Unreliable narrator yet again.

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 177989


> Eggplant:
> If the narrator had said Harry's parents died in a car crash that
> would indeed be an unreliable narrator, but a narrator saying that 
is
> what Harry was told is not a unreliable narrator. 

zgirnius:
Thus spake the narrator:

PS/SS:
He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, 
as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his 
parents had died in that car crash. 

zgirnius:
We could, arguably, conclude that the narrator is telling us here 
what Harry is thinking. But the narrator does not actually tell us 
that is what s/he is doing.

Though really, I find this to be splitting hairs. Is the 
narration "unreliable" or merely "misleading"? I think there are 
times when the narrator fails to specify that we are being told 
Harry's thoughts and opinions rather than Potterverse reality, and 
many times when we are shown things and told Harry's reactions in 
such a way that we are led to conclude that Harry's reactions must be 
correct because they so beautifully mesh with what he and we have 
seen.

And Rowling's comments in her latest appearance suggest to me she 
knows very well how to do this and has been doing it, particularly 
regarding Snape and Dumbledore:

JKR, at Kodak Theatre Appearance (the front page of Mugglenet has 
more on the appearance): 
"Although [Dumbledore] seems to be so benign for six books, he's 
quite a Machiavellian figure, really. He's been pulling a lot of 
strings. Harry has been his puppet," she explained. "When Snape says 
to Dumbledore [toward the end of 'Hallows'], 'We've been protecting 
[Harry] so he could die at the right moment' — I don't think in book 
one you would have ever envisioned a moment where your sympathy would 
be with Snape rather than Dumbledore." 

zgirnius:
Why? She appears to be saying, because that's how she tried her 
darnedest to make it seem to us gullible readers, through the way she 
told her story (narration). <g>