Disappointment and Responsibility (was Re: Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174871

Lupinlore:
> With regard to Sirius statement that the world is not divided into
> good people and Death Eaters, here the issue is even more complex.
> I understand and acknowledge that, even taking that statement at
> face value, there are problems with the way that JKR plays the
> theme out in the text, or fails to play it out as the case may be.
> I reiterate, I do not see JKR as having no responsbility in this
> matter.
> 
> However, it seems to me in this example that some people were
> wanting her to have said something very different than what, in
> fact, was literally put down in the text.  That is, they were
> wanting Sirius to have said "The world is not divided into people
> who are nice to you and people who hate you and mean you ill."
> They wanted this to play out particularly, to use loaded examples,
> with the Slytherins, particularly Snape and Draco.  They wanted,
> it seems, Snape to not REALLY hate and bear ill-will toward Harry
> -- his cruelty was to have been an act, or a legitimate teaching
> method designed to teach Harry what he had to know, or an artifact
> of Harry's skewed perceptions.  Draco's attitude likewise was to
> have been a result of petty, not-serious childhood rivalry and/or
> Harry's prejudice.  Draco was to have been revealed to have been
> a boy much like Harry who really just wanted to be friends.
> 
> Well, the trouble is that ISN'T what JKR said.  Sirius DIDN'T say
> "The world isn't divided into people who are nice to you and people
> who hate you and bear you ill will."  Regardless of the merits of
> such a message, that just isn't what's there. Snape DID hate Harry
> and bear him ill-will, if not always in the way Harry believed (but
> usually in the way Harry believed).  Draco DID hate Harry and bear
> him ill-will, almost exactly in the way Harry believed.  In this
> regard, to say something controversial, JKR might be justified in
> answering the charge, "You lied to us!" with a rejoinder "Errr, no.
> You lied to yourself."

Magpie:
Speaking as somebody who fully admits to being wrong in this area, I 
don't think that's quite what "we" (or I in this case) wanted. It 
wasn't that characters like Snape and Draco would turn out to really 
be nice--I for one always thought that they did hate Harry and never 
considered any of their actions as a "cover" for really helping him 
or anything like that. 

What I assumed--and was wrong--was that there would be some kind of 
new understanding in the end that did involve Harry himself seeing 
that even with those things being true, he could still have things to 
learn about them. Not meaning that Harry would say, "Wow, it's my 
fault you have been nasty to me!" (although I wouldn't mind some 
moments of that for Harry with some people) but that there'd be some 
connection. I felt like Harry had no connection with either of those 
two characters in DH-Harry kind of had a habit of not having to 
compromise with other people. 

Someone went through all of the Snape moments, but of course Harry 
doesn't recognize any of the "clues" about Snape's loyalties in DH. 
He just gets the memories, finds out (plot point) that Snape loved 
his mother and always worked to protect him. Some of said it would 
be "unrealistic" for Harry to reconcile with Snape, but this feels 
like lowering the possibilities to make JKR's choice the only 
possible one when it wasn't. Of course he could have had some scene 
with him where he had to actually deal with the guy--it wouldn't have 
to be a Hallmark moment. Not that JKR had to write it, but it's not 
like it was impossible.

It's like I compared it to before--the Snape revelation to me was 
disappointing in the same way the reconcilation with Hermione is in 
PS/SS: there are some things you can't know about a person without 
respecting them, and finding out they loved your mother and protected 
you your whole life is one of them. It's not an emotional connection, 
it's a plot point: now Harry knows this about Snape, and he uses the 
information he has now. Emotional things in this canon tend to work 
more as plot points. (I think this is why stories that happened in 
the past are often more powerful than the ones in the present, 
because we can just hear the tale and fill it in ourselves.)

So yeah, I did think from the first book that Slytherin seemed like 
the biggest conflict in the book and that would therefore mean the 
drama would come from that reconciliation--even if it was the first 
steps. (And no, I don't see that in DH--I don't consider the idea 
that we're to presume that Slytherin went away to lick its wounds and 
so was probably better in future to be any kind of step on the path 
to reconciliation.) I was wrong--it turned out they were the house of 
bad guys representing "people like that" that JKR feels we all have 
to deal with (and just as in real life they pick on you in school and 
pick on you as an adult and so anything done to them is obviously 
just standing up for yourself and others). 

Did I fool myself? I think that's a bit much. I was wrong about where 
the story was going, but stories depend on readers having 
expectations. This did seem like the biggest source of drama, the hat 
sang twice about the houses having to work together, Harry has his 
set up lines about "never" forgiving Snape or working with Draco, 
we're talking about kids in Harry's school. So I would argue with 
anyone who claimed this was just me projecting onto the text--it's 
not unreasonable to have expected it, just wrong.

One reason I always thought it had to happen was I couldn't see how 
there could not be a real reconciliation that showed a *change* in 
the Slytherin dynamic on-screen (particularly Draco because he was 
the student representative and a kid who believed the Pureblood 
ideolgy--and I assumed Harry would also learn that Snape had already 
done it) was because I didn't see how it would really be much of a 
happy ending without it--more like dealing the symptoms rather than 
the cause. That's the way I still felt reading it. I can't say I was 
really fooling myself, because my feelings at the ending kind of 
confirmed. It didn't make JKR wrong for not writing the story I 
wanted, but it does explain why the story was unsatisfying for me 
personally. That's partially my responsibility, but I think the 
author's set up made my expectations at the very least not 
unreasonable and unfortunately she didn't write her own ending well 
enough for me to convince me it was just as good or better. 

-m