[HPforGrownups] Harry's POV (was Snape is NOT Sexy)

[Kelly Grosskreutz]

No: HPFGUIDX 56485

Diana Williams said:

> Harry is the Point-of-View character in the story, and if you'll look
> back at the story, it is *not* told from the omniscient narrator POV.

And severin_szaltis corrected:
> I'm afraid not; it *is* an omniscient narrator (or ON). The fact that
> the narrator only chooses to tell us what Harry feels and thinks and
> not the other characters, is neither here nor there with regard to
> the omniscience of the narrator.

And I (Morgan) suggest:

I'm afraid this is mostly a disagreement on technical terms. Some
people use "pov" (point of view) and "narrator" as synonyms. I don't
know what are the correct academic terms (especially not in English
grammar). I see a distinction in the way the terms are usually used in
fanfiction and literature discussions: narrator being, strictly
speaking, the voice that tells the story, and "pov" being a possible
limitation to the narrator's perspective and knowledge.

And I (Kelly) contribute:

According to the notes I took at an author panel I attended last summer,
there are two types of third person narration:  omniscient and focused.
Straight from my notes:
Focused third person locks into one character's head at a time.  In other
words, a narrator is telling the story, but for a bit of the story the
narrator might only be telling it from Person A's point of view, then he
might shift to Person B's.



Using this definition, the Harry Potter books are focused third person. Also
using this definition, an author using focused third person does not have to
stay with his/her original narrator, but can shift to a different narrator
if s/he so chooses.  It is acceptable to have more than one point of view.
Although JKR chooses to tell the majority of the story through one
viewpoint, Harry's, there is nothing saying she can't switch to someone else
for a short bit.  I don't have a problem with her switching viewpoints
because it is obvious that it is not from Harry's point of view.  She does
it in such a way that I don't find myself thinking, "How can Harry know
this?  He's not even here!  Oh, this is from *Ron's* POV."  I do agree I
found it slightly disorienting in the beginning of GoF to see a different
writing style, but it fit with the contents of that chapter.  The style
seemed to make the chapter even more serious than normal, and it had the
effect of driving home the seriousness of the contents even more simply
*because* the writing style was different.  As for Ron at the Quidditch
match, maybe that could have been done in a different way, but I don't think
it would have been as effective having Ron tell that story later to Harry as
it was for us to actually *watch* what was going on in the stands.  Or maybe
that's just a sign that PS/SS was her first book, since I can't think of
many times she's done it later on.



Kelly Grosskreutz

http://www.idcnet.com/~ivanova/