Duel, who made just as valid point that Snape's loyalty, to her, is posession more than anything else, and therefore can not contradict any relationship - love or otherwise (sorry, Duel, if I misquote you here)
It's close enough. :) That's sure part of it: I think he's desperate to hang onto her even as he's leaving her behind himself in many ways, because she's the only good thing he's ever had in his life - that makes her awfully precious to keep, even if it's obvious to everyone else that the friendship is realistically falling apart. I do believe he loves her. I don't think it's a simple romantic love, let alone a lifelong exclusive-of-all-others romantic love - first, he's too damaged a kid to understand love well, and second, the role she has in his life is too much the savior of the small innocent child he was, and she was lost to him when he lost his innocence, so I don't think she represents an adult love. (She's almost literally the symbol of his childhood innocence, really. Even her name; lilies generally symbolize innocence.) He continues to need her his entire life, because she's the only person who cared for him and made him truly, innocently happy, and the only person he was ever a good person with - what she represents, his lost innocence, is too critical to his redemption, too critical to the man he's trying to be, for him to ever treat her as unimportant.
I also think that as a teenager, he probably believed it was (or wanted it to be) romantic love, because it was a way to hold onto Lily forever. From his life choices, it's pretty clear he never put serious thought into a long-term relationship with her, let alone marrying Lily and having kids; that's just not compatible with what he was doing with himself. He never seems to have come onto her or asked her out. It seems like he needed her possessively far more than he was attracted to her. But when he was 15, he just couldn't get enough of her in his life to make him feel loved and good, and that would have been a way to get more of her to himself. He's a needy guy. :)
Fundamentally, though, even if I thought it was primarily and solely a romance - and this is where I disagree significantly with JKR, given her preferred backstory for Dumbles, Snape, and McG - I don't believe in The One True Love, the one you pine for the rest of your life. (In fact, I think it's antithetical to a lot of what Dumbledore wanted to teach about love, which is that love is not a rarity, something that's gone if you miss out on it, but that connecting with and caring for people is what we as healthy human beings do. So I think JKR contradicts her own message there.) Snape may not be the world's healthiest human being, but he does belatedly grow up and want to rescue people rather than hurt them, and likewise I think he becomes capable of connecting and caring for people like a slightly less damaged person, at least. He may always have too much needy-child inside him to ever really love healthily, but I think that's part of why he hangs onto Lily after all these years - it's belated, but he can love selflessly and be that less damaged man that he should have been, and it's not necessarily about romance at all. It's about what's left of his innocence, and his ability to love. (And less abstractly, I think losing someone you love doesn't mean you don't acquire fuckbuddies, friends with benefits, people you're attracted to and fond of, or maybe grow to love someone else, too. People who lose someone they love continue to have human relationships, sexual needs, and even emotional needs that they fill with other human beings.)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-23 03:24 am (UTC)It's close enough. :) That's sure part of it: I think he's desperate to hang onto her even as he's leaving her behind himself in many ways, because she's the only good thing he's ever had in his life - that makes her awfully precious to keep, even if it's obvious to everyone else that the friendship is realistically falling apart. I do believe he loves her. I don't think it's a simple romantic love, let alone a lifelong exclusive-of-all-others romantic love - first, he's too damaged a kid to understand love well, and second, the role she has in his life is too much the savior of the small innocent child he was, and she was lost to him when he lost his innocence, so I don't think she represents an adult love. (She's almost literally the symbol of his childhood innocence, really. Even her name; lilies generally symbolize innocence.) He continues to need her his entire life, because she's the only person who cared for him and made him truly, innocently happy, and the only person he was ever a good person with - what she represents, his lost innocence, is too critical to his redemption, too critical to the man he's trying to be, for him to ever treat her as unimportant.
I also think that as a teenager, he probably believed it was (or wanted it to be) romantic love, because it was a way to hold onto Lily forever. From his life choices, it's pretty clear he never put serious thought into a long-term relationship with her, let alone marrying Lily and having kids; that's just not compatible with what he was doing with himself. He never seems to have come onto her or asked her out. It seems like he needed her possessively far more than he was attracted to her. But when he was 15, he just couldn't get enough of her in his life to make him feel loved and good, and that would have been a way to get more of her to himself. He's a needy guy. :)
Fundamentally, though, even if I thought it was primarily and solely a romance - and this is where I disagree significantly with JKR, given her preferred backstory for Dumbles, Snape, and McG - I don't believe in The One True Love, the one you pine for the rest of your life. (In fact, I think it's antithetical to a lot of what Dumbledore wanted to teach about love, which is that love is not a rarity, something that's gone if you miss out on it, but that connecting with and caring for people is what we as healthy human beings do. So I think JKR contradicts her own message there.) Snape may not be the world's healthiest human being, but he does belatedly grow up and want to rescue people rather than hurt them, and likewise I think he becomes capable of connecting and caring for people like a slightly less damaged person, at least. He may always have too much needy-child inside him to ever really love healthily, but I think that's part of why he hangs onto Lily after all these years - it's belated, but he can love selflessly and be that less damaged man that he should have been, and it's not necessarily about romance at all. It's about what's left of his innocence, and his ability to love. (And less abstractly, I think losing someone you love doesn't mean you don't acquire fuckbuddies, friends with benefits, people you're attracted to and fond of, or maybe grow to love someone else, too. People who lose someone they love continue to have human relationships, sexual needs, and even emotional needs that they fill with other human beings.)
And that is my tl;dr about Snape and Lily. :)