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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186940


> > Betsy Hp:
> > You're entirely wrong! :D  And I can say that because you've made the mistake of making a far too sweeping statement. (Mwahaha!)  There's no way *all* readers (your implication) are too preoccupied with "their own subjective agendas" that they miss an author's sledge hammer. jkoney is entirely wrong, too, and for the exact same reason.  The idea that the author cannot possibly make their intentions clear in the text is farcical to me.  It's basically saying a writer cannot write.
> 
> jkoney:
> Actually I'm saying that the reader doesn't know how to read. And it doesn't matter what's in the text, they are going to use their subjective viewpoint and ignore the facts as they are written.

Carol responds:

I hope you don't mean that readers in general don't know how to read or that any reader who hears JKR's stated intentions but fails to see them in the text doesn't know how to read. It's important, for one thing, to realize that one of her intentions in the early books, sustained by the interviews, was to fool the reader with regard to Snape. What she wanted us to think as we read (which is not necessarily what we really thought since some of us know an unreliable narrator when we encounter one) and what she wanted us to think after we read the last book are two different things.

At any rate, an author's statements about her own book are just as likely to be subjective as a reader's--she likes certain characters and dislikes others. I probably dislike Umbridge as much as she does, but unlike her, I don't find Umbridge's punishment amusing. I don't dislike Vernon Dursley as much as she does, either. I am not, however, under any delusions that we're intended to admire those characters. The text (which is quite reliable in depicting those two characters) makes it clear that they're not admirable.

Any intelligent reader can interpret a book without the author's help. And anyone who misinterpreted Draco as a potential hero or Snape as the potential murderer of Harry (people were actually betting on that outcome) will be under no such delusions when they've read the final book. Some things are canon fact and indisputable: Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's order; Harry's scar contained a seventh soul bit.

Others remain subject to interpretation and will remain so regardless of what the author says that she intended because the evidence to support those intentions didn't make it into the books. 

At any rate, I have no objection to readers allowing JKR's statements outside the text to color their readings. Me, I'd rather look at the text itself, putting to use all those years I spent learning how to analyze English literature.

It's no different from, say, a historian interpreting a historical document. Its author's statements about it, if any, can only go so far. And it's humanly possible (I'm not saying that this is the case with JKR) to lie about, conceal, or even be mistaken about one's intentions. Ask me what I meant in a post I wrote five years ago, and I might not be able to tell you. The human mind is a very imperfect instrument (as JKR herself demonstrates through inconsistencies in the books themselves).

Carol, who respects JKR for her brilliant and highly enjoyable creation but takes her statements in interviews as the off-the-cuff remarks they are and not as directions on how to read her books