To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storylineWAS :Re: Disarming spell

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185514

> jkoney
> I think at one point or another we have all agreed that Harry isn't 
> the most reliable narrator.

> 
> The line about the quidditch tryouts illustrates that Harry doesn't 
> know that many people in the school. He has his close friends, his 
> dorm mates, quidditch people and the people he attends class with. 
> Other than that, I don't even think he knows everyone in Gryffendor.

Magpie:
As Carol pointed out, Harry is not the narrator. The line about 
Quidditch actually isn't one of the ones that suggest he doesn't know 
many people (though it's true that often he knows a lot fewer people 
than someone else would in his situation). It just tells us that a 
bunch of Hufflepuffs showed up to try out. In the Quidditch scene the 
narrator, which is somewhat tied to Harry's pov but is not Harry 
giving us his own pov--there's a little difference there, even though 
sometimes the narrator suggests Harry's emotional feelings about 
something or his own conclusions (and if those conclusions are wrong 
we will learn that later because Harry's mistake is part of the 
story)--we're told that there's a group of Hufflepuffs. Which is 
funny because it shows that Harry's so dishy even Hufflepuffs have 
come to try out for the team. But the narrator is giving us a piece 
of straightforward information the same way it tells us things like 
when Hermione enters a room or when Goyle sniggers or when a group of 
students stares at Harry. There's little point in the narrator 
saying "Daphne Greengrass walked into the room" in order to tell us 
that Imogene Squibble walked in the room only the narrator said 
Daphne because they look a bit alike and Harry doesn't know them 
well...UNLESS somebody corrected him. If nobody corrected him then it 
was Daphne who walked into the room. 

jkoney: 
> So when he sees the people coming to the fight he calls them 
friends 
> and family memebers because he doesn't know who they are (as in 
what 
> house) but he knows they are coming as support for his side.

Magpie:
The narrator called them friends and family members so that's what 
they are. If they're supposed to be Slytherins--particularly 
Slytherins that both the narrator and Harry have never had any 
trouble identifying as such--call them that. After thousands of pages 
of this series I have every reason as a reader to not read friends of 
family of the students left at Hogwarts (who are from all the houses 
except that house) as including Slytherins. I have even less reason 
to read it as the group the JKR identified in her interview, which 
were not Slytherins who were friends and family of these other people 
without Harry knowing it, but the very Slytherins Harry watched leave 
earlier. 

jkoney: 
> So if he had spent the time to recognize that there were slytherins 
> in the group I think we would be discussing how inconsistent JKR 
was 
> by naming the slytherins when he doesn't usually recognize anyone 
> outside his groups.

Magpie:
We don't know what we'd be discussing if the scene had been written 
differently, but I don't see why it's inconsistent for JKR to have 
the narrator identify people as Slytherins. The narrator does so 
throughout the series. There's plenty of times the narrator reveals 
that Harry knows names of people whose names we don't, and is able to 
identify people by house even if he's not friends with them. JKR 
writes in the straightforward way most people speak throughout the 
rest of the series. 

-m