James and Intent

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 186960

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jkoney65" <jkoney65 at ...> wrote:

> We only see James from scenes that Snape has picked. 
> They are not a fair presentation of the James that actually lived.


zanooda:

But, but... this is exactly what I was saying :-)! We are *shown* James in a bad light, and we are only *told* about his good qualities, we never actually see them :-). 


> jkoney65 wrote:

> As someone who hated James he is not going to show anything 
> that shows James in a positive light.


zanooda:

Right, but I was not talking about Snape here, I was talking about JKR :-). Does she hate James too :-)? No, she loves him and, I suppose, wants us to love him, but she failed to convince some of us, as you can see :-).



> jkoney65 wrote:

> 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.


zanooda:

Well, it's great that you are satisfied with this character. To me, however, this is not enough to be "told". I need to feel it, and I don't. That's fine, we readers are different this way :-). Besides, what I wanted was one short scene, not an entire novel-inside-the-novel about James. JKR is great in creating characters, just a few lines scene would be enough to convince me :-).


> Jkoney65 wrote:
 
> 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? 


zanooda:

I'm not saying James wasn't a great guy. I *know* he was a great guy, because the author keeps telling me that. I just have trouble believing it, LOL! She shouldn't have written "Snape's Worst Memory" so well :-)!