Innocent Alby? (longish)

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 123028


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" 
<susiequsie23 at s...> wrote:
> 
> Renee:
<snip>
>> To me the rift between stated authorial intentions 
> > and the text as we have it creates a problem. This can be 
> > partially solved by seeing the series as a development from pure 
> > fairytale to a more "realistic" form of fantasy-cum-mystery, but 
as 
> > the Dursleys continue to play an unpleasant role in Harry's 
life, 
> > this doesn't entirely work. It works best if I can see the whole 
> > series as symbolical and largely non-realistic.
> > 
<snip>
>  From time to time, 
> > this kind of thing tends to give me an "anything goes" feeling 
that 
> > undermines my admiration of JKR as a writer and makes me think 
this 
> > is really no more than a piece of very clever entertainment with 
a 
> > dash of hazy personal philosophy added to the mix.
> 
> 
> SSSusan:
> A thought-provoking post, Renee.  I believe you have put your 
finger 
> on something many do struggle with in the series.  HAVE we moved 
away 
> from a fairytale and into the realm of more "realistic fiction" 
> [yikes, is that an oxymoron? sorry, lit majors]?  It would seem so 
> with the ways the Dursleys appear to have moved from caricature to 
> true nasties, with Harry's raging in OotP, with the death of 
Sirius.  
> But, you're right, Renee.  If we've made that shift, what do we do 
> with characters who still seem to be sort of caricatures or 
symbolic, 
> rather than real?  

Renee:
That's one of my problems. Take Umbridge, for example, one of the 
most two-dimensional characters in the series, and never rising 
above the level of a toad. She's seldom discussed other than as a 
plot device, and people hardly ever wonder what makes her tick. 
Lockhart is also a caricature, but in COS this wasn't much of a 
problem (and in OotP he only makes a cameo appearance); he never 
made me wonder what kind of book I was reading. Umbridge does. So 
does OotP Draco. If I can analyse the books in symbolical terms, the 
flatness of some characters doesn't pose a problem. When I'm asked 
to look at this from a realistic point of view, it does.      

SSSusan: 
> I'd never thought of DD in this way, but I think you're right.  We 
> saw his "breakdown" moment at the end of OotP, when we confessed 
to 
> old man failings.  And, since JKR called him the epitome of 
goodness, 
> we assume we're supposed to feel bad for him, forgive him, and 
move 
> on, still trusting & believing in him.  Clearly, not all readers 
are 
> interested in doing that and prefer to analyze him a bit more 
harshly 
> in the light of the RW.  

Renee:
To be frank, I'm not very happy with all these analyses according to 
RW criteria. I'm probably not going to make myself very popular by 
saying that this way of reading strikes me as improductive. The same 
arguments and discussions come up with predictable regularity, and 
this isn't merely due to the fact that new members inevitably tend 
to raise old issues. Why is it, that analysing and judging the 
various characters' behaviour according to RW standards as if this 
is reality instead of fiction (and I'll be the first to plead guilty 
to this), is so much more popular than trying to determine what it 
is we're reading, and what statement the author is making? 

To me, what character X ought to have done instead, why character Y 
is a lousy or an excellent teacher, and why character Z gets no more 
than (s)he deserved, is less interesting to discuss than how the 
various characters' actions and other narrative elements are being 
combined and woven into a rich fabric of story. In other words, how 
it all fits together, what pattern we can discern and how all the 
details contribute to the whole. So Snape was wrong to antagonise 
Harry in his first Potions lesson and to keep doing so over the 
years. But what is more interesting: Snapes moral status as a 
teacher, or the consequences his attitude and his actions have for 
the development of the story? Are we here to issue judgements, to 
gain insights into the intricacies of a complex and fascinating 
tale, to figure out a messsage, or what? I suppose everyone has 
their own anwer to this, but I know behaviour analysis according to 
RW standards is not foremost on my list. 

SSSusan:              
 > And your bringing up Sirius' death is a good one, too.  I'm one 
of 
> the ones who's argued that JKR should *not* bring Sirius back b/c 
I 
> believe it would undermine the message that she seems to be trying 
to 
> make -- that death is painful, final, and sometimes very, very 
> senseless.  That's Real Life.  But is THIS?  If I'm understanding 
you 
> correctly, you're saying that sometimes you feel like she wants to 
> have it both ways.  Allow the fairytale, symbolic, don't-try-to-
> analyze-this-as-real-life view of things, but then also have us 
see 
> it all as realistic.  Have we shifted to "realistic" or is it a 
> mishmash of realistic and fairytale?

Renee:
OotP looks more realistic, but well... how realistic can it be when 
it's about magic? When it's about a world of which we don't know all 
the rules, because new surprises tend to turn up around every bend? 
Of course there's such a thing as basic recognition, or we wouldn't 
be able to enjoy the books at all. But it remains difficult to know 
what is real, to know when RL criteria apply and when they're being 
discarded or toyed with for the sake of the story, or just for fun - 
precisely because we're given so very few rules to go by, and so 
much seems random. Almost as if the author wants to retain a way out 
of every corner she might inadvertently paint herself into. Maybe 
that's why so many of the discussions are about human behaviour: 
that's the area where we feel safest.

I really hope I made myself clear.


SSSusan:
> I did want to thank you for raising the issue.

Renee:
You're welcome, even though it was just something that came up 
spontaneously :)