Out of Harry's Head (was Re: Ch 14 GoF, weird?)

[vjmullen]

No: HPFGUIDX 60377

>bboy_mn writes:
>I think that is the advantage of a third person narrator who, none the less, 
narrates from Harry's point of view. This narrator has insight into Harry's 
thoughts and feelings, as well as insight into the greater world around Harry. 
Sort of like the omniscience narrator.

>JOdel writes:
>I suspect that she is going to have to do this [broaden point of view] as the 
series progresses and the situation in the wizarding world worsens. She is 
going to have to have a way of showing the reader information that Harry has 
no way of learning until much later. 
 But as the scope of the opposition 
between Voldemort and the rest of the ww grows we are almost certainly going 
to reach a point that we will have to see the action from the PoV of someone 
other than Harry or Voldemort.

I reply:
As a reader interested almost as much in the craft of writing as the story 
itself, I believe this thread begs discussion of GoF chapter one. Throughout 
the series, JKR employs a third-person omniscient narrator focused almost 
exclusively on Harry’s point of view, excepting PS/SS Chapter 1 and GoF 
Chapter 1. The narrator (which in literary circles is recognized as *separate* 
from the author) does seem to have a voice, humor, and sometimes even value 
judgment of his/her own, separate from Harry, as evidenced in the passages 
recording the turban dream in PS/SS and the time comments in GoF. But in 
Fiction Writing 101 at college, one of the first things students concentrate 
on is the continuity of point of view. And while JKR doesn’t ever leave 
third-person omniscience, she does not tell the story from Harry’s point of 
view in PS/SS Chapter 1 or GoF Chapter 1. The first chapter of the first book 
is more of a "true" omniscient point of view, which I accept easily because it 
serves as an introduction and gives us details, all of which are proving more 
important as the series progresses.

Chapter 1 of GoF is different, though; the point of view is that of Frank 
Bryce for the entire chapter after the narrator’s introduction. When creating 
a world filtered so stringently through one character’s eyes – in fact, in 92 
out of 94 chapters of the cannon – the author shows something is *direly* 
important to the reader’s knowledge when switching point of view.

My question is simply "what" – what is so important in the Riddle house scene 
that we have to see it filtered through Frank Bryce’s eyes instead of Harry’s? 
JKR segues into Harry’s point of view by having him see this incident in his 
dream, but why didn’t she just narrate from Harry’s point of view like all his 
other dreams? We get a nice bit of comedy in Frank Bryce’s inner reactions to 
hearing words like "Quidditch, which was not a word at all." But why should we 
see into this common Muggle’s brain when there are so many other delightful 
characters whose psyches we are dying to see in detail? How would GoF be 
different if the chapter were from Harry’s point of view – or even more 
severe, how would the book be different if the chapter weren’t there *at all*? 
I think we still would have understood the action. On the first read, you 
almost forget about Chapter 1 by the time you get to the end. But what 
mysteries from Chapter 1 remain unsolved? I can come up with two: What is 
other murder that Voldemort says must be completed before he kills Harry,(my 
theory: he means Crouch Sr.), and who owns the Riddle house? Any others? 
Anyone?

My (not completely satisfying) explanation is that Frank Bryce was not just a 
plot device for Dumbledore to read about in the newspaper and grasp as a clue 
pointing toward Voldemort’s return. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say I’ll be 
downright *disappointed* if JKR broke her carefully constructed point of view 
to show us the scene from Frank Bryce’s eyes merely for some cute 
Muggle-can’t-comprehend-Wizarding-World-conversation narration. Frank Bryce 
and his murder will be important again in books 5, 6, and/or 7 ... and as for 
future scenes or chapters that don’t conform to Harry’s point of view, well, 
I’m sort of against them, but JKR may well employ them in the coming saga. But 
she’s told the story expertly from Harry’s limited point of view so far; I 
think it’s more compelling to be in his head since this is *his* 
coming-of-age.

By the way, this is post the first from me. I’ve been stewing about this POV 
issue for eight days now, so I had to reply when I saw the thread heading that 
way. Have any of you noticed other POV breaks/gaffes?

Reply early and often,
vjoporter, who doesn’t quite buy the Severus Snape/Perseus Evans deal, but is 
nonetheless searching for inadvertent anagrams her parents and husband may 
have given her