JKR's narrative strategy (Was: Whose point of view ?)

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 107251

> > Pam wrote:
> > > I also have thought that the Little Hangleton scene 
> > > may be the narrator presenting Harry's dream (remember 
> > > his link to Voldemort), sort of like a television screen 
> > > in his mind. In this sense, the scene isn't deviating 
> > > from Harry's POV at all . . . . 

> > James replied:
> > It seems to me that the POV in this chapter is indeed the 
> > POV of Frank Bryce. Why? Because Harry's dreams are always 
> > from Voldemort's point of view - as far as we know he's 
> > never had a dream from the POV of someone close to 
> > Voldemort or interfearing with Voldemort. 

> Pam replied:
> You're right; taken alone, it's definitely from Frank's POV 
> (the history of the Riddle family & his own past, his 
> perception of trouble at the manor that night, etc.). 
> OTOH (and there's *always* an 'other hand'!!), who's to say 
> that Voldemort (via Nagini, perhaps?) couldn't have been 
> aware of Frank from the start, delved into his past mind, 
> and then tracked his movements until he climbed the stairs.  
> Then (and only then) could the first chapter have been 
> Harry's dream/shared Voldemort mind. 

Two things.  

First, I don't think that we are supposed to believe that Harry
experienced the dream either from Voldemort's point of view or from
Frank's.  Based on his recollection, at any rate, he seems to have
experienced it as an objective observer.  Harry remembers that "at the
moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had
seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror, which had
awoken him."  He also remembers the "picture" of a darkened room in
which he saw Pettigrew and Nagini (whose name he does not remember),
which does not sound like the POV of Voldemort, who was facing the
fire.  That much could be from Frank's point of view, but Harry also
remembers "watch[ing]" Frank fall to the ground (he also does not know
Frank's name).  I think the explanation most consistent with the rest
of the story is that Harry observed the scene much as he observed the
Pensieve memories: connected to Voldemort, but not from within him.   

Second, although this is a tangential point, it is not correct that
the whole Little Hangleton scene is told from Frank's point of view. 
The chapter begins with an omniscient narrator recounting the story of
the 1944 murders.  There are a number of aspects that are distinctly
independent of Frank's POV, such as the expressed view of the people
of Little Hangleton that the house is "creepy," the conversations in
the village pub after Frank has been arrested, the thoughts of the
police upon reading the coroner's report ("never read an odder
report"), and the psychology of the boys who liked to break into the
Riddle house ("They knew that old Frank's devotion to the house and
the grounds amounted almost to an obsession, and it amused them to see
him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling
croakily at them").

The shift to Frank's point of view is signalled midway through the
chapter by the sentence "It was Frank's bad leg that woke him; it was
paining him worse than ever in his old age."  From that point on, the
narrator follows Frank's point of view until Voldemort kills him and
the story shifts to Harry's point of view.

-- Matt