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

[wynnleaf]

No: HPFGUIDX 155800


> >
> Carol responds:
> You're misunderstanding the concept. It isn't Harry who's fooled, at
> least not in this case (though he's certainly mistaken in the case of
> Draco listening behind the shelves in the library). It's the reader
> who's left up in the air.
> 
> The probabality, in fact near-certainty, that Harry shouts the first
> Petrificus Totalus, the one that freezes Brutal-Face (Yaxley?), makes
> some readers *assume* that he cast the second one as well. But I don't
> think it's a matter of the narrator "not having time" to present every
> detail. How long would it take to say/write/type "Harry said" (or more
> likely "Harry gasped"? About two seconds. Nope. It's information that
> we could have been given but which is withheld from us and which may
> or may not be important. Notice that JKR has Tonks and Harry
> discussing the words that snape shouted as he was leaving. Why bring
> that up if all he shouted was "It's over"? The two puzzle pieces may
> or may not fit together, but we shouldn't dismiss them as unimportant
> because we don't want them to mean anything.

wynnleaf

Another important thing to keep in mind is that often the author is
*not* incorporating these bits (like Tonks and Harry discussing the
words shouted), in order to leave clues so the reader can suspect
something.  The purpose is so that when the truth comes out in the
end, the reader can't feel that it came totally out of the blue.  The
reader has to be able to re-read and think "oh yeah, I see it there,
and there, and there."  Like I said in another post, the narrator is
not directly lying to the reader.  The author must make sure that a
re-read makes sense with the final revelations.  The reader wants to
sense that there really *were* clues there, but he/she just didn't see
it.  On a re-read, those clues should start to stand out.  But the
author doesn't want to give away the surprises.  So the author isn't
leaving clues so you'll figure it out.  The author is writing so that
you *won't* figure out the truth, but the narrative will still make
sense when you do know the truth.  You have to be able to re-read and
both see how you got tricked in the first place, but be able to see
the clues that you missed.  The object isn't to write clues that the
reader picks up on, but to write sort of touch-stones so that the
truth makes sense in re-reads.  You don't want the surprise to come
across like some sort of out-of-the-blue revelation.  You want the
person to think "why didn't I *see* it?"  That's the point of the
unreliable narrator -- to trick you, not to give you clues you can spot.  

If there weren't thousands of readers putting the books under a
microscope for literally years at a time, we wouldn't pick up on these
things.

It may be that the petrificus totalus example doesn't turn out to be
one of these instances.  But if it *does,* then we'll be able to
re-read and think, "oh yeah, I see that now."

carol
> The unreliable narrator is not an invention of Snape fans. 

wynnleaf
That's right.  Hopefully the essay I posted on "A 'Seeming' Reality,"
(about Austen's books) makes it clear that we're talking about a
commonly used device in writing.

wynnleaf