Harry's POV revisited

[love2write_11098 at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 16074

Recently in English class, we talked about a different kind of POV. I 
haven't been participating in this discussion, so I don't know that 
it's been brought up: third-person subjective (we're reading William 
Kennedy's Ironweed which is an extreme example of this).

Third-person subjective can also be third-person limited, as in the 
case of HP. We have Harry's POV in that we can only see what he sees -
- with the exception of the Quidditch scene in PS and the first 
chapter of GoF, there are no scenes where Harry is not present. He 
has to overhear things or be told them, or be in on the conversation 
in some way, in order for us to hear or know things.

But third-person subjective is a little different. In that POV, the 
narrator is almost another character, one who is not all-knowing, but 
who has his/her own opinions of things. In Ironweed, the narrator-
character often asks rhetorical questions, or slips from an educated 
dialect into that of the bums that populate the story. In HP, I would 
say that the narrator usually agrees with Harry, but in some cases 
(as with Quirrell) makes it obvious that that is not what the 
narrator-character thinks has happened. There are other possiblities 
too -- I wonder how much Harry has really noticed about Ron's crush 
on Hermione, for instance. We usually get all that information from 
the narrator (though at the end of the Yule Ball chapter, Harry does 
think that Hermione "got the point more than Ron" or something like 
that).

The third-person subjective part of the HP narration is probably 
secondary to the third-person limited. My guess is that usually we 
get Harry's opinion (perhaps this is because the narrator-character 
agrees with it most of the time). Occasionally, though, I think our 
narrator-character is more observant for the sake of the reader.

What do you guys think?

Stacy