Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)Somewhat spoilerish for Dresde

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183926

Carol earlier:
> The difference is that we're *told* what little we know about
Hermione's parents. (We don't even know their real first names.) they
appear in only two scenes, at Diagon Alley in CoS and at King's Cross
in OoP, and they don't have even one line in either scene.
> 
Lynda responds:
> That's because Hermione's parents aren't part of the WW 

Carol:

This much I agree with to some extent. However, the Dursleys aren't
part of the WW, either. Caricatures though they are, they are *shown*,
not talked about. Their words, actions, and appearance reveal who they
are. (I'm not calling them round (complex) characters, though Dudley,
surprisingly, is a dynamic character (one who changes or develops).
The Grangers are so flat as to be one-dimensional, and, of course,
can't develop because they're virtually invisible even when they're
on-page. I would say that it's not so much the Grangers not being part
of the WW as that they're barely part of the story.

Lynda:
that Hermione is becoming more and more a part of throughout the
series. Yes, its sad to see a girl who loves her parents distancing
herself so much from them, but even in real life, this happens.

Carol:

Even when we first meet them, they're nonentities from the reader's
perspective. It isn't so much a matter of Hermione growing away from
them (though I agree that she does) as a matter of their lack of
importance to the story, in contrast to the Malfoys, who are important
enough to be fully developed (admittedly more so in the later books,
but our glimpses of Lucius Malfoy show him as a distinct individual as
early as CoS).

Lynda: 
> I did read the series for Harry Potter's story, not Draco's, Ron's
Hermione's, Neville's or Snape's, so the lack of emphasis on their
stories doesn't bother me as much as it does some others. <snip>

Carol responds:

I'm not talking about subjective reactions, what a reader (you, me, or
anyone else) liked or didn't like (or about thwarted expectations
regarding storylines that went nowhere--that's Betsy's view, not
mine). I'm talking about character development as a literary
technique. Whether you care about them or not, the Malfoys are fully
developed characters, presented through the narrative strategies
(action, description, and dialogue) that authors use to bring
characters to life on the page. The Grangers, in contrast, are barely
characters at all, and what little we know is revealed through
exposition (explanation)--telling, not showing.

It has nothing to do with what we like or want. It has to do with
what's there on the page. We can picture the Malfoys in our minds. We
know what they're like as people and whether we like them or not.
(Clearly you don't, and you're not alone. We're not supposed to
approve of the Malfoys' treatment of House Elves or their support of
Voldemort and Pure-Blood supremacy or most of the other things that
they do.) The Grangers arouse no such feelings and create no such
pictures in our minds. We neither like nor dislike them. They have no
more personality than Slughorn's candied pineapple (or whatever the
stuff is called).

Even Bob Ogden and Hepzibah Smith, minor characters from memories, are
vividly drawn, caricatures though they are. The Grangers aren't drawn
at all.

Carol, who is simply trying to indicate that the Malfoys are more
fully delineated as characters than the Grangers because they, unlike
Grangers, are important to the plot, which involves much more than
Harry's conflict with Voldemort