Harry's bias again, answering several posts

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 140987

Alla:
> Do you think that Snape unwillingly overlooks the fact that Harry 
was 
> raised a  muggle? Because it is strange to me that he would not 
know, 
> since whole WW knows that Harry is ... well, not being raised in WW.
> 
> I think Snape did it on purpose, knowing whole well  that Harry has 
> no clue about magic yet and have not had  ever any exposion to 
amgic 
> after his parents' murder. Just me of course.

Ceridwen:
Sometimes I'm sure Snape and everyone else knew.  Other times, I'm 
not so sure.  Snape made a big enough deal of the 'celebrity', which 
would only serve if Harry actually was raised as a celebrity.  That 
wouldn't happen in the Muggle world, only in the WW.  Yet, Snape 
works at Hogwarts, is part of the Order, is privy to information 
about the students as a member of faculty, and so on.  I find it 
confusing, more for Snape than for the nameless faceless WW at 
large.  For them, I doubt if any of them gave too much thought to 
where Harry was being raised, they only knew it wasn't in their 
neighborhood.

I'm even less sure that Snape understood, or if he was even told, how 
badly the Dursleys were raising Harry.  Would his position warrant 
him knowing that?  He wasn't Harry's Head of House, he wasn't any big 
cheese in the Order.  I guess a case could be made for him knowing as 
part of having Harry in his classes.  But, that's based on this 
world, not on the WW.  Things may be different.

Alla:
> 
> Well, actually I always realised that we have limited POV,  and 
> Snape's actions are VERY often defended based on the fact that we 
> only see what Harry sees. It is a fair argument, Harry IS wrong 
> sometimes, I am not disputing that. ( I believe he is also right 
> quite often of course :-))

Ceridwen:
It'd be strange if he wasn't right at least part of the time!  How 
can he be set up as the hero of the story if he's consistently wrong 
about *everyone* and *everything*?  I'm glad he's not right about 
everything and everyone all the time, though.  Those are big shoes to 
fill for younger readers, and frankly, a character like that, 
especially a kid, is not only boring, but aggrivating.  At least to 
adults, IMO.

Alla:
> But at the same time I also think that the importance of "Harry 
being 
> wrong" argument is often exagerated, because some actions of Snape, 
> or I would say many actions of Snape are objective, IMO and I 
cannot 
> evaluate  them differently whether Harry or anybody else sees them.

Ceridwen:
Yet, the broom hexing incident seemed so clear-cut, so obvious, there 
was Snape, muttering under his breath, and there was Harry, hanging 
on for dear life.  Harry wasn't the only one who got it wrong, 
either.  Ron and Hermione also got the impression that it was Snape.  
So, the circumstantial evidence did point in his direction from an 
objective source, the reaction of Ron and Hermione.  But in the end, 
we found that circumstances were not as they seemed, he was 
countering someone else's hex.

> 
> Again, going back to the first scene, I find Lebeto's example to be 
> perfect - Snape punishes Harry for the fact that he did not help 
> Neville. Erm... how exactly would it look differently if anybody 
else 
> would tell us "objective description " of this action?
> 
> I mean, sure Draco and Co woul add different adverbs or objectives 
to 
> it - " how great that Snape did punish that Potter or something 
like 
> that", but suppose we are asking "neutral" narrator to tell us 
about 
> this event. Do you think such narrator would be able to put 
positive 
> spin on Snape's actions here?

Ceridwen:
I don't know if an objective narrator could.  I don't have anything 
else other than Harry's POV to go on.  Given what we have, no, I 
doubt it.  But, going back to the broom hexing, I can't allow myself 
to be quite so sure about it.  It *looks* like a duck, it *quacks* 
like a duck, but is it a duck?

Alla:
> I think it would look to anybody as absolutely unwarranted bullying 
> or nastiness, if you like this word better. :-)
> 
> It looks even worse in retrospect, IMO, when we see Snape punishing 
> Hermione for actually HELPING Neville.
> 
> Poor Gryffs, they are d*mned if  they do something and d*mned if 
they 
> don't do  the same thing on Snape lessons.

Ceridwen:
Nastiness might be a decent word for Snape's actions.  From what we 
*can* see, he does come off as a biased creep when it comes down to 
Gryffindors v. Slytherins.  And it seems he's always out to take 
points, and he seems to positively gloat when he catches Harry or one 
of Harry's friends at something.  He doesn't come off as a bully as 
much as someone who is hoping almost gleefully to see someone get 
into trouble.  So, sure, nasty/nastiness.  We had been warned that he 
favors his Slytherins.

But again, I'll say it with reservations.  I don't know any more than 
the narrator tells me.  Someone has mentioned that the HP books are 
written very much like detective novels, and we're kept in the dark 
so we can solve the puszzle along with the hero.  The thing about 
these books is, they're self-contained stories in themselves, but 
they're all part of a larger whole.  And the narrator, who is most 
often in Harry's head, is still concealing things until the absolute 
end.  (Heck, for all I know, DD&Co are really the bad guys, 
Voldemort's the white hat, and the MoM is the model government.  With 
all the twists and turns we've been subjected to, I'm surprised any 
of us can find 'up'! ;) JMO)

Ceridwen.