Why the idea of Peter’s redemption makes me uneasy, but not Snape’s.

[elanor_x]

Why the idea of Peter’s redemption makes me uneasy, but not Snape’s.

Discussing in sistermagpie’s post  the possibility of Snape’s redemption, I have suddenly understood one of the reasons why I have never liked fandom theories that Peter will kill Voldemort, thus making D's prediction "one day you will be glad you saved his life" come true. I feel that such sacrifice should bring redemption and forgiveness, and I can't grant Peter that. He killed Harry's parents, betrayed his own friends [while loyalty and bravery are the 2 central values in the series] and is as despicable as one can get.

  sistermagpie wrote about the Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: 
“Ransom doesn't look down on Tom. He respects him both for what he did for him and for the sacrifices he made. Ransom can't ever be completely dismissive of the type of man Tom was given what he owes him. As I said, he has to carry part of Tom with him into the new world because of that, and that's the way Tom really doesn't just die forgotten.
I kind of hope Harry has to carry Snape with him the same way.:-)”

I believe some things can not be forgiven by people, f.e. Hitler's crimes, and can't imagine Harry forgiving Peter, unlike Snape, let alone carrying any bit of Pettegrew with him anywhere. If Snape doesn't turn out to be evil and sacrifices himself, the idea of Harry carrying the man with him will partly reconcile me to his death. It will mean both growth for Harry, becoming more like Dumbledore, and giving Snape at least posthumous recognition. As for Peter, I have no idea what JKR will do with him and will prefer just killing him off screen like Amelia Bones or sending to Azkaban to the sacrifice for the mentioned above reasons.

Answering to my comment, sistermagpie  also wrote about Peter's redemption: I just don't see how he can be, even in death. Even the thing with Harry saving his life seems to undercut that for me, because it makes anything Peter would do for Harry again in his best interests, somehow, or not something he's necessarily doing out of a sense of right and wrong.
Ironically with Snape it seems like his feeling indebted to James comes out of his own personal feelings, and the way he protects Harry so grudgingly in PS somehow makes it better. Maybe because he's not lying about it or something.
So yeah, I've no idea what will become of Peter but it's hard for me to see a way for the character to rise to far above where he is now after all he's done, especially with a single act. I can't imagine him having a real change of heart, and it seems like that would be necessary for real forgiveness.

 So, what is the basic difference between Peter and Snape? Why it's possible for me to forgive one but not the other?

It's indeed hard to "rise to far above where he is now after all he's done", but Snape did no less and I think even more damage than Peter has ever done during his years as a DE, being more powerful wizard and (what is more important) both much smarter and willing to use his brains. Peter showed V Potters' hideout, yes, but without Snape telling him about the prophecy V wouldn't go after Potters and Longbottoms in the first place. From HBP I got the impression Voldemort considers Snape his right hand man. Yet, if he is DM, he is redeemed in my eyes. Then why not redeem Peter too?

My first thought was about fandom discussions and fics including those characters. With Snape there are numerous speculations questioning the reasons for his actions - joining V and afterwards possibly switching sides. When he joined DEs, he was young and very likely went after his school friends and indeed Sirius told about him being friends with a bunch of future DEs in OoTF. People talk about him joining them for petty personal reasons, like Being a Man instead of a humiliated school nerd with nearly non-existent social skills, but now I got a thought [amazingly for the first time despite being a HP fan for years]- even if it's true, Snape was still ready to pay the price and not a small one. As a Slytherin and, I bet, not promoting his Muggle father, he wouldn't be in danger whether V won or not, if he stayed neutral. By joining V he put his life in great danger and I trust Snape's intelligence enough to be sure he fully understood the implications of his actions, unlike Draco in the beginning of HBP and in the former books. Snape is considered brave by his fans for spying for Dumbledore, but ESE Snape is not a coward either and very well could justly shout at Harry "Don't call me a coward" too. People also tend to view Snape's actions as ideologically motivated - Dumbledore believed he switched sides after seeing the wrongness of his actions. Whether the death of Harry's parents or something else caused the change isn't important. I would even strongly prefer the true reason not to be Harry's parents' fate [not everything has to be about them and, as I have already stated, I trust Snape to understand he didn't join ladies' sewing circle but a terrorist group]. Rather than sudden [and very strange imo] remorse about James & Lily, I prefer to think he was one of many (mainly pure-blood) wizards, who were very enthusiastic about V and his propaganda until the madman showed his true colors. Sirius talked about the phenomenon in OoTF. Either way we see Snape knowingly and deliberately risking his life - once (ESE Snape) or twice (DM, joining "at great personal risk" quoting D himself). 

On the other hand, Peter doesn't care about anything except preserving his life at any cost, finding powerful protectors and otherwise exploiting everybody foolish enough to let him do that. He isn't willing to take any responsibility, let alone pay The Price. How can Peter have "a real change of heart", if he doesn't have a heart but the lackey's petty soul in the first place?

With me it all really comes down to being able to respect the character or my version of him [which of them we will see in the last book] and in a certain way trust him to be loyal to his principles more or less.  As a spy Snape obviously lies to at least one of the sides [or both if you think he serves only himself] and will use practically every subterfuge/lie to save his life, but I can't imagine ESE Snape beginning for mercy if all his lies fail like Peter did in PoA. It reminded me of this passage from the mistful's fic "Quality of Mercy" [chapter 17], which wonderfully shows what I mean: 

“I could not walk by then,” Snape said precisely, as if pity did not occur to him. “I lay on the ground and watched them. She wept and she knelt and she begged and she performed every trick she could think of, to get them to spare her. She would have lived, if she possibly could have. I do not want you to think she ever gave up."
Harry did not see why Snape was telling Malfoy awful things about his dead mother. But Malfoy lifted his wet face and looked almost uplifted.
He remembered the screams the Dementors had brought back for him. His mother had begged, too. Narcissa Malfoy had not wanted to leave her son.
Besides – he remembered the cold practical look her beautiful face used to wear. She would have thought she could be more use alive than dead. She would have knelt. She would have promised anything.
Harry didn’t know what he thought of that.
“When she saw it was no use, she gave it up,” Snape said. “She stood and took the Curse full in the chest, looking directly at your father’s eyes until she died. She did not betray my position. She did not look at me. She passed no message on to you. She endangered nobody for the sake of sentiment, she stood alone and took the punishment alone. She claimed to the last that she had no idea where you were, and she claimed to the last that she was loyal to the Dark Lord, and that she would have betrayed you if she did know. There was no last stand. There was no open defiance.” His pitiless voice grew no warmer as he said: “Your mother was a very wonderful woman. Wonderful. She had them all fooled."

From what we have seen so far, I can neither imagine Voldemort behaving with such decency nor Snape without it. He may be cruel, a spy [both ESE & DM versions], a traitor [ESE Snape betrayed DEs], with many crimes behind his back, but he has a certain feeling of self-respect about him [at least that's my feeling as a reader], which makes me respect him too whether he is ESE or DM. In this passage I saw Slytherin's version of self-respect and honour, which is different from Gryffindor's, but isn't inferior in my eyes. "There was no last stand. There was no open defiance." While Gryffindor's courage seems to be the epitome of last stands and open defiance.

The picture conveys my feelings while writing  this post - dark but beautiful in a way:
 

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Comments

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading this post.

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

Thank you. After writing it I was afraid the point was self-evident and almost considered deleting it.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, Snape seems to me to be essentially honest, even though he has to lie to someone as a spy.

I also think that, once Snape makes up his mind, it's made. The external factors don't come into play the way they do with Peter. With Peter, it's all situational with the over-all motivation being for Peter to survive.

Snape wants to survive too, but I get the feeling that he wants to survive in order to do sometihng. (What that thing is is unknown.)

[neville81.livejournal.com]

I am here via your link on sistermagpie's journal. IMO, the main difference between possibly forgiving Peter and Snape lies with JKR herself. No matter, what she might have said about Snape in some of her interviews (trying to mislead us a bit without lying, IMO), she also was the one, who wrote all the positive aspects of him in the books. We saw Snape saving Harry's life, we saw him returning to Voldemort on Dumbledore's order at the end of GoF (which, even if Snape is evil, was a very brave thing to do, since Voldemort believed him to be on Dumble's side at this time, and which is in a direct contrast to Karkaroff's behaviour), we see him bullied in OotP, we see him saving the day by alerting the Order at the end of OotP, and the for once omniscient narrator tells us, that he feels genuinely sorry for Narcissa at the beginning of HBP. Therefore we see good in Snape, no matter how much evil he has done as well, and it is IMO therefore easier to accept, if his good side wins in the end again. Peter, however, has so far been described always and solely negatively. Even in the Pensieve scene, which was befor ehis Death Eater days and where JKR could have shown us a less negative portrayal of Wormtail, he was simply despisable. In fact, the only scene, which comes to my mind, which could be interpreted in Wormtail's favour, was when he tried to convince Voldemort in the first chapter of Goblet to take someone else but Harry for his resurrection plan. But this didn't last long, and in the end he had no problems harming the boy. Having him be redeemed, would be much less satisfying than Snape's redemption, because other than Dumbledore's words, there's nothing leading up to it. JKR portrays absolutely nothing good in him (so far, of course).

That said, I'm sure Peter will do something to help Harry in the end. JKR basically already spelled it out via Dumbledore at the end of book 3, and it will happen. But I doubt it will be enough to count as an actual redemption in the end. Maybe he'll have a Gollum-like end.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Took me so long to be able to read this again more thoroughly and now I agree with it! Snape and Peter seem so fundamentally different to me--recently somebody was saying that Peter and Snape were the same because they both betrayed their side, but to me they're so different. They're doing different things for different reasons. Snape has the potential for nobility, but I don't see that Peter does.