James and Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186962

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jkoney65" <jkoney65 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67@> 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:
Why would he need to show James in the worst light when Harry had already seen that memory? The scenes in "The Prince's Tale," whether they're about watching Lily on the swings with Petunia, losing Lily, begging Dumbledore to save Lily, or casting the doe Patronus, which symbolizes Lily, are all about--Lily. 
> 
> 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.

Carol:
But that's the point. We're *told.* As an editor, I'm constantly telling my clients that they need to *show,* not tell. And JKR has quite beautifully shown us James being a bully in SWM.

jkoney: 
> 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. 

Carol:
Reading another kid's mail may not be very nice, but it's not being a bully. James tripping Severus and ridiculing him for the House he wants to be in is being a bully. "Attacking" Petunia with a limb appears to be accidental magic comparable to Harry's "blowing up" aunt Marge. Hanging out with bullies is not being a bully yourself, though, granted, it's condoning bullying. Attacking a kid who's studying, two on one, is being a bully. We never actually see Teen!Severus being a bully. And that can't be because Snape, who selected the scenes, doesn't want to show himself in a bad light, because some of the scenes certainly do just that. You're not looking at the canon here; you're speculating about what Teen!Severus and DE!Snape may have done. (Sure, he was undoubtedly a bully as a DE, but SWM happens *before* that, and James can't have known that he intended to become a DE because Sirius Black never knew that he had become one. All they knew was what Lily knew, that Severus's friends Avery and Mulciber were DE wannabes.

We're talking about the very effective presentation of James and Sirius as bullies. It's brilliantly done, and it makes most readers as uncomfortable as it makes Harry. And we see nothing to *show* us that he changed or had any motivation other than Lily lust for changing.

jkoney:
The HBP invented the toe nail growing spell and many others. 

Carol: 

A spell that Harry thought was cool and used on Crabbe much as his father had used a head-sweling spell on a kid whose name I can't remember. And Harry uses another cool HBP spell, Langlock, on the helpless and unsuspecting Filch. Harry isn't much different from the Prince here, except that he's incapable of inventing his own spells. In any case, with the exception of Sectumsempra, which is undeniably dark, and Muffliato, which is so useful that Hermione (who disapproved of the HBP throughout sixth year) uses it among the protective spells that she casts in DH, the spells in the HBP's Potions book are clever schoolboy hexes little different from the spells that the kids cast on each other in the corridors all the time. The HBP was a genius; Harry and Ron happily admit it. And he also happily uses the Prince's Potions improvements to get marks he doesn't deserve in Potions. 

jkoney:
> I doubt he would invent something that he wouldn't use. Otherwise how would other people have figured it out? 

Carol:
Which makes him no different from Harry and his friends--except that he was cleverer.

jkoney:

> 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.

Carol:
Of course, he was wrong to sneak around after curfew to find out what the Marauders were up to, but how is that different from Harry sneaking around after curfew to find out what Draco is up to? What the Marauders were doing was very dangerous, and, IMO, they should have been caught and stopped. But who was Severus supposed to go to for help? It was obvious that the school was sanctioning the presence of a werewolf. He wanted to find out for himself, and he also wanted to convince Lily that James was a toerag. Actually, that's *her* word, and it made him happy--for a little while, until SWM ruined everything. As for attacking James with his back turned, who attacked first, two on one?

jkoney:
> 
> 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.

Carol:
No one is saying that James is "insane," though he's certainly the biggest bully on the playground, whom Wormtail follows for that reason until he finds a genuinely insane and much more dangerous bully to follow. Nor is anyone saying that Severus was an innocent. But he *was* attacked two on one, without provocation, in that memorable scene. And that scene caused Harry to rethink his view of his father; it even, temporarily, gave him sympathy for Snape--even after the adult Snape stepped in and furiously ended the Occlumency lessons. And, the second time around, Harry did his best to keep away from his father because he didn't want to witness that scene again.

jkoney: 
> 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.

Carol:
But the problem is, he saved Severus's life (certainly out of no personal fondness for him) *before* he attacked him on the playground. He didn't change or learn any lesson from it, which makes it clear that he did it for selfish reasons, to keep himself and his friends out of terrible trouble, and not for altruistic or humanitarian ones. And, sure, Severus became a DE after that. Sure, he came to DD asking him to save *Lily's* life, not James's or their son's. But he ended up asking DD to save them all, promising to do "anything" in return, and spending the rest of his life protecting Harry and undermining Voldemort (admittedly not that difficult for the first eleven years, but he risked his life for a year before Harry was born and for all seven years that Harry was in school or Horcrux-hunting, most particularly the last three.

But we're not talking about Snape. We see Snape quite clearly and can judge his repentance and atonement (and his behavior as a teacher) for ourselves. It's James that we don't see becoming a good guy. What I see is a kid on a train insulting and tripping another kid because that kid doesn't want to be in the House that supposedly represents chivalry (ironically, James's behavior is less than chivalrous), that same kid (who runs with a werewolf and endangers the population of Hogsmeade once a month) bullying and humiliating another student publicly.

I would have liked to care about James, to like him and respect him and feel that Harry had a father to be proud of. All I'm saying is that the James she depicts so memorably in SWM is not yet that admirable person, and we have to take on faith that he did become that person because JKR chooses to *tell,* not *show*, us that he changed.

All those of us who feel cheated by canon!James want is a scene showing his admirable Order member side. The best we get is a young father playing with his baby--and brilliantly laying his wand on the couch because he trusts an untrustworthy friend. I feel sorry for that James, betrayed by the unworthy Wormtail, and I certainly like him better than the arrogant little berk of SWM who isn't even particularly nice to his own friends. But I would have liked to see him being truly chivalrous, maybe standing up for Muggles against DEs. *Something* to make me see that he'd stopped bullying and started protecting someone other than his own wife and child. Something comparable to Snape's "lately, only those whom I could not save" and by his saving not only Draco and Dumbledore and Katie Bell but even Lupin, who thought he was a murderer and a traitor and hated him.

Carol, who understands that we're supposed to like and admire the later James but never got to see that James and undo the bad impression created by the young one 
> 
> 
> > 
> > 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.
>