Twists, Patterns and Universal appeal (was what surprised you the most?)

[dfrankiswork at netscape.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 23943

Susanne Schmid wrote:

>In PS/SS, the big
>surprise was that the evil guy turned out to be
>Quirell, not Snape. CoS didn't offer a great deal of
>surprise in that sense, as from Lockhart you could
>easily expect *anything* and Ginny was being
>controlled but not evil by herself. PoA returns to the logic
>of no.1, only reversing it- bad guy turns out to be
>good guy, bad cat is good cat. GoF presents us with a
>double twist: for a brief moment, it seems that good
>guy is bad (when fake Moody takes Harry up to his
>office, until Dumbledore & co. arrive) and I admit
>that at that point I thought "Oh no, not another
>Quirrell!". Then, we discover that good guy was
>impersonated by bad guy, which is surprising enough.
>
>So, what can possibly be next without repeating
>patterns too often or becoming too artificial? Future
>will tell us.
>

I'm not too good at thinking up new twists but one thing that I wonder about is the appeal of the repeated patterns that come in HP.  So first we have the bad DADA prof, then we have the bad DADA prof who turns out to be an impostor, and so on.

One thing I liked in the later books is the way that familiar scenes are described, perhaps for the third or fourth time, and each time there is a new twist to give it interest and plot significance.

So, first time around, Diagon Alley is our introduction to the Wizarding World, and we have Quirrell and the mysterious package at Gringotts.  Next time, we are introduced to Lockhart and Lucius Malfoy, particularly the scene at Flourish and Blotts.  (When will Knockturn Alley reappear?).  Then, it provides the setting for the get-together with the Weasleys (another recurring pattern) and the arrival of Crookshanks.  In the fourth book, it is omitted in favour of the World Cup, which provides its function of introducing new non-Hogwarts characters such as Bagman, Crouch and Winky, and new plot elements such as the Dark Mark.

There are numerous other instances: the train (both coming and going), the final discussion with Dumbledore, the visit to Hagrid's hut, the Quidditch games, the denoument after going through a secret or hidden passage, the trial-by-Dursley, the accusation by Snape, the DADA lesson, Christmas presents and dinner, the end-of-year awards, the exotic beast (Norbert, Aragog, Buckbeak, Blast ended Skrewt), the exotic artefact (Erised, diary, map, Pensieve), the exotic being (Centaur, House Elf, Dementor, Merfolk), the Snape revelation, meeting the DADA teacher before term starts.  New ones are emerging: the significant Divination lesson, the discussion with Sirius, the face-off with Fudge... the list goes on.  Not all of these appear in all four books, but even when they are missing their absence is significant: no end of term awards when Cedric dies, for example.  No revelation about Snape in COS because it deals with the distant past.

I think some critics have seen this as a weakness ('she just repackages the material and laughs her way to the bank'), but I think both that it's deliberate and a large part of the appeal.

It will be interesting to see if JKR keeps up her seemingly endless ability to get new twists out of the same material, or whether there will now be a more decisive break with the 'Hogwarts pattern' as the action moves to the wider world.

David


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