Power vs. Trust (was:The Possibilities of Grey Snape...)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 143054

> > Magpie:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > (And as Sydney correctly pointed out, the scene in the Tower is 
> > designed so that we don't see a moment where Dumbledore realizes 
> > he's been wrong.)  

Nora:
> 
> Actually, that is precisely what I find the whole pleading scene 
to 
> be.
> 
> "The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all 
> evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading."
> 
> There's your tragic anagnorisis right there (also argued for in 
post 
> 142981), just in the terse style which JKR likes.  [It's also 
> interesting that this happens right as Snape enters the scene, 
which 
> means some switch--positive or negative--goes off immediately.]  
> Mercifully, she forgoes the fanfiction option of laying everything 
> out on the table and telling us what everyone in the room thinks.  
> Results in far more arguments about what actually happened, but is 
> far better literature. :)

Magpie:

Giving Dumbledore a beat of recognition seems very much a convention 
of original fiction (not fanfiction) to me.   Rowling often gives us 
clear external signs of internal conflict or understanding that the 
narrator reports to us.  Harry has just spent an entire scene giving 
us signs of internal conflict in another person.  I just can't see 
how, if the idea here is that Dumbledore has just realized that 
Snape, the man he's trusted in all this, is not to be trusted, the 
author can skip that moment. Dumbledore asked for Snape to begin 
with.  Snape is here.  Why is that suddenly a bad thing?  I think 
it's absolutely JKR's style to show us an outward sign in Dumbledore 
that he's just realized he's made a horrible mistake, but I'm not 
seeing it.  

Magpie: 
 
> > Perhaps an editor should have made sure in the end we all knew 
what 
> > everyone knew when.

Nora:
> 
> That would take most of the fun out of it, though.  It rockets us 
> into fanfictionland, where authors are happy to write out detailed 
> accounts of events and then have endless scenes (usually in the 
> Headmaster's Office and involving drinks, as a way to get the 
entire 
> cast of characters as audience in there) then explaining to us 
what 
> everyone has been doing and why they've been doing it.


Magpie:

It wouldn't take the fun out of it if we're supposed to know what's 
going on, which we possibly are.  Canon itself has had scenes in the 
headmaster's office to explain things--OotP ended with such 
a "Dumbledore explains it all" scene.  Sometimes Rowling assumes 
that we get things that we don't get, and in Book VI she's having to 
hide things from the reader that the characters know about.  I 
assumed that the reason nobody ever said in Chapter II that Draco 
was supposed to kill Dumbledore was because JKR didn't want the 
audience to hear it straight out, but that the characters of course 
knew what Draco was supposed to do.  They said they knew.  Yet much 
of fandom thinks Snape was bluffing and even though he said he knew 
the plan, he didn't.  I also assumed that when Dumbledore told Harry 
he already knew about the UV this meant that Dumbledore knew about 
it.  Yet many fans think he didn't know all of it.  

Maybe this is the sort of thing we're supposed to be wondering 
about, but I'm not certain it is, so I'm not sure how important 
speculation about it is.  The book might be more interesting if it 
were more clear, though, instead of less.  

-m