What JKR Finds Important

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 116038


Del said:
<snip>
> I would have loved it if End-of-GoF!Harry had *evolved* into
> Angry!Harry throughout the first chapters of OoP. I would have
> followed him through the transformation, sharing his annoyance at
> being mistreated more and more. But I was given no such chance. Right
> from the beginning, Harry's temper is boiling and he's over-reacting
> to everything. I never got to jump into his head, and things only got
> worse as the pages went by.
> 
> As I said in another post, this was *my* problem, I'm aware of that.
> But it does seem like I wasn't the only one having that problem (makes
> sense : I'm not *that* special ;-)
> 
> Del


Antosha:

Well, I'm sure you *are* special. ;-)

And I do see your point. I think the difficulty is the way that the books are constructed. At 
the end of GoF, just as at the end of OotP, Harry goes home still in a state of shock. As 
much as I know it was a cheap way out for JKR, it makes a certain amount of sense that he 
doesn't see the Thestrals yet.

Then, as in all of the books after PS/SS, we get a lacuna, a gap, from late June until, in this 
case, early August. And during that "off stage" time, Harry has had a chance not only to 
absorb what has happened--he has become obsessed with reading the Daily Prophet, with 
trying to catch the news on the television--he's having nightmares about Cedric and the 
graveyard as well as what appear to be deeply troubling, Jungian dreams about a dark 
corridor (in fact, these turn out to be links with LV), and HE HAS NO OUTLET FOR HIS FEAR, 
since no one is talking with him. Add the normal teen angst and the probable irritating 
factor of a close mental link with the most evil wizard of all time, and voila, we discover 
Harry, already wound tighter than a top at the beginning of the book.

JKR likes to end the books on a note of hope and redemption, but that doesn't make a very 
good place to START from, so inevitably, there's a bit of a disconnect between the end of 
one book and the beginning of the next.