The book has gaping flaws, but IMO the brilliant stuff surpasses them all. I haven't finished it, (I actually found myself reading from pg 600 on first that was just how I got there, b/c I had to go to work on Sat and couldn't start it properly until last night. So I've read all the major stuff, but now am going back to read all the rest.
I actually wasn't going to get on here until Teus (when I think I would have finished) but I'm just *****CRYING too #*$%& HARD***** and wanted to see if any of you had picked up on this yet.
Don't rush to judgement on Rowling....she takes several times reading for some things to sink in. I'm shocked nobody has picked up on Snape's Patronus. This has got to be one of the most BEAUTIFUL things in modern literature, and I predict it will soon become classic. I can guaruntee you that even the "Snape loves Lily" people NOBODY saw this coming.
In Book 6, Hagrid was supposed to meet Harry at the Hogwarts entrance after Tonks had seen him off the train. But Snape shows up instead. He says to her "I was interested in seeing your new Patronus.....I liked the old one better." Tonks is shocked and looks either stricken or angry at this comment (can't remember which.) At the end of the book, we find out (indirectly, of course, Rowling hints and we pick up on it) that people's Patronuses change when they fall in love. They take the form of the Patronus of the person they were in love with. So whatever hers was before, her Patronus changed into a wolf...which, of course, must be Lupin's too. Snape's dislike for Lupin is eternal, so when he tells her that he liked her old Patronus better, she finds out, possibly for the first time, the extent of his dislike for Lupin. Of course, she has no idea why. She only is hurt by the fact that he knows who she has fallen in love with and that he hates the man she loves. The first time we read HBP, we are outside parties to this mysterious conversation, but by the end of the book, we now know what it means, and see it in a different light. And we take her side, hopefully. It just makes Snape all that more of a bastard.
In DH, she unexpectedly builds on this Patronus theme by hinting that two people deeply in love share the same Patronus, but in a singular way. It's the same animal, but the man has the male form of the animal, and the woman, the female. So James's Patronus is a stag, and Lily's, a doe. In the film of POA (and the book too?) Harry sees the stag walk up and thinks his father cast it, but after the time travel etc he knows that he cast it. Ironically, he and his father must share the same Patronus. So in a sense his father WAS there.
The scene of Harry's "past" stag Patronus in POA fighting off the demetors forshadows Chapter 19, "The Silver Doe", which itself foreshadows Chapter 34, "The Forest Again", which Jo explicitly links together. More in a second. (Oh GOD....I can't even type the chapter titles without crying...seriously....have to go for a Kleenex..back in a sec)
ANYWAY, *SNIFF*... I won't copy out chapter passages b/c 1) you can all go back and read them and 2) I'd cry too hard. The forest is pitch black, it is winter and has just started snowing (*HINT Bambi HINT*) and Harry sees a silvery doe coming up to him. He at first has no idea what it is, he only becomes aware of a feeling like he knows her and was expecting her to come and her "familarity". Rowling goes on a bit about how beautiful she is, esp her face, which she describes in detail. Note that unlike all other Patronuses she calls her a "she" and not an "it." Also, that this is the only time we see a Patronus doing something other than fighting. She is simply a messenger, and just walks along, leading him to the Gryffindor sword in the lake that Ron uses to destroy a Horcrux. He follows the doe through the woods. As he walks there is a question in his mind that grows stronger and stronger, but Rowling never tells us what it is. Finally he begins to run to her, and is about to ask the question, but just as he opens his mouth, she vanishes. And Harry is suddenly afraid: "Now fear came: her prescense had meant safety."
After finishing the book, we know that Snape and Lily share the same Patronus, b/c Snape loved her from the time they were 10 yrs old and possibly younger. He "had" her Patronus possibly before she had even learned how to cast one. Of course, it wasn't versa vice. Curious, she took James's deer Patronus but Snape didn't share a stag Patronus with James ("rivalry") but took hers. Of course the only reason this is, is b/c he knew her first, from home. Lily and James met later, on the Hogwarts Express. Or is Rowling implying the depth of his love for her by having his Patronus stay the same as hers?
Anyway, after finishing the book, we know that Snape cast the doe Patronus that led Harry to the Gryffindor sword. So for one brief moment Snape becomes an honorary Gryffindor. But go back and re-read that chapter, and instead of the silver doe, picture the ghost of Lily leading Harry through the woods. This is why Harry "knows" her, and I think that by the end, he has figured out what she is. At the end of the chapter, Harry thinks she might be a Patronus and is trying to figure out who cast it. The question burning on his lips (and Snape, through Occlumency, senses that he is about to ask) is, "Are you my mother?" (You can bet that Snape was monitoring Harry's mind every second during this.) Snape "turns off" the doe at that instant not only b/c she has served her purpose, , but b/c he does not want to "share" her with anyone else, esp Harry. I get the feeling that Snape wouldn't resort to Patronuses to fight unless he had to--the doe/Lily is something special and private. Geez, Jo--how romantic. Snape possibly secretly spending time at nights in the forest communing with Lily in the only way he knows how. Well, she has him carrying around a picture of her that he was crying over in Grimmauld Place, why not? (I'll never see Grimmauld place the same way again.)
Go back and re-read the chapter again, and picture the silent figure of Snape, walking ahead of (or possibly beside?) the doe/Lily, leading Harry through the trees, in the pitch darkness. (I prefer to think of Snape standing/walking far away, like 30 steps or more.) And of how Harry cannot see him through the doe, how he is always just a few steps away, on the other side. Think of what Lily means to Snape, and what he has done to save Harry--the good stuff, I mean, not the bad. Not just in this book, but the entire series. And Rowling's quote of how Harry was afraid when she vanished, and how her "prescense had meant safety. " What inspires a lack of fear for Harry? What is Harry's Patronus inspired by? His parents.
Picture Snape and "Lily" (visually linked by the spell coming from the wand) walking ahead of Harry, and how he does not show fear. They share the same Patronus, so they are one here. And ""Lily"s outer beauty at that moment matches Snape's inner beauty, as he does what is perhaps the most noble thing of his life. It's his best moment. This is why Rowling goes to great lengths describing how beautiful the doe's face is. For a few brief seconds, it's as if Snape were the "father" instead of James, the parent, givng him protection and safety. What could have been.... had not people made the wrong choices. This allusion of love/i.e. "walking through the woods" is a Tolkien reference, Tolkien's closest thing to hinting at a romantic relationship.....several characters in The Silmarillion but esp Beren and Luthien, (THE great love story of Middle Earth)"and together they walked through the woods once more, and no joy among all the chidren of Iluvatar was so great, though it was brief." (Ron's daughter Rose is also a Tolkien tip of the hat--Frodos' sidekick Sam has both a wife and daughter named Rose.) After you've re-read the chapter and tried not to take this in without wrinkling the pages, consider the irony of Chapter 33, "The Prince's Tale." Harry has "the Prince's" potions textbook but of course that turns out to be the mother of all red herrings. But by the time of Chapter 33, he is in some way "noble." (well, up to an extent, but you you what I mean. He's still a bastard to everyone else, but ultimately in the grand schem of things...I know, I know, bad deeds for good reasons, hey, I said I'm intruiged by the character, but he's not my favorite! But as big as bastard as he is, I now feel a bit sorry for him and was glad he was redeemed.) And of course, 33, , the chapter Harry finally finds out the truth about Snape, the age of Christ's death.
Rowling takes this even further by verbally linking Chapters 19 and 33, when Harry literally has his "Dark Night of the Soul" experience. Virgil's "I walked through a dark wood" that Dante references in The Inferno, Virgil being Dante's guide. Whatever we see the Old Forest as, I never expected it to become a Dante/Virgil allusion by the end of the series! Harry uses the Resurrection Stone to summon the souls of his old mentors and parents (if you can't see the veritable Joseph Campbell primer here....) and they walk beside him as he takes us on a tour of old sights past, from the rest of the series, as he prepares for death. Of course this is one big Star Wars allusion too, someone (I think it was Varitek?) mentioned cinematic refs, (Luke leaving Dagobah after Obi-wan tells him he must go to fight Vader, I imagine George Lucas if he is reading this must be crying his eyes out) but he didn't spell them out.
Of course we can pick upon the obvious ones but I wonder if he picked up on the Bambi one. Bambi's mother "sacrificed" herself for her son, she could have ran beside Bambi but told him to go on ahead and she took the bullet for him. Bambi's father is (wait for it) "the great Prince of the Forest" and in the film he first appears on a hilltop watching his doe and fawn protectively. Rowling has the Silver Doe chapter take place in winter not only to allude to Bambi but so that we think of the father as well. Taken literally, that's James. Taken in terms of the symbolism of the shared doe Patronus, in this particular chapter, it's Snape.
In Chapter 34, Harry walks forward to meet his death, with his four dead past protectors walking beside him. James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily. The Four Marauders, as they should have been. Peter forfieied his membership, so Lily in a sense took his place. (If you can't read this without ...OH God...must pause again for a second here!) . The first time you read this, the Maruaders thing you pick up instantly. But I had to read this three times to get the further POSSIBLE and I mean POSSIBLE allusion. Rowling explicitly links "The Silver Doe" with "The Forest Again" by the title of course. Just in case we have do not read this scene with the Four Marauders walking Harry through his possible last ordeal, and instantly travel back to Harry's walk through the forest with the ghostly doe (so not only do we see the Four Marauders, but we also see their individual Patronuses/animagi,--I'm guessing that these are the only two extended scenes or the only ones in the whole book where Harry is in the forest) just in case we haven't already mentally linked the two chapters, she tells us to go back and re-read Chapter 19 by calling Chapter 34 "the Forest Again." And what is Chapter 19 all about? Harry's encounter with the joined "Lily" and Snape.
There is a possible reason why Rowling lists Lily last among the Four Murauders on pg. 699. She's the greatest of them all. Instead of her walking, I see the silver doe, probably the most beautiful of all Patronuses. Rowling does a Revised ROTJ Special Edition thing where we see the young, unspoiled Anakin looking at Luke at the victry party. Sirius and Lupin, the non-parents, look like their younger, more handsome selves, before tragedy entered their lives. Chapters 19 and 34 are verbally linked, so the images of the walking ghosts are perhaps linked with Snape as well. Rowling leaves it up to us (depending on whether or not we think Snape is at heart good and if he has redeemed himself) to be able to further picture Snape there also, walking with Harry and the "Resurrected" four, since he too is the doe. IF we are fans of the character and if we think he merits any pity at all. He walks there too. This is fantasy, of course, b/c he hates Harry, (but at the very end, does he? He does looking into "lily's" green eyes.....I wonder if his quote to Dumbledore "Always" will make it into film 7?) And if he does, what younger self would he look like? The way he looked when he died a martyr to the cause (as James and LIly appear, as they died) but with a flicker of a smile on his face? The teenage Snape? Or would we see--trailing along behind James, Sirius, Lupin and Lily, scrambling to keep up-- the uncorrupted and still innocent child of ten, but with a happy smile on his face? Harry talks to Lupin, telling him how he was sorry he died. What would Harry say to Snape, if he could see him? The fanfic writers will go nuts. I'd love to ask Jo this.
I've gone on long enough for now, I think....there aren't a lot of SNape fans on here and I'm one. He is one of my favorite three characters, b/c I know someone who in terms of behavior is a lot like him. It inruiges me that Jo can make him a martyr to the cause and redeemable but keep him an engma to the end. Either he really continued to hate Harry until the end or he was such a secret romantic that he can't bear, at the very end, to have ANYTHING linked to Lily damaged. ("For him? " Snape Shouted. "Expecto Patronumn!" "After all this time?" aked Dumble dore, his eyes full of tears. "Always," said Snape.)
Maybe I go for this possible sentimental stuff because my real-life screwed up "Snape" might be redeemable after all, even though he might remain a bastard outwardly....
I predict the "Silver doe" visual image/forest scenes will become as famous a visual image as some other metaphors in modern literature. Right now I can think of two, both tear-jerkers that aren't immediately apparent the first time you read the books they came from, "Dr Zhivago" and James Clavell's "Shogun." In Dr Zhivago, the scene of Zhivago saying farewell to Lara....the image of the sleigh bearing Lara away, that "shot like an arrow" out of the dip of the hills where it had vanished for a moment. And the light of the setting sun dying the snow-covered hills orange.
In "Shogun", the first time Blackthorne sees Toranaga, he has the peregrine falcon Tetsu-ko perched on his wrist. We see the falcon at other times in the novel, as she hunts with Toranaga. At the end, in the last 5 pgs of the book, Clavell tells us, through Toranaga, that the falcon is the visual symbol of Mariko. As a tribute to Mariko's bravery in sacrificing herself, he decides to set her free. I can never forget Clavell's paragraph describing her flight, ending with, "She was a creature of immense beauty up there, soaring high, above all the tears...." and we only now fully appreciate that Mariko's soul has flown to Heaven at last, even though we have already witnessed her funeral a hundred pages back....
I swear to God, I haven't cried so hard since I read these 2 books, and a third, "Les Miserables", where Victor Hugo...(oh, wait a minute? Victoire? Hugo? Geez, Jo, a little early for this, you think?) has this huge 10-pg long death scene for Jean Valjean where he tells Marius and Cosette why he did things in his tragic life. At the end, he asks to speak to Cosette alone and he is so weak he can only whisper. He describes what she meant to him as the only bright thing in his life and when he talks about her childhood, when she was a little girl of 6 or 7 and ...and he says, "You laughed. You hung cherries in your ears" and I just FREAKING LOST IT COMPLELETY I remember throwing the book down and crying for 5 straight minutes.
And oh yes, the Grey Havens....I'm having a Grey Havens experience right now.....*SNIFF*
I actually wasn't going to get on here until Teus (when I think I would have finished) but I'm just *****CRYING too #*$%& HARD***** and wanted to see if any of you had picked up on this yet.
Don't rush to judgement on Rowling....she takes several times reading for some things to sink in. I'm shocked nobody has picked up on Snape's Patronus. This has got to be one of the most BEAUTIFUL things in modern literature, and I predict it will soon become classic. I can guaruntee you that even the "Snape loves Lily" people NOBODY saw this coming.
In Book 6, Hagrid was supposed to meet Harry at the Hogwarts entrance after Tonks had seen him off the train. But Snape shows up instead. He says to her "I was interested in seeing your new Patronus.....I liked the old one better." Tonks is shocked and looks either stricken or angry at this comment (can't remember which.) At the end of the book, we find out (indirectly, of course, Rowling hints and we pick up on it) that people's Patronuses change when they fall in love. They take the form of the Patronus of the person they were in love with. So whatever hers was before, her Patronus changed into a wolf...which, of course, must be Lupin's too. Snape's dislike for Lupin is eternal, so when he tells her that he liked her old Patronus better, she finds out, possibly for the first time, the extent of his dislike for Lupin. Of course, she has no idea why. She only is hurt by the fact that he knows who she has fallen in love with and that he hates the man she loves. The first time we read HBP, we are outside parties to this mysterious conversation, but by the end of the book, we now know what it means, and see it in a different light. And we take her side, hopefully. It just makes Snape all that more of a bastard.
In DH, she unexpectedly builds on this Patronus theme by hinting that two people deeply in love share the same Patronus, but in a singular way. It's the same animal, but the man has the male form of the animal, and the woman, the female. So James's Patronus is a stag, and Lily's, a doe. In the film of POA (and the book too?) Harry sees the stag walk up and thinks his father cast it, but after the time travel etc he knows that he cast it. Ironically, he and his father must share the same Patronus. So in a sense his father WAS there.
The scene of Harry's "past" stag Patronus in POA fighting off the demetors forshadows Chapter 19, "The Silver Doe", which itself foreshadows Chapter 34, "The Forest Again", which Jo explicitly links together. More in a second. (Oh GOD....I can't even type the chapter titles without crying...seriously....have to go for a Kleenex..back in a sec)
ANYWAY, *SNIFF*... I won't copy out chapter passages b/c 1) you can all go back and read them and 2) I'd cry too hard. The forest is pitch black, it is winter and has just started snowing (*HINT Bambi HINT*) and Harry sees a silvery doe coming up to him. He at first has no idea what it is, he only becomes aware of a feeling like he knows her and was expecting her to come and her "familarity". Rowling goes on a bit about how beautiful she is, esp her face, which she describes in detail. Note that unlike all other Patronuses she calls her a "she" and not an "it." Also, that this is the only time we see a Patronus doing something other than fighting. She is simply a messenger, and just walks along, leading him to the Gryffindor sword in the lake that Ron uses to destroy a Horcrux. He follows the doe through the woods. As he walks there is a question in his mind that grows stronger and stronger, but Rowling never tells us what it is. Finally he begins to run to her, and is about to ask the question, but just as he opens his mouth, she vanishes. And Harry is suddenly afraid: "Now fear came: her prescense had meant safety."
After finishing the book, we know that Snape and Lily share the same Patronus, b/c Snape loved her from the time they were 10 yrs old and possibly younger. He "had" her Patronus possibly before she had even learned how to cast one. Of course, it wasn't versa vice. Curious, she took James's deer Patronus but Snape didn't share a stag Patronus with James ("rivalry") but took hers. Of course the only reason this is, is b/c he knew her first, from home. Lily and James met later, on the Hogwarts Express. Or is Rowling implying the depth of his love for her by having his Patronus stay the same as hers?
Anyway, after finishing the book, we know that Snape cast the doe Patronus that led Harry to the Gryffindor sword. So for one brief moment Snape becomes an honorary Gryffindor. But go back and re-read that chapter, and instead of the silver doe, picture the ghost of Lily leading Harry through the woods. This is why Harry "knows" her, and I think that by the end, he has figured out what she is. At the end of the chapter, Harry thinks she might be a Patronus and is trying to figure out who cast it. The question burning on his lips (and Snape, through Occlumency, senses that he is about to ask) is, "Are you my mother?" (You can bet that Snape was monitoring Harry's mind every second during this.) Snape "turns off" the doe at that instant not only b/c she has served her purpose, , but b/c he does not want to "share" her with anyone else, esp Harry. I get the feeling that Snape wouldn't resort to Patronuses to fight unless he had to--the doe/Lily is something special and private. Geez, Jo--how romantic. Snape possibly secretly spending time at nights in the forest communing with Lily in the only way he knows how. Well, she has him carrying around a picture of her that he was crying over in Grimmauld Place, why not? (I'll never see Grimmauld place the same way again.)
Go back and re-read the chapter again, and picture the silent figure of Snape, walking ahead of (or possibly beside?) the doe/Lily, leading Harry through the trees, in the pitch darkness. (I prefer to think of Snape standing/walking far away, like 30 steps or more.) And of how Harry cannot see him through the doe, how he is always just a few steps away, on the other side. Think of what Lily means to Snape, and what he has done to save Harry--the good stuff, I mean, not the bad. Not just in this book, but the entire series. And Rowling's quote of how Harry was afraid when she vanished, and how her "prescense had meant safety. " What inspires a lack of fear for Harry? What is Harry's Patronus inspired by? His parents.
Picture Snape and "Lily" (visually linked by the spell coming from the wand) walking ahead of Harry, and how he does not show fear. They share the same Patronus, so they are one here. And ""Lily"s outer beauty at that moment matches Snape's inner beauty, as he does what is perhaps the most noble thing of his life. It's his best moment. This is why Rowling goes to great lengths describing how beautiful the doe's face is. For a few brief seconds, it's as if Snape were the "father" instead of James, the parent, givng him protection and safety. What could have been.... had not people made the wrong choices. This allusion of love/i.e. "walking through the woods" is a Tolkien reference, Tolkien's closest thing to hinting at a romantic relationship.....several characters in The Silmarillion but esp Beren and Luthien, (THE great love story of Middle Earth)"and together they walked through the woods once more, and no joy among all the chidren of Iluvatar was so great, though it was brief." (Ron's daughter Rose is also a Tolkien tip of the hat--Frodos' sidekick Sam has both a wife and daughter named Rose.) After you've re-read the chapter and tried not to take this in without wrinkling the pages, consider the irony of Chapter 33, "The Prince's Tale." Harry has "the Prince's" potions textbook but of course that turns out to be the mother of all red herrings. But by the time of Chapter 33, he is in some way "noble." (well, up to an extent, but you you what I mean. He's still a bastard to everyone else, but ultimately in the grand schem of things...I know, I know, bad deeds for good reasons, hey, I said I'm intruiged by the character, but he's not my favorite! But as big as bastard as he is, I now feel a bit sorry for him and was glad he was redeemed.) And of course, 33, , the chapter Harry finally finds out the truth about Snape, the age of Christ's death.
Rowling takes this even further by verbally linking Chapters 19 and 33, when Harry literally has his "Dark Night of the Soul" experience. Virgil's "I walked through a dark wood" that Dante references in The Inferno, Virgil being Dante's guide. Whatever we see the Old Forest as, I never expected it to become a Dante/Virgil allusion by the end of the series! Harry uses the Resurrection Stone to summon the souls of his old mentors and parents (if you can't see the veritable Joseph Campbell primer here....) and they walk beside him as he takes us on a tour of old sights past, from the rest of the series, as he prepares for death. Of course this is one big Star Wars allusion too, someone (I think it was Varitek?) mentioned cinematic refs, (Luke leaving Dagobah after Obi-wan tells him he must go to fight Vader, I imagine George Lucas if he is reading this must be crying his eyes out) but he didn't spell them out.
Of course we can pick upon the obvious ones but I wonder if he picked up on the Bambi one. Bambi's mother "sacrificed" herself for her son, she could have ran beside Bambi but told him to go on ahead and she took the bullet for him. Bambi's father is (wait for it) "the great Prince of the Forest" and in the film he first appears on a hilltop watching his doe and fawn protectively. Rowling has the Silver Doe chapter take place in winter not only to allude to Bambi but so that we think of the father as well. Taken literally, that's James. Taken in terms of the symbolism of the shared doe Patronus, in this particular chapter, it's Snape.
In Chapter 34, Harry walks forward to meet his death, with his four dead past protectors walking beside him. James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily. The Four Marauders, as they should have been. Peter forfieied his membership, so Lily in a sense took his place. (If you can't read this without ...OH God...must pause again for a second here!) . The first time you read this, the Maruaders thing you pick up instantly. But I had to read this three times to get the further POSSIBLE and I mean POSSIBLE allusion. Rowling explicitly links "The Silver Doe" with "The Forest Again" by the title of course. Just in case we have do not read this scene with the Four Marauders walking Harry through his possible last ordeal, and instantly travel back to Harry's walk through the forest with the ghostly doe (so not only do we see the Four Marauders, but we also see their individual Patronuses/animagi,--I'm guessing that these are the only two extended scenes or the only ones in the whole book where Harry is in the forest) just in case we haven't already mentally linked the two chapters, she tells us to go back and re-read Chapter 19 by calling Chapter 34 "the Forest Again." And what is Chapter 19 all about? Harry's encounter with the joined "Lily" and Snape.
There is a possible reason why Rowling lists Lily last among the Four Murauders on pg. 699. She's the greatest of them all. Instead of her walking, I see the silver doe, probably the most beautiful of all Patronuses. Rowling does a Revised ROTJ Special Edition thing where we see the young, unspoiled Anakin looking at Luke at the victry party. Sirius and Lupin, the non-parents, look like their younger, more handsome selves, before tragedy entered their lives. Chapters 19 and 34 are verbally linked, so the images of the walking ghosts are perhaps linked with Snape as well. Rowling leaves it up to us (depending on whether or not we think Snape is at heart good and if he has redeemed himself) to be able to further picture Snape there also, walking with Harry and the "Resurrected" four, since he too is the doe. IF we are fans of the character and if we think he merits any pity at all. He walks there too. This is fantasy, of course, b/c he hates Harry, (but at the very end, does he? He does looking into "lily's" green eyes.....I wonder if his quote to Dumbledore "Always" will make it into film 7?) And if he does, what younger self would he look like? The way he looked when he died a martyr to the cause (as James and LIly appear, as they died) but with a flicker of a smile on his face? The teenage Snape? Or would we see--trailing along behind James, Sirius, Lupin and Lily, scrambling to keep up-- the uncorrupted and still innocent child of ten, but with a happy smile on his face? Harry talks to Lupin, telling him how he was sorry he died. What would Harry say to Snape, if he could see him? The fanfic writers will go nuts. I'd love to ask Jo this.
I've gone on long enough for now, I think....there aren't a lot of SNape fans on here and I'm one. He is one of my favorite three characters, b/c I know someone who in terms of behavior is a lot like him. It inruiges me that Jo can make him a martyr to the cause and redeemable but keep him an engma to the end. Either he really continued to hate Harry until the end or he was such a secret romantic that he can't bear, at the very end, to have ANYTHING linked to Lily damaged. ("For him? " Snape Shouted. "Expecto Patronumn!" "After all this time?" aked Dumble dore, his eyes full of tears. "Always," said Snape.)
Maybe I go for this possible sentimental stuff because my real-life screwed up "Snape" might be redeemable after all, even though he might remain a bastard outwardly....
I predict the "Silver doe" visual image/forest scenes will become as famous a visual image as some other metaphors in modern literature. Right now I can think of two, both tear-jerkers that aren't immediately apparent the first time you read the books they came from, "Dr Zhivago" and James Clavell's "Shogun." In Dr Zhivago, the scene of Zhivago saying farewell to Lara....the image of the sleigh bearing Lara away, that "shot like an arrow" out of the dip of the hills where it had vanished for a moment. And the light of the setting sun dying the snow-covered hills orange.
In "Shogun", the first time Blackthorne sees Toranaga, he has the peregrine falcon Tetsu-ko perched on his wrist. We see the falcon at other times in the novel, as she hunts with Toranaga. At the end, in the last 5 pgs of the book, Clavell tells us, through Toranaga, that the falcon is the visual symbol of Mariko. As a tribute to Mariko's bravery in sacrificing herself, he decides to set her free. I can never forget Clavell's paragraph describing her flight, ending with, "She was a creature of immense beauty up there, soaring high, above all the tears...." and we only now fully appreciate that Mariko's soul has flown to Heaven at last, even though we have already witnessed her funeral a hundred pages back....
I swear to God, I haven't cried so hard since I read these 2 books, and a third, "Les Miserables", where Victor Hugo...(oh, wait a minute? Victoire? Hugo? Geez, Jo, a little early for this, you think?) has this huge 10-pg long death scene for Jean Valjean where he tells Marius and Cosette why he did things in his tragic life. At the end, he asks to speak to Cosette alone and he is so weak he can only whisper. He describes what she meant to him as the only bright thing in his life and when he talks about her childhood, when she was a little girl of 6 or 7 and ...and he says, "You laughed. You hung cherries in your ears" and I just FREAKING LOST IT COMPLELETY I remember throwing the book down and crying for 5 straight minutes.
And oh yes, the Grey Havens....I'm having a Grey Havens experience right now.....*SNIFF*
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Go have fun talking about Lord of the Rings. I, too, think it's superior to Harry Potter, but that's neither here nor there.
You're dead to me.
