JKR and Emotional Arcs (was:Re: JKR and the boys (and girls)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 161648


> Betsy Hp:

> I wonder if that's why I suffered from a bit of an HBP drop?  I was 
> sooo excited about HBP, and as I mentioned before, I was thrilled 
> with what happened with the Slytherins (the Malfoys, the train 
> compartment, Snape).  But as I thought about the main characters, I 
> felt more and more let down.  I found I didn't really care about 
> them all that much anymore.  In many ways, I just stopped liking 
> them.  Which isn't the best way to feel about a book, IMO.

Sydney:  

I have to chime in and say my reaction is very similar.  The first
time I read HBP I read it so fast I didn't really register much of
emotional reaction.  I remember being a little disappointed in the
romances, which I was really looking forward to but seemed to come out
a little generic and sit-comy.  On the second read I was so impressed
with the plotting of the Slytherin stuff that I tended to skim over a
lot of the main character's scenes, which didn't strike me as odd
until this moment!

Now someone's lent me the audiobook and I'm having to listen to
everything as it comes, no skipping.  And I gotta say... I yield to no
one in admiring JKR's plots but I'm a bit unsure of where she's going
with some aspects of the four kids in the center.  Particularily
Ginny-- I'm only on Chapter 9 and pretty much every line she gets,
she's putting someone down, hexing them, or sneering at someone
offscreen.  It's hard to see why all these boys keep being so
desperate to be with her seeing as she seems to having not much but
contempt for them!  I suppose the idea is that she's this Spunky
Spitfire but the only way JKR seems to find to express this is by
having her be... well, a bit of a cow, really.  She gets one positive
thing with Luna-- but then again, her 'niceness' is expressed by her
'telling people off', as Luna says, for calling her 'Loony', which,
uh, Ginny herself did in OoP.  I wish Luna could have had a story to
tell about Ginny being nice that involved, I dunno, having a laugh or
finding her books or something.  

I'm hoping Ginny's just going through the 15-year-old CAPSLOCK thing
Harry did except she's goes for mean rather than shouty, and she'll
grow out of it.  I do remember not liking Harry much in OoP but being
impressed at the uncompromising portait of a typical 15-year old
no-one-understands-me door-slammer.  I think this is true of how JKR
normally characterises people-- you can like or dislike them depending
on whether you like or dislike that kind of person.  The odd thing
with Ginny is that I'm feeling a bit slippery about how I, as an
audience member, am supposed to feel about her.  I mean, I feel that
JKR didn't much care if I liked Harry or not in OoP, she was going to
be honest to what he was going through.  But I get more of a feeling
that I'm supposed to like and admire Ginny and root for her in a more
uncomplicated way, and that ain't happening.  Is the negativity and
arrogance an accidental effect of cummulative scenes that JKR didn't
intend?

Probably there's some sort of alchemical angle (I'm 100% sold on JKR
using a lot of alchemy to structure the books), because there is a
huge amount of fire imagery used with Ginny and her hair and her
temper and her 'hard and blazing' look.  So again, maybe there will be
a chemical reaction thingie and she and Harry will temper each other,
or something.  I just hope I don't have to skim their scenes in Book
VII like I feel like doing in HBP.

-- Sydney