What would a successful AK mean?

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 142893


>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at y...> wrote:
> 
> > If this is the Big Betrayal, even assuming that a by-the-book 
> > plotter like JKR would place it so extremely oddly at the 
> > transition into the 'third act',
> 

Nora:
> Why not?  It's the big BANG at the end of the book, setting up the 
> Secunda Parte.  

The "is Snape a goodie or a baddie" theme has been a reliable tension
point for the entire series.  You would either tie it up in the climax
of the series proper, or you would tie it up well in advance so you
have time to introduce a new question.  At the end of the 2rd act you
generally just blow stuff up real good, or kill someone, because your
concern is momentum. It's a bad place to put a period on a question
mark, if you will.  It's like having Rick decide not to go with Ilsa
before they get the thing with the passes sorted-- it would suck the
energy out of the narrative drive.

>Anyways, she's not as interested in showing this re: 
> Dumbledore, but far more interested in showing it re: Harry--being as 
> she's interested in showing everything re: Harry.

Soooo, she would just leave out the bit where Dumbledore realized the
guy he trusted so profoundly is Evil.  Right.  

The essential point is, that I think almost anyone would agree that
the scene is at the very least ambiguous (if you think only a lunatic
would see it that way, well, why are you arguing with lunatics? :)). 
 All it would have taken to remove all ambiguity from that scene is
ONE LINE from Dumbledore, one closeup where he absorbs his betrayal. 
JKR deliberately left it ambiguous.  Meaning Snape's loyalties are
still to be resolved.

> I don't think Mozart is the best analogy for Rowling, because Mozart 
> is not a genre bender in the symphony (while Rowling is at least 
> playing with the combinations of genre, enough to scramble our 
> expectations.) 

?  JKR is COMBINES genres, but she doesn't break them.  Insofar as
they're mysteries, the red-herring suspect isn't guilty and the Truth
is Revealed in the final twist.  In so far as they're school stories,
the bully is an upper-class twit and somehow there are never any
competent adults to deal with the smugglers.  In so far as they're
romances, the bickering couple are Perfect for Each Other.  I can't
think of a writer that adheres to genre conventions as faithfully as
Rowling. If Harry and the Gang wind up going out to Dodge City in Book
7, I'd bet my boots there would be a shootout on Main Street at noon.


> I don't buy the association of Dumbledore's trust with the major-key 
> ending.  In fact, let me offer a counter-association in terms of key 
> structure.  Harry's ultimate victory, and his realization that he can 
> and must rely upon his *own* judgement as opposed to being 
> Dumbledore's parrot ("I believe in DD and don't need to hear reasons 
> for myself") brings us back not to the key of the first movement, but 
> a breakthrough modulation--we end not where we begin, but we have 
> reached a distant key via an interesting path.

But Harry relying on his own judgement hasn't been a question mark. 
He's been pretty alarmingly independent since book 1.  He never said,
like Lupin, Dumbledore trusts Snape and that's good enough for me. 
There is no modulation there.  If anything, there's been a theme of
Harry not relying sufficiently on other people.

This isn't a moral question.  I'd be totally up for a book that was
about Our Hero being too trusting, and going against his better
judgement and putting his fate into the hands of that baddie, and then
the baddie turns out to be really bad, and Our Hero needs learn to
trust his instincts.  That sounds like a great pitch.  But here's a
bad pitch:  very independent hero never really trusted that shifty
guy;  shifty guy turns out to be evil; hero magnanimously forgives
shifty guy.  How is that a story?  A, the hero doesn't go anywhere,
and B, the forgiveness angle doesn't pay off the trust angle.  


> Our prediction records speak pretty bluntly against the idea that 
> Rowling is going to end in the same key that she began in, after 
> all.  With a few scattered exceptions, most of us are guessing 
> details quite badly. 

Speak for yourself, my dear ;).  I predicted for book 6:  love potion
hijinks, Ron and Hermionie hooking up, moving forward the Harry/Ginny
plot, Dumbledore dying, and something happening to amp up the
suspicion on Snape-- probably this would be combined with the D-dore
dying.  Story analysis is my business. 

> And who knows whether Harry will live or die?

Harry will die in some unusual/incomplete fashion, and come back to
life.  A land-of-the-dead sequence is de-rigeur for this sort of story.

> 'Change' and 'being wrong about Snape' are not necessary correlates.  
> Harry could well be absolutely right about Snape--but have to not go 
> for the vengeance he currently has his mind set on. 

But that hasn't been what has been set up as the 'question mark' in
that relationship.  The emphasis has never been on Harry wanting to
punish Snape, which is what would be required for 'Harry forgives
Snape' to be a resolution (Draco, maybe?).  The question mark in the
relationship is Harry trusting Snape.  The theme of Harry
misinterpreting Snape's actions was introduced in Book 1-- Harry
thought Snape was trying to kill him, when he was trying to save him.
 In book 3, Harry thinks Snape is trying to poison Lupin, when he is
in fact making him medicine.  Every book has had a scene of Harry NOT
TRUSTING Snape.  The unanswered question, which Harry has pointed
asked and tantilizingly gotten no answer, is 'Why does D-dore trust
Snape'?  Trust is the key word that is used again and again, and trust
is what the resolution must involve.  The vengeance idea is not, if I
may use a musical metaphor, a note that belongs in this chord.


> -Nora thinks of Rowling as a little closer to Bruckner: love those 
> breakthrough modulations, but not always the best hand with tight 
> clean structure

--Sydney, who thinks mabye Rossini?  Sometimes repeats her favorite
themes to the point of tiresomess, and the stitching might show a
little, but one really fabulous ensemble bit and all is forgiven.