Trolly problem: Snape and Lupin
Source: Trolly problem: Snape and Lupin
why would you distort “Severus changed sides because of Lily” to “Severus only changed sides because of Lily”? Trying to save someone you care about is a pretty good reason imo.
This argument annoys me too because I think I can see where it stems from, and I disagree with the idea behind it. The idea being that a good person should care about everyone equally and not care about someone more than others. I despise that sentiment deeply (DEEPLY) and I think it’s been used to guilt-trip people rather a lot. And don’t get me wrong, some human beings might work like that, I wouldn’t know. Some religions are very keen to encourage people to want to work like that, as are movements and organizations, and sometimes you follow this line of thought until you reach Utilitarianism. Or trolley problems. Would you let 500 people die so that your best friend may live? Would you push your best friend in front of the train so that the 500 people may live? Most of us don’t think in trolley problems. Or, frankly, don’t naturally care about the greater good more than we care about our best friend. And because one’s man holiness is another man’s inhumanity, caring about everyone equally is not even what most of us aspire to.
There is a relevant passage by Orwell that says “To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others” and I think that the beauty of that sentiment is generally twisted when it comes to Snape Discourse (wow do I hate those words) and it makes me fucking mad.
Or whatever, I guess.
I have opinions and I am not holy. (She says, banging her fists on the table)
Trolley Problems are interesting to me because they force us to confront our definitions of morality. What do these choices say about me, about what I value? Why do I sacrifice my friend for 50 but not 10? Why do I hesitate more when asked to push my best friend rather than simply change the track? Do I choose to value children or adults or dogs or men or women? Who am I to say I’m a good person?
We have an example of a person who always aces the Trolley Problem in the Potterverse: Dumbledore. And on one hand, that makes him a great general, a great strategist, the one and only Leader of the Light. On the other hand, that makes him feel morally icky. He’s willing to raise a child like a pig for slaughter. He’s willing to purposely stymie any chance for growth or happiness for a human being so that he can keep his perfect spy. He makes these decisions and directs the Trolley with a coldness that I only see matched when Voldemort himself says “I regret it.”
Alternatively, Snape is interesting because he LIVES the Trolley Problem. His JOB is to watch people die, and later to kill Dumbledore, so that he can save more people later. And he does this, oh he does it. He lets the Trolley run over those whom he could not save.
But ONLY those whom he could not save.
Severus lives in DEFIANCE of the Trolley Problem. He snatches people from the tracks. He’s given the option to push someone down or let others die and throws himself over the edge instead. He sees no-win scenarios and tries to find a loophole, any loophole, because this is his line in the sand and he’ll be damned if he crosses it.
Of course, in the end, he has to cross it. He has to tell Harry to go to his fate. But that’s the beauty of Severus’ response to the Trolley Problem. He will do what he has to “for the greater good”, spy and lie and kill and die, but he will not give into the comforting falsehood that the lesser of two evils is a good. He will stand, back straight and soul torn to shreds, look himself in the eye and say, “It was wrong. It was the best choice, but it was wrong, and it was what I chose.”
That is what makes Severus different from Dumbledore. That is what allows his redemption arc to exist. And that is what makes him one of the strongest, most moral characters that I have ever know.
An inverse of the usual Trolley Problem also comes up with the character of Remus Lupin to a certain extent. An unfortunate habit of fandom is to characterize him as a mild-mannered academic, which is exactly the impression that Lupin wants to give people of him. He wants to seem as non-threatening and dangerous as possible because he is aware of his condition and how that affects the way that people may view him. That being said, Lupin has his own dark-side; we see glimmer of that potential in how he handles Peeves and much later in his decision to bait Snape by stalling in taking his potion until he had backed out of the room.
However, the real moment where we see Lupin’s darker side is towards the end of HP: PoA when, in the span of time it takes him to see Peter’s name on the Marauders Map and come to the realization that he’s alive and run across the grounds through the tunnel in the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack he’s been able to shift mental gears from mourning a person he believed to be a friend who had been horribly murdered to preparing himself to murder that person in front of three children out of vengeance. That is a HUGE emotional transition in the span of so many minutes. In Lupin’s case, we see the inverse of the typical Trolley Problem. Instead of having to decide between the life of a friend and however many strangers, he’s found the resolve to end the life of someone he knew intimately as a friend in his boyhood for many years because of past harm he did to other of his friends.
Compare that to Snape who still believes Sirius to be traitor when he arrives. We later learn how devastated he was to learn that after all his efforts, spying, lying, risking his life and betraying former allies Lily still is killed as a result of a Marauder’s betrayal. We also learn that he continued to agree to work for Dumbledore and to protect Harry for Lily. In spite of that, when confronting the man who played a role in the death of Lily, his focus is on de-escalation (.e.g. he binds Lupin, who he knows hasn’t take his potion, first and then warns Sirius against making any move towards him), getting Harry, Ron, and Hermione out of the Shrieking Shack, and turning the two men he believed were working together to harm Harry over to the wizarding authorities. Even later after he was knocked unconscious, we see that Snape conjures stretchers for Sirius and Harry to take them back to Hogwarts (contrast that with how Sirius inflicts further harm to his body while he’s unconscious and vulnerable).
Point being, when it came to responsible adult behavior and even moral behavior both Sirius and Lupin fell very short. For all of Snape’s “hysteria” and screaming, his bark was actually worse than his bite. His actions that night were actually far more morally sound, in-so-far as he sought to apprehend Sirius and Lupin and turn them over to the Ministry for judgement rather than exact his own vengeance (and he could have done it and more than justified his actions later). He treated even his enemies, even the very enemy he could have blamed for Lily’s death, with greater humanity at certain points (e.g. conjuring the stretcher) than he was treated with. That degree of restraint; the recognition that even with our enemies we must draw certain lines, it certainly reflects the strength of character Snape had come to develop. Truly, in his own way, Snape could be one of the strongest and most moral characters.
I love this I went to the site and found a comment that I liked that summed up what I was thinking so pls understand this is not mine this is from...
snapedefender
Oh, that’s gorgeous
bc dumbledore is so often presented as the morally superior in the snape and dumbledore relationship - we see dumbledore’s disgust and we accept that it’s the right reaction to snape’s desire to save lily. but is it? dumbledore sees snape wanting to save lily first and foremost as wrong, but for dumbledore putting any one person ahead of others without cause (like putting harry above others for “the greateter good”) and doing it out of simple love is wrong. dumbledore doesn’t think like that and he can’t think like that regardless due to his position in the war. so of course of COURSE he sees snape’s devotion to lily’s survival over harry’s (the more “useful” person to want to protect) as disgusting or wrong. dumbledore’s moral values are skewed differently, but that doesn’t mean they’re what we should see as objectively right.
which means dumbledore ISN’T the “right” one in snape and dumbledore’s relationship. dumbledore is a big picture thinker and he values the most people he can save; but is that right when it means sacrificing one person, esp when it’s a person you love? hp’s always had that very interesting question about “the greater good” that is clear in dumbledore; is it for thegreater good when people are thrown under the tracks to ensure other people’s survival? who chooses who survives and who doesn’t and do they have the right to choose?
i think harry is the really interesting case study for this difference in morality between dumbledore and snape. dumbledore loves harry - but harry is not someone he loves first, he is a weapon to use first. so dumbledore will sacrifice him, bc dumbledore sees that sacrifice as necessary. dumbledore would not have gone running to his enemy to beg them to do anything to save harry; he would have accepted harry’s death. but snape may accept that harry needs to die, but he recognizes it for what it is: an evil. necessary, but morally bad. which is really, REALLY interesting to me bc we see dumbledore’s disgust for snape’s desire to save one person over many with lily - and then we see snape’s disgust at dumbledore’s willingness to sacrifice one person for the man reflected backa few scenes later. which implies that it’s not that dumbledore is a “good” person and snape is a “bad” person - they have both done things to disgust and outrage each other and that disgust and outrage is based on your own moral inclinations, not on any objective moral law.
a lot of people use dumbledore’s disgust to “prove” that snape was doing a bad thing or is a bad person without really thinking it through - can dumbledore really be called a moral compass in this series when he does so many amoral things? can we rely on him to be an objective source of good vs bad? can we really trust his opinion on snape’s actions considering how different (NOT better; different) his own moral code is? and these questions are infinitely more interesting than another tried round of “snape only changed sides for lily, so he’s a bad person.”
Yes but these sort of questions require critical thinking and intellectual understanding. They require openness to experiences most harry potter readers aren't that mature , wise or even open to experiences to understand that. I am glad someone does though.
