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

[linman6868 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23946

David Frankis wrote:

> 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.  
<snip> 
> 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.
<snip> 
> 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.

Exactly! Precisely! Just what I was going to say myself!  Keep it up, 
Chief, keep it up! ;)

I too think JKR's doing this deliberately.  It's part of her comedic 
genius to make us all expect the list of things David made and I 
snipped (don't forget the traditional catastrophe on Halloween 
night!), and yet to be endlessly amused, shocked, horrified, and/or 
taken aback when each item makes its appearance.  It's her way of 
preserving continuity and adding novelty at the same time, and IMO is 
one of the girders that holds up her universe for us.  We might get 
bored with endless attempts to have something wholly new and magical 
happen with each successive book; we won't even think to be bored if 
we are looking forward (like a child who's memorized a bedtime story) 
to things we *know* are going to happen, on tenterhooks waiting to 
see how they manifest themselves.  My recent convert told me after 
finishing GoF that she'd learned to "watch the DADA teacher" for the 
key to the mystery, but was still floored when she found out what 
that key actually was.

I expect that in future books, the salient -- tropes is the only word 
I can think of, and it's so gradschoolish -- will continue to 
manifest themselves, but on a larger scale and without being confined 
to Hogwarts, as we've seen with the Quidditch World Cup replacing a 
trip to Diagon Alley (as David pointed out) or the Halloween 
Catastrophe being an international embarrassment (Harry's upsetting 
entrance in the Tournament).  And needless to say, the stakes will be 
higher.

Lisa I.