The Too Unreliable Narrator (was: What really happened on the tower)

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 155753

> Kemper now:
> Harry may have noticed Snape and Quirrell, but he wouldn't have 
noticed
> Hermione lighting Snapes robes.
> 
> The narrator was not being fair.  She was intentionally unreliable 
in order
> to misdirect and set up the reader to believe as wrongly as Harry 
believes
> that Snape is the bad guy.
> 
> Sorry to pull out the Unreliable Narrator card, but come on, it's so
> obvious. <g>
> 
> Kemper, who believes the narrator continues to be intentionally 
unreliable
> though the story, though the intention is much more subtle (e.g., 
The
> Lightning-Struck Tower)

Neri:
You are using the term "Unreliable Narrator" in the same meaning 
of "sneaky narrator", but this wasn't the original meaning of this 
term, at least the way I understood it. The original meaning was that 
the narrator can adopt Harry's subjective PoV instead of telling us 
objective facts. In the bucking broom incident what happens is 
exactly the opposite – the narrator becomes *less* subjective by 
describing events from several points of view, instead of sticking 
with Harry's.

Of course the narrator is being sneaky here. My point is that there's 
fair sneakiness and unfair sneakiness, and JKR was sneaky in a fair 
way: she told us everything important that her hero had seen and even 
more. She didn't have the hero know or see important things that we 
weren't told about. She didn't describe an incantation being said as 
if by the hero, and later told us that it wasn't him. That IMO would 
be unfair sneakiness, or in JKR's words conning the reader.

Neri