Neville/What's obvious

[porphyria at mindspring.com]

David asked, on the main list:

<The question I really want to know the answer to is, what is it about us that makes things that are obvious to one person obscure to another?>
 
<...I theorised that it has, at least in part, to do with the 'two cultures' divide between scientists and humanists.>

David, I'm answering you on Chatter because I think my reply has more to do with my own experience, and my ideas about 'the reader' rather than the books themselves.

I think you could be right that it's a cultural thing. After all, what scientists and mathematicians consider proof of something is much more rigorous and fact-based than anyone would ever be able to be with art and fiction. Science and Math are supposed to have one right answer, but if literature only had one right 'meaning' then it wouldn't be literature; we'd have no need for poetry at all. Think of how differently the term "to analyze" is used from one discipline to the other: in science it means to determine something's component parts, in literature it often means something like guessing, to read between the lines and see what's not explicitly there. It's very nearly the opposite.

I've both studied and taught literature in school, and I have a very 'Humanities' background, so when I read a book I do look for certain types of clues that I've noticed in other books and read in other people's interpretations. Going by my 'literary' experience, I feel that there are a lot of indications that JKR wants us to wonder if Neville is under a memory charm, or at least think about memory charms, or think about Neville. But I think that a reader has to employ a certain style of reading in order to feel this way. It helps to think of the HP series as a whodunnint, both on the level of each book and the series as a whole. We do know that JKR drops clues, hints and forshadowings of future plot developments from book to book. Remember Sirius Black was mentioned right at the beginning of PS/SS! Any Polyjuice Potion is mentioned in CoS, but becomes the key to the mystery in GoF. So in a way, these books 'teach' you to read them that way, they teach you to look for little clues, motifs, or recurring issues and string them together. I'd say the fact that I feel that way has a lot to do with what I was taught in school, though I suspect it would be seemingly 'natural' for someone who reads lots of mystery novels and gets used to that sort of thing.

Does this begin to answer your question? It's a very interesting topic.

~~Porphyria


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