Of course, each of the plants has a number of meanings associated with it, so to end up with that sentence you have to be awfully picky about what they mean.

 

No i don't think so. I mean he still actively doing bad and mean stuff to anyone and especialy harry and sirius

 

In the books, I would say a most definite no. Now if you decided ask the same question for Movie version of Snape, played by the great Alan Rickman, then I'd have to give you a different answer. Whereas in the books Snape was always an asshole man-child who never grew up and is always raging, Movie Snape felt more like a unfeeling bitter man, with an emphasis on unfeeling. The movie made me feel a bit bad for the guy, the books did not.

If you actually watch the films, the only time's Snape truly outwardly expresses emotion is in his memories of Lily's death, which is why it works better, whereas in the books his 'redemption' is undeserving.

It also helps that Movie Snape had the advantage of JK Rowling having told Rickman about the whole Lily thing years beforehand.

 

No. The guy is a cunt.

 

That is a really good point. Book Snape had a lot of really small, petty moments that got left out of the movies. Plus the general attitude both conveyed about it all. Book Snape always seemed like the worst sort of petty tyrant, who delighted in using his power to torment anyone who annoyed him.

Movie Snape ... well like you said, he came across as bitter and burned out. Where Book Snape's attitude towards Harry came across as vindictive glee at a chance to vicariously punish James through Harry, Movie Snape usually seemed more like he was so bitter and burned out that he couldn't bring himself to care about treating anyone with basic civility.

 

Snape never loved Lily.

When she was alive he obsessed over her, but that didn't stop him from calling her a racial slur and joining a hate group who specifically targeted people like her and her parents.

If only there were a quick and easy visual analogy that could really drive this home...

Spoiler

He coveted her, he was infatuated with her, and he was jealous over the fact she was with someone else, but he did not love her.

Then he turned a prophecy over to Voldemort that would essentially make the dark lord start killing babies until he got 'the right one,' possibly allowing him to become unbeatable, and Snape only regretted that action after he found out it might get the woman after whom he lusted killed.

At that point, he tried to bargain with said dark lord so that he would kill James and Harry, but let Lily survive... Yeah, what a prince. This is ultimately a selfish act, because you can't tell me it didn't cross Snape's mind that it sure would be a lot easier getting Lily for himself once James and Harry were out of the way and he could swoop in to 'comfort' the grieving, childless, widow.

Then she is murdered and Snape spends the rest of his life obsessing over her memory and treating her son like shit: Isn't it funny how the fact that Lily would have no doubt wished her son to be happy and treated well never mattered one bit to Snape? The only things that mattered to him were that Harry was proof James fucked Lily, and that Snape couldn't have her because she was dead... which he probably thought was also Harry's fault, despite Snape being the one who pointed Voldemort at them.

Yeah, he claims later that he was determined to preserve Harry's life 'for her' but he sure didn't care how good or bad that life was, particularly when he was one of the chief people making it suck.

And a key phrase from the paragraph before last is "obsessing over her memory." Snape didn't act like he loved Lily when she was alive, in fact treating her pretty shabbily, and after she's dead all he does is dwell on a memory of a woman that wanted nothing to do with him. That's not love any more than some otaku who tries to marry a video game character that can't ever actually interact with him.

The Lily that would love and wed "Snape the racist dirt-bag who tried to make the racist dark lord invincible" never existed. In that respect, his supposed 'love' for Lily is no more real than any crush any schoolboy ever had for the smart, popular, pretty, girl in class that didn't know he existed... so he had to make up what she was like in his mind. It was less real, actually, since Lily did know him but actively wanted nothing to do with him after he showed his true colors, rather than simply not knowing he existed.

-
Snape is the reason Voldemort killed the Potters and targeted the Longbottoms, resulting in the latter being attacked after the Killing Curse backfired on him and destroyed his body. Snape then spent more than a decade being a completely shit teacher, intimidating children and making their schooling a nightmare, with that going double for Neville and triple for Harry. He's a miserable, pathetic, petty, little, man who tries to assuage his frustration over his failures and the lack of control he has over his own life by being a bully and a tyrant toward children.

The excuse for his reprehensible behavior is always "he's a spy, has to look like legit death eater for Voldemort" and I've gone over why that doesn't wash many, many times. But look at it this way: His only REAL spying (for what it's worth) was done during OoTP and HBP... 2 years of spying that had dubious impact on the war, versus 16 of being a horrible cunt toward the students, and around 3 years of being a death eater, with all that implies.

So, you tell me: Does ANY of the good (not just his laughable 'love' for Lily, but every good thing) Snape did OUTWEIGH the bad?

The function Snape served in beating Voldemort could have been accomplished by Dumbledore simply telling Harry what was going on or, barring that, giving Harry those memories in a similar fashion to how he gave him the Resurrection Stone (Do not open until Doomsday) and putting the sword someplace safe, telling Harry where he could retrieve it "in case something happens to me."

The amount of legit spying Snape does in the books is totally negligible, and only results in him getting stuck in that stupid Vow. The less than timely Order response at the end of OoTP seems like it could be placed firmly at Snape's feet, too.

So basically his good deed(s) amounts to sticking with his promise to himself to keep Harry alive (and miserable), so maybe, maybe, Lily won't hate his guts in the afterlife...

Big deal. :x

TL/DR
No.
Snape's 'love' for Lily does not make up for all his bad deeds, especially since Snape did not love Lily: He was infatuated with her while she was alive and 'in love'/obsessed with his own imaginary version of her after she was killed.

 

I never thought revenge even factored into all this. Nothing in canon indicated that Snape was protecting Harry for anything other than Lily's memory and because it was the right thing to do. In fact, in his interaction with Dumbledore, he seemed more suicidal than anything. Later, he confessed to not wanting to do his job anymore, of being tired. Revenge? Far from it, his need to do right by her seemed to be one of the only things that kept him going

As for the original question, no. I don't think his love for Lily excuses anything, but for me, the sacrifices he made, the people he saved and the role he played in defeating Voldemort more than make up for his failings.

TL,DR- It's not love that redeems him, it's the things he did for love.

 

Snape was a genuinely horrible person. Also, I don't really care if Snape actually loved Lily or not. As far as I'm concerned, it is irrelevant. Either way, it doesn't excuse any of his bad deeds.

A better question would be whether his supposed good deeds made up for his bad deeds, but I don't think they do in this case. That however, is a separate discussion altogether.

That said, I disagree with most of the reasons provided for Snape not loving Lily in this thread.

The only possible explanation I've found in this thread for Snape's obsession over Lily is his asking Voldemort to spare Lily alone. That is something I can accept that someone loving another would likely never do.

Almost every other explanation feels like a simplistic generalization.

Snape's association with Death Eaters: Snape himself was a half-blood. For whatever reason (power, delusion,...) he joined the DEs. If it was simply about blood purity or lack thereof (and consequently Lily), he'd never have joined.

Leaking of the prophecy: Snape didn't know who the prophecy belonged to. Yes, it was a horrible thing to do, but he had probably done worse things, and it had nothing to do with his love or not-love for Lily. He did it because he was a horrible person and a Death Eater.

Hating Harry: There are better reasons for Snape to hate Harry than his supposed not-love for Lily. For one, there's James, but more importantly, Snape might be placing the blame for Lily's death on Harry.
His logic could be that if Harry was never born, Lily would never have been in place where Voldemort would have to kill her. It's twisted logic, but people do that all the time. They shirk their own guilt and put the blame on others.
I think this reasoning comes from an assumption that Snape would have hated Harry even if Lily didn't die that night. We simply don't know that.

Snape was a nasty piece of shit: Yes he was. But again, it has nothing to do with whether he loved Lily.


TL;DR
Nothing Snape did makes up for his bad deeds.
I don't know if Snape loved Lily and I don't care. If you think he didn't love her, find a better explanation than simple generalisations.

 

No. Not in the slightest. Not even close. He was a douchelord through and through.

 

No more than that Alaskan serial killer who hunted down 30 women, but immediately pleaded guilty so his wife and children would be totally left out of the media scandal.

 

Yeah and there is a scene that is in book but skiped in movie that involved hermione oversized tooth caused by draco and when snape saw it he just said 'i see nothing different'.

 

I'd say that ultimately no it doesn't make up for his actions. However, I would say that it does redeem him to some extent. In my opinion, rather than outright redeeming him (because Snape does a lot of things that I'd say are pretty horrific) it demonstrates that Snape wasn't a completely irredeemable piece of garbage. He was deeply unhealthy and needed help, and probably had the potential to be a really great person if he could have worked past his giant boatload of issues.

There are a lot of people like this in the real world I'd say; people who do horrible things but who when you look into their pasts have had circumstances or issues that make you at least on some level understand how they came to be that way. In Snape's case I feel a lot of it stems from the fact he developed an obsession with Lily that never got fulfilled and had no closure. This is very similar in my mind to the origins of Humbert Humbert from Nabokov's Lolita who also has unclosured romance that he believes leads to his own obsession with young girls. Humbert is certainly not a respectable or redeemable person, in that his actions are truly horrifying and regardless of the objectively good things he might do at times, it doesn't make up for his sickening actions.

During his formative years Snape was also was surrounded by negative influences that pushed him into a horrific mindset and to do horrific things which would later be compounded by fear from the Voldemort. Later on he does do good things, he tells Dumbledore that Voldemort knows of the prophecy now, he gets Harry the Sword of Gryffindor, he spies on Voldemort, etc. but to me these things don't fully make up for the bad he did, they just make him more interesting and more tragic. It makes it sad how far he fell because you can see the good he had the potential to do.

 

Imho Snape loved the idea of being in love with Lily. He did not truly love her in the romantic sense. Instead he put her on a pedestal and did not view her as a person with desires or flaws.

However, because of this, he uses this love as an excuse to justify all his wrong doings. Personally, I would have much more sympathy for him if Rowling had depicted Snape understanding how morally wrong his actions were, but to the end, this love for Lily was merely used to show how he used it as an impetus and not to exonerate him of his crimes.

All in all, Snape was a person with both good and bad qualities. But he still did many bad things. none of which should ever be explained away but something such as love.

 

I kind of disagree with the statements that Snape did not love Lily. For Snape, Lily wasn't a muggleborn, she was probably his closest and best friend up until 5th year of hogwarts, and from what I can tell in the books, the friendship part at least is mutual. They probably knew each other better than anyone else for that 5-6ish year long period of time. He was very close to her for far longer than James was(they started dating 7th year, so roughly 3-4 years?)

None of this is to say that Snape's love make up for anything, it doesn't (and if anything, makes all the shit he does to Harry even worse). But to say that he only desired her is just not fair.

 

Snape's love for Lily should have no bearing at all on his bad deeds. If that were the case, you could make an argument for most rape cases.

On the other hand, I do believe that the good deeds (Such as spying for the Order) that he did in his life (However little they may be) might make up for the bad ones made in his younger years. Unfortunately, we don't know the full extent to what he did - He could have been the wizards version Jack the Ripper or just Voldemort's dry cleaner for all we know.

 

No. In canon, we know too little of Snape's actions and his reasons for said actions to redeem him. It's hard to forgive him even in fanfiction, because writers often go to unreasonable extremes to absolve him of blame, which is unrealistic.

Until JKR writes a full recounting of the events leading up to and happening during the first war with Voldemort, Snape remains a conflicted bad guy who was forced to do some amount of good by forces he couldn't control.

 

Hmm. Redeem him from what? I don't think he cares that he was cruel. It was more what his affection for Lily lead him to do. I think JKR and the narrative are pretty clear that he's anti-Voldemort, anti-all that entails, saves lives and opposes muggleborn discrimination. If you want to go by word of god alone, JKR using him to support her Pro-Palestine/communication with Israel stance wouldn't have any weight if he still has Zionist/DE sympathies and was an unrepentent murderer.

The implication obviously being that he did have the moral and physical courage and did redeem himself.

So again, he changed, redeemed himself, etc. Death of the Author is absolutely a valid way of interpretation, but also...JKR isn't stupid and you can suss out her meaning. She's clear that characters like the Dursleys and Malfoys are unrepentent bigots on Pottermore. She's also clear that Snape is still a jerk. She never suggests he's an unrepentent bigot or DE, though. Nothing in canon contradicts, and things support that, he's remorseful for his past actions and is actively making it up, his biggest emotional investment being in Lily. Also, as to how healthy his love for Lily was. I think the word 'love' here is just being used to mean had affection/cared for. She says Petunia had a dim 'love' for Lily, even though she mistreated her and Harry since she was 9. He and Lily were best friends for a few years. She loved him back. That relationship wasn't made up.

It also depends on how you're evaluating it. If it's like, if he's a DE and kills 12 people he has to save 12 people while on the Order? He became a DE and did that job, then became an Order member and did that job.

 

Not even getting into the rampant retardation the rest of your post contains, the fact he continues to bully Harry, Neville, and in fact most of his students rather does contradict him being remorseful about his past misdeeds.

I'd go so far as to say the only thing he did regret was, y'know, causing Lily's death by accident after he'd gotten her husband and child killed so he could swoop in and comfort her.

 

The entire point is that he views being a being a jerk and being a murderer as two different things. Killing someone and calling someone an idiot, are in fact, different things. He's remorseful and making up for one, not the other. There isn't anything to suggest he wanted to comfort her, as opposed to just wanting her alive? Even if that was with James and Harry. Chill with the ableist slurs.