Dissin' the Slyths

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 38518

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "marinafrants" <rusalka at i...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "dicentra63" <dicentra at x> wrote:
> > Maybe JKR didn't
> > have her chops down yet in Book 1, so Dumbledore's "tactical error" is
> > actually hers.  On the other hand, I would need to see evidence that
> > the Slyths and Snape took it any harder than Neville did when he ate
> > the canary creams. Do we hear them mutter about how they hate
> > Dumbledore and his kind because of how they're being treated at
> > Hogwarts? 
> 
> Given the perspective of the books, we wouldn't hear it if it did
> happen.  The Slytherins could be holding daily bitch-fests on the
> subject in their common room, and unless Harry finds an occasion to
> lurk behind the arras, we'll never know about it.  We do know that the
> Slytherins don't like Dumbledore, and none of them shed any tears when
> he was temporarily removed in CoS.
>
If the effect the switcheroo had on the Slyths was significant to the
story, JKR would have found some way to make their reaction visible. 
And I think they didn't mourn Dumbledore's departure in CoS because
he's a known muggle-lover: their distain for him predated the last
chapter of SS/PS and probably even predated the novel itself.  
> 
> Perhaps it all comes down to a difference in reading philosophies,
> then.  I believe that a work of fiction can have implications and
> meanings that the writer didn't intend, and that the unintended
> interpretations can be as valid as the intended ones.  (Not always,
> but they can be.)

I can deal with finding *meanings* the author didn't intend (I'd never
have made it through a literature program if I didn't), but as far as
*events* go (and a bad reaction from the Slyths would count as an
event), it didn't happen unless it is either shown or alluded to in
the text itself.  And it wasn't.  Which is why I can see this only as
a mild FLINT, if that, not as a demonstration of Dumbledore's bad
judgment.  

(I guess I've just corrected too many Freshmen papers in which their
reading of events was so off-the-wall that I got really sensitive
about deviating from what the text presented as opposed to what their
gut reactions to it were.  [And I'm not comparing your analysis to
those Freshmen papers, believe me.  Freshmen papers don't have a leg
to stand on; you do.  And you can form a coherent paragraph :D])  
 
> I also can't just discard my knowledge of the real world as irrelevant
> to my reading of the books.  Fantasy and science fiction writers do
> sometimes deliberately construct totally alien societies where nothing
> that we know applies, and readers must put aside all their human
> preconceptions in order to immerse themselves in the story.  But I
> don't think JKR intended that any more than she intended for us to
> condemn Dumbledore.

I wouldn't call for a discarding of real-world knowledge (it's
impossible to do) but rather for a privileging of the inner logic of
the fictional world such that it gets the benefit of the doubt. 
Unfortunately, fictional worlds don't have all the bases covered.  I
don't know to what degree we can fill in the blanks for them with our
own, beliefs, PoVs, and such.

--Dicentra, who attributes whatever error there is to JKR and not to
Dumbly-dorr