The American Spectator

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I can’t help but think that articles like this one are counter-productive. After all, you are reacting to entertainment and literary device and not to real life where this type of commentary belongs.

Let’s look at it from this perspective: From the beginning of the series, Snape’s true allegiance and motives have been carefully tucked away behind a veneer of mistrust and deceit. We are meant, of course, to imagine Snape as an agent of Voldemort and capable of great evil, and even though Snape appears to do the right thing again and again, Rowling still manages to make us not trust him.

Snape appears to kill Dumbledore in service to Voldemort, which drives the drama and finally makes us think we were right to not trust Snape all along. This too turns out to be a ruse, but it can’t be denied that Snape did commit murder, so some mitigating circumstance had to be created. That circumstance turns out to be to save Dumbledore from a more horrible death that otherwise could not be avoided.

Mr. Haddon can argue, as he has, that this equates to euthanasia, but the words “lighten up” immediately jump to mind. In the sci-horror film Aliens, Corporeal Hicks made a pact with Ripley that one would kill the other in the event they were infected with an alien parasite. The alternative to being shot to death was to have the alien being rip through your chest in a gruesome and painful way with the end result still being death. I don’t think anyone can reasonably say that they wouldn’t prefer the bullet in this situation, but to equate this type of death to Kevorkian style euthanasia is a bit of a stretch, not to mention silly given the improbability of death by alien or magic spell.

p>To make this argument makes you look like a crank with no appreciation for fantasy and entertainment, and it’s why liberals’ brains turn off when you speak. br> — Chuck Lazarz br> Reading, Pennsylvania /p> p> I think David Haddon missed a critical point in his article. In the story , Dumbledore knows when and how he will die, and what will happen to him if he is captured in his weakness close to that time. In real life, we do not know when our Creator will determine our time is done, and what saving miracles He may have for us. We are real and should not destroy this body He has given us. The Lord Jesus Christ knew when and how he was to die and could have prevented it. Thankfully for us — he did not.