CHAPDISC: HBP1, The Other Minister

[hitchyker42]

No: HPFGUIDX 141803

Hi everyone, first time poster here!


 
KathyK wrote:
> 1. 
> Does this scene work?  If so, what made it work here in contrast 
> to the other potential locations in the series?  Is it simply that 
> Fudge has more information to disseminate or are there thematic or 
> stylistic reasons to include this scene now?



It seems like this scene works here mainly for thematic reasons.  
JKR is making it clear right off the bat now that the question of LV 
has been answered for the WW.  He is back and his gauntlet has been 
thrown down.  I assume what JKR meant by the possibility of using 'a 
chapter very like this' in previous books was the idea of showing a 
meeting between Fudge and the muggle Prime Minister.  Clearly the 
information Fudge would have given in previous incarnations of this 
chapter would be different, or at least truncated.

A chapter like this as the opener  PS/SS would have consisted mainly 
of "Hello, I'm Cornelius Fudge.  I'm a wizard and you're a muggle 
and I hope we never see each other again."  It wouldn't be a very 
compelling way to begin the story, and it would be very expository 
in the sense that all the information about the existence of  
wizards and the secrecy of the WW would have been dropped into the 
reader's lap in a heap.  The actual beginning JKR chose is much 
better, I think, because it starts off with the Very Normal 
Dursley's and their Very Normal life.  And then we start to see 
things that are just a little off.    Cat's reading signs and people 
with cloaks.  And then we get treated to a bunch of exciting images—
McGonagall's transfiguration, Dumbledore, the Put-Outter, Hagrid 
arriving on a flying motorcycle.  The wonderful thing about the 
beginning of PS/SS is that it delivers exposition to the reader at 
just the right pace and it makes huge, huge promises for what the 
series has in store. 

In POA I still feel like the book is very much Harry's story alone.  
Ultimately of course, so is the whole series, but she does start to 
weave in threads of other's stories into it as well, and much of 
that begins after Harry learns about all the history revealed by the 
end of POA.  Until that point, it is all about Harry and injecting a 
Fudge/PM scene into that, I think, would be too distracting and 
irrelevant to the book.

The opening scene of GOF is actually told from non-Harry 
Perspective, only the second time this occurs, I think.  In this 
context, a Fudge/PM scene would fit in better except that then the 
question is what do we get out of it.  Essentially all Fudge had to 
say was that some bad stuff went down at the QWC.  We would already 
know this from seeing it happen at the beginning and I think it's 
more important for us to see the events at the QWC firsthand because 
it's our first taste of the DEs as a group, as opposed to the 
various incarnations of LV in the previous books.  One supremely 
evil wizard is one thing, but the idea of a mob of wizards doing his 
bidding is more terrifying still and it has to be shown on the 
page.  Afterwards, any sort of panicked visit between Fudge and the 
PM would just be totally redundant and feckless.

In OOP Fudge's information about the dementors and the mass breakout 
would come in the middle of the book and would interrupt the flow of 
the novel.  As far as I can tell, the only times JKR breaks from the 
standard perspective of the books is at the beginning when she is 
setting up little events to mystify and intrigue us.  This wouldn't 
qualify and I think the placement here would be distracting.

The chapter works at the beginning of HBP because it emphasizes 
that, although it's still Harry's story, the fight has grown beyond 
Harry's personal struggle and it has affected the WW as a whole.


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