OotP Harry not a prefect & his Inner Voice
Nora Renka
nrenka at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 7 15:44:52 UTC 2004
No: HPFGUIDX 115091
--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch"
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:
>
> Cory wrote :
> " The point is, if you want to start assuming things about the
> characters that aren't in the story, we can make any of the
> characters into anything we want them to be. I'm not sure how
> helpful that is to interpreting the story, though. Just my
> opinion, of course."
>
> Del replies :
> You're perfectly right. Which is why we can't assume that Dean,
> Seamus and Harry are on the same level academically, or that Harry
> has better leadership qualities than Dean or Seamus, or that Harry
> is the only one who can keep a cool head under stress. Those are
> assumptions, not facts.
Both are true--but there's a further difference we might make,
between assumptions from given evidence and assumptions from
silence. Of course, it's not provable that Harry is the ONLY one who
can keep a cool head under stress--but we've had positive evidence,
in the text, of Harry's abilities, while we haven't of the other
characters under discussion. So while we should always keep the door
open for information to be filled in when we don't know things, or
when things are simply not described (just because we don't know
about it doesn't mean it didn't happen or isn't there, in JKR's world-
-that's one of her best ways of springing things on us), I think we
should generally priviledge what we have positive proof for. This
invariably results in reversals and reinterpretations. Such is the
fun of reading a WIP, where past events must be continually re-read
in light of later revelations.
-Nora ponders how different the experience will be for those who get
to read all seven books at once
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