Perspective and the Potterverse wasRe: FF: Speculation - a matter of perspective

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 38807

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., heidit at n... <heidit at n...> wrote:
>>>>>>  I did not use any
 fanfic in my original post when I suggested that in a manner that 
parallels Pride & Prejudice, Draco might find it in him to 
overcome the elements of his attitude and behaviour that would 
preclude a relationship with Hermione (see
> various Draco Redemption threads). I admit that in rereading 
the books back in 2000, I did look at the narration and events 
from other perspectives - as the book is told almost entirely in 
third person limited and from Harry'sperspective, we rarely know 
what the other characters are truly thinking, as we see everything 
more or less through Harry's eyes. 
 
> Canon itself plays with perspective in a fascinating way - on 
your first read of Goblet of Fire, for example, the reader likely 
sees Moody as a good guy almost all the way through the book - 
but on a second read, knowing that Moody is really Barty Crouch, 
faithful servant of Voldemort, [snip remainder of example]<<<<

I am not sure I would call this playing with perspective. On 
second reading, our viewpoint is still the same: through Harry's 
eyes. It is our knowledge set that is different.  What we imagine 
Crouch is thinking the second time through will change 
drastically, but that is not the same  exercise as  re-imagining 
the entire novel from Crouch's perspective, or from Draco's. 

Perspective in a novel, like perspective in art, is an illusion. The 
fact that we see Harry's world mostly through his eyes gives us 
an illusion of depth, a sense that the wizarding world has an 
independent existence. This illusion, like the illusion of 
perspective on a stage, can only work from certain points of view. 

If you leave the author's chosen viewpoint and go poking  around 
backstage as it were,  you will find  the illusion spoiled. It is like 
looking at a backdrop up close. What seems realistically  
rendered from your seat in the audience is quite impressionistic 
from a few feet away. Try to re-create the Potterverse from 
another character's point of view and you confront the fact that 
much of Rowling's world is not realistically rendered after  all. 
Certainly the Slytherins are not.

The young Slytherins are one dimensional and most of their 
atmospheric and symbolic contribution to the Potterverse rests 
in this. However, Slytherin's artificiality has to remain 
imperceptible to the characters themselves. Harry can fear 
Slytherins or co-operate with them, or ignore them. The one thing 
he cannot do is recognize that Slytherin itself is absurd,  a comic 
conceit or a travesty. It is really not a House but an anti-House, 
the house that quite unapologetically socializes children to be 
anti-social.  Of course Dumbledore can not recognize this either. 
He can explain why Harry is truly a Gryffindor, but how could he 
tell the Slytherins why they are truly Slytherin without becoming 
someone other than the wise and benevolent Headmaster? He 
can't very well explain to them that they are part of a literary 
construct <g>. 

Of course this means that Hogwarts is delightfully dysfunctional, 
another thing  the characters can't be allowed to grasp without 
ruining the fun. Slytherin is the elephant in the Hogwarts living 
room. Everybody knows that  Slytherins go bad but only the 
bumptuous Hagrid is willing to speak of it.  Dumbledore, for all 
his wisdom, literally does not see. 

As long as the  Slytherins are part of the background, their one 
dimensionality is appropriate to the story.I can interpret Slytherin 
as a wry social commentary on all the sad institutions which 
inadvertently perform its function in the real world, or as Harry's 
Don't Bees, or as a symbolic representation of one part of the 
human personality.   

 The moment I try to  conceive of them as morally complicated, 
however, their situation makes no sense. Are they Slytherins 
because the Hat recognizes that at the age of eleven they are 
"criminally incurable"? OTOH, if they aren't hard cases, why  treat 
them as if they were?  I don't think  Rowling can show us 
Dumbledore or Hermione or anyone else trying to redeem  the 
Slytherins. The Slytherins aren't there to be redeemed. They 
aren't real enough for that.

Yet Slytherin is a House divided. At the end of PS/SS, Snape 
shakes McGonagall's hand while Draco sits fuming. At the end 
of GoF,  some  Slytherins stay seated while others rise. This 
division may take the place of the complexity which JKR cannot 
show us. Draco, for example, could change sides and *then* be 
developed as a complex character, just as Snape has been.

Pippin