Straightforward readings? (was Re: Truth vs. what meets Harry's eye )

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 140716

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lupinlore" <bob.oliver at c...>
wrote:
> > Hickengruendler:
> > 
> > Like Mad-Eye Moody turning out to be Barty Crouch junior under 
> > Polyjuice Potion, who was supposed to be dead, but instead his 
> mother  was buried in his place and Crouch junior was being kept 
prisoner  in his father's house? ;-) 
> >  
Lupinlore: 
> Yeah, I have to admit I never had much admiration for that one - 
particularly the part about how DD managed not to notice one of his 
oldest friends was not, in fact, one of his oldest friends.  Think
of  all the little in-jokes and brief references of which Crouch must 
have been totally ignorant, and yet DD managed to completely miss
it  all.

Pippin:
Why would he have to be totally ignorant? He had the real Moody under
the Imperius curse and Voldemort "the most accomplished Legilimens
the world has ever seen" to conduct the interrogation. He could have
relived every single one of Moody's interactions with DD  before he
ever arrived at Hogwarts.


Lupinlore: 
> Of course there is also the fact that, having managed to fool
Albus,  Barty proceeded forward with a standard comic-book 
 villain's "ridiculously complex, needlessly dramatic, self-
 destructively intricate" plot. 

Pippin:
So, you think it would have been a more interesting series if Harry
hadn't participated in the TWT? Anyway, grandiose absurd plots are
a Voldemort specialty, and it was his idea, not Barty's. He was
already discussing it with Wormtail before Barty had been rescued.

I think JKR's detachment affects the way Harry interacts with people
as much as the needs of the plot. She probably didn't know the
names of everyone in her class when she was in school just as 
Harry doesn't, she probably joins clubs and doesn't keep up with
the members after she leaves, and generally conducts her life
in a way that Slughorn would find incomprehensible.

But I don't think JKR has introduced plot elements randomly with
no notion of how they are supposed to play out in the last book. I
think she knows perfectly well where she is going, though as she
said, it may not be where many of the readers want to go. She said
something about only having seven readers left when she was done.
The series was planned and plotted with no idea that she would
become a popular writer, and she may have other things in mind
than suiting the story to what the fans of popular stories want.

Plenty of people were hoping that JKR would introduce a love interest
for Lupin and that we would meet one of Lily's old friends; I guess 
Tonks and Slughorn just weren't what they had in mind. <g>

A lot of people seem to think the straightforward reading is for Snape
to be the symbol of all that's wrong in a world where children are
picked on, and they want him to have done something obviously
and seriously wrong; they want him to have killed DD in cold blood
so that they can feel good about it when he's caught and punished.

Fine by me...but wasn't the straightforward reading of Snape that he
saw Harry as a symbol of the way he got picked on when he was a kid, 
and kept trying  to catch Harry doing something wrong so he could 
feel good about it when Harry was punished? 


Pippin