Maraurders/he exists

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 168351

> Carol responds:
> <snip> But I don't think we can blame the unreliable
> narrator, either. Since the Pensieve is, according to JKR, an
> objective record of events, the only bias would be from the narrator
> reflecting Harry's pov. Frankly, the narrator makes only a few
> Harrycentric comments (e.g. "Snape was clearly unpopular"). Most of
> the rest is objectively narrated, with the focus on James's words and
> actions (reflecting Harry's own focus on James). 
> 

Neri:
Hmmm. I've never realized that Harry's limited PoV can only err
*against* Snape, never in his favour. Is an unreliable narrator only
allowed to be unreliable in one direction? <g>

In fact the SWM scene is tricking us in many different ways, perhaps
not all of them technically coming under the heading of unreliable
narrator, but if so they certainly need a term of their own. Perhaps
you could supply us with the correct literary terms for the following
techniques: 

1. Describing only a single event and let the readers assume it is
typical, faithfully represents the state of things during the whole
five years before that. 

2. Not even describing this whole event, deliberately leaving the
impression that it ended in a way that was too horrible to describe on
page, but not telling us that it indeed ended that way.

3. Adding a title like "Snape's Worst Memory", keeping it ambiguous
who's PoV it represents (the all-knowing Author's? Harry's?) 

4. Making characters talk in a way that appears self-convicting, but
could in fact mean other things ("it's more the fact that he exists").

5. Convicting a character using a witness (Lily) who has her own
issues with him. 

6. Making several characters behave in an unreasonable way so as to
downplay certain aspects of the event (everybody ignoring the blood on
James's face).

7. Making characters that later discuss that event unreasonably hide
relevant information (Lupin and Sirius not telling Harry about
Levicorpus being widely used).

8. Hinting to a parallel with another scene in the same book (Dudley
and his gang doing Mark Evans) thus suggesting (but never confirming)
a parallel between the Marauders and Dudley's gang. 

9. Using all the above to the same end of suggesting Snape's
innocence, and also tell us that Harry is blaming him for an unrelated
issue (responsibility for Sirius's death by goading him) and then tell
us explicitly, over Harry's head, that this is to relieve Harry's own
guilt, thus creating the impression that *any* evidence against Snape
in the series is only due to Harry's biased PoV. Would this be termed
"unreliably unreliable narrator?" <g>.   


> Carol:
> As for the de-emphasis on the cut that James received, I think it's
> because the cut is not important. The narrator notes it once in
> passing--a gash appears on James's cheek and his robes are spattered
> with blood. James reacts to it only by casting Levicorpus. He does not
> so much as cry out in pain or raise a hand to his cheek. Harry thinks
> no more about it; none of the characters in SWM remarks on it,

Neri:
*Why* does the narrator note this "in passing"? Is it realistic that
no one comments about such a thing in the scene nor remembers it
later? Only to spring on us, in a next book, a similar Dark curse in
Snape's book?

If the curse Snape uses in SWM isn't important, no one comments on it,
and it's not even Sectumsempra, then why showing it at all??? Snape
could have attempted any other of a long list of innocent familiar
hexes against James and fail. Why would the Author choose one that
draws blood in the first place and then de-emphasise it?


> Carol:
> nor do
> Lupin and Black bring it up when Harry, seeing his father as a bully
> and Snape as his victim, brings up the incident. They're too busy
> remembering James playing with the Snitch and ruffling his hair to
> give much thought to Severus. It's clear, however, that they're
> vaguely ashamed of their own behavior in that scene:
> 
> "Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?" asks Lupin. "Did I ever tell
> you I thought you were out of order?"
> 
> To which Black replies, "Yeah, well, you made us feel ashamed of
> ourselves sometimes" (671).
> 
> Clearly, Severus was not going around attacking them with Dark magic.

Neri:
So you believe Sirius when he's talking about James, but not when he's
talking about Snape? Here's more of Sirius's testimony suggesting that
Snape was, indeed, going around attacking them with Dark magic:

"Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark
Arts" (only one page before the words you quote, and how would Sirius
know that if Snape had never used Dark Arts in public?).

"Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids
in seventh year, and he was part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly
all turned out to be Death Eaters." (strongly suggesting that this was
going on since their first year, and also hinting to active use of
curses in the company of bullies). 

"James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on
each other" (again showing this was going on since their first year,
and also suggesting it was a mutual issue, not one sided)

"Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to
hoping he
could get us expelled.
" (showing Snape has been quite active against
the Marauders).

Why do you believe Sirius when he's ashamed about his own and James's
behavior, but not when he talks about Snape's behavior? Isn't it
because JKR has ingeniously created this appealing (but largely
unsupported) story about Snape the poor innocent victim?  


> Carol:
> They, themselves, acknowledge their behavior (and, by implication,
> James's) to be unjustified. 
> 
> Let's look at the scene itself. Sirius and James catch Severus
> off-guard. (Note that Sirius becomes very still, "like a dog that has
> scented a rabbit.")  James addresses "Snivellus," who reaches for his
> wand  <snip more description>

Neri:
You go back to describe the scene. We went through all this many times
already before HBP. What we've found in HBP was that this scene is
manipulative and one-sided. For instance, the description you quote
yourself of Sirius becoming very still "like a dog that has scented a
rabbit" is a classic example of unreliable narrator. It is well
calculated to leave us with the impression of Snape as the poor
harmless rabbit, while in fact this is merely Harry's subjective
impression, and is contradicted by (deliberately downplayed) facts
even in that very scene. 


> Carol: 
> To return to the cutting hex, to which no one pays attention in this
> scene. Sectumsempra means "cut forever." There's no indication that
> James is cut forever. Not only is there no further mention of blood
> but no one mentions a visit to Madam Pomfrey for dittany to prevent
> scarring. No one utters the countercurse (which, in any case, only
> Severus would know--it's not written in the margins of his Potions
> book like the countercurse to Levicorpus).
> 
> My impression is that this little cutting hex, which does minimal
> damage and is not considered important enough to be mentioned by
> anyone, is not the admittedly Dark Sectumsempra, which is marked "for
> enemies" and requires a complex countercurse to reverse. Most likely,
> this incident and the somewhat later "Prank," which endangered
> Severus's life (yes, he could have been killed rather than transformed
> into a werewolf in the confinement of the Shrieking Shack with no help
> at hand) and which he regarded as a murder attempt, spurred him to
> modify the cutting hex into something deadlier, either as a defense
> against further attacks or as retaliation. It's clear, however, that
> he never used it on them or he'd have been expelled (as Harry would
> have been had Draco died). It seems likely, and this is just my
> opinion, that Snape invented (or researched) the elaborate
> counterspell later, probably after he'd "returned to our side." At any
> rate, I don't think that either the curse or its countercurse had been
> invented at the time of the SWM. Surely, we'd have heard about it if
> Severus had been forced to sing or chant the countercurse to
> Sectumsempra to heal James's cheek.
> 

Neri:
Snape's potions book also has Levicorpus in it, which was already in
wide use by the time of the SWM scene, so he must have invented it
before that. This means Sectumsempra, which also appears in that same
book, could also be invented by that time (the countercurse indeed
appears to have been invented later, as it's much more complex and
isn't mentioned in his book). A Sectumsempra curse could fail on James
because Snape cast it too fast, either missing and merely grazing
James's face, or simply because he failed to cast it appropriately. If
this was only some harmless "little cutting hex" why haven't we seen
anything like it until now? If it's another of Snape's inventions why
isn't it in his book? In the whole series we see precisely two
instances of a hex that cuts people and draws blood. One is
Sectumsempra and the other is the one used by Snape in SWM. 

(Unless you count the slashing curse Dolohov uses on Hermione in OotP,
which only acts internally so no blood is drawn. Anyway it hardly
helps Snape's case as it is obviously a Dark curse).

But the main point is: why would the Author make Snape use an unknown
cutting hex in the first place, downplay it in the original scene, and
then spring Sectumsempra on us just a few chapters before the tower? 


Neri