Theoretical boundaries / Dursleys' abuse

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 120513


Del wrote:
> <snip> The style of narration is the narrator's only, it doesn't
*have* to be influenced by the story he is relating at all. Usually,
an invisible narrator like the one in HP remains strictly consistent
from the beginning to the end of a book or series, no matter what happens.

Carol responds:
I think that JKR took a while to find her narrative voice. Clearly,
the first chapter of SS/PS could not have been told using Harry as the
POV character, and one or two of the snippets on her website seem to
indicate that she originally considered using Draco to provide an
alternate perspective. Eliminating him changed the focus drastically,
whether for better or for worse, I can't say. But her limited
omniscient perspective doesn't work for the background on the Riddle
murders, so she adopts a completely different narrative voice there
and switches briefly to an unknown POV character partway through.
There are one or two other places where she temporarily slips out of
Harry's perspective. And in no case does she tell the story using his
voice--which, IMO, is a good thing. An author has to create a
situation in which a first-person narrator is telling his own story,
and that won't work for Harry, whose survival is supposed to remain an
open question.  

So what happens to that narrative voice as Harry grows and changes? My
thought has always been that the style, like the subject matter, grows
with the characters. The "Uranus" joke in PoA would be out of place in
OoP, for example, not just because the main characters are older but
because the situation is darker and direr. (I'm at a loss for comic
passages in OoP. Were there any?)

I notice things like narrative voice and lapses in point of view (for
example, the narrator reporting that Harry is asleep, which is odd if
he's inside Harry's mind). But absolute consistency in narrative
technique is probably rare. Look at "Moby Dick," for example, and the
problems Melville experienced when he realized the limitations of
having a common sailor as the POV character. He resorted to
Shakespearean soliloquies and similar devices so that Ishmael could
hear Starbuck's thoughts and then finally gave it up and used a
third-person omniscient narrator. The narrative technique is
inconsistent and seriously flawed, and yet the book remains a masterpiece.

Or consider LOTR. The narrative voice of the opening chapters is
almost the avuncular storyteller of "The Hobbit." The voice in "The
Council of Elrond," which deals with "higher" matters, is almost
biblical (and cringe-worthy if you don't like that kind of thing.) But
LOTR, too, is generally considered a masterpiece and the narrative
inconsistencies are almost certainly deliberate.

I don't rate JKR on a par with Tolkien, much less with Melville, as a
great writer. I think her lapses *are* lapses in some cases. I found
the opening chapter of GoF jarring, as if I'd landed by accident in
the wrong book. And yet there's really no other way she could have
handled that information.

So I'm not sure that I agree with your assertion that invisible
narrators usually remain consistent, but I do agree that JKR's
inconsistencies are to some extent a flaw in the books. She seems to
have given most of her thought to the plot, including characters'
backstories and planted clues, and less thought to seemingly secondary
elements like narrative voice. Quite possibly, unlike Melville, she
isn't even aware of the problem. I'd venture to say that most readers
don't notice it, either, except to be vaguely bothered by the change
in "tone." How much of it derives from Harry's state of mind in OoP, I
can't say without rereading the book and choosing some representative
passages. If the book as a whole is deliberately dark and the darkness
reflects Harry's POV, perhaps it isn't the flaw that it seems to be.
Maybe Books 6 and 7 will have the same "voice" and it will seem more
appropriate as more people die. Or maybe it's a fluke, reflecting
Harry's anger in OoP. Ask me what I think on this topic when HBP is
out. :-)

Carol, who just realized that it's now Christmas Eve!