Narrative strategy and Harry's death (?) (Was: Re: JKR's narrative strategy)

[ariston3344]

No: HPFGUIDX 107144

Carol wrote:
> The HP books are a different matter. They are not told by the
> protagonist as an adult from his own point of view. Such a device
> would ruin the suspense JKR wants us to feel regarding Harry's
> survival.

This seems right to me, and I lean toward the view (don't lynch me!) 
that Harry will die in book 7 (but that's a different post).  But 
I've always thought that this poses a rather awkward problem given 
the POV adopted by JKR (since it is almost always 
Harry's).  Any scene leading to Harry's death would obviously be THE 
climax of the entire series -- it's almost unthinkable to me that 
such a scene would not be told from Harry's POV.  But if it is told 
from his POV, how would JKR smoothly handle Harry's death itself?

She could have Harry thudding (or slowly slipping) out of 
consciousness, after which point the POV immediately shifts.  This 
seems awkward, even if there is a chapter division at that point.

Alternatively, JKR could follow Harry into death.  Then it seems 
that there are two choices: (1) Dead Harry himself, in ghost form or 
otherwise, views the action somehow so that we get the full 
denouement from his POV; or (2) We would see Dead Harry reuniting 
with his parents (or something similar), after which we would switch 
back to an earthbound POV for the denouement for those left living.  
Both of these seem unsatisfactory to me, though, because they 
introduce something very big and very brand new (life after death, 
seen through Harry's eyes) right at the very end.  That in turn 
presents two other possible options:

(a) We follow Harry into death but never learn much about what life 
after death is like.  To my taste, that's unsatisfying and maybe 
even a bit cliche -- a few rungs above "It was all a dream".

(b) JKR provides an in-depth, satisfying introduction to life after 
death -- but this seems like it would have to be so long as to be 
anti-climactic.  [C.S. Lewis does pull off (b) in the Chronicles of 
Narnia, but I'm not sure it would work as well in the HP context, 
and maybe people disagree as to whether they think it really "works" 
in the Narnia series.]

The only other alternatives I can imagine are that we get a lot of 
info on life after death in advance, so that when Harry gets there, 
there's not much left to say (how would this happen?), or we leave 
Harry's POV *before* his death scene (i.e., we leave Our Hero's POV 
at the most crucial point in the whole series).

I'm not a literary genius, but it seems that it would be very 
difficult to write a satisfying ending with Harry dying, given JKR's 
choice to use Harry's POV primarily (though admittedly not 
exclusively).

Should POV problems be taken as a reason to think that Harry will 
live (although, as I said above, I actually think he probably won't)?

Ideas/arguments/corrections?  (As always, sorry if this is a tired, 
worn out, old topic.)

-ariston