Red Herrings

[mnaper2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 101787

"Wanda Sherratt" <wsherratt3338 at r...> wrote:
> JKR is an expert at inventing red herrings, I think everyone will 
> agree.  Her technique is to crowd the canvas with a huge number of 
> details, so that we can't possibly tell which ones are important 
and 
> which are just there to distract from the others.  With two books 
to 
> go, we can't right now tell which is which, but I'd be interested 
in 
> knowing what other readers have, in their own minds, identified to 
> their own satisfaction as red herrings.  Of course, we're all going 
> to have different ideas; somebody's red herring is bound to be 
> someone else's absolutely essential clue.  I'll start off with just 
> one:
> 
> Snape - I think that Snape is one vast red herring.  Ron is 
> perpetually voicing dark suspicions of him, and he is always on the 
> scene to draw our eyes and make us overlook everything else.  (And 
> very effectively, too - he's one of the most entertaining and 
> interesting characters in the books.)  His role is never fully 
> explained, so we can imagine it as more important than it really 
> is.  I think this happened a lot in OotP, from Mrs. Weasley's "He's 
> just arrived" at Grimmauld Place to Sirius's grumbling about Snape 
> being important and making reports and Harry's daring accusation of 
> spying.  I don't believe Snape is the important "He" that Molly was 
> referring to, or the key player Sirius implies, but Snape is so 
> compelling, he crowds out the other characters so that we miss 
> what's REALLY going on.

Ally:

Well - red herring means, in my mind, is something that is made to 
seem important when it really isn't.  I think Snape will still be 
important to the stories, so I'm not sure if I'd call him an actual 
red herring.  He's still Harry's biggest nemesis, he has some 
involvement with Sirius that is yet to be explained and JKR said 
would be, and we're told by JKR that she can't reveal certain things 
about him - his boggart, his patronus, why DD trusts him - because it 
would ruin the stories.  So, I do think he will be important to the 
stories.  

BUT, I see what you're saying.  I do think JKR uses him at times to 
draw our focus away from other characters, like she clearly did with 
Quirrel in SS.  But I don't think he is a total red herring to the 
books.

Now, Mark Evans - that's another story, if you ask me.  ;)