Good Writing (was Why now?)

[p_implies_q]

No: HPFGUIDX 110746

delwynmarch wrote:

> Del replies :
> Yep, Sirius's death was exactly my objection to your former 
paragraph
> : the events that led to it were *not* shown to be inevitable. 


Alice responds:
I agree that it did not seem inevitable, but must disagree that this 
makes it bad writing.  (Something else may, I suppose, though.)  
In fact, that it was so possible that he should have lived -- easily, 
even -- seemed meaningful.  Harry's had one lesson in the 
vulnerability of life in Cedric Diggory, but that was simpler: 
Wormtail murdered him, and that's all there is to it.  Moments 
after the event, Harry tries to force this simplicity on to Sirius's 
death ('SHE KILLED SIRIUS -- I'LL KILL HER!').  The attempt 
doesn't work, and so he keeps trying to make it simple, to pin it 
down, in other ways: it's Snape's fault, it's Kreacher's fault, it's 
Harry's own fault (this last, I suspect, will hold him up the 
longest).

But the reality that he's going to *have* to confront if he's ever 
going to be able to deal with this and move on is that it was a 
confluence of several persons' wills, good and evil alike, bad 
timing, stupidity -- which, regardless of how inexplicable, just IS -
- and little, meaningless things, like how close Sirius *
happened* to be standing to the Veil when he took a Stunner.  
And things in life happen that way -- without that strong sense of 
inevitability, of motion forward in a plan -- in the short term at 
least.  Inevitability?  'That's chess!'  Shtuff happens?  That's life.

I don't believe for a moment that this quality of Sirius's death is 
an accident in the book that, of the whole series thus far, is most 
concerned with fate and prophesy.





Delwynmarch:
There
> were *so many* ways in which Harry could have done things 
differently
> ! My personal pet peeve being that if Harry could get his head 
at GP,
> and if he didn't intend to take his friends with him to the MoM, 
and
> if he was in such a hurry to get to London, then why on Earth 
didn't
> he take *all of himself* to GP, and checked on his own whether 
Sirius
> was there or not ???


Alice:
If I believed that Harry could have done this, then I'd actually have 
to say that this is a gaping, yawning plot hole.  I don't think that 
the fact that he could put his head through *does* mean that he 
could put the rest of himself through, though.  The primary 
reason is simply that if he could, it seems like Hogwarts would 
have serious security issues: Slytherins of ill repute could be 
slinking off to do evil sorts of things, and Seamus Finnegan 
would be a regular at the Leaky Cauldron.  Moreover, Sirius was 
able to put his head in Gryffindor common room's fireplace, but if 
he were able to put the rest of himself through on account of that, 
he would never have cut up the Fat Lady in PoA.  For that matter, 
why would anyone have bothered putting up anti-Apparation 
wards?  It seems clear that there is a 'communication only' 
mode to Floo, and that the wards around Hogwarts are set up to 
allow this mode only.

One could argue that the unclear presentation constitutes bad 
writing, but I expect that it's actually good writing: the books are 
given from Harry's point of view; since this is the sort of thing that 
Harry would probably just pick up by immersion, it's better if we 
do, too.






Delwynmarch:
And that's only *one* example of the kind of
> things that seemed *logical* to do and yet Harry didn't do them, 
and
> we are *not* given a good reason of why he didn't think of 
them.


Alice:
The only thing that leaps out at me as a really dazzling feat of 
stupidity -- illogic, to be consistent with your terms -- is not even 
thinking of Snape.  And that, too, seems realistic: we are often 
blinded by our pride/prejudice/human stupidity in general, and 
we often wind up regretting what we do bitterly because of it.  But 
I do have to admit -- *Harry* never thinking of Snape seems 
realistic to me; Harry and Ron both overlooking it, even -- but 
Harry, Ron, and *Hermione* all three . . . well, that makes me 
wonder whether Hermione really didn't think of him.  But no need 
to break out the conspiracy theories here.  ;)

I definitely do agree, though, Delwynmarch, that since this is a 
story, and moreover a story built around a prophesy, many more 
events like Sirius's death would make the series lose coherence 
and conviction.  And that, now we've had our explosion of chaos, 
things are going to have to start converging. . . .  I hope so, 
anyway.

Well, that's enough hot air from me, I think.



Cheers,
Alice