OOP: Humor and Tone (Was Questions for JKR)

[Carol Bainbridge]

No: HPFGUIDX 63133

At 10:45 AM 6/25/2003 +0200, The Admiring Skeptic wrote:

>Do any of you miss JKR's amazing humor besides me? ... Did she really 
>think 50 million readers (counting a few readers per book) all needed such 
>a negative experience to appreciate her story? Or has she lost it?

Yes, I missed the humor, but I guess I appreciated the few appearance of it 
all the more for it.  I can't imagine what the next two books will be 
like.  I'm hoping that now that Harry has gone through the initial stages 
of teenage angst and has come to understand much of his past and has had 
many questions answered, we can get back to a less angry Harry and rather 
more humor.  It's hard to imagine that, though, with the announcement of 
the impending war.

>Next: As you can tell, the tone of OoP disturbs me, especially since what 
>has enchanted me about HP has been the uplifting tone. Everybody seemed 
>just a touch more noble than life, or more evil than life, which was 
>inspiring because it wasn't overdone. The characters were real, but with 
>just enough character-airbrushing to make them a delight to read.

What I think is that JKR is growing us up, in a sense, along with 
Harry.  All the books, although written from a 3rd person omniscient 
narrator's point of view are still written from Harry's perspective.  In 
PS/SS Harry was just 11 and we see the world as an 11 year old would see 
it.  And not just any 11 year old.  An 11-year-old who has been mistreated 
in his home and has just discovered a whole new magical world.  (And it's 
interesting that the age is 11, which I think is an age where much of the 
magic in our childhood lives is disappearing, if it hasn't gone 
altogether.)   With each passing year, Harry sees what he didn't see 
before, feels what he hadn't felt before.  In OOP, he is an angry 
teenager.  I'm not at all surprised that he is reacting the way he 
is.  Hormones certainly come to play at this age, and those hormones affect 
emotions a great deal; it's not just about being attracted to the opposite 
sex.  Anyway, my point is that at 15, Harry now sees people as neither 
completely good nor completely evil.  That's a much more grownup way of 
looking at people than the black and white view that children have of 
looking at adults.  OOP is truly a coming of age book.  Like Harry, we are 
all struggling to come to terms with what Harry is learning about the 
various people in his life.  It's tough finding out that people you thought 
were infallible do, in fact, make mistakes, that people you thought truly 
horrible, have a good side.  It sure makes life more complicated.  But it 
also makes life richer, in my view anyway.

>More inspiration for me, and again, it rings "true" because the story is 
>one step removed from Real Life. Has anyone seen any inspiration in OoP 
>that I've missed?

Well, actually, as it's still full of magic, the story is still a little 
more than one step removed from Real Life for me.  I see plenty of 
inspiration in OOP.  Look at Neville, for example.  For a kid for whom 
everything seems to go wrong, he sure has proven himself to have a great 
deal of courage.  And look at the strength of character of Hermione and 
Harry when they refuse to break their promise to Hagrid to keep on eye on 
Grawp, even when they knew how potentially dangerous it was.  Consider too 
D.A.  Look at what Harry is able to do.  He is proving himself to be an 
excellent teacher, even managing to teach Neville some good spells.  And 
Harry remains as humble as ever, which is part of why, I think, he is so 
upset at his father's arrogant behavior in the pensieve.

>Once we've been mired, in OoP, in relentless human failings, what do I 
>need the Wizarding World for? I can see weak humanity 24/7. Once the WW is 
>not a place where people have a magical excuse to be just a touch larger 
>than life, now that the magic has become irrelevant to their characters, 
>the fantasy of HP has become, for me, more like a gimmick than an asset. 
>Are there any other disappointed fans out there? Or am I suffering alone?

I think we've seen some indications before of less than perfect characters, 
but maybe not in what we consider major ones.  Many have suspected already 
that Snape was not as bad as he appeared to be and that Sirius was not as 
wonderful as Harry thought.  The one surprise may have been James, but 
again, all we saw was one memory -- and it was Snape's after all -- of his 
bad behavior.  That still leaves the door open as to just how accurate that 
memory is.  And as others have noted, James was 15.  That behavior is not 
unusual in 15 year old boys, as my 14 year old son confirms.  We can't 
forget that James became a member of the Order of the Phoenix and fought 
against Voldie.  There is still a great deal we do not know about 
James.  All we have learned so far is that he is human.  He was not 
perfect.  But that doesn't mean he wasn't a good man.

No, the magic isn't a gimmick to me now any more than it was before, and it 
really was before too.  It's a gimmick to tell a story.  It's still all 
larger than life to me.

Carol Bainbridge
(kaityf at jorsm.com)

http://www.lcag.org