House points and Dumbledore, Authorial Intent, and A Question

Fri Jan 31 05:45:41 UTC 2003

No: HPFGUIDX 51219

My goodness!  People have been busy today!  

A bunch of Point Award Scene thoughts here.  If I've replicated 
anyone's arguments, or missed out on anything vital, then please 
accept my apologies.  It's a bit tricky to compile a post when so 
many people have had such interesting things to say on the topic, and 
although I've tried to make this at least marginally coherent, I fear 
that I may jump around a bit.  

--------------

Errol wrote:

> Goodness Gracious! The end-of-term argument all over again!

<smile>

I just love this argument, I really do.  It's one of my all-time
favorite topics.  Heaven only knows why.

> I agree that the timing of the announcement was lousy. But it 
> was lousy because the room was already decorated and the Slytherins 
> had prematurely congratulated themselves. My question here is -- 
> Who decorates the hall for the feast? Did the Slytherins put up the 
> house colors anticipating the victory? 

You know, I had never considered that angle before?  If it came up 
last time around, I must have missed it.

Certainly, if the Slytherin students were indeed the ones who 
decorated the hall themselves, as a premature gloat, then that 
changes my interpretation of the event quite a bit!

Nonetheless, I really do find it hard to imagine that the decorations
were put up by students.  I feel convinced that they were the work of 
the school administration itself.  If Dumbledore himself doesn't do 
it, then one of the other professors does, or the elves do, or the 
banners and suchnot are somehow magically connected to whatever spell 
or device keeps track of all of those house points in the first 
place.  No matter what the precise mechanism, though, I feel certain 
that it still comes down to the school administration, just as I feel 
convinced that it was Dumbledore and the school administration, and 
not any particular group of students, who made the decision to 
decorate the hall in mourning black to honor Cedric's memory at the 
end of the year in GoF.

It's a nice thought, though.  But I really do think that Dumbledore 
allowed the Slytherins to rest assured in their assumption of 
victory on *purpose.*  Just to swipe it out from under them at 
the very last minute, in order to make his point.

I think he was in error to do so, myself.  Others, however, clearly 
disagree.

As for the fairness of the point award itself, though, I am in 
agreement with all of Errol's arguments on this count.  I don't
think that the fact that none of the other students had the 
opportunity to save the world from Voldemort is particularly
relevant.  Points seem to be *regularly* awarded or penalized for 
actions taken under special circumstances not shared by the student 
body as a whole -- the Troll in the toilet is a good example.  
Students with inner ear problems aren't going to be winning a whole 
lot of points for their house by playing Quidditch either, but that's 
okay: they have their chance to do so in other arenas.

Then, as I've said before, I don't see anything the slightest 
bit "fair" about the point system in the first place.  What on earth 
does winning Quidditch (and the houses do get points for *winning* 
it, you know, not for displays of sportsmanship while playing it) 
have to do with comportment or moral virtue?  What does knowing 
information that you have never been taught and which is not included 
in any of your coursework, but which you could only have come by 
through outside reading, have to do with diligence?  What does not 
breaking curfew have to do with academic achievement?  What about 
speaking respectfully to ones professors?

None of these things really has a thing to do with each other. They 
are merely displays of those traits (athletic prowess, intellectual 
curiosity, compliance with the rules, respect for ones elders) which 
the Hogwarts admin wants to encourage in students.  The willingness 
to risk ones life in order to prevent an evil wizard from gaining the 
secrets of eternal life is presumably also such a trait.  Therefore, 
it is worth points.  And (quite rightly, IMO) lots of 'em.

No, it's not the point award itself that bugs me.  It's the timing.  
Not to mention the *attitude.*

Maria wrote:

> I was really sorry for Slytherin at the end of PS. Not only 
> did they lose in such a "humiliating" way, but even 
> more - *everybody* is incredibly happy to see Slytherin lose. 
> I don't think anyone deserves that.

Yeah, I know what you mean.  At the same time, though, what we see of 
their behavior in the first book also makes me feel as if they really 
did earn that dislike.  Also, I think it's pretty natural for people 
to feel happy to see the seven-year-champions finally get taken 
down.  I'm a New Yorker, and yet I always used to root against the 
Yankees, just because I was so sick of them *winning* all the time.  
If I lived in the Potterverse, I'm sure that I'd share Ron's fondness 
for the Cannons.  ;-)

I feel a lot more sympathy for the Slyths these days, actually, 
when they've been on this losing streak for three years, and yet the 
Huffs and the Claws are *still* prone to cheering on their constantly-
winning rivals.  Even though I suspect that their rotten 
interpersonal skills contribute to their being not very well-liked, I 
still rather sympathize with them, much as I tend to sympathize with 
Snape, who similarly brings his unpopularity down upon himself by 
means of his own bad behavior.

Grey Wolf asked:

> Do you really think the Slytherins would've been less ticked 
> off if they had lost the House Cup two days before, when 
> Gryffindor suddenly found itself one moning with 170 extra, 
> unspecified points? If you don't mind me saying so, that 
> would've ticked them off exactly the same way, if not more.

Of course it would have ticked them off!  Just look at how much it 
ticked off the Gryffindors, when they woke up one morning to learn 
that a bunch of their own idiot first-years had lost them 150 points 
in the middle of the night!  They were mad enough to engage in 
ostracism over that, weren't they?  Ostracism of their own house-
mates.  At a boarding school, in a milieu in which said housemates 
had absolutely nowhere else to turn for social engagement.  Charming.

No, I'm sure that if the Slyths woke up one fine spring morning to 
find that Gryffindor had been awarded 170 points overnight, they 
would have been terribly suspicious, and they would have spent a lot 
of time muttering darkly among themselves about bias and so forth.  

And Dumbledore *still* could have taken advantage of the feast to 
explain to everyone precisely what had warranted the point award.  It 
would have been a far more emotionally effective way to make the 
point that he was trying to make, IMO, and actually, I *do* think 
that it would have ticked off the Slyths a whole lot less.  

I don't think that conflating the message of our protagonists' 
heroism with the deliberate humiliation of House Slytherin did very 
much to convince the Slyths that there *wasn't* bias in play.  Nor do 
I see the slightest bit of evidence in the books to suggest that what 
Dumbledore did taught the Slytherin students a damned thing about 
sportsmanship, or about fair play, or about virtue, or about self-
sacrifice, or about generosity, or about rolling with the punches, or 
about trust, or about faith, or about the possible benefits of
actually *listening* to what those in authority have to say -- rather 
than, say, joining a terrorist organization aimed at bringing down 
the current status quo.  

Well, actually...allow me to rephrase that.  

I see no evidence that what Dumbledore did taught them any *good* 
lessons about any of those things.  

There were certainly plenty of lessons to be learned from his attempt 
at moral instruction.  But I don't think they were at all the lessons 
that it was really beneficial for the Slytherin students to be 
learning.  If you get my drift.

Not, mind you, that I think that anything that Dumbledore did was 
very likely to instill the Slytherin students with any deep respect 
for the virtues of fair play.  But if that was indeed what he was 
trying to do, then he picked the wrong strategy, IMO, just as I think 
that he picked the wrong strategy with Student!Snape in the aftermath 
of the infamous Pr*nk.

Maria:

> Dumbledore must be aware of the dislike between Gryffindor 
> and Slytherin, but his actions speak of the fact that he 
> simply doesn't care about it - he increases the dislike even 
> more, when he, IMO, should be trying to let them reconcile.

Yes, precisely.  That's exactly how I feel about it as well.  The 
Gryff-Slyth rivalry strikes me as a real *problem* in wizarding 
society.  It's hard for me not to read it as having helped to 
facilitate Voldemort's first rise -- and it now seems likely to 
help facilitate his second rise as well.  

I often find Dumbledore a troubling character because while at times 
he seems to be set forth as a person who is unusually capable of 
*transcending* what I perceive as the true evils of the Potterverse, 
at other times he seems to be either oblivious to it or even helping 
to facilitate it.  This is a tension, an ambiguity in his character 
that I find simultaneously intriguing and unsettling.

Of course, it's also what makes me enjoy him so much as a character.  
If he didn't strike me as so very fallible, then I'm sure that I 
would find him perfectly unbearable. ;->

That doesn't make Dumbledore evil (and yes, Grey Wolf -- don't 
worry!  I know that you don't believe in an Evil!Dumbledore!  This is 
just on route to making a broader point).  It just means that he's 
flawed, and that he makes mistakes.  As indeed, he has been *shown* 
to be, over and over again in the books.  Indeed, from that snippet 
we've now seen of Book Five, it looks as if this trend is likely to 
continue: Dumbledore *should* have told Harry something five years 
ago.  But he didn't.  In short, he made a *mistake.*

I think that this was probably what Snapesangel was trying to get at 
when she wrote:

> I think you rather have the idea that Dumbledore is 
> omnipotent.  This is clearly not true. He makes mistakes, or 
> fails to act, in several situations(or so we can infer, since 
> bad things have happened during his tenure as a teacher and 
> then as Headmaster.)

<snip very good list of Dumbledore's mistakes>

Yup.  (Although not to be pedantic here, but I think maybe 
"omniscient" might have been even more what you meant?  Not only that 
he isn't all-powerful, but also that he doesn't know everything, that 
he cannot "see all?")

Dumbledore can make mistakes, and he does.  That he can and does make 
mistakes *is* canonical.  To suggest that he may have made one when 
it comes to the point award may run contrary to what seems to have 
been the authorial intent, but it is in no way contrary to the 
letter, or even really to the *spirit* of the canon.

But as to that pesky authorial intent. . . .

Did the *author* intend for the reader to view Dumbledore's last 
minute point award in PS/SS as one of his mistakes?  

Well, obviously none of us can say for sure, but I personally don't 
think that she did.  

And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.  

How JKR *wanted* people to read the scene matters diddly in the long 
run.  In cold hard reality, many readers *do* interpret the scene in 
just that way, and that reading is perfectly compatable with all of 
the other places in the text where Dumbledore is shown to be 
imperfect: good, yes, and very well-intended. . . .but also *very* 
fallible.

If the author wanted this scene to be read one way and one way only, 
then she made a *mistake.*  Sometimes authors, very much like 
Dumbledore himself, do make mistakes.  They write scenes which they 
mean to bolster one aspect of the story, but which in fact, for many 
readers, bolster a completely different aspect of the story instead.  
So long as the scene can still serve to bolster some *coherent* 
aspect of the story, though, then the narrative can still work.

In fact, sometimes it works far better than it would have if the 
authorial intent had held sway.  I once read an excerpt from Henry 
James' journal, in which he described what he *meant* to say in the 
novel _What Maisie Knew._  Now, I just love Henry James, and I really 
like _What Maisie Knew_ a *lot.*  But I think that it would have been 
kind of a lame book if Henry James had actually *succeeded* in 
writing it to say what he thought that he was trying to say, because 
what actually ended up on the page is *way* more interesting
that what he describes in his journal.

It's good for fiction to be somewhat ambiguous, IMO.  Unambiguous 
works of fiction -- particularly *morally* unambiguous works of 
fiction -- are really not very enjoyable to read.  Even very small 
children tend to view them with profound disaste, and indeed, 
often voice their contempt for such stories in terms far more harsh 
and vituperative than we adults would be likely to use.  ;->

Bboy wrote:

> The next point is that, we must view this not from Slytherin's 
> perspective or Gryffindor's, but from the perspective of a reader. 

The fact of the matter is, though, that all readers do not read from 
the same perspective.

It's quite obvious that opinions here differ a great deal.  To some 
people, the last minute victory was indeed (as I agree with you the 
author very likely intended it to be) thrilling, exciting, 
climactic.  A dramatically satisfying end to the story.  

To others, however, it left a very nasty taste in the mouth.

I confess that I had the latter reaction to the scene, the first time 
that I read the book.  I did not care for it at all.  It was a total 
eye-roller for me.  In fact, I found it sufficiently annoying that I 
probably would never have bothered to read CoS at all, had I not 
brought it along with me on the same plane ride.  After finishing SS, 
it was either CoS, the in-flight mag, or a nap.  And I wasn't feeling 
sleepy. ;-)

I didn't really start liking the series until CoS, and part of the 
reason for that was that I saw many signs in CoS that the author was 
setting about to undercut to number of the things that I had so 
DISliked about SS: the pronounced yet unexamined dualism, for 
example, and the emphasis on inheritance, both of which are 
privileged in the first volume, but take *serious* cuts to the jaw by 
the end of the second.

> From the perspective of writing a fun thriling story that 
> encourages us to root for the hero and feel the thrill of 
> his victory, JKR got it right.

For some readers, she did.  And for other readers, she *really* got 
it wrong.

It seems obvious to me, however, that even people who did not read 
this scene as an unambiguous "feel good" moment can still enjoy the 
series as a whole.  They're all over this list, right?  

So obviously either the ways in which the scene "failed" for them 
were not sufficient to turn them off of the books, or their reading 
of the scene was not, in fact, a "failure" at all, but rather, an 
alternative type of authorial *success.*

Bboy still:

> I do get the point being made from a real world perspective, but 
> from a literary perspective, the last minute vitory snatch from 
> your foes, was the right choice for a thrilling happy end to the 
> story.

What did you think of the "cursing the Slyths on the train" scene at 
the end of GoF?

I ask because that scene strikes me as very similar to the point 
award in that it is a humiliating defeat for the Slytherins which 
makes some readers cheer with glee, but which always leaves a very 
nasty taste in my mouth.

I also think, though, that the scenes are very *un*like each other, 
not merely in terms of what is actually being depicted (a defeat 
handed down by an authority figure vs. a squabble between peers, for 
example), but also because I think that Train Stomp is presenting 
much the same dynamic to the reader, but in a far more ambiguous and
morally complex light.  

The similarities and differences that I perceive between these two 
scenes often strike me as evidence that the series is indeed moving 
away from an "us vs. them" aesthetic and striking out into some 
rather more complicated thematic waters.

But now I'm *really* curious to hear what others think on this.  So a 
question for the list as a whole:

Did the scene on the train at the end of GoF have the same emotional 
effect on you as the point award scene at the end of PS/SS?  If not, 
then why not?  What are the differences in how these two scenes are 
presented to the reader?  How do we interpret those differences in 
light of the motion of the series as a whole?

Elkins