Real characters & persuasive argument

[Amy Z <lupinesque@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50363

Elkins wrote:

> But if you are trying to explain why you reacted to a given text
> in a particular way, then why on earth would you present evidence
> that had nothing to do with what you were trying to explain?  I
> don't understand this at all.  Wouldn't that be a rather *odd* 
thing 
> to do, really?
> 
> If what you are trying to convey, for example, is "Ron and Harry 
> strike me as really inconsiderate.  Their behavior upsets me a 
> great deal when I read the books.  Here are some examples of the 
> sorts of things they do that have made me feel this way," then 
> why on earth would you cite things that *hadn't* made you feel 
> that way?  I mean, that would just be downright *weird,* wouldn't 
> it?  I would certainly find it strange.  If nothing else, it would 
> make ones post utterly incoherent.

Not at all.

Let's take a really, really obvious example instead of a subtle one 
like whether Ron and Harry are on balance inconsiderate idiots.  
Let's say someone is trying to explain (<g> not persuade anyone else) 
that Snape strikes her as a particularly kind person.

So what does she do?  Does she say "He smiles at Draco [cite]" 
and "He saves Harry's life"?  That wouldn't really explain, would 
it?  She would have to talk about examples where Snape didn't appear 
to be kind and say something about why those are misleading, or how 
they don't come up so frequently as to outweigh her overall 
impression.  Surely she goes through some kind of internal process 
along those lines in order to reach her conclusion--somewhere in her 
own reading process she has dismissed many of Snape's obvious 
unkindnesses.

The same applies in this case.  We all reach different conclusions 
about the characters.  I'm interested in how other people reach their 
conclusions, and often come to see the characters differently because 
of how others perceive them and their excellent explanations of those 
perceptions.  But as a close reader of the books, I seldom do that in 
response to posts that leave out many of the salient points I've 
noticed.  No one is going to convince me that Snape is kind without 
dealing with the evidence to the contrary; no one is going to 
convince me that Harry is on balance inconsiderate without doing the 
same.

Ebony wrote:
 
> > Why would I point out all of Ron's very good characteristics in 
> > an essay in which I am speaking about why I do not like the idea 
> > of him with Hermione, when such evidence is tangential to the 
> > topic? 

Elkins wrote:

> Yes, precisely.  Why would one?  I see no reason why one would
> want to do that.  It's not a matter of sneaky rhetorical ploys,
> as some people seem to be implying.  It is simply a matter of 
> coherence and of *relevance.*

I don't think it's a sneaky rhetorical ploy; I think it's 
unconvincing.  As I read arguments about why Ron and Hermione 
wouldn't be a good couple, I'm thinking about each of their good 
qualities and the interactions between them that suggest possible 
good couplehood.  I'm posing little "yes, buts" in my mind.  Ignoring 
the incidents that argue against one's perception allows these "yes, 
buts" to flourish.

When you write about Crouch Sr., Elkins, you take on each of the 
incidents that are frequently cited as suggesting something positive 
about him and explain why you interpret them differently.  This makes 
me much more likely to join you in your interpretation than if you 
ignored them, because *I'm* not ignoring them; how can I?  I read the 
books closely and form my own tentative conclusions.

Elkins wrote:

> I believe that the problem here may be that you have misconstrued 
the 
> intended argument of both Eileen's and Ebony's posts.  If you look 
> back to Eileen's original post #50164, for example, you will see 
that 
> she wrote this sentence (set apart in a paragraph of its very own, 
in 
> fact, as if for emphasis):
> 
> > But I don't expect *anyone* to concede that *either*
> > Ron or Harry is as flawed as I read them. 
>
> In other words, she was never trying to "convince you," or anyone 
> else, to consider these characters as inconsiderate as she does.  

Fair enough.  She doesn't want to convince me, and I'm unconvinced, 
so we're all in agreement.  <g>  (Ebony, I suspect, would like to 
convince us that Ron and Hermione wouldn't be good together . . . am 
I wrong, Eb?)

> What I guess I'm finding upsetting here is the vague feeling that I 
> get from this thread, a feeling that so long as a reader's response 
> is sufficiently idiosyncratic (which is only to be expected: after 
> all, there would be very little point in bothering to set forth 
ones 
> reasons for having a *universal* response to a text, would there?, 
> which as I read it, was precisely a large part of Eileen's *point*) 
> and sufficiently powerfully expressed (which one would think we 
would 
> value on this list, but which sometimes it seems that we don't), 
that 
> it is therefore held to be in some way invalid, or even *unfair*

Again, I don't think it's unfair.  What did I write that makes you 
think I was saying so?

Amy Z