Harry as the Narrator

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 91059

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "meriaugust" <meriaugust at y...>
wrote:
> I remember how a few weeks ago there were a series of posts 
> regarding whose perspective the HP books are being told from, and 
> who the narrator is. I was thinking yesterday that it may, in fact, 
> be Harry telling his own story. But how, if there are chapters in it 
> where Harry could not possibly know what is going on? Well, if I may 
> stray a bit OT here, yesterday I was watching Lord of the Rings: The 
> Return of the King, and it occured to me that the manuscript that 
> Frodo and Bilbo wrote ("There and Back Again" and "Lord of the 
> Rings") was not just an account of the two hobbits adventures, but 
> of all of the events that occured across the series of books/films. 
> Now Frodo wasn't around for most of those, so he must have been told 
> what happened, and transcibed it for his book. Now, back to HP, if 
> either of the timelines that I have seen for these books is right (I 
> have seen one where Harry's birthday is in 1980 and one where his 
> birthday is in 1983) then we can reasonably assume that these books 
> are taking place in the not so distant past. Perhaps Harry, after 
> deafeating LV and graduating from Hogwarts with honors, took a gap 
> year before getting a job and found out his own whole story, then 
> wrote it down to be passed on to JKR and us muggles. He could then 
> reasonably be the narrator of his very own life story, which would 
> explain how the narrator knows all of Harry's thoughts and actions, 
> and would also explain why it is not told in first person, as there 
> would be parts where Harry wasn't present for the action and was 
> presumably filled in later. So perhaps this is an indication that 
> Harry will live to the end of book 7, as he is the one narrating it 
> all after the fact. 
> Submitted for approval. 
> Meri


The Harry Potter books use a limited omniscient narrator, that is, a
voice that tells the story mostly from one person's (often unreliable)
point of view, but occasionally from outside the characters if the POV
character isn't present (as in the dialogue between Dumbledore and
McGonagall in SS/PS chapter one or the scene where Hermione sets fire
to Snape's robe) or even from another character's POV (as when she
gets inside Uncle Vernon's mind but still reports events that he
doesn't see in SS/PS chapter one). A limited omniscient perspective is
no guarantee that the protagonist will live (though I personally think
he will). Not even a first-person point of view guarantees that. (Ever
read "All Quiet on the Western Front"?

As for LOTR, the narrator is supposedly an "editor" whose primary
source is the Red Book of Westmarch, written by Bilbo and Frodo but
incorporating chapters not involving either character, for example the
adventures of Merry and Pippin, which presumably they related to Frodo
and he recorded from their perspective. I don't think JKR is going
that far--pretending to adapt Harry's adventures as he has related
them in his memoirs (written rather soon after the fact or even before
the fact!) to a third-person narrative. IIRC, Harry would be 23 going
on 24 this year and would have been all of seventeen when Book One
came out. He wouldn't have had time to record his adventures at that
point.

So, again, IMO the limited third-person narrator is a standard
literary device enabling JKR to tell the story mostly from Harry's POV
but to shift away from it as needed (which a first-person narrator
could not do). Many books, including many modern novels, use this type
of narration, whether or not the protagonist survives to the end of
the story.

Carol