James and Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186955

jkoney wrote:
> 
> 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. 
>
Carol responds:
Snape isn't showing that scene to Harry to put James in a bad light. In any case, he knows that Harry has already seen it when he entered the Pensieve without permission during the last Occlumency lesson. He's showing his own worst memory because it shows why his friendship with Lily fell apart. It's his own history and his relationship with Lily, whom he still loves thought she rejected him, that Snape is revealing to Harry. James's part is almost incidental. (Notice that we don't see the so-called Prank, which is supposedly so important to Snape.) Not to mention, of course, that Snape had no good memories of James to show Harry had he been interested in James at all.

But the problem for the reader is that, aside from the scene where he's playing with baby Harry and his appearances after he's dead (the wand echoes, the walk in the forest, and one I forgot to mention before, his appearance with Lily in the Mirror of Erised), JKR chooses not to show James alive through any memories except Snape's, which does not show James (or Sirius--or for that matter, weak Remus and sycophant Peter) in a good light. And that's not because the dying Snape (who previously had tried to prevent Harry from seeing this memory) cares what Harry thinks about James (though the memory certainly does confirm Snape's view of James as an arrogant, strutting bully). We know from *Lily* that Teen!James is a "toerag" who hexes people in the hallways because they annoy him (a charge proven by the detention card involving the hex that doubled the size of a kid's head). We know from Lupin that Lupin was made a Prefect in the vain hope that he'd keep his roommates in line. We see him showing off with the Snitch, knowing that the girls are watching. Even Sirius says that Lily thinks James has a big head, which he does. (Someone should have given *him* a badge that read "Big-head Boy"--or whatever the Twins put on Percy's badge).

IOW, there's no reason to doubt that the memory presents an accurate picture of James at sixteen (not fifteen--JKR can't do math). Sure, he was made Head Boy, but Dumbledore probably didn't know about this incident--at least, I hope he didn't!--and he certainly didn't know that James was an illegal Animagus who went on midnight excursions with a werewolf (and two other illegal Animagi).

We know that James was clever and talented or he couldn't have become an Animagus or helped to create the Marauder's Map. But we also *know* that he was a bully who began his first day on the Hogwarts Express by being unfairly prejudiced against a boy he didn't even know because he wanted to be in Slytherin. We know that he valued chivalry (raising that imaginary sword that I think can only be the Sword of Gryffindor since we don't hear about any other imaginary swords and he's talking about Gryffindor values), but we also know that his idea of courage (rashly running with a werewolf who could have attacked an innocent citizen of Hogsmeade, for example) and his idea of chivalry (rescuing a classmate from a werewolf only to bully him a week later) were in need of revision.

We know that Lily married him, but she was already attracted to him half against her will. We hear (but we don't see) that he stopped hexing people (other than Severus, who "gave as good as he got"), probably to win Lily's approval. But, still, the one experience that some of us thought must have caused him to mature and rethink his priorities, the rescue of Severus from werewolf-Remus) had no such effect. There's no on-page life-changing experience for James (in contrast to Severus, for whom Voldemort's intending to kill Lily changed everything--well, except for a few unpleasant personality traits).

zanooda wrote:
> > 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. 
,snip>
> > 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 ;-).

Carol responds:
Exactly.
 
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.
>
Carol responds:

But what's the use of stating her intentions if they're not realized (made "real" in the text)? Sure, the reader knows that James is supposed to be a good guy. A lot of good characters (some of whom didn't know what he was really up to) liked and admired him. McGonagall's grief at the loss of James and Lily is real. 

But, for Harry, we get that moment of great disillusionment about his father when he enters Snape's Pensieve without permission. He learns to his dismay that Snape's view of his father, while it's certainly not the whole story, is not a malicious lie but the truth as he sees it, with solid evidence to back it up. Even talking to Lupin and Black, who excuse James's behavior on the grounds that he was "fifteen" (they can't count, either) doesn't help much. Harry points out that *he's* fifteen, and, however much he may be tempted, he doesn't go around publicly humiliating Draco Malfoy. He still wants to think the best of his father, though, and later hopes that he was the Half-Blood Prince and inventor of the Levicorpus spell that he once used on Severus Snape (lots of irony there). And yet he gets the same sick feeling when he views the SWM a second time, staying well away from his father's conversation, which he can't bear to hear. It's as if he's in denial about his father till the very end. The father Harry wants to believe in is the one he saw in the Mirror of Erised, the one represented by his powerful stag Patronus (the mate to Snape's through another irony).

But for whatever reason, neither the reader nor Harry gets to see much of that good James and nothing at all of his transformation from arrogant berk to courageous Order member (and that little story of James and Sirius tricking Muggle policemen doesn't help at all--even marriage apparently didn't help him to grow up).

JKR's intentions are clear. We're supposed to believe that he changed from a bully to a person worthy of our respect and admiration. But it's not on the page and consequently, for some of us unwilling to take his transformation on faith, it's not convincing, any more than Phineas Nigellus's statement that Slytherin played its part is sufficient to convince many readers to believe JKR's off-page statement that the (older) Slytherin students (minus Draco, Goyle, and the dead Crabbe) followed Slughorn into battle.

Carol, whose lasting impression of James is the unfavorable one so vividly rendered in SWM