[HPforGrownups] Point of View

[Hollydaze]

No: HPFGUIDX 31236

I can not find the exact post that I wish to reply to but it is related to this email so I am replying to this one instead.
> > Actually, the first chapter of GoF *is* sort of in Harry's PoV...He
> dreamed
> > that entire scene. It is unclear as to how much is what Harry saw
> (dreamt) and
> > how much, if any, is a different perspective
> >
> > Calypso
>
> No, it was definitely in Frank Bryce's POV.  The whole device with
> Harry later dreaming it (and not evening knowing who the old man was)
> was just a convenient (and frankly, rather forced) conversion back to
> the standard Harry POV that we've seen previously.  I still think
> that doing this was a transitional stage: it now makes sense for the
> POV to have other shifts as the books go on.

Phil wrote:
>We first get the viewpoint of the villagers of Little Hangleton -- 
<SNIP>
> Complicating these points of view -- local gossip (and all the points > of view contained therein) and Frank Bryce
> -- is the fact the chapter concludes with Harry waking from a dream.  > Inasmuch as Harry may be said to have
> dreamed some or all of the first chapter, the question, then, is how > much of it did he dream?

Even with all this discussion of Harry dreaming/having visions and so it still being his point of view, there is one really obvious part of the books that no one seems to have pointed out that is definitely NOT from Harry's point of view: not a dream or a vision:

The first chapter of the first book.

None, out of the whole of that chapter, is from Harry's point of view and if anything it is mostly from Vernon's point of view, as the book follows Vernon around "all day". You get his opinions of the goings on. Then we meet Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid but we don't really get any of their opinions and it isn't really from their point of view and from then on we are following Harry. But surely this shows that even if it is only for a chapter, JK is capable of writing things from other characters points of view and may do so again.

I also have the feeling that only the "now" part of the Frank Brice bit was in Harry's dream, where Frank found and listened to LV and was killed, the rest of it seemed to be background information and even with the talking in the pub was not really from any one person's point of view.

HOLLYDAZE!!!




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]