James and Intent

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186961

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

jkoney:
A scene Harry saw in a pensieve that seems like a set up to a large portion of fans. Why that memory? There is nothing in it to suggest that Snape and Lilly were friends. Hiding his abusive father or his time on DE raids would make sense, but not something that Harry couldn't make any connection with. That scene was chosen because he knew Harry had invaded a pensieve before. It was chosen to show his father in the worst light.


> Carol
> 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. >snip>
> 
> 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).

jkoney:
We aren't shown but we are specifically told that he did change. Any other reading becomes completely subjective and is how a reader might feel, not what they actually know to be true.

James may have been a bully but he was also being a bully back to another bully. Snape we see in cannon, attack Petunia with a limb, read her personal mail, and hang around with future DE's whose entire existance is based on bullying people. The HBP invented the toe nail growing spell and many others. I doubt he would invent something that he wouldn't use. Otherwise how would other people have figured it out? We see Snape sneaking around after curfew trying to get the Mauraders in trouble. Shouldn't he have just gone to a teacher or his head of house? We see his inner self come out when he calls Lilly a mudblood. If he never had thought it, he wouldn't have said it. Finally we see Snape attack James with his back turned.

James isn't some insane bully and Snape an innocent. We see a couple of scenes of them together. What they have going is a "pissing" contest that started long before and continues afterward. There are no innocents in that scene.

And it was James, for whatever reasons you believe, who saved Snape's life. That's not something Snape was willing to do or even cared about when he met Dumbledore.


> 
> 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:

>snip> 
> 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
>
jkoney:
I'm not sure what faith is needed when it is written out in black and white. No if's, ands, or buts about it.