PS/SS - chapter 1, post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180897

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> > The first weird thing that jumped at me today is that at some
point of talking all things Potter I sort of stopped counting this
chapter as written not from Harry's POV. I mean, it is not like I
forgot exactly, but pushed back so to speak. Does it matter that
narrator is more trustworthy here?
> 
Potioncat responded:
 
> For your first question---Quick, get Carol!
> 
> I think the PoV of or type of Narrator makes a big difference in the
telling and setting up of the story. Of course, we couldn't have had
this chapter from Harry's PoV. All he could see about now was Hagrid's
beard.
><snip>

Carol responds to the summons and Apparates onto the top step of 4
Privet Drive (which is actually a porch and provides more secure
footing than the lower steps):

Right. First, Harry's pov won't work because he's a baby, but also
he's not present, so we start off with a dramatic narrator, shift to
Vernon's pov, and shift again in the second half of the chapter to a
dramatic narrator who can't get into anyone's mind and sees the action
from the outside. (Both techniques are used in later novels.)

SS/PS begins with an objective narrator reporting on the Dursleys'
appearance and beliefs. The stetement that the Dursleys "were proud to
say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much" (SS Am. ed.
1) clearly reflects the Dursleys' view of themselves, not necessarily
the narrator's and definitely not the author's (nor the reader's for
long). We soon learn that "normal" to Vernon and Petunia (not, of
course, to sixteen-month-old Dudley quite yet) means nonmagical,
unlike Petunia's sister Lily and her "good-for-nothing husband" (2), a
phrase reflecting a slide from objectivity into the Dursleys' pov.
(Later, Harry is described as being "as not normal as it was possible
to be.") "Normal to the Dursleys also probably means middle-class and
ordinary, with the husband making plenty of money to buy a shiny new
car and all the latest appliances and gadgets and the wife not having
to work outside the home. (The reader, of course, is free to dispute
this definition of normalcy.) 

By the bottom of page 2 (Am. ed., when Mr. Dursley is in his car, the
narrative has shifted to his point of vies--that is, the narrator is
inside his head rather than viewing the Dursleys from the outside.
Just having a different pov from Harry's does not necessarily make the
narrator more reliable than he (or she) is later in the story. He's
simply restricted to a different set of perceptions and assumptions
that contrast with Harry's. For example, when the Muggle Frank Bryce
is the pov character in GoF, we're told that there's no such thing as
magic and no such word as Quidditch. The reader knows better by this
time, of course, but that's Frank's subjective reality and the
narrator is reporting from his perspective.

Vernon, too, is a Muggle, but unlike Frank, he knows about the magical
world because of the Potters. Nevertheless, he's in denial. The cat
couldn't have been reading a map: "It must have been a trick of the
light." Nor could it be reading the street sign" "cats couldn't read
maps *or* signs" (3). We see him more directly fooling himself about
the people in cloaks collecting for some cause and not being sure that
his nephew's name is Harry (the narrator doesn't provide an alternate
explanation), but "he didn't blame her--if *he'd had a sister like
that" (5) clearly reflects Vernon's perception that Petunia's sister
is abnormal. However, Mrs. Dursley's getting upset at the mention of
her sister could hint at something more, Petunia's conflicted feelings
about her once-loved sister to which Verson isn't privy. Similarly,
her sharp response when Vernon asks if she's heard from her sister
lately ("No. Why?") suggests that she's hiding something from Vernon,
just as Lupin's similar reaction in PoA to Harry's question about
Sirius Black shows that he's hiding something. Vernon, however,
provides his own explanation--she looks shocked and angry because they
normally pretend that she doesn't have a sister (7). As we shift out
of Vernon's point of view, the narrator actually states that Vernon is
wrong in his belief that he and Petunia couldn't possibly get mixed up
in anything that was going on with the Potters and "their kind" (8).

IMO, the Dursleys, unpleasant as they are, do represent ordinary
people, Muggles, in one respect: they deny the existence of magic to
the extent that they can (and wouldn't even think about it at all if
it weren't for Petunia's magical sister). Even the reader, at least
most adult readers, has to willingly suspend disbelief to accept the
world of the story. If we saw flocks of owls or people in brightly
colored cloaks, we'd provide an explanation that fit with our
worldview. If we saw a cat reading a map (or a sign), we wouldn't
believe our eyes any more than Vernon does. Muggles who didn't have
magical relatives would be even more prone to provide such
explanations ("They don't see nuffink, do they?). Besides allowing the
narrator to introduce owls, cloaks, the Potters, the word "Muggle,"
and even an Animagus without accurate explanations, Vernon's
establishes that a magical world can exist within the ordinary Muggle
world without the Muggles' awareness precisely because of the Muggle
propensity to explain away anything "abnormal." (Later, of course, we
get the Statute of Secrecy, Muggle-repelling charms, Obliviate, and a
number of other reasons why we Muggle readers can't see or enter this
secret world, which we're neverless encouraged to believe in from the
first. And, oddly, we're encouraged to empathize with the "not normal"
Harry rather than the "normal" Dursleys, who after all, are "the worst
sort of Muggles," as McGonagall, not knowing any genuinely evil
Muggles, rather naively puts it. (Of course, presenting Harry in the
next chapter as an undersized male Cinderella and giving him glasses,
knobbly knees, and unruly hair makes him "normal" in an Everykid sort
of way that child readers who aren't handsome or strong or wear
glasses can identify with. "Not normal" becomes normal (like me)
because "normal" is both unpleasant and oblivious.)

Interestingly, the narrator does not slip into the cat's pov even
after she transforms into a witch, nor into Albus Dumbledore's.
(Hagrid, of course, is a late-comer and couldn't be the pov character
for that reason alone.) We see both McGonagall and Dumbledore from the
outside, without being privy to their thoughts or perceptions. The
narrator is essentially an invisible eavesdropper objectively
reporting their words and actions, attributing emotions to them
("angrily," "irritably," "glumly") based on their facial expressions
and tone of voice but not indicating how they feel inside (no churning
stomachs or stinging eyes) or why they feel as they do other than the
dialogue itself. The narrator somehow knows Dumbledore's name but
judges his age by the color of his hair and the length of his beard
and notes that his nose looks like it had been broken at least twice
(8)--a sneaky bit of foreshadowing. DD doesn't *seem* to realize that
he's out of place. The sight of the cat *seems* to amuse him "for some
reason." He finds what *seems* to be a silver cigarette lighter (9).
IOW, the narrator is guessing, and inviting the reader to guess, what
DD is thinking and what, exactly, is going on. Clearly, JKR didn't
want the reader to know DD's thoughts because she, like DD, wants to
keep her secrets.

We're not allowed inside McGonagall's head, either, even though she's
obviously less well informed than DD. We get an objective description
of her, along with her name, provided by DD in dialogue, but her
actions, too, are interpreted by the narrator ("as though hoping he
was going to tell her something," 10; "it *seemed* that Professor
McGonagall hed reached the point that she was most anxious to
discuss," 11). There's no reason to question these objective
interpretations, which are not distorted by any bias against the
characters or against magic, or by ignorance of the WW. They are
probably more accurate than McGonagall's viewpoint, which would
certainly be distorted by her emotions (fondness for the Potters,
dislike of Muggles, fear of Voldemort, general irritation and, later,
grief). Probably, JKR has chosen not to get inside her mind because
she's not a calm, unbiased observer. It's also possible that, like DD,
she knows too much about the WW. Sidenote: JKR never chooses the pov
of an adult Witch or Wizard, other than Voldemort's as presented
through Harry. Either she uses an objective narrator who sees the
characters from the outside, or she chooses a character--a Muggle or
Harry--likely to misinterpret the action. Even when she switches
briefly to Hermione's pov in SS/PS, Hermione is misinterpreting the
action, thinking that Snape is trying to curse Harry rather than
countering Quirrell's curse. Her tactic keeps us from knowing too much
too soon, and, occasionally, keeps us wrong-footed, so that we
misinterpret the actions and words of characters other than the pov
character along with him, especially when the pov character is Harry.

Carol, astounded to have produced seven long paragraphs in response to
Potioncat's summons