[HPforGrownups] Re: Appeal of the story to the reader

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 175676

>
> Nita:
>
> Well, for some of us, the separating line is not all that
> impenetrable. After all, both real-world processing and thinking about
> books goes on in the same mind, *and* authors frequently try to say
> things about our world in their imaginary stories (see "The Lottery"
> by Shirley Jackson). So sometimes we need a reason why the rules of
> the story-world are different from the normal ones.
>
> Nita, wondering *why* conventional justice doesn't work in Potterverse...


montims:
so now I am beginning to understand why some people are having the problems
they evidently are.  You see, I have no problem suspending my disbelief and
entering a "parallel" world, whether it is opera, theatre, books, films,
whatever, even when set in what is ostensibly and recognisably our own
world...

I am troubled by inconsistencies within the imaginary world, but I do not
have to have its physical or moral or whatever laws conform with those of my
world.  More than that, I lived in Italy for 10 years, and quickly had to
make massive adjustments to my understanding of the way people reacted to a
concept or action (the Mafia, to use an extreme example; Ms as a female
title to use a trivial example).

I adore Discworld, and find its characters and laws totally consistent.  I
read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Trollope and others, and am not cut up
when their moral ideas differ from mine.  If, in their universe, as
character is good for doing X and bad for doing Y, I note it mentally and
move on, maybe with a little smile at the differences in our attitudes.  But
it does not make their world wrong, or their characters morally deficient.
As I say, it is inconsistencies (Flints if you will) in the imagined world
that jar...

Oh, and as to why conventional justice doesn't work in Potterverse, IMO it's
because there is LV, and a MoM, and Hogwarts, etc.  Their world is not
"conventional"...


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