good and bad Slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[urghiggi]

No: HPFGUIDX 175386

> Julie H:
> 
> > It's a tangle. I still honestly don't know what 
> > the author intends me to think about him in the end. 
> 
> houyhnhnm:
> 
> Why does it matter what the author intends for you to 
> think about a character?  I mean outside of the text 
> itself.  Surely that's the reader's job, not the author's.  
> JK Rowling created a fascinating imaginary world.  She 
> peopled it with characters and made them do and say 
> various things.  But it's up to me to decide what I 
> think and how I feel about those characters.  That's 
> the way I approach the reading of fiction anyway.
>

Julie again:

Why does it matter? good question. Frankly, it interests me more from an intellectual 
standpoint than an emotional one, I guess. I'm a writer too (in fact I do it for a living, but 
nonfiction) so the author's intention and results are of interest in terms of looking at the 
writer's craft. One thing that really actually interests me a good deal about this group is 
the amount of discussion that does seem to be generated specifically by ambiguity in the 
text, and passionate arguments based on interpretation of the ambiguity. I'm interested, I 
guess, in how much of that ambiguity is actually intentional (a reflection of authorial craft) 
and how much isn't (a reflection of authorial sloppiness.... or, just as likely, the author's 
own ambiguous ideas/feelings about the subject matter... or traits/notions within the 
writer that are not well understood even by the writer). When you have such an unusual 
amount of secondary canon, as with JKR, to me it becomes irresistible to look at those 
quotes, and how the author sees the work, and how that's consonant/dissonant with how I 
as a reader have responded to the work. 

All creative work reflects not only the writer's talents/imagination but also his/her world 
view. I'm interested in JKR's worldview because, as discussed here, she seems to prefer to 
write about some pretty deep stuff. Yes, yes, she's writing about Harry & Co. -- like all 
good writers, she didn't start out saying "this is my world view, I'm going to write some 
fiction to disseminate it." But the situations in which she puts her characters, and their 
response to those situations, at the very least reflect her interest in topics that must 
matter to some degree to her (life after death, choice vs. fate, race/class prejudice, etc). 

I enjoy a "cracking good story" as much as the next person -- but to me part of the 
enjoyment of any work like this -- something that clearly intends to be weightier than, 
say, an Agatha Christie mystery -- is pondering what the work does say about how the 
author views the world. For sure, this aspect becomes paramount to me on second and 
subsequent reads, if any, when basic questions about the plot have been resolved. If 
there's ambiguity in the work, to me it's interesting to try to figure out whether that stems 
from actual ambiguity in the author's world view, from an intentional authorial decision to 
leave a lot open to reader interp, or from the author's shortcomings in skill (in other 
words, the author had a clear intention to say "X", but the readers think the author said "Y" 
or "Z" or "X" but also  "Y" or whatever.).

But that's just some of what interests ME, about the Potterverse and many other works as 
well. YMMV. Whether it "matters" depends in part on personal interest/tastes, for sure.

Julie H, chicago