Lupin, a bad guy? (Warning: longish)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 96974

Renee wrote:
<huge snip:
> Back to Lupin: I hope you don't expect a quote saying "Lupin is an 
> habitual liar", because every word in the series is either coming 
> from the less-than-reliable narrator Harry Potter, or from one of 
> the characters, who are all fallible beings and biased in one way or 
> another. (Well, maybe not Crookshanks...) 
> 
>
Carol responds:
I hope you'll forgive me for not dealing with Lupin specifically. I'm
rather fond of the man and would rather that he wasn't evil. You're
certainly right, however, that the characters are all fallible and we
can't take what they say as true and complete even if they're good. In
fact, even a well-intentioned character giving what he considers good
advice can be used to mislead us (take, for example, the Weasleys
arguing over whether Harry should be told that Sirius Black is out to
kill him. Who'd have thought that they were both wrong.) Bad
characters can also be wrong. Just because he says that Lily made an
unwitting sacrifice or that the one he believes has left him will die
doesn't mean he's right on either count.

And the narrator, who is constantly with us, is more unreliable still.
But I'd like to make a small correction. Harry isn't the narrator;
he's the point of view character. The narrator is unreliable
*primarily* because he or she presents most of the story from Harry's
point of view (the scene where Hermione sets fire to Snape's robes is
one of several inconspicuous exceptions I could identify--others are
more obvious), but that's not the only reason. There are those red
herrings planted everywhere and tricky wording that suggests something
other than what is really happening. Harry "knew" such and such is one
example. The twinkle in Dumbledore's eye is another. (There are also,
of course, simple inconsistencies like the number of years NHN has
been a ghost or the ages of the two older Weasley brothers or the
number of students at Hogwarts. There's no way to get those pieces to
fit and we should just send JKR a calculator.)

But I absolutely agree with you that we need to weigh every word
carefully and look beneath the surface of both the dialogue and the
narration. Very little can be taken at face value (except such details
as Harry's need for glasses and the Weasleys' red hair). I'm not
saying that we need to hatch conspiracies about gumwrappers or
ESE!characters, only that a surface reading in which every word is
viewed as "true" is not an accurate reading. Either that or Harry's
parents died in a car accident and Dementors can see.

Carol