James and Intent

[mesmer44]

No: HPFGUIDX 186983


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mesmer44" <winterfell7@> wrote:
> >
> > "pippin_999" <foxmoth@> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >  
> > > > 
> > > > I think she pictured James as being a good adult. That much I get. And I see Pippin's point of view about his simply growing up. It's the writing of it that seems somehow unsettling. We think James is a great guy (but I don't know why we thought that) then we saw him being a jerk--several times---and we never see the transformation between the two moments. So it's unclear why we got the good man/bad boy story without the middle transforming scene.
> > > 
> > > Pippin:
> > > What JKR showed us, brilliantly, was not how James transformed. It was  how Snape could keep perceiving James as such a jerk when everyone else thought he was so wonderful. 
> > > 
> > > People do keep saying what a great guy James was. Dumbledore, Hagrid, McGonagall, Lupin, Rosmerta, and Sirius all clearly love him and miss him.  Even Peter Pettigrew and Voldemort have nice things to say about him. Undoubtedly he resisted Voldemort and died trying to save his wife and child, though not in the epic battle that Voldemort boasted of having with him.  
> > > 
> > > But nothing is compelling enough to  shake the bad impression that teenage James left on us.  Snape's abiding hatred and disdain, which at first seemed completely undeserved, the mark of a character so filled with jealousy and malice that he couldn't even be grateful to the man who saved his life, become more than understandable. 
> > > 
> > > But even though there were episodes in his father's life that Harry would rather not dwell on, Harry named a son after James. I think that shows us that Harry believed that James had grown beyond those days. 
> > > 
> > > For me, the glimpse through the window of the happy father playing with his son was telling. It's not just that James loves his family, it's that he's at peace with them. When do we see Vernon or Lucius just enjoy being a dad? Never: they're always in a power struggle with somebody. And so was Sirius at GP, most of the time, even when Harry was there and desperately in need of his company.
> > > 
> > > Pippin
> > >
> > Steve replies: 
> > 
> >  Very well stated Pippin.  I think those who are so preoccupied w/ James's behavior at Hogwarts and the lack of written scenes w/ him doing good things as a father apparently consider him more bad than good. And I can actually see this happening from their subjective pov.  I tend to cut him more slack than that, with his bad behavior being done as an adolescent and the vast majority of his behavior as an adult apparently being good.  Being a part of the OotP is a much bigger deal than some of you are making it, in my opinion, as it isn't just a Shcriners club he's part of here, but an active resistance force against LV.  But the other thing others don't seem to be mentioning, that I'm aware of is what Lily thought of him as a husband. If he was such a bad person, wouldn't she have divorced him or wouldn't there be some canon of her criticizing him as an adult? Snape valued Lily to the point of risking his life (and sacrificing it as well?)on her behalf.  If Lily was worthy of Snape's love, wasn't she also worthy of being a good judge of character for James? Just some thoughts.
> >
> Carol responds:
> 
> Just a question, Steve, and please don't think I'm being rude. Why is our interpretation subjective but yours isn't? We're looking at what's on the page, and what's on the page is judged as bullying by Harry himself. To some degree, any interpretation is subjective, but a text-based interpretation is less so than one that's based merely on what we want or feel. (I actually *want* to see a James who's worthy of admiration, but that's not what's depicted in SWM.)
> 
> Once again, all we're saying is that the supposedly admirable James whom Lily loved and who is represented by Harry's Patronus is not depicted in the books. Any reader--you, me, or anyone else--is forced to *imagine* him because we never see or hear the living James doing anything admirable, unless you count that touching last scene with his family (which, I confess, I found rather disappointing because Voldemort had led me to expect a battle between him and James).
> 
> On the one hand, anything a reader *feels* is subjective, whether JKR intended us to feel those emotions or not. But subjectivity in the negative sense of seeing what we want to see whether it's there or not is another matter. It seems to me that viewing James as admirable despite the lack of supporting evidence (and the evidence to the contrary) is wishful thinking.
> 
> As I keep saying, any interpretation that can be supported by canon is a valid interpretation. Can you show us the canon for a believable good James?
> 
> And just a note here: It's probably not the best idea to base our view of a character on what other characters say about him or her as opposed to that character's own words and actions (and even those can sometimes be deceptive). The good comments about James are balanced by the bad ones, not to mention that James's friends and admirers were either unaware of what he was up to on full-moon nights or sharers in his mischief.
> 
> I'd love to do a post including comments about characters that turned out to be mistaken, starting with Lee or the Twins saying about Fake!Moody, "How cool is he?" In most cases, we find out that these comments are mistaken not through those characters retracting their comments (that almost never happens) but through the character they're speaking of proving them wrong through his own words and actions. But James is a strange case. We never see evidence either way of what he became. Yes, he joined the Order, but what did he do there besides annoy Muggle policemen in a semicanonical side story? All we see him do is hide in Godric's Hollow, mistakenly trusting Voldemort, play with his baby, leave his wand on the couch, and call to Lily that Voldemort is there and he'll hold him off. Sorry, James, but that's hard to do without a wand in your hand.
> 
> That little scene is all we get. Any other basis for Reformed!James comes only from the comments of other characters, who, sad to say, are very often mistaken in their judgments.
> 
> Carol, trying to distinguish between interpretation based on textual evidence, which is only minimally subjective, and the kind of wishful thinking (e.g., Lily should have married Snape) that can lead to distorted and uncanonical interpretations, which is not what we're doing here
>
Steve replies:  Minimally subjective is like being minimally pregnant. And, in my post, I mentioned it was IMO, which is a pretty obvious concession to subjectivety. An objective reader would have realized this. A subjective reader would have not.