His crimes: ex-death eater, gave the prophesy to Voldemort, was awful to his students.

His redeeming factors: Basically risked his life for years being a double agent, committed murder for the greater good, died for the greater good. It was implied that he did try to protect the students in 7th year when the Carrows were there. After all, he sent Ginny and the others to Hagrid for detention when things could have been much worse if they ended up with the Carrows.

 

His most heinous crime was being a dick. No forgiveness for that, I'm afraid.

Also, being a 50-something year old incel when you can "bottle fame and brew glory", also unforgivable.

 

I think the best thing about Snape's character is how complicated he is. In someways he was truly a hero of the war. And in other ways he was a despicable person. He was deeply flawed, but despite those flaws tried (at least at times) to do the right thing.

I don't think the question of him redeeming himself is reasonable, its not an equation you have to balance (unless you're St Peter I suppose). Instead, I think its better to not simply dismiss him out of hand as a "bad guy" or to pretend like he's really one of the good guys. He's genuinely one of the most complex characters in the book, and its important to acknowledge that.

 

You think he'd be a better person if he'd used potions to make women sleep with him? Really...?

 

No, I think he'd be a better person if he used Potions to be glorious.

I'd throw Severus the Stud some WAP if he had Potion-smooth skin and the wizardly secret to safe penile enhancement, and so would the a goodly number of Witches.

 

I don't think he really "redeemed" himself so much as he died doing good things for the wrong reasons.

Snape did well enough as a death eater that he asked Voldemort for a favor and Voldemort even deigned to grant it, though he did go back on his word. I doubt Voldemort would look so favorably on a death eater unwilling to get his hands dirty. He had no qualms about getting a family killed until he found out who the family was.

Snape changed his ways when Lily was threatened and killed because of his obsession with her. Snape might have thought he loved her but it was one-sided, stalkery kind of love that certainly wasn't reciprocated, certainly not a good motivation. Towards the end, it does seem like Snape started to become a genuinely good person with hints of protecting the students. But I don't think this is enough to be considered a redemption. I don't think there's really enough you can do to redeem yourself from what Snape did. Snape is a complex character, and to say that he was evil or good is overly reductionist. But he wasn't a good person either and I don't think you can really redeem doing what Snape did.

 

The guy was 38 when he died and 30 at the start of the series. Rickman was great at Snape, but he is way older and way more attractive than Snape is in the books.

I guess it comes down to what you mean by did he redeem himself. He never stops being a complete dick to everyone, but his actions are directly responsible for Voldemort's downfall two different times. You can say he was heroic for joining the Order and working towards Voldemort's downfall. By Snape's own actions he had no choice to not be involved in the war. He was either going to work for Dumbledore or Voldemort. Good on him for not joining the terrorists, and not running away once Dumbledore died.

I have always interrupted all of his actions working for the Order as him only working against Voldemort because he killed Lily.

 

People forget man. Snape was not.... attractive. Reality is, most characters weren't that attractive, but you're not going to find a cast fully of average looking people, so opinion gets shifted. In fact, of all the characters in the books, the few characters that Rowling ever outlined explicitly as good-looking were (off the top of my head) Cedric, Fleur, the Patil Twins, Cho Chang, Ginny, Blaise(?), and OG Sirius. I don't even think James was considered drop your pants attractive, just "well-cared for".

But yeah, book Snape wishes he was smooth af movie Snape

 

Well, you got to remember most of the cast are just average British people. There are a lot of great things to say about British people, but their beauty is not one of them.

 

I can think of cases of love that are completely one sided, like with parents and small children. The fact that Lily didn't love him does not mean he did not love her, which is a basically good enough motivation for trying to protect Harry to be taken as presented. He is or was kind of a dumbass in the sense that he joined a terror cell that regularly murders people similar to Lily, and somehow didn't expect she would be killed. I don't really think of redemption as doing enough good deeds to make up for all of your bad deeds so much as good motivations taking the place of bad ones, and I can't entirely say that's what happened; he still seems to hate Harry because of his father and there was no indication he was ever sorry for anything else he did. He's not really supposed to be a role model.

 

I would otherwise be inclined to agree, but for that one thing he said to Dumbledore, about how the only people he's seen die lately are the ones he couldn't save. That was such an odd bit, considering he otherwise seems so goal-oriented and disdainful of other people's feelings, even if he still indulged his own plenty. Maybe he could only channel empathy through his pre-existing self-loathing, but it seems like he was capable of that, at least. So Mordecai is right, complex indeed.

 

Savage.

 

Its ok Blor, you're beautiful on the inside.

 

I think Mordecai did a good job nailing it.

The only thing I might add, is I think you need to divy up what you are talking about here. By that I mean, people are lumping his *war* actions in with his *character* they are two different things.

Also what do you mean by redeem

In terms of his war actions... well actually I suspect giving the prophecy from a moral stand point isn't his worst sin. I mean sure that sucks in a "who wins the war" sense. But if snape was a full on DE he was probably torturing and murdering innocent people, which I'd put as morally worse then passing on the prophecy.

But that aside. Mmm. I think he did 'redeem' himself for the war crimes. In the sense he showed he truly regretted them and did everything he could to fix his mistakes. I think it is important to note 'redeem' to me doesnt mean he should be forgiven. Like, if Snape as a DE murdered your innocent civilian squib uncle (hypothetically) I dont think there's anything he can do that 'forgives' that or 'makes up for it. When I say redeem, I mean he recognized his actions were wrong and did what he could to fix them. I think that is an important distinction, because too many people are treating this like a balancing act i.e "does his sins outweigh his virtues on the scale and thus is his soul saved?" Some actions arguably can't be 'made up' for. All you can do is your best going forwards.


In terms of Snape as a teacher.... I don't think he needs to be redeemed. I mean was he a shitty person to Harry and the Gryffindors? And a horrible teacher? Yes. There's plenty of those in the real world too. They suck.

But on the scale of crimes here, thats pretty low down there. I think Snape should have been fired as a teacher (if there were no war considerations) sure. But does he need to be 'redeemed' for those actions? No. Not really.

 

Completely agree with this point:

I think he ticks a lot of boxes for both your stereotypical incel and for a member of the wizarding SS or at the very least Voldemort Jugend, and in connection with that I find it very difficult to see him redeemable in the way he acted towards other people, Lily in particular. I also don't think it's made clear if he ever changed his bigoted views or if he jumped ship purely to avenge Lily and to do whatever he thought she would want from him. If he genuinely came to his senses I think I would find him much more redeemable, but the way he acts about werewolves in PoA and the way he acts towards muggleborn Hermione makes me wonder if he ever did. I could be completely wrong about that, though.

At times it feels like he's portrayed the way he is to warn young people about the dangers of abusive relationships and how you should take people at their word when they show you what they really think of you, like the mudblood thing in his worst memory. But then I feel there are plenty of people who see that scene very differently to me, or who maybe see something beyond a nazi parallell in that scene and in the wizarding wars in general.

He did change his allegiance and saved the lives and health of people and for that he is redeemable. Since we don't know much about his particular warcrimes I'd say he probably did more good than bad in the war against Voldemort and likely more than redeemed himself in that particular area.

I think that most of the books contain parts where there was an effort to show he did good as well as bad as well as to portray him as a clever schemer, but PoA is a bit different. Towards the end of the book he's described as looking deranged or insane when he says he'll try to get both Sirius and Lupin kissed by the dementors, and then there's the hissy fit he throws in the hospital wing in front of Fudge when Sirius escapes and then the outing of Lupin after he doesn't get the Order of Merlin. That book has informed my view of him more than any other part of Snape's story, and he remains the character I love to hate the most.

 

Let's not ignore that Severus Snape is solely the reason the Dark Lord knew there was a prophecy about his downfall, and thus necessary to eliminate the competition. It's not like that tidbit of information ol' Snapey boy gave the Dark Lord led directly to the deaths of two people, the orphaning of their child, and the torturing into insanity and effective orphaning of another child.

Severus Snape is solely and directly responsible for Voldemort's killing of James and Lily Potter, who he had attempted previously to recruit and showed no inclination to kill (thus far.)

Snape's scum, and if he were on fire, I wouldn't even piss on him to put it out.

 

Meh. I think Snape gets treated harshly (and fairly so), but it's for much the same reason that there are so many manipulative dumbledore fics.

If you take Snape at face value, you're likely going to take dumbledore at face value. One is scum and the other a kindly grandfather mentor....but then the actual events of the books change those perceptions with their actions.

 

I think people are so confused by Snape because most struggle to grasp that shitty people can do good things, just as good people often do shitty things. That confusion is based in an absolutist ethos that is stupidly common these days, and is ultimately the root of very real social problems, like the so-called "cancel culture."

While I think @soczab makes some good points, I can't fully agree. From a purely subjective victim's POV, yes, Snape may have done things that can never be balanced. But that is ultimately an irrational position. From a more objective standpoint, how it balances out must be taken into consideration.

Let's say Snape tortured/killed an even dozen people as a DE (no idea if this is a reasonable figure or not, but it works for this hypothetical). Did his actions as a spy for the Order prevent the torture/murder of more than a dozen others? If so, then yes, in the realm of war crimes, he has redeemed himself by doing more good than harm, which is about the best anyone can do in an actual war (since the very nature of war often requires even the "good guys" - if there are any - to do terrible things for the sake of victory).

That doesn't change the fact that he was an awful person in the slightest. It's okay to utterly loathe him as a despicable man, but admire his deeds as a war-hero. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

Well this may just be a place where philisophically we disagree. But i'll quote Full Metal Alchemist (if youve ever seen it) "For what could equal the value of a human soul?”

I agree he can both be a war hero and never forgiven for what he did.

But I think you enter very dangerous territory morally speaking when you start weighing and counter weighing human life. To use your analogy, if I kill a dozen people and then save a hundred people... that in NO way makes up for killing the dozen.

At best you could separate them. "He did these evil things." "He did these good things." One doesn't wash out the other.

And it works in reverse too. If I risk my life to save a dozen lives and then murder someone... my selfless acts arent erased by my horrible one. They are separate

Most justice systems do accept that premise too. Like IRL if you murder someone and then a year later are arrested after you risked your life to save a busload of kids... you don't get your earlier murder just 'forgiven'.

TLDR: You can be BOTH a hero *AND* a villain.

It is dismissive and wrong to forgive crimes like murder via counting the 'number' of good you did. The loss of life can't be quantified. You can't quantify the people the murdered person might have impacted (or the new life they might have brought into the world). Its un-quantifiable and thus no action you take can fix the wrong you did.


BUT. The fact that you did something vile doesn't preclude you from doing something heroic. To often we categorize people based on 1 or 2 actions. Snape *did* something evil. And he did something heroic. He is both hero and villain. The heroism doesnt erase or dismiss the bad he did. And the bad he did doesn't erase his heroic sacrifices. Hence why he is an interesting character.

 

I can partially agree with that. I tend to prefer the macro-view of things that does attempt to quantify things like that. I acknowledge that the individualistic view is perhaps more valid than I implied in my last post, but my knee-jerk reaction is to see it as much less important overall.

Most of my antipathy for that view comes from my experiences in prison. I met tons of guys in there that frankly didn't deserve to be there for as long as they were. A guy named Josh in particular stands out to me. He was in for Vehicular Manslaughter (he had been driving drunk and hit a man in a crosswalk). It radically changed his outlook on life. By the time I met him, Josh was one of the most sincerely good people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, and was desperate to contribute something good to the world.

He could have done it, too. He was very driven and had earned a Bachelor's degree in the mental health field (don't remember the specifics) by correspondence course, and was also taking some sort of by-mail seminary classes as well because he ultimately felt called to help people spiritually as well. But every year, the family of his victim showed up at his parole hearings and screeched about their loss and how nothing could ever make up for what had been taken from them. And every year, the parole board cited the grief he'd caused as reason to keep him locked away where he couldn't do much of anything to even try to make things right. I get that the victim's family has a right to grief, but after a few years of this (bearing in mind that he'd already spent more than ten years locked up by the time I met him) it just struck me as infuriatingly selfish.

This was a man who had so much to offer the world, who was deeply sincere in his desire to make up for his mistakes. But he was kept in a cage by the spite of people who cared more for their petty justice-system-enforced revenge than they did for the people he would have helped on the outside. The saddest part to me was that Josh never held it against them. He never complained or railed against it. He just calmly accepted every terrible thing they said and every demand they made that he suffer more.

After watching that happen, I have a very hard time not dismissing out-of-hand the view that these things can't be truly balanced. It reminds me too much of that family, and makes me wonder how much more suffering there is in the world because they insist that Josh could never really make amends, and thus should never be given the chance.