CHAPDISC: HBP 2, Spinner's End

[meriaugust]

No: HPFGUIDX 142032

Meri, responding with snipping of potioncat's excellent summary: 

> 1. Bellatrix kills a fox, thinking it could be an Auror. Does she 
> suspect Snape's home is being watched, or is she always looking 
over 
> her shoulder for an Auror? Do you think all DEs would be this 
trigger 
> happy, or is it just Bella?

Meri: I was actually a little surprised the first time this part. 
After all, why would a powerful DE like Bellatrix LeStrange stoop to 
such a tiny bit of animal cruelty? But on my second reread I 
realized that it was Bella's paranoia that lead her to kill the 
animal, not her cruelty. I wonder if it is only Aurors that she's 
worried about. She's fallen out of favor with LV, and she's on a 
mission that the Dark Lord doesn't know about. Could she be worried 
about being offed by LV, disposed of as so many others who had 
failed him have been? 

> 2. The neighborhood sounds deserted, except for some streetlights 
> that are still lit and the presence of food wrappers at the 
river's 
> edge. What can our RW sociologists tell us about this neighborhood 
in 
> the late 90's?

Meri: Not being a sociologist, I got the impression that it was a 
poverty-stricken, working class place. There probably are lots of 
people living there, but they just aren't a visible kind of people 
(homeless squatters, etc.) if that makes any sense. It strikes me as 
a kind of place where illicit activity is rife, where people don't 
ask too many questions and where dark deeds can be committed without 
exposure to the light of day. What better place for a supposedly ex-
DE to have his summer residence? 
 
> 3. Bella knows Narcissa is going to visit Snape, but she is caught 
by 
> surprise (equaling that of many from this list) at the location. 
She 
> calls it a Muggle dunghill and doubts that any of "our kind" has 
ever 
> set foot there. In fact, Snape, Pettigrew and Narcissa all seem 
> familiar with the area. Yet it was Bella who was supposed to be 
part 
> of young Severus's gang. What do you think is going on here? How 
long 
> do you think Snape has been using this location?

Meri: I think this has more to do with Bella having been in Azkaban 
for all these years. She's more out of the loop than the others 
might be, especially Narcissa, who through her husband may have even 
visited the place before. I don't remember getting the impression 
that Wormtail was particularly familiar with the place, but then 
again he may have been staying there for at least a year at that 
point, if he went into Snape's service directly following the 
graveyard in GoF. But as to Bella having socialized with Snape in 
school, can you imagine young Snape inviting a group of prepubescent 
DEs to his Muggle father's household for tea over the summer? Me 
neither. Until we get more cannon about young Sevvie, I'm just gonna 
leave this one alone. 
 
> 4. Snape's tiny sitting room is lined with leather bound books and 
> contains a threadbare sofa, an old armchair and a rickety table. 
It 
> had the "feeling of a dark, padded cell." A padded cell is used 
for 
> someone who needs protection from himself. What does this room, or 
> the house and neighborhood, tell us about Snape? Do you think this 
is 
> his usual home away from Hogwarts?

Meri: I think that it tells us that we don't know nearly enough to 
make an informed guess about him. Now that we know definitively that 
Snape is a half-blood I personally see him in a different light (and 
can appreciate why he found LV's gospel so attractive: pure blood 
mother and halfblood son abused at the hands of a filthy, vile 
Muggle). Unlike LV, who has, as far as we know, shunned most of his 
heritage (other than a short stint in GoF we really have no cannon 
to suggest that he ever resided in the Riddle house during his first 
rise to power or that since his rebirth he has returned there), 
Snape lives in what I imagine to be his childhood home, and has kept 
a Muggle name for himself. He is also the self-titled Half Blood 
Prince, implying what I read to be a rather fierce pride in his 
past. But then again, that doesn't explain why he keeps it hidden 
now. 

> 5. Narcissa is described as having a note of hysteria in her voice 
> and the look of a drowned person. She then enters a room that has 
the 
> feeling of a padded cell.  What does that tell us about Narcissa?  
> How does that fit with her actions later in this chapter?

Meri: Narcissa is a character whom I've always wondered about. How 
committed is she to the DEs and their ideology? Is she a Black 
through and through? Toujous Pur all the way? I'm not sure. Clearly, 
however, she loves Draco very much, regardless of his faults (things 
only a mother could be blind to, anyway) and doesn't seem to want 
him to follow in Daddy Malfoy's footsteps. But to me she seems 
desperate. Draco is an only child, he's all she has now that Lucius 
is in jail. What wouldn't she do to protect little Draco, and more 
importantly, now what is she going to do now that both her husband 
and her son are probably out of LV's good graces. I personally 
wouldn't be all that surprised (and I would be surprisingly upset) 
if the Daily Prophet's first headline in book seven was, "Malfoy 
Murders: Three members of prominent family found slaughtered in 
Wiltshire". Narcissa is probably ridiculously unimportant to LV in 
the long run. 

snip
 
> 7. This is a serious chapter, with lots of dark images. It's 
> informative too, but it's difficult to decide which information is 
> truth and which is deception. What images or feelings made an 
> impression on you? How do they affect your interpretation of the 
> story? 

Meri: Reading this chapter the first time, my thoughts were: "Snape, 
you bonehead! An unbreakable vow? My god he really is evil!" But 
reading it twice there are so many double entendres of sorts. It is 
almost like reading GoF knowing that Moody is really Barty Crouch, 
Jr. You can see so many multiple meanings in everything, and since 
we don't know Snape's motivations yet we can have all this fun 
trying to sort them out. My second read through I was sure that 
Snape was lying about knowing about "the plan" but he just 
improvised to make it seem like he was more knowledgeable than he 
was. 
 
> 8. Narcissa asks Snape to make an Unbreakable Vow and Bella 
> is "astonished" that he agrees. It looks like a wedding ceremony, 
and 
> is obviously very serious. We've seen that magical contracts have 
> serious consequences--the Goblet of Fire in GoF, and the SNEAK hex 
in 
> OoP. None of us can really understand why Snape agreed, but is 
this 
> just Business as Usual in the Wizarding World? How does this vow 
> compare to magical deals in fairy tales and myths?

Meri: Magic seems to have surprisingly binding powers over people, 
something that law doesn't have to enforce and that doles out its 
own punnishments for violations of magical contracts. (Side note: 
what would have happened to Harry had he not competed in the 
tournament?) In most stories that I recall, magical contracts are 
almost always fulfilled but there is also some sort of wiggle room 
for people to break out of them (one coming to mind was the Princess 
in the Rumplestillskin story getting out of giving up her firstborn 
son to the imp if she can guess his name in three nights, something 
that was not in the original contract) or to modify them at the last 
minute. But this doesn't seem to be the case in the HP universe. A 
contract is a contract is a contract and there's nothing to be done. 

> 9. (Thanks to Carol for this question): Like "The Other 
> Minister," "Spinner's End" is written from a point of view other 
than 
> Harry's. But while "Minister" uses the usual third-person limited-
> omniscient narrator, who sees through the eyes of the Muggle Prime 
> Minister rather than Harry's, "Spinner's End" dispenses with a 
point-
> of-view
> character altogether. Narcissa, Bellatrix, Snape, and Wormtail (if 
> we're counting vermin) are presented from the third-person 
dramatic 
> or third-person objective
> point of view, meaning that they are seen from the outside with a 
> minimum of commentary and no direct insight into their thoughts. 
It's 
> as if both the
> narrator and the reader are invisible, silent witnesses to the 
scene, 
> much like Harry on the tower. How does this change in the point of 
> view affect our reading of this chapter? Why do you think JKR 
chose 
> this point of view rather than letting us into, say, Narcissa's or 
> Bellatrix's mind? How does having a chapter written from a point 
of 
> view other than Harry's affect your reading of HBP or the series 
> itself? Should JKR have omitted the first two chapters in order to 
> maintain a Harrycentric view throughout the book? Why or why not?
> Related link about Point of View:
> http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/elements.asp?e=4

Meri: This one is fairly easily answered, I think: if we are in any 
of these character's heads, we know too much. What kind of mystery 
would there be if we knew what these characters were thinking? We'd 
know whose side Snape was on, what Bella really thought of the 
arrangement and what Narcissa wanted Snape to do. It would almost be 
like being in DD's head in chapter 1 of SS, "The Boy Who Lived": 
we'd just know way too much. It would also have skewered the chapter 
to one character instead of allowing each reader to interpret it 
without the framing of a particular viewpoint. We know that seeing 
most things through Harry's perspective doesn't always allow us an 
accurate view of things, maybe JKR was trying to be as clear as 
possible, for once.

Just a couple of my own questions (hope you don't mind potioncat!): 

- Who was watching whom? Was Snape there to keep Wormtail that ever 
loving screw up from getting in to too much trouble? Or was Wormtail 
assigned to, ahem, tail the double agent and make sure everything 
was kept on the up and up? I wonder if LV would have placed Wormtail 
there if he didn't think the rat man could handle Snape. And I am 
also wondering what happened to the rat man when Snape went back to 
school. 

- Bella as a nickname for Bellatrix is now cannon, if it wasn't in 
OotP. But Narcissa being called Cissy (Sissy? I don't quite 
remember)? Does anyone else think that was a mite sugary? Or has the 
Won-won incident left a bad taste in my mouth? 

Meri - loving the chapter discussions...