Story analysis/Hurt/comfort

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 156167

Betsy Hp:
> Hee! That's the post that brought me to HPfGU's. Here's a link
for
> any who are interested:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/39083
>
> But actually, I disagree with you here, Alla. Not that emotions
> effect a reading, but that it all boils down to emotions. Because
> Elkins shows, rather definitively I thought, that JKR *does* use
> hurt/comfort with Draco. Hurt/comfort is a specific sort of
> technique, one that writers can choose to use, and one JKR uses
> often. Elkins showed all that with examples from the texts. She
> also showed that hurt/comfort can be undercut, that JKR has
undercut
> it with certain characters (Pettigrew, for example) but chooses
not
> to do so with Draco. None of that is emotion. It's all right
there
> in the text.

Alla:

Well, yes, of course she analyses the text and brilliantly she does,
but the interpretations she makes I thought and still do very
colored by emotions ( as I said, it only make it more beautiful for
me, but that is what I think)

For example - when she sees Draco's suffering as sympathetic, I
don't. I think that this is all very deserved, because the reasons
for Draco's sufferings are all in the text too and I see them as
Draco's own behavior.

Hurt/comfort as far as I know is not a literary technique, although
I can be very wrong on this.

I think this is just the name  that readers  and mostly female 
readers IMO came up with to name the phenomena of
wanting to **comfort** the characters they sympathize with, because
they suffer so stoically.

If you can reference the "hurt/comfort" as being a literary
technique, I will actually be very grateful.

Now, author of course can do it, making us sympathize with character
or not, but I would argue that our emotions come out very strongly
in deciding whether it indeed works for us or not, as you said. :)

Am I making sense? In the textual examples Elkins brings I see
nothing heroic, or sympathetic. I don't see a sympathetic underdog,
I see rich, spoiled bastard, who deserves every suffering and I
maintain ( and I can be very wrong, as I said, I never talked to
Elkins in person or even on line, I just read her posts) that
Elkins' emotions helped her to interpret text this way.

Basically I think that the emotions helped Elkins decide that 
hurt/comfort was used there in the first place. Am I making sense? 
Of course she does not use emotions to say that she likes or 
dislikes the character, but in much more sophisticated way, because 
IMO to say that hurt/comfort is used, character's sufferings must 
make us sympathize, sort of as I call it to make us "hug him and 
make it all better", hehe.

I don't think that Draco deserves to feel better when he comes to 
suffer for what he did in books 1 through 5, his deeds are just so 
**unsympathetic** to me and IMO Elkins downplays the maliciousness 
of what Draco did and this is also IMO in the text.

Betsy Hp:
> Where emotion comes in is if it actually *works* for you. JKR
uses
> the same technique with Sirius, and it obviously works like gang
> busters for some, but not so well for others (as with just about
> every single character in Potterverse <g>).

Alla:

Yes, but to me it comes even earlier, I don't see **hurt/comfort**
with Draco at all.

Yes, good example about Sirius. It works for me, because the most 
obvious example is him being in Azkaban reads to me as unfair 
sufferings, for something he did not do.

For some readers it does not work, since they read Sirius' 
sufferings as justifiable, or result of his own choices, etc, etc.

Draco's sufferings I just see as very **fair**, so I see nothing to 
comfort Draco with, and for me I see no hurt-comfort there.

I think that hurt comfort is actually a very good example of us 
interpreting text with the help of our emotions (not in a purely 
emotional way, but just using them) 

And I can totally **see** it, even when it does not work for me, you
know?

Sorry to go back to Snape, but I **totally** see hurt/comfort in his
character appearances and it even worked for me partially some time
ago. :)

I see it on the page, so I would think that I would be able to see
it with Draco. Moreover, I see it with Draco in HBP, although again
it does not work for me.

So, yeah, I think it is not there in books 1 through 5

Betsy Hp:
Of course, if you
> emotionally connect with a character that can be what sends you
> looking for textual support for your feelings. However, if it's
> there in the text, it's intellectual support you're giving, not
> emotional.

Alla:

Don't really feel like talking about my writing style anymore :),
but briefly - yes, of course, textual support **is** intellectual
support. My feelings appear after I read what is in the text and I
just like to express them together with intellectual support.


Betsy Hp:
> So I guess my point is that intellectual analysis *does* exist.

Alla:

Sure it does. :)

Betsy Hp:
And
> while a certain technique might not work for you emotionally (as
> hurt/comfort, while popular, doesn't work for everyone) it doesn't
> mean that that particular technique isn't in play.


Alla:

Again, could you reference it for me as **literary technique**? I am
honestly very curious.

Thanks.

JMO,

Alla.