Draco and Intent: Re: Snape and Harry’s Sadism (was: Lack of re-examination)

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186845

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>

> Carol again:
> What the author can tell us about her book or her intentions in writing her book is only helpful to some degree with regard to specific characters and circumstances and only if the intentions are actually realized within the book itself. Let's say that she intends Ginny to be Harry's ideal wife (as she does). Not every reader is going to agree with her. Or she intends Dumbledore to be "the epitome of goodness." Again, not every reader will agree that she has succeeded in transferring her intention from her own mind to the text itself.
> 
jkoney:
The problem with your point is even if it is realized in the book, spelled out, spoken plainly, etc. you still have people stating that it isn't true. So it doesn't seem to matter how clear the author is, people are still going to "analyze" the story with their own agendas. Therefore the author is never going to be able to make their intentions known.


> snip>
Carol 
> But literary analysis usually operates on a more sophisticated level. We could look, for example, at the influence of life at the Dursleys on Harry. The story states nothing directly except the incidents themselves and Harry's immediate reaction, but we could argue, for example, that life with the Dursleys was an instance of good coming out of evil (a common motif in the books). It may have toughened him or given him a resilience that, say, the pampered James would not have had. I think we can safely say that it prevented him from sharing Ron's fear of spiders (which derives from the Twins, particularly Fred). Or we could analyze the effects of having the Twins as older brothers on Ron.
> 
> And the influence of one character on another is only one of many things we can examine that JKR never talks about in her interviews and the narrator doesn't state directly in the books. We can look at the parallels between Harry and some other character, say Neville or Snape or LV, and explore their significance.
> 
> We can talk about influences on JKR's writing (in which case, it would be nice to have her input; we don't want to assume that she's read a book she's never heard of). Or we can explore the role of mythology or English boarding school culture or Christianity or any number of elements. We can look at genre. In what ways are the books mystery stories? In what ways does Harry's story match the hero's journey? In what ways is it a Bildungsroman? What about elements of the Gothic novel?

jkoney:
Or we could ask the author if she intended life at the Dursley's to be good coming out of evil or any of your other points. That we we would know for sure what she was trying to do.


>Carol 
> There's a lot more to literary analysis than the author's stated intentions can tell us. What we need to do is examine the text itself, looking for irony, ambiguity, narrative technique, influences, parallels, and many other things. We have to look beyond the literal meaning of the words on the page, which may be ambiguous or misleading or incomplete or just plain wrong (as when Harry will surely die from a Crucio, for example). We need to put it all together. But unlike a jigsaw puzzle, in which there's only one right solution, there are an infinite number of valid readings. (Of course, there are also obviously wrong readings as well, those that are not supported by or are in conflict with the text. "Fenrir Greyback is a tragic hero" is pretty clearly a wrong reading, for example. So is "Wormtail's hand is the unnamed fourth Deathly Hallow.")

jkoney"
Why do we have to break it down to look for irony, ambiguity, etc? You are now taking pieces of the story and trying to analyze them. This isn't some pathogen we are trying to isolate. Take the humor out of the story by itself and you won't have a complete picture of what is happening or why it occurred. 


> > 
> Carol earlier:
> > > Any reading, whether it matches JKR's stated intentions or not, is a "right" reading as long as it can be supported by the text. It's only "wrong" when the next book reveals it as wrong (as Betsy's reading of Draco as Harry's future best friend turned out to be). Until DH came out, both DDM!Snape and ESE!Snape were valid readings because the evidence for both was in the text. We just didn't know which were clues and which were red herrings till we found out in "The Prince's Tale."
> > 
> jkoney:
> > But in this case their is a straightforward right way of reading the interactions of Harry and Draco. By the time the scene on the train is over, if you still believe they are going to be friends then you aren't actually reading the story as it is written. Just because something happened in another book doesn't mean it is going to happen in this one. That is adding things that don't exist to this story.
> > 
> > By the time those first two Harry Draco scenes are over, Harry knows more than enough about Draco: bully, arrogant, etc. that he isn't going to be friends with him. He just left the Dursley's why would he want to hang around with the same type of person?
> > 
> Carol:
> Yes, "Draco is destined to be Harry's best friend" is a "wrong" reading (though I can see why Betsy read that trope into the first book). But we still interpret Draco Malfoy in different ways. Even Harry learns to see him with new eyes, somewhat sympathetically, and Draco himself evolves as a character. That's the type of thing that's subject to analysis. We could ask how the Malfoys function in the novel and what it means to us as readers (regardless of JKR's intention) that they survived relatively unscathed, already having been punished quite severely by LV himself. Note the irony that they would have remained loyal to him had he not done so.
>  
> > > Carol
> > > But there are still many matters for which we have no official canon explanation, or for which the canon explanation is unclear or incomplete (the Elder Wand, for example, or the whole concept of "the Master of Death"). We're still debating character's motivations (and whether there's a rule against hair clips shaped like butterflies!).
> > 
> > jkoney:
> > I agree their are a few things like the elder wand that I would like to have more details on. On others I believe JKR thought we would use some common sense and know that wizards went to the toilet, showered, shaved, etc. 
> 
> Carol responds:
> Yes, but those things aren't matters for literary analysis. However, we might examine the sorts of things that JKR takes for granted and see where that leads us.
> 
> jkoney: 
> > She would think that we would understand that Hogwarts was based on the British boarding school ideas and that they had dress codes. She doesn't go into detail but she gives us a uniform list. From their she expects us to extrapolate to a dress code that these schools would have, such as rules for clothes, shoes, hair, nails and jewelry. All things dress codes normally have. 
> > 
> > That line was an unforgettable one to me. It never occurred to me that McGonegall was doing anything but enforcing (IMO, the obvious) the dress code during a high profile school event. I remember teachers being stressed at these type of events and enforcing every little rule. (I had to dry shave because my cheezy little mustache was showing and it was seen before one event)
> 
> Carol responds:
> Whereas it never occurred to me that she was doing anything except wanting the students in her House to look their best and not embarrass the school. That there might be a rule against wearing colorful hair decorations during the TWT (which happens extremely rarely) never occurred to me. And, of course, any such rules if they exist are suspended for the Yule Ball. It's clear that such regulations don't normally exist or Luna couldn't wear her much more ridiculous accessories, presumably to class though she doesn't have any classes with Harry. And the High Inquisitor herself wouldn't wear a pink Alice band or perky little hair bows in OoP. It might set a bad example for the children.
> 
jkoney
It wasn't the TWT that was the event, it was the school assembly to greet the other schools that was the event. Obviously the Yule Ball had it's own set of rules for dress, etc. otherwise it wouldn't have been such a big deal to have dress robes available.

I think JKR gave her readers too much credit in assuming that they would understand the concept of a boarding school and all the rules that go along with it: dress codes, meal times, remaining on school property, curfews, parental visitation, etc. Then again, I'm glad she didn't spell it all out because I wouldn't have gottent through the first book.