Understanding a Gray Character: The Loved and Hated Severus Snape

In the dramaturgy kitchen, gray characters always seem to be the prettiest cupcake in a batch; the gray character always seems to have more spice, more pepper, more sugar; Some love them, others hate them; Some are sweeter, others, bittersweet. And maybe we can even come to an agreement here that ``bittersweet`` is the right adjective for a gray character. Also, we can agree that in the dramaturgy kitchen, the gray character is the one who sets everything on fire.

And in an infinite list of countless names coming from countless stories, we have in particular a character that is recognized by all; Loved and hated; Obscure, but touched by love, which made him destroy his own bonds and repent of his own mistakes. We’re talking about him, Severus Snape.

When Snape’s name comes up in a conversation circle, people will be divided on the most diverse arguments. There are those who love Snape, and there are those who hate him so much that they disavow those who even understand this gray character who is one of the best and most complex ever created. But, sailing between the waves of duality, psychology and realism, understanding Severus Snape is understanding why the gray character is the prettiest cupcake in a batch. And here, I will tell you why.

The gray character is the prettiest cupcake in the batch because he is the one who leaves the world of dramaturgy and reaches realism; The gray character is the one who reaches the reality of who we human beings are. And understanding Severus Snape — not agreeing with him and his actions, but understanding him — means understanding ourselves.

The gray character seems to have a journey to the sound of “O Fortuna”. I mean, Snape would have his journey perfectly expressed through the drama of “O Fortuna”. But who said that only gray characters live in a sea of ​​angry waves, and at other times, peace, and then again, a storm with thunder? Our lives are like this; we are like the gray characters. And every day we have the choices of continuing to make our mistakes, or of redeeming ourselves in the face of the hearts we stabbed.

So…I can’t understand those who say they ``don’t like Snape``. Not liking Snape, despising him for his actions, is believing that we are all characters made of sugar and exempt from any mistake or sin. Snape is so human he could be touched between the pages of books . And here I am, ready to analyze, to understand why he`s one of the most beautiful and perfectly made cupcakes in the dramaturgy kitchen.

Severus Snape walks dramatically through the halls of Hogwarts, his black cloack flapping in the air. Alan Rickman magnificently interpreted the character’s grandeur, but we also remember the many times Snape was described in the books as a ``big bat``.

A bat nestles and hides between its wings, as if it has something to hide from everything and everyone. And what about Snape? What would he have to hide?

That was a question that had been bubbling through our minds since ``Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’`, and we had our revelation given into our mouths like a balm from the gods; after Snape’s tears in the pensieve, we discovered that our gray character could, even within his mistakes and sins, be called a “hero”.

Maybe calling Snape a hero is too much, but to agree that he really was ``one of the bravest men we’ve ever known’`, oh, we can certainly agree on that.

It takes a lot of courage to fight against our past, and to try to heal the wounds caused by our mistakes.

Snape, nurturing his love for Lily, tried to heal his own wounds, also trying to rebuild the towers destroyed by his past actions; Snape delivered the prophecy to Voldemort, and I have no doubt that there hasn’t been a day when our gray character hasn’t wanted to die of regret.

Those who live with the ghost of regret, and wake and sleep every day with it, there, sticking a sharp dagger into their chests, are the ones who know what it’s like to die every day a little while still alive.

And speaking of love: did Severus Snape really love Lily Potter? Severus Snape’s love may have turned into an obsession clinging to old feelings, marked by regret and pain. But we know what Lily Potter really represented in his life: She was the only bright and luminous thing in his life marked by darkness; She was the one who saw him as someone for the first time; She wasn’t afraid, and she trusted him with her secrets and her friendship. Snape came from dark and gray, from a life of black and white; Lily was a vibrant blur of color in his existence. Snape felt alive with Lily; Snape felt seen and heard; Lily worried about Severus. So, out of gratitude and attachment to past memories and feelings, Snape also nurtured his love, even if not in a healthy way, but yes, he did.

When we give ourselves a chance for positive things to happen, magically, we feel at peace, as if everything will finally fall into place; But when everything starts to go wrong again, we get a taste of revolt. And living with the revolt covers us with the structure and bones of a cranky little being full of hate.
Snape was this hateful, grumpy little being; His black clocal was his armor against happiness. Every time Snape tried to feel happiness, he had been hurt; When he was little, Snape wanted to be just a child, to be seen and accepted, loved and understood, but on the contrary, he lived in a precarious situation and between the screams and fights of his parents.
When Snape thought he could be happy next to Lily Potter, happiness had been taken away by the one who had hurt him, everyday: James Potter.
Snape accepted the lie that happiness was not for him.
Even with a heart capable of love, Snape accepted the dark arts as his refuge.

Severus needed to feel accepted. His will to survive and to feel that he was part of something is clear, in all his memories that Harry watches in the Pensieve. In our real and current world, we always talk about our mental health, and probably a character like Snape certainly never had the time or opportunity to question anyone or himself about his own mind. Snape, visibly, had dealt his entire life with issues that had been hidden under a rug. Snape has certainly dealt with stress, anxiety, trauma and depression since he was a little boy. His mind had never found a place to rest in peace.

In “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, we see Harry feel the turmoil of being who he is, outraged by his existence and events around him. Harry never asked to be born and to be a boy marked by death. Severus Snape never asked to have his life marred by misfortunes. The difference and the turning point is when Harry decides he is not Voldemort’s equal; Harry chooses the path of light. And with every choice, there are consequences.
And Snape’s choices spawned all of his own painful fate and was consumed with grife, regret and sorrow.

When with his eyes on Harry Potter, surely Snape’s mind must have collapsed. He claimed, in the end, that everything he did was for Lily; Snape may not have felt love for Harry at any time, and clearly, when he saw the boy, he saw James Potter in front of him, right there. But, thinking of Severus Snape as a human being capable of repentance and love, we know that some small fire sparked within his heart, causing him to feel empathy, for Harry, and for Lily.

Snape risked his life every day to protect Harry, in the name of his happy memories with Lily; Snape lived every day of his life obsessed with the happy memories of his past, because he was already dead and corrupted. And when I see people calling Snape ‘’obsessed’’, I say: We all have the right to hold on to our happy memories; they belong to us; they are our treasures, our sacred cups of elixir of life. If a life is marked by tragedies, at least one happy memory is capable of being a breath through all the pain.

So why judge Severus for the fact that his life was miserable, and for keeping his memories alive with Lily? So, does it mean that we cannot repent of our mistakes, and must pay for each one of them until we die from our open and deep wounds?

We all have the right to choose repentance. When we decide to feel the purest regret within us, some wounds are anesthetized; When we choose to repent, we see a new door opening, and a second chance and a rebirth.

For a soul full of pain, a memory of happiness is a new chance to live another day.

Severus, within his limited capabilities, tried his best to feel regret coursing through his soul day after day. We know that a man marked by a cold and loveless life could never react to society in any other way; Snape didn’t know how to act in the face of love; Snape didn’t know what affection was, or even how to show it. But in the end, he chose to love, in his own way.

Still, Snape had time to do the right thing, and choose the path of light.
So I repeat: I cannot understand those who hate Snape. Snape is as human as we are, and many of us don’t have the courage, oftentimes, to face our mistakes and accept them, and try to redeem them. Often the ``I’m sorry’` doesn’t come out of our mouths, but our actions can say it for us.

And here I end my analysis by explaining why a gray character makes the most beautiful cupcake in the dramaturgy kitchen: a gray character, as the name implies, is that character who allowed himself to be painted at least once for all the colors of the rainbow.
And when the gray character allows himself to be painted and touched by color, the story catches on fire; it’s the moment when things happen, when the twists spin like tornadoes; It’s when some character has decided to really feel the reality of being a human, and the fantasy world of a story becomes the truth for all of us.
The gray character is what we are: our mistakes, our ego, our anger, our envy and our hatred. But the gray character is also our capacity for redemption, our forgiveness, and our open arms for a second chance…and for love.

I repeat: To understand a gray character is to understand ourselves.

And understanding Snape, gives us the certainty that we can still look for the chance to wash our souls filthy with dirt, in the face of what we did and regret, and kneeling before those who loved us without question.