James and Intent

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186951

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jkoney65" <jkoney65@> wrote:
> 
> > We really only see James from Snape's point of view.
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> In SWM we don't see James from Snape's point of view. JKR explained that Pensieve memories are objective, they don't show events from someone's point of view, but how they really happened :-). 

jkoney:
Sorry, poor phrasing on my part. 

We only see James from scenes that Snape has picked. They are not a fair presentation of the James that actually lived. As someone who hated James he is not going to show anything that shows James in a positive light. So we have to take anything that Snape shows as not being a fair representation of the James that actually lived. 


> zanooda
> I think many of us have trouble believing that James changed because we were not *shown* how this happened :-). Yes, we were told many times by different characters that James was a good person, but we never actually saw it. The only scene we *saw* him in, however, is SWM, which was quite shameful, IMO. 
> 
> This is a very vivid scene that can't be erased from our minds *just* by other characters saying good things about James. This is something you need to see to believe, not to hear about it :-). Personally, I like to think that James changed after his parents died while he was still at school. There is nothing about it in the books, but I believe that such an event could push the boy in the right direction.
> 
> However, I still consider James one of the very few JKR's failures. She is able to create believable and appealing characters with just a few lines, but in this case she didn't manage to show me who James Potter really was ;-).
>

jkoney:
We aren't shown this because it isn't relevent to the story of Harry's journey. We are told it more than once so the author doesn't have to write several scenes (meaningless to the plot) about it. 

Doesn't this seem like she is telling us one thing in text and people aren't believing it? She seems to make the point quite clear that James grew up and was a good/great guy. So wouldn't this be the readers subjective view overriding what is actually written down? 

I can't blame JKR for not stating her intentions clearly on this issue because she wrote it down.