kind of interesting, now I think about it, that I haven't read more of her responding to children who say Snape is a horrible teacher or whatever by agreeing BUT saying he has also saved Harry's life or whatever. Maybe I just haven't seen them.
Anyway, I think maybe that's why it's easy to get into a rut of seeming to always talk about the bad guys in a non-flawed type way, because it's the only way to give the personalities we see a wider context. I mean, I honestly don't really get why Malfoy dogs Harry's every step and is constantly harassing him. Yeah, I can point to things like Harry refusing his friendship, but come on, would that really explain what we get in a normal person? Does he really have no more to his personality? Is he always, at best, just boasting about his father, because that's hard for me to believe because it's not real. The trouble, it seems to me, is this lack of a wider character. Everything he does and says concerns Harry in that same relentlessly flat way. Occasionally you'll get something more promising--he's protective of his family, but even that we have little clue about. Why is he protective, exactly? It's just as flat. Oops-somebody said something about the Malfoys. Cue red spots on Malfoy's cheeks and begin harsh, whispered threats. I've no idea how he really feels there, as I would feel for Ron or the twins when Molly is insulted.
I'm not even talking about personal details, exactly, like knowing that Snape had a dog named Fluffy or Draco is close to his kindly grandmother. I mean more just seeing them interact in different situations, the way you get a sense of somebody IRL. I just don't feel like we have been given any clue about that for any Slytherins except maybe Tom Riddle--him I can sort of get a sense of, oddly enough. But I have a hard time believing, for instance, that Lucius spends all his dinner parties making comments about how blood counts for nothing. Surely wizarding society should have some great tales about Lucius the man and former Slytherin. Well, that's a lot of what was so great about N_A, really, was the way we got the characterizations from canon and glimpses into other sides, so we could imagine people in different areas of their lives.
The HP books aren't heavy on character-development in general--which isn't an insult. The books work with archetypes. But we obviously "know" the main characters better than other characters. They're more fully-fleshed out archetypes with the different sides those archetypes have. More importantly, we see them in lots of situations with lots of different people in lots of different moods. That's why, obviously, we can talk about them more. It's funny because I really can probably talk far more about flaws in the Gryffindor characters than the Slytherin ones, even though the Slytherins are more flawed, because we just don't know the Slytherins. There's very little to say about most of their flaws because we really don't get them. We can see them behaving badly but we don't know why they do it as individuals, really. Not everyone is a snob for the same reasons, or racist the same way. One boy defends his father from a different place than another boy does.
I try to piece together some hints about Malfoy from things like his opening scenes and the way his father speaks to him, but even with those things we don't in any way have a complete sense of this person. So the best you can do is figure out that he is hurt by Harry's rejection and things like that. The rest we have to fill in for ourselves because we don't have scenes where Malfoy explains himself or interacts with people in a very revealing way. Occasionally Malfoy will have flashes of personal revelation in dealing with Harry, but usually he's pretty well-covered. I guess that's why I find the flashes interesting. Still, it's not a lot and probably only seems like more because the rest of the Slytherins get nothing at all. It's not that there's never any reason given for their acting the way they act (although often there isn't, or the reason doesn't quite seem to cover it), it's just that it doesn't seem part of a larger personality. By personality I just mean...well, Ron's got a personality, for instance, and it's not defined by being the youngest son or jealous of Harry. It's just his Ron-ness. [insert other characters in place of Ron there, obviously] It seems particularly odd for Malfoy not to have any hints of this since he's supposed to be this recognizable face in Harry's year at school, yet he's a sort of bizarre creature instead. Even if Harry isn't his friend, you'd think there's be some sense of him.
But what of Snape? The thing is, I don't think Snape gets it much either. I mean, Snape is, I agree, one of the most interesting characters in canon, and perhaps the most complex. But he isn't a particularly developed character, where we see him change; we don't have many personal details about him that explain his actions. We know he hated Harry originally because of his history with James. We know he used to be a DE. It seems he was once close to Lucius. His parents fought.
But still, what we've got are blurry snapshots with no explanation of how he got where he is. We don't know exactly how he came to join the Death Eaters, or what he did there, or why he left. We only see him interacting with Harry, whom he doesn't like, and who doesn't like him, and who doesn't spend much time wondering why Snape is who he is. Really, I'd say we get more insight into Remus and Sirius, despite their having smaller parts. Harry knows what Sirius would do in many situations, sometimes Sirius and Remus both tell us how they feel or explain their own actions. We see them with each other, we know something about their families, and we see them with friends. I think sometimes it's easier to feel their flaws because they're set in a full personality.
And I think that's why maybe it's easier to talk passionately about their flaws. See, I don't know how people speak about the flaws of a lot of the bad characters, since they just seem to be defined by them. Snape and Draco we can a bit, but even there we don't have a wider context for it, and it's the wider context that makes it interesting. Even JKR, as we know, jokes about Snape being a "horrible person." It's kind of interesting, now I think about it, that I haven't read more of her responding to children who say Snape is a horrible teacher or whatever by agreeing BUT saying he has also saved Harry's life or whatever. Maybe I just haven't seen them.
Anyway, I think maybe that's why it's easy to get into a rut of seeming to always talk about the bad guys in a non-flawed type way, because it's the only way to give the personalities we see a wider context. I mean, I honestly don't really get why Malfoy dogs Harry's every step and is constantly harassing him. Yeah, I can point to things like Harry refusing his friendship, but come on, would that really explain what we get in a normal person? Does he really have no more to his personality? Is he always, at best, just boasting about his father, because that's hard for me to believe because it's not real. The trouble, it seems to me, is this lack of a wider character. Everything he does and says concerns Harry in that same relentlessly flat way. Occasionally you'll get something more promising--he's protective of his family, but even that we have little clue about. Why is he protective, exactly? It's just as flat. Oops-somebody said something about the Malfoys. Cue red spots on Malfoy's cheeks and begin harsh, whispered threats. I've no idea how he really feels there, as I would feel for Ron or the twins when Molly is insulted.
I'm not even talking about personal details, exactly, like knowing that Snape had a dog named Fluffy or Draco is close to his kindly grandmother. I mean more just seeing them interact in different situations, the way you get a sense of somebody IRL. I just don't feel like we have been given any clue about that for any Slytherins except maybe Tom Riddle--him I can sort of get a sense of, oddly enough. But I have a hard time believing, for instance, that Lucius spends all his dinner parties making comments about how blood counts for nothing. Surely wizarding society should have some great tales about Lucius the man and former Slytherin. Well, that's a lot of what was so great about N_A, really, was the way we got the characterizations from canon and glimpses into other sides, so we could imagine people in different areas of their lives.
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I'm not entirely sure about Remus, but with Sirius I feel rather the same as with Snape - I'm missing some crucial part of the backstory here, and so I don't know him nearly as well as I might.
We know something about both Snape's and Sirius's childhood, and their time at school, but that's all a long way from either sending someone to a transformed werewolf, or from joining the Death Eaters. Still, from the Pensieve scene I can get a sense of why Snape might join, and what's missing is more why he left them again. With Sirius, canon gives us absolutely no understanding of why he did what he did, or why he apparently never regretted it, and so I don't fully know what he is really capable of, or who he actually is.
Of course, I have my own version of Sirius, and we can speculate on any motive we like for fanfic purposes, but that's not the same as knowing the canon character.
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Yes, exactly. I was thinking more of just how Sirius and Remus, since they don't think of Harry as the enemy, are sometimes able to be questioned about their actions and give an account of themselves that attempts to be honest and objective. Like the way Remus says he didn't tell Dumbledore about Sirius being an animagus because he was afraid of Dumbledore knowing he'd betrayed his trust as a kid. Or getting a chance to see MWPP interact with each other in that moment after the O.W.L.s and before the lake. It seemed almost fitting Snape was by himself because we don't (yet?) have any idea what his interactions with friends might have been like. Malfoy seems the same to me--the one time we see him with his friends or family he doesn't seem relaxed at all, and he's fixated on the main story and Harry, making him seem even more like a plot device.
Of course that's only one thing we learn about Remus, and Sirius talking about James and his family is only one thing--it's not the same as the way we'd have gotten to know either of them if the books took place during their times at school. It's more the students where they just sometimes don't really seem like kids in the class.
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That passage is very important for my understanding of Remus, and it gives me the feeling that I know him much better than I do Sirius. With the latter, we never got anything like this "confession," so he is much more of a mystery than Remus. Still, we know more about him than Draco or Dumbledore, for example. These two almost always appear as plot devices, and their character can't always be seen very clearly because they so obviously have a definite purpose in nearly any scene they're in, whereas we can observe Sirius while he has nothing particular to contribute at all.
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I'm none too fond of Remus's flagellating because I don't see any real consequences following from his admission. Just as knowing Sirius and James did something wrong was not enough for him to step in and try to stop it, knowing he himself is doing something wrong doesn't seem enough for him to change. (You might argue that he might have changed after PoA, but I'll believe that when I see it.)
With Sirius, I somehow find his bad habits and unpleasant character traits much more bearable because he doesn't hold anything back. He simply seems in denial about having done any wrong with regard to the Shrieking Shack "Prank", for example, and I'd say he has to believe that in order to still see himself as a basically good person. Yes, he too repeats his mistakes, but he has never consciously admitted them to himself, or at least that's the impression I'm getting. I can believe that if he were ever forced to face his own faults he would then do something about them, would change, would grow up.
Remus, on the other hand, seems completely locked in repeating the patterns from his childhood.
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Yeah, I think that too. It's one of those sneaky moments where he sounds like he's being really responsible when he's cutting out anyway and it's a done deal. He actually doesn't ever have to deal with the real consequence he would have faced had anyone found out he was witholding information while they thought Sirius was the murderer. In re-reading his scenes with Harry, it's definitely something to think about; that he sounds so caring while he can't bring himself to talk.
I can believe that if he were ever forced to face his own faults he would then do something about them, would change, would grow up.
Yes, there's more of an intent on Remus' part. Sirius may drive one crazy because he's so stubborn and stuck in his views and in denial (much as a character like Draco might be, refusing to see his own faults), whereas Remus sees what he's done wrong but is very smooth about getting himself off about it. Not that I can be too judgmental about Remus that way, because I suspect it's a flaw that I share with him (going back to that post I did about characters we identify with in bad ways).
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And he doesn't have to deal with any consequences from keeping things from the Headmaster exactly because Snape does him a favour by letting slip he is a werewolf - he can just blame Snape for his leaving. Isn't it convenient?
And I can understand Remus - as you say, it's not that rare a flaw -, but I still find it frustrating that he can't bring himself to shake the habit even when so much is at stake, and in addition it makes me really, truly hate fanon!perfect!Remus who has nothing whatsoever in common with the Remus I see in the books.
(BTW, I loved those "character confessions." Personally, I can completely identify with Harry's procrastination in GoF - but the fact that I recognise myself in him doesn't make me cut him more slack, it only frustrates me more. Wonder what that says about me?)
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Exactly--and think how many people remember the whole book as Remus the martyr and best person in the world cruelly getting kicked out by Snape just due to bigotry? (And the movie seems to play this up--whoa, there is just no place in the world for people like me!)
And I can understand Remus - as you say, it's not that rare a flaw -, but I still find it frustrating that he can't bring himself to shake the habit even when so much is at stake, and in addition it makes me really, truly hate fanon!perfect!Remus who has nothing whatsoever in common with the Remus I see in the books.
Yes, and coming from somebody who recognizes the tendency in herself, I know this is exactly the kind of situation where I really kick myself to do the right thing even if it means I'll be on the spot because it's the right thing. Basically what he did in PoA was just what he did in the Pensieve.
(BTW, I loved those "character confessions." Personally, I can completely identify with Harry's procrastination in GoF - but the fact that I recognise myself in him doesn't make me cut him more slack, it only frustrates me more. Wonder what that says about me?)
Heh. Probably that you're more grown-up that Harry is yet.:-) Still, I think that's why I really can't identify with somebody like Hermione, the way she jumps on things right away and gets them done early...I'd want to do that but probably wouldn't. Well...that is, I wouldn't unless I was able to trick myself into feeling like I was doing it at the last minute!
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And making the same mistakes at 37 as you he at 15 is not exactly a sign of maturity. Where someone like that got the reputation of being a nearly-perfect innocent victim of prejudice just baffles me. Then again, many fanon characterisations baffle me - I just don't see where they are coming from.
I think that's why I really can't identify with somebody like Hermione, the way she jumps on things right away and gets them done early...
Hermione is completely unlike me in that respect, too. I identified with her rather a lot in her pre-Trio days, but nowadays there is not much left in her that speaks to me.
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Snape, as you and ishtar discussed, is a pretty static character - he's the same man he was in PS, for example. He always had the motivations just now coming to light, it's just that Harry didn't see them.
And this could apply to a lot of characters, especially adults.
Dumbledore was always flawed (ask people who've been saying that since the first book! ;) Molly was always intolerant, Lupin was always weak-willed.
Sirius is about the only adult character who's character has shifted at all.