The Pensieve as Metaphor

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 68491

While we've been discussing the Pensieve it seems to have 
been forgotten that there are several ways to use it. I think these 
different ways of using the instrument are a metaphor for the way 
we perceive the characters in the novel

 We see three different modes of Pensieve use. In GoF, 
Dumbledore swirls the basin with his hand and the  faces of  
Snape and Karkaroff  swirl about on the surface and speak.

 When Dumbledore  prods The Pensieve with his wand, a single 
figure rises; Bertha Jorkins in GoF and Trelawney in OOP. Again 
they speak, but they also rotate, with their feet in the basin. This 
would mean that Dumbledore is not only seeing the person 
face-on, but also  from behind, a view he normally wouldn't have 
had at the time.

The third way is to plunge oneself into the memory. When 
Dumbledore retrieves Harry from the Pensieve, he doesn't 
appear to be re-experiencing the memory as his past self. 
Instead there are two Dumbledores in the vision, one of which is 
able to do things like interact with Harry, which the memory self 
cannot.

We don't know how truthful this other vision is supposed to be in 
the context of the books. Harry has been warned that some  
magical artifacts, like the Mirror of Erised,  contain neither 
knowledge nor truth. But it seems that the Pensieve is a kind of 
metaphor for the novels themselves. Certain of the characters 
swim about on the page but never come to life. Others assume a 
sort of three-dimensionality and we see more in them than 
what's on the page. Still others draw us bodily, as it were, into 
the world of the novels. When that happens, we really can't tell 
whether what we perceive is what the author actually meant for 
us to find there, or stems from our own imagination  and 
experience. 

What sort of "life" the characters take on in the reader's mind is 
not entirely under the control of the author, as what one sees in 
the Pensieve seems not entirely under the control of the person 
who laid down the memory.  It is not surprising that while we can 
agree about what's on the page, the more we speculate about 
the characters, the more diverse our view of them becomes.


Pippin