On Letters (was Re: Hmmm. What's your favourite *now*?)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 183053

 >Montavilla47 
> > James (from the Giant Peach) and Charlie (from the Chocolate 
> Factory) 
> > are likewise alone, tiny, abused, and poor.  But they both take 
> every
> > chance they are given, and Charlie persists beyond all reason in
> > hoping and trying to get that Golden Ticket.
> 
> Potioncat:
> But they don't get anything on their own either. Someone/something 
> comes along and helps.(I haven't read James, just seen the movie 
> version.) Harry persisted in hoping to obtain a letter, too.
> 
> (by the way, Lupin and Sprout are in James and the Giant Peach. For 
> what it's worth.)

Magpie:
Oh, Dido Twite and Lyra would be capable of grabbing a letter, no 
problem, imo. So would Harry himself under different circumstances 
without using magic. Speaking as somebody who used to be a mediocre 
kid, how many of these letters were there? The main place I remember 
being annoyed was with the first one where Harry had to be so shocked 
he let them see the letter to begin with--because obviously he did 
that so that we could start the whole thing. I was mostly pained that 
I, the reader, already started the book with a chapter that told me 
that this is in no way ordinary so why are we dragging out getting on 
with it? 

As I said, maybe if we hadn't already been clued into the kid's being 
important in chapter one there would be some suspense, but since 
there wasn't this chapter was a long one for me. It wasn't so much I 
thought less of Harry's brains for not grabbing a letter, but the 
problem obviously wasn't that it would be impossible for a kid to get 
a letter. It was that nobody was going to get this letter until the 
next chapter. Why would I ever think this kid was an EveryKid when 
the first chapter already told me he wasn't?

-m