Severus Snape, Hero or Villain?

“Do I think he’s a hero?  To a point, I do, but he’s not an unequivocally good character.”

                        --J.K. Rowling

“Harry Potter: The Final Chapter” Dateline (NBC)

July 29, 2007

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/0729-dateline-vieira.html

Introduction

One of the most popular and controversial characters from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is Severus Snape.  For most of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, readers are misled into believing that Snape is the villain.   At the end of the sixth book (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), Snape ends up killing Dumbledore with a curse.  At the end of the 7^th book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) it is revealed that Snape has been on the “good side” all along, working as a double agent.  Even though he was working for the good side, some readers still do not see him as a hero, citing his faulty motives and cruelty to children.  Others see him as the epitome of heroic, working to save people that he did not much like.