From the main list: Which Series Has the Most Characters?

Dicentra spectabilis dicentra at xmission.com
Sat Jul 17 04:42:00 UTC 2004


106467

From:  "ladyramkin2000" <ladyramkin2000 at yahoo.co.uk> 
Date:  Thu Jul 15, 2004  10:47 pm 
Subject:  Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic
 
Neri wrote:

>I can't think of any other literature work with so many characters
>that is described from the POV of a single character

David Copperfield? Great Expectations? Jane Eyre? There must be
dozens.

Sylvia (who will be livid if Snape doesn't get all that is due to him)


106478
 
From:  "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at yahoo.com> 
Date:  Thu Jul 15, 2004  11:30 pm 
Subject:  Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic
 
> Neri wrote:
>
> >I can't think of any other literature work with so many characters
> >that is described from the POV of a single character
>
> Sylvia:
> David Copperfield? Great Expectations? Jane Eyre? There must be
> dozens.

Neri again:
Sylvia, you chose three books that I last read a long time ago, so I
don't want to make any assertions, but go to:

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/wizards-a-c.html

take a quick scan, and tell me if any of the above books has that
number of characters.

Neri

 
106479

From:  "ladyramkin2000" <ladyramkin2000 at yahoo.co.uk> 
Date:  Thu Jul 15, 2004  11:55 pm 
Subject:  Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic

 
Hi Neri
It wouldn't matter if David Copperfield had twenty times the
(considerable) number of characters Dickens employs, the story would
still be seen entirely from David's POV, just as the HP books are
seen entirely from Harry's. But I did enjoy going through the list
you recommended. And hats off to JKR for vast array of people she has
introduced us to. More power to her elbow!

Sylvia 


106483

From:  "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at yahoo.com> 
Date:  Fri Jul 16, 2004  1:07 am 
Subject:  Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic


> Sylvia wrote:
> Hi Neri
> It wouldn't matter if David Copperfield had twenty times the
> (considerable) number of characters Dickens employs, the story would
> still be seen entirely from David's POV, just as the HP books are
> seen entirely from Harry's.


Neri:
Sylvia, I don't exactly understand your answer. I didn't say HP isn't
written from the POV of Harry. I said that it is.

To clarify, what I asked is this:
Out of all literature works that ARE written from the POV of a single
character, is there one that has more characters than HP?

A quick count of the characters of "David Copperfield" listed in:

http://www.ellopos.net/dickens/copper_characters.html

yields less than 30 ("Great Expectations" is way behind). I doubt
very much if this is close to the number of characters in HP, even if
we forget for a moment that HP is only 5/7 finished.

Neri
 


106486

From:  silmariel <silmariel at telefonica.net> 
Date:  Thu Jul 15, 2004  2:36 am 
Subject:  Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic

 
El Vie 16 Jul 2004 00:30, nkafkafi escribió:
> > Neri wrote:
> > >I can't think of any other literature work with so many characters
> > >that is described from the POV of a single character

> > Sylvia:
> > David Copperfield? Great Expectations? Jane Eyre? There must be
> > dozens.

> Neri again:

> http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/wizards-a-c.html

> take a quick scan, and tell me if any of the above books has that
> number of characters.
>
> Neri

On a quick scan, 'Beach of Steel' by John Varley can perfectly have that
number of characters, and 'The Firebrand' by Marion Zimmer Bradley (no
wonder
because it's The Iliad rewritten from Cassandra's PoV).

Carolina



106487

From:  dkewpie <kewpiebb99 at yahoo.com> 
Date:  Fri Jul 16, 2004  2:42 am 
Subject:  Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: JKR and the Snape/Harry dynamic

--- ladyramkin2000 <ladyramkin2000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Neri wrote:
>
> >I can't think of any other literature work with so many characters
> >that is described from the POV of a single character
>
> David Copperfield? Great Expectations? Jane Eyre? There must be
> dozens.

How about "Lolita", one of JKR's most favorite books?
It's definitely one of the best example of "unreliable narrator" type of
literature.

K
 

 

106519

From:  "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at yahoo.com> 
Date:  Fri Jul 16, 2004  1:06 pm 
Subject:  The Number-of-Characters Challenge (was: JKR and the
Snape/Harry dynamic)
 
Neri originally mused:
I can't think of any other literature work with so many characters
that is described from the POV of a single character.

Neri later clarified:
To clarify, what I asked is this:
Out of all literature works that ARE written from the POV of a single
character, is there one that has more characters than HP?

Sylvia countered:
David Copperfield? Great Expectations? Jane Eyre? There must be
dozens.

Neri was not convinced:
A quick count of the characters of "David Copperfield" listed in:
http://www.ellopos.net/dickens/copper_characters.html
yields less than 30 ("Great Expectations" is way behind). I doubt
very much if this is close to the number of characters in HP, even if
we forget for a moment that HP is only 5/7 finished.

Adi:
Harry Potter books aren't written from Harry's point of view. They
are written from the author's bird-eye-view, if one may call it that.
Remember the first chapter of Book4 where the point of view shifted
to the action in the Riddle house though Harry wasn't there. Though
Harry was dreaming all this, it wasn't written like that.

Neri:
I won't get into technical terms of literature (so my ignorance won't
be revealed) but JKR does limit herself to what Harry sees and thinks
about 97% of the time. There are two chapters (out of about 100
overall) that are not written from Harry's PoV, plus several
paragraphs, mainly during quidditch games. This is good enough for me.

Carolina challenged:
On a quick scan, 'Beach of Steel' by John Varley can perfectly have
that number of characters, and 'The Firebrand' by Marion Zimmer
Bradley (no wonder because it's The Iliad rewritten from Cassandra's
PoV).

Neri now:
OK, you guys. It won't be enough to drop names. This is a serious
group here. If you come up with a book, you'll have to prove it.

No, I won't make you count all the characters in each book. We'll do
what scientists always do when they're too lazy to count. We'll
sample.

Take the book you proposed and open it in pages 1, 100, 200, 300,
400... and so on until the end of the book. Write down the characters
that are mentioned in these pages. Then count the characters you
wrote. An individual character only counts once, even if he/she
appears several times. Repeat the same procedure in HP, and I'm
talking about all five HP books taken together. Publish your result
here. And you'd better do a honest job, because if we're not sure
about the results, will send you to sample pages 50, 150, 250, 350
and so on.

I leave it to your fair judgment what name counts as a character and
what name doesn't, as long as you use the same criteria in both your
contender book and HP. To illustrate, I think that Blaise Zabini
shouldn't count as a character in HP (at least not currently) but
Seamus Finnigan should.

And remember, the prerequisite is that this book (or at least 97% of
it) is told from the PoV of the same one character. "Le Morte
D'Arthur", "War and Peace" and "The Wheel of Time" are out.


Neri





More information about the HPFGU-OTChatter archive