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

[wynnleaf]

No: HPFGUIDX 155770

Neri
> 
> 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.

wynnleaf

I'm not quite sure I understand something about what you're saying. 
Are you saying that this is just something *JKR* wouldn't do?  Or are
you saying there's some sort of literary rule that the narrator
wouldn't be this "unfair," as you put it?  Because there's no such
rule.  Who-dunnit detective books do it constantly.  It's all over
Sherlock Holmes storys -- he investigates a crime scene, but doesn't
reveal what all he discovered until the "all is revealed" ending.  

So are you simply saying that JKR wouldn't do this, or that it's not
her practice to do it?  

Neri

We were recently reminded about JKR saying that the
readers "like to be tricked but not conned". To avoid describing
details that Harry knows and later would turn out critical, that would
be conning, I believe. 

wynnleaf
Well, like I said, it's a common practice with a lot of well-loved
mystery/detective books.  And JKR has not broken faith with the
readers by using it.  Casual readers will enjoy the surprise without
much question.  In-depth readers, who search for clues, figure out a
lot of the unreliable narrator moments ahead of time, or, if they
don't get them quite right, at least those readers are aware that they
are likely to be tricked (nicely, of course).  Hopefully, we'll *all*
get some surprises from JKR's unreliable narrator that *none* of us
have thought of yet.

Some readers, attempting to discover what's really going on, might not
like the idea of an unreliable narrator, because it may interfere with
how they interpret the books.  But that doesn't mean JKR won't use it.

An important aspect of the unreliable narrator tricks is that once
we've read all the books, we still have to able to re-read the books
and it all make sense in the light of what we'll then know.  Because
of that, the unreliable narrator can't actually flat-out lie to the
reader.  The deception has to be subtle enough to persuade the reader
to believe one thing, while leaving plenty of room for something
completely different to be going on.  The example of the cursed broom
in PS/SS is a good one.

I believe the supposedly stunned Flitwick is an example.  Snape tells
the girls outside the room that Flitwick "collapsed."  Later, when
Harry and others reveiw the evenings events, Hermione comments that
Snape must have stunned Flitwick.  But later, when we see Flitwick
again, the *narration* refers to his "collapse."  If it turns out that
Snape did not stun Flitwick (which either ESE or DDM Snape could have
done), we will be able to read these sections over and they'll still
all make sense, because the narration will not have directly lied to us.

Carol, am I right about the last couple of paragraphs?  I can't think
of examples where narration, outside of directly using a character's
pov, outright lies to us.  

wynnleaf