Long Grim Analysis (was Very Little Foreshadowing?)

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25670

Cindy, I'm sorry I took so long to respond to your question.  The 
reason is that I've gone through multiple drafts since that time 
trying desperately to do a better job of explaining the "author 
prophecy" type of foreshadowing because my first two efforts to do so 
were simply atrocious.  Unfortunately, everything I've come up with 
since then has been, though less confusing than my original two, still 
short of the mark.  So I'm giving up and instead of re-explaining 
author prophecy I'm only including the part of my draft that addressed 
your specific questions.

If I ever get the author prophecy RE-re-explanation :) right (which is 
seeming more and more unlikely) then perhaps I will post it 
seperately, but I just can't see making you wait any longer for me to 
address your specific comments while I fuss over my inability to put 
my thoughts on paper.  So here's the short of it:


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., cynthiaanncoe at h... wrote:
> Luke, 
> 
> There are answers, and then there are ANSWERS!  
> Thanks so much.  This shows that there is much
> more to the Grim than meets the eye.

It's a good thing that you can't see me because I am blushing bright 
red and giving the tips of Ron's ears a run for their money!

Really though thanks to EVERYONE for their compliments about some of 
my recent posts.  You all flatter me to an extent I'm sure I don't 
deserve (not that I'm complaining!).


> One observation, though.  I see no author prophesy
> in your analysis (or did I miss it?)  

Nope, you didn't miss it.  Though I could've missed something myself, 
I don't believe that there is any author prophecy related to the Grim. 
 Like I said, author prophecy is really quite rare.


> Could it be that Hermione's skepticism about the 
> Grim is properly viewed as author prophesy?

Hermione's suspicions about the Grim can't quite be author prophecy, 
because even though she turns out to be right, at the time that she 
made her statement we weren't supposed to straight-away accept what 
she said.  There existed an element of doubt (voiced by Ron--but 
specifically that we had reason to believe there was also a 
possibility the Grim was real and was really a death omen).  Author 
prophecy can't occur in an instance where there is doubt.

This would be more clear if I could just properly explain what author 
prophecy IS already.


> Is it even possible to identify author prophesy
> when there is so much misdirection going on?

You may have hit on something with the comment about how author 
prophecy might be hard to identify when there is misdirection going 
on.  Or more accurately that it is hard for author prophecy to exist 
when there is midirection going on (about the same idea).  I hesitate 
to ever set a hard-and-fast rule, but generally I'd say second-time 
foreshadowing (which involve a type of misdirection) and author 
prophecy probably won't be present on the same idea.  They might 
appear on the same page, even right next to each other, but still in 
reference to different ideas.  Because second-time prophecy is a 
set-up for things to turn out differently than you expect and with 
author prophecy things have to turn out the way you expect, because 
that's the whole point.

-Luke