Details, and the unreliable narrator

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 124059


 > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
> wrote:
 
> Pippin: 
> The *narrator* says the moon was completely obscured by
> clouds. But if the moon is completely obscured he can't tell
> whether it's risen or not. It could be the narrator who makes the
> mistake, just as it(he?) says that Harry's parents died in a car
> crash.

Geoff:
I don't see how you can make the supposition that the death of 
Harry's parents in a car crash was due to an "unreliable narrator".

Canon is quite specific:
'The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin 
scar on his forehead which was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He 
had had it as long as he could remember and the first question he 
could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had got it.
"In the car crash when your parents died," she had said."And don't 
ask questions."
Don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with 
the Dursleys.'
(PS "The Vanishing Glass" p.21 UK edition)

'He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, 
as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his 
parents had died in that car crash. He couldn't remember being in the 
car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory 
during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision; 
a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. 
This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn't imagine where 
all the green light came from.'
(ibid. p.27)

'She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It 
seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and 
had you and of course I knew that you'd be just the same, just as 
strange, just as - as - abnormal - and then, if you please, she went 
and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he 
said, "Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!"
(PS "The Keeper of the Keys" p.44 UK edition)

This wasn't an "unreliable narrator", this was an "unreliable 
Petunia". Harry has been brought up on the fiction that his parents 
died in a crash - a fiction produced by Petunia - and presumably 
Vernon. It would satisfy Harry, for the time being at least, and also 
be a good back story to keep the neighbours from probing too much.

But it certainly isn't the narrator's device. All the evidence comes 
from either what Harry has been told by Petunia or the moment when 
she inadvertently reveals the truth in front of Hagrid - and Harry.