Neville, with or without the Canary Creams

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 36643

In trying to account for a sudden change of focus in my Neville 
argument, I explained my shift in interpretive style by explaining 
that I had felt that David "might feel a bit more comfortable with 
a far more academic/analytical and far less popular/'fannish' 
(personalized, interactive, extrapolative, rebellious) approach to 
the text."

David responded:

> I have rather stacked the case against myself recently, haven't I? 
> But I only get uncomfortable when one approach is implied to be 
> superior to another.

Okay.  I'm sorry if I was unjustly stereotyping you there, BTW.  I 
was just trying to keep the lines of communication open.

Personally, I don't consider any interpretative style "better" than
any other.  I tend to view them primarily as tools of analysis: like
all tools, they have different uses and are suited for different 
tasks.

In a forum like this one, though, they also serve double-duty as the 
tools of interpersonal communication.  And when it comes to
communication, the most important first step, IMO, is to settle on a 
language that everybody involved can feel reasonably comfortable 
with -- or at least to make some effort to signal the shift if one 
plans on switching suddenly from one mode of discourse to a different 
one.

In my last message, I stated my belief that my own interpretation of 
Neville's character is most likely *not* the author's own, adding my 
opinion that JKR does not really understand, or "get," people like 
Neville.  

I then, however, suggested that by revealing in GoF that Neville is 
not, in fact, nearly as emotionally transparent a character as he may 
have appeared in the previous three volumes, Rowling has left him in 
a somewhat indeterminate state.  By signalling to the reader that 
Neville does indeed have a hidden internal life, but by not yet 
choosing to reveal what that internal life might actually be, she has 
effectively made him a "black box." 

Finally, I listed a number of places in the text where I felt there 
existed a strong possibility that the reader's initially-encouraged 
reading of the character might turn out not be the truthful one.  I 
concluded with: 

> What *does* Neville think about? What *are* his real opinions? His 
> real motivations? We really just don't know. He's a highly opaque 
> character who has been masquerading for three books as an extremely 
> transparent one, and that makes you wonder (or it makes me wonder, 
> at any rate) what else might be going on there.


David wrote:

> I'm slightly lost. Doesn't that list of points suggest that JKR 
> *does* 'get' Neville? 

Not necessarily.  To me, all that it really suggests is that JKR does 
indeed wish to introduce the reader to the notion that Neville *does* 
have a hidden inner life: that he thinks about things that he does 
not share with the protagonists, that he is capable of keeping very 
big secrets, that he is not at all as transparent a personality as he 
may at first have appeared.  In short, I do think that GoF sets out 
to establish quite firmly in the reader's mind the understanding that 
with Neville, What You See isn't necessarily really All That's There.

But that doesn't mean that what JKR will eventually establish really 
to *be* there is anything like what *I* imagine to be there.  She's 
just shown us that he has a hidden inner life.  What the nature of 
that inner life might be, however, is as yet undetermined.  When it 
finally is determined, I will in truth be *very* surprised (although 
obviously also very pleased) if it should turn out to be anything 
like what my own personal identification with the character has led 
me to imagine it to be.


> Or is that a third Neville, different from that of Hermione's 
> imagination *and* your identification? 

Well, in some ways I guess that he *is* a kind of Third Neville!  The 
post-GoF Neville is Indeterminate Neville: because the author has 
chosen to leave him in a highly indeterminate state at this point in 
the narrative, until Book Five comes out it remains possible for him 
to be simultaneously the Neville of Hermione's imagination *and* the 
Neville of my own identification, thus allowing me to maintain my 
favored reading without running into any strong canonical 
contradictions.

Once the author chooses to open that box, though, then Indeterminate 
Neville will likely collapse, and I'll just be stuck with JKR's 
Neville...whoever *he* should turn out to be.


> Or are you just unconvinced by your own argument?

There are in fact two separate arguments here: one of possibility; 
and one of probability, or plausibility.

I certainly think that the argument of possibility holds firm.  The 
possibility *does* exist that the author intends to do something that 
I will personally find highly enjoyable -- compelling, convincing, 
satisfying, what have you -- with Neville.  The character is in an 
indeterminate state at this point in the narrative; he could 
therefore still be taken in a direction that I would enjoy.

But do I think it *probable* that JKR's intentions towards the 
character are what I would prefer for them to be?  No.  Quite 
frankly, I don't.  I consider it highly unlikely.


> David, now dreaming about the kitchen table in the Elkins household 

<blink>

The kitchen table?

<sudden look of comprehension>

Oh!  You mean that thing in the kitchen?  The thing that's covered 
with all of those stacks of books, and the CDs, and the art supplies, 
and the polyhedral dice, and the "To Do" lists, and the potted 
Christmas Cactus that we meant to find another place for sometime 
last year, and all of those unopened envelopes marked: "Dated 
Material -- Open IMMEDIATELY?"

Yeah, I kind of know what you mean.  Sometimes I have dreams about 
that thing too.


-- Elkins, who thinks that she ought to get some sort of special 
prize for refraining from ever once referring explicitly to that #%&@ 
feline of Mr. S. in the main body of this message.