What would a successful AK mean?

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 142905


> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at y...> wrote:
> 
> > 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. 
> 
> Well, except that we've had two of the major threads still open for 
> the last book running the entire way.  What is Snape up to, but far 
> more importantly: what *is* Voldemort and how are we going to get rid 
> of him. 

Obviously Voldemort is the A plot.  But B and C plots still follow the
same rule. I reitreate, the end of the 2nd act would be an extremely
weird place to tie up a plotline.

> <snip>
> 
> > Soooo, she would just leave out the bit where Dumbledore realized 
> > the guy he trusted so profoundly is Evil.  Right.  
> 
> Well, if you believe Harry, Dumbledore is 'pleading' at the end of 
> the book.  

As I said in the post, what's missing is the TRANSITION.  The moment
WHEN the realization hits Dumbleodore.  The 'pleading' would have to
be moment just after.  

> Some readers want to argue that Harry's perception is faulty because 
> Dumbledore would *never* plead.  But the contra-argument is that it's 
> precisely Dumbledore's exceptional pleading that makes the scene what 
> it is.  So do we smooth it out to conform to an idea of the 
> character, or do we let it stand in its spiky discomfort?

*furrows brow*.  Do you mean the 'spiky discomfort' of Dumbeldore
reduced to pleading?  Heck, yeah, I would smooth out that spiky
dicomfort.  Why introduce an entirely new note into a major character
10 seconds before he dies?  Especially when there's a world of rich,
yummy drama left to milk on the guy who's still standing?

> 
> And yes, Dumbledore is not the center of the books, so his reaction 
> is infinitely less interesting to her than Harry's.

But of no interest whatsoever?  Anyhow, we seem to agree on the main
point, which is:

> 
> Agree that it's deeply ambiguous.  However, worth thinking about is 
> that she may well be interesting in making us *think* that it's 
> ambiguous when it's really not going to be in the long run. 

Well, that would assume the series was written so the reversal shock
would mainly hit the 10 percent of her audience who are Snape fans.
And that to this end, she was willing to have the reversal shock
bypass, you know, Harry.

> > ?  JKR is COMBINES genres, but she doesn't break them.
> 
> But as soon as you combine genres, things get messy.  Look at the 
> tonal plans of symphonic tone poems if you don't believe me. :)  The 
> demands of dramatic structure wreak havoc on normative tonal plans.

I have no idea about music theory, but in terms of dramatic theory,
it's really not that complicated.  Snape fullfills two roles in the
books:  the Red Herring (for the mystery plots) and the unreconciled
Shadow (for the psychodrama).  She hasn't dirupted the through line of
any of her genres, no matter how much she entwines them she does not
distort their essential nature.
 
> But it has been such a theme for others just to rely on Dumbledore, 
> end of story. 

Yeah, but who cares?  The point is Harry.  Harry who has had an
emotionally intense relationship with Snape from his first appearance,
who gets to have all sorts of enimgmatic scenes with him, Harry who
has this big unresolved thing with Snape, Harry with whom it is
PERSONAL.  Other people get a couple of lines of dialogue.  Teeny tiny
buildup, crapola payoff.  

Believe me, much as I loathe Pettigrew, if he had had an emotionally
intense and ambiguous scene with Harry in every single book and we got
POV Harry stuff where he was all "Harry was desperate for more reasons
to hate Peter" or if Peter's loyalties were a huge questionmark over
the series, I would not hesitate in assuming the Redemption of Peter
was going to be the big payoff.  As it is, I could go either way with
Peter, because I don't feel I have enough buildup either way. 
 
> > 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.
> 
> That does violate Rowling's own comments about "dead is dead" in the 
> Potterverse, but we'll have to see.  I'll put my bets against actual 
> death.

I definietly wouldn't say 'actual death'. The Draught of Living Death
has been suggested. I don't know how the 'behind the veil' scene would
work, but I have this dread that it will feature a lot of dry ice and
people floating around;  the end of GoF was too cheesy for my tastes.


> > 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?).
> 
> But now it really is. 

No, it really isn't.  Because as we agreed above, Snape's actions are
still ambiguous.  The sentence isn't finished.


>It's there, and I don't see why she should have to 
> have a laser focus on the theme of the past books as opposed to 
> focusing on something a lil' different.

It's not a 'little different'.  It's "once upon a time there was a
wolf, and the wolf was about to eat a little girl, and then the little
girl had lunch".  It doesn't end the sentence.  

 
> > 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.
> 
> Trust, trust.  It involves knowing the reasons for actions, to be 
> able to trust someone--especially someone who's shown the 
> orientations that Snape has.  But isn't trust also going to *have* to 
> involve a forebearance from vengeance? 

Of course forgiveness is a big part of that.  But the main theme is
STILL trust, and Harry misinterpreting and misunderstanding Snape. 
Until you pay that off, you can't move on to the subsidiary point.

 Especially given the depths 
> of what Snape has been and done, it's going to have to involve more 
> than a leap of faith based on hearsay, but some kind of deep 
> emotional connection 

Oh, totally, it's going to involve some deep emotional connection.  I
hesitate to say it, but the Snape/Harry dynamic is structurally the
central relationship of the story.  It's the one that's had the most
investment put into keeping it destablizied;  it's featured in the
most emotinally intese scenes, it's the one left at it's nadir at the
top of the 3rd act.  Of course it could be a straightforward
protagonist/antagonist relationship, but it certainly hasn't been so far.

-- Sydney