Narrative style and POV

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 89786

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Darrell Harris <tigerfan41 at y...>
wrote:
> The narrator is just a voice, not a character. Usually
> but not always
> he or she sees from Harry's point of view, but
> sometimes it's as if
> the narrator is an invisible presence witnessing and
> reporting events
> from the outside. We're treated at one point to Vernon
> Dursley's
> thought (though not really his perspective) and at
> another to Frank
> Bryce's. I very much doubt that Dumbledore will ever
> be the POV
> character, simply because he needs to remain
> mysterious.
> 
> Who else would know that Snape never found out who set
> him on fire? 
> JKR.
> 
> Carol
> 
> 
> I think it's easier to compare this to a biographer's
> prospective. After interviewing those involved taking
> copious notes one reconstructs the story then retells
> it from the knowledge gained. When possible one uses
> 1st person perspective for direct quotes and input.
> Where one couldn't rebuild the 1st person knowledge
> the information is presented using the available data
> that was gleaned from those who were there.


Carol responds:
Admittedly a biographer, like a novelist, writes in the third person,
quoting his sources (including letters to and from his subject), but
he or she strives (not always successfully) for an objective point of
view that allows little dialogue (unless the biographer is a witness
to the events and is writing from memory or a recorded interview) and
never allows him or herself inside the head of the subject of the
biography.

The narrator of a novel, however, has essentially five viewpoints to
choose from: first-person participant, first-person spectator,
third-person omniscient (narrator knows everything and can be
considered generally reliable), third-person limited omniscient, and
third-person dramatic (narrator reports the characters' words and
actions from the outside and can be considered wholly reliable).
First-person narrators can only depict events that they have witnessed
or participated in (or heard about). They are in general somewhat
unreliable if only because their viewpoint is so limited. If they're a
naive narrator like Huckleberry Finn, they are very unreliable,
forcing the reader to interpret events that the narrator has
misinterpreted. I won't go into the reasons why JKR has chosen not to
have a first-person narrator; I'll just say that it wouldn't work for
this series. Instead she's chosen a limited omniscient narrator who
usually but not always tells the story from Harry's perspective.
Occasionally she chooses another POV character--or none at all. In at
least three instances that I mentioned in my previous post, she
reports events that Harry is unaware of from an outside perspective,
which could arguably be either third-person omniscient or third-person
dramatic.

None of these points of view is that used by an ostensibly objective
reporter or biographer, who is dealing with real people, not
characters, and cannot get inside his subject's head. A limited
omniscient narrator, like a first-person narrator, colors the
narrative with the perspective of the POV character. When that
narrator is a boy between eleven and fifteen who is learning about the
WW as he experiences it (and is often wrong in his conclusions and
judgments), we need to be careful when we accept as fact anything the
narrator says. Is this statement the truth as JKR has defined it or is
it Harry's perception of the truth?

In any case, my whole point in writing my original post is that Harry
is never the narrator, nor is Dumbledore. My final question repeated
one asked by Pippin, who suggested that the narrator (meaning, I
think, POV) was Dumbledore. I don't think Dumbledore's point of view
is or will be given in this novel, any more than we'll see Snape's. (I
could be wrong, though--who'd have thought we'd see from Voldemort's?)
In any case, in the scene where Hermione sets Snape's robes on fire, I
think we can temporarily consider the narrative voice to be JKR's own,
or, if you prefer, that of an omniscient narrator. Clearly the POV in
that scene isn't Harry's or any character's. It's the narrator's own.

Carol, who hopes she isn't boring everybody to tears with this thread