JKR's dealing with emotions - Talking about Death

[amiabledorsai]

No: HPFGUIDX 147477

> Kemper now:

> The problem with Harry's coping of Sirius' death isn't that long,
> Shakespearean soliloquies are absent from the text, it's that
> Harry isn't shown waking with a tear-soaked pillow or something
> similar to show the reader the depth of Harry's loss and how he
> was hurting silently.  All JKR had to write was a short, simple
> sentence and it would have been clear.   

Amiable Dorsai:

Like maybe:

"He had been sitting in a chair beside his bedroom window for the best
part of four hours, staring out at the darkening street, and had
finally fallen asleep with one side of his face pressed against the
cold windowpane, his glasses askew and his mouth wide open."  (HBP3)

Or:

'He could tell that Dumbledore understood, that he might even suspect
that until his letter arrived, Harry had spent nearly all his time at
the Dursleys' lying on his bed, refusing meals, and staring at the
misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to
associate with dementors.
   
   "It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realize
he won't write to me again."'(HBP4)

Those kinds of sentences? 

This is not a failure of Rowling to show Harry's anguish, this is
characterization. Think of Harry's upbringing--he would have learned
not to cry before he learned how to read, and Rowling is showing us
just that.

"Half-Blood Prince" shows us the effects of the emotional brutality of
Harry's early life again and again: He can't cry for the loss of
Sirius; he fails to recognize what his feelings for Ginny mean; he
isolates himself (or tries to--Ron and Hermione are having none of it)
at just the time when he needs his allies the most....

More than any writer I can think of, Rowling makes you read between
the lines--and she doesn't make it easy, witness the ongoing debates
about Snape's true nature.

Amiable Dorsai