JKR and Occlumency lessons (was Re: Snape and Occlumency)

[spaebrun]

No: HPFGUIDX 121720



Potioncat wrote:
> There have been countless discussions about Occlumency lessons, and 
> I've participated in quite a few of them.  We can argue whether it 
> was DD's mistake or Snape's fault or Harry's distrust....or 
> something else instead. And we all tend to get very emotional about 
> it. 
> 
> But really, what was JKR intending when she wrote these classes? 
> What are we learning from them?  How did they affect the characters?

Reed:
I think the reason JKR invented those Occlumency lessons was to show
what happens if Harry and Snape are paired together - not as teacher 
and student, which is still a comparatively distant relationship, but
only 
the two of them, forced to cooperate on an important and very
difficult, 
emotionally challenging task. The occlumeny lesson setup 
made for very interesting scenes that showed the characters' struggle
to deal with their mutual dislike to serve the cause. (I know, I
can't tell
for sure what Snape was thinking, but I tend to think he honestly
tried
to do what Dumbledore asked of him.) JKR created a lot of tension 
by giving glimpses of hope that their relationship might improve and 
then dramatically shattering these hopes by the pensieve disaster
that 
ended the lessons. 

Perhaps it is true that from a rational point of view it's somewhat
problematic to fully justify Dumbledore's decision to pick Snape 
of all people to teach Harry, but from a narrative point of view this 
constellation is great! If you'd had someone else, say Lupin, 
to teach Harry, the focus of the scenes would have to be an entirely
different one - probably more on the difficulty of occlumency itself 
than on the difficulty of cooperating with the person you hate most. 
For I think that *this* is what the lesson setup is all about.
I think that Harry's relationship to Snape and their ability to work
together will be crucial to rest of the story and that the occlumency 
lessons were a narrative tool to elaborate this thread and bring it
into 
focus. 
And btw: I, for my part, thought Occlumeny
with Snape made some of the  most exciting scenes in book 5 :-).

Reed