Distinct Novel vs Separate Parts & Tolkein (was: flaws in the books)

[sevenhundredandthirteen]

No: HPFGUIDX 105897

Katie wrote:

>Your post was fascinating; I just wanted to make one minor
>correction. Frodo is not dead to the reader at the end of The Two
>Towers; he is quite alive, but captured in the Tower. (You can make
>a comparable point with Gandalf, though!)

I (Laurasia) reply:

Maybe I should have said he `appears dead' or at the very
least, as if he was in real danger of dying. As soon as Sam took 
the ring, it became a real possibility that Frodo was now a 
redundant ring bearer. Because the story of the ring was told 
by a series of bearers of the ring rather than one single 
protagonist as soon as the ring is passed between Frodo and Sam, 
there is the possibility that the hobbit we've been following all 
this time is just one leg of the journey- like Bilbo. My point 
was that Harry Potter isn't told by legs of journeys from 
different points of view.

Trevor wrote:

>I would also point out that Harry Potter is written as 7 distinct 
novels in
>one series where as LOTR was written as one book- the editors broke 
it into
>3 parts for marketing concerns. The HP series therefore consists of 
much
>more distinct novels rather than one continuous book.

I reply:

I think that whether series or one novel makes little difference in 
this instance. Take the series about a group of people where each 
book is told by a different member (Lots of kids books do this,- 
when I was 8 I was a big fan of `The Babysitter's Club`).

Each book is definitely a separate entity, but because there 
is a revolving series of protagonists, there is never any 
guarantee that one won't move away, another one might join in 
their place (Like the TV series `Charmed' where it was very
easy to replace sisters, because each episode didn't focus on 
a single main protagonist). This is because there is a series 
of protagonists who have equal footing. 

Even though Harry Potter is definitely seven distinct novels
there's never been a chapter where Ron went off to do something 
for the plot without Harry. Harry is a lone protagonist and 
no-one is his equal so it would be hard, or unsatisfying at the 
very best, for JKR to switch mid-series. I think this aspect of 
the story dictates that Harry can't die midway through, rather 
than the separation of each part of the story into distinct 
books.

~<(Laurasia)>~