Lack of re-examination (was:Re: Secrets (Long) OLD POST REPOST)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186584

Carol earlier:
> > <snip>
> > And Harry isn't given time to rethink it. By the time he
> realizes who "Moody" really is, Barty Jr. has committed much more serious offenses directly involving Harry, including sending him to the graveyard to be murdered. <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> But that's why I blame JKR.  She should have *made* time, maybe not the end of GoF, maybe later on in the series, but just some point where Harry reevaluates things.  If JKR was hoping for the *reader* to reexamine and reevaluate she really should have had her protagonist do the same if she wanted him to end the series as someone the reader could still relate to.
>

Carol again:
I've probably snipped too much here, but maybe this part will be sufficient. I think you're forgetting the traumatic events that Harry went through, first in the graveyard and then with "Moody" when he returns. We hear Crouch Jr. telling his story; we see him actually trying to kill Harry. My first thought was, What! *Moody* put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire? I never liked him, but I didn't think he was trying to kill Harry! But then we learn that "Moody" is a DE and an imposter who, among other things, killed his own father and placed Krum under the Imperius Curse so he'd torture Cedric Diggory. Harry sits there in shock as Crouch Jr. recounts his story. Then he sees a Dementor suck Barty Jr's soul. Then he has to recount his own story of the horrors in the graveyard, including the return of Voldemort and the murder of Cedric Diggory. It's really no wonder that he's not rethinking something as seemingly small as the bouncing ferret or the Crucio'd spider. The next time we see him, he's not only having nightmares about Cedric, he's being called a liar by the Daily Prophet and suffering all the trauma of OoP.

The reader, OTOH, will probably react in surprise or shock (did anyone really suspect that "Moody" was Barty Jr.?) and then go back, as a lot of us did with PoA, to find the clues that we missed (because Harry missed them). Those clues include the bouncing ferret and the lesson with the Unforgiveable Curses.

Harry, admittedly, never rethinks the incidents involving Barty Jr., but I think that's partly because he's only fourteen going on fifteen and not a great judge of character, and partly because he knows the truth about the now soul-sucked Barty and has no reason to be concerned with him again (except to briefly get over the shock of seeing the real Moody, whom JKR takes care to have Moody refer to as "that scum").

It doesn't bother me that Harry never thinks about Barty Jr's role in getting him to the graveyard since, as I said, Barty has confessed his own guilt and is now no threat to anybody. It does, however, bother me that Harry keeps saying that Voldemort murdered Cedric Diggory when in fact it was Wormtail who did it. Voldemort at that point was a (nearly) helpless and at the moment wandless Baby!Thing. I can't help thinking that if Harry would just explain a few details to the likes of Fudge and Zacharias Smith (maybe not specifically identifying the DE as a supposedly dead rat Animagus but at least pointing out that Voldemort had an accomplice and was restored to his body by a potion and an incantation) that someone might actually have believed him.

But Barty? We know he's evil, and if go back and reread the book, we'll see his other doings in that light--a very clever use of the real Moody's idiosyncracies, phrases, paranoia for his own uses, and especially adapting Moody's hatred of DEs to fit his own hatred of DEs who "walked free." The careful reader will see these things. The careless reader won't, but no one is going to think that the "Moody" of GoF is a good guy. Nor, I think, will anyone see his helping Harry or giving Neville tea and a Herbology book as acts of kindness. It was all a lie, all a disguise, all a plot to get Harry to Voldemort.

> Betsy Hp:
> I'm neither asking for an overarching moral end nor an Aesop's Fable. I'm asking for Harry to *think*, to think about the very things you're saying JKR wanted her reader thinking about.  Because he doesn't, I don't think JKR reexamines the scene herself.  So I think being bothered by it, thinking Draco really was mistreated, goes against the text.

Carol:
But, as I said, Harry is not a good judge of character and he doesn't have time or reason to think about Crouch Jr. once he's been exposed and soul-sucked. It's the opposite of what happened with Sirius Black in PoA. Now that he's been revealed as a good guy and James Potter's true friend, not the traitor who brought about Harry's parents' death, Harry doesn't give his former actions--slashing the Fat Lady's portrait and Ron's bedcurtains; dragging Ron by the leg into the Shrieking Shack a second thought. As for the so-called Prank, he knows next to nothing about it but automatically takes the Maruader's view of the matter.

Harry's judging these two characters by appearances prepares us for the small revelations involving two other characters he judges in the same way, Kreacher and Regulus Black, and for the big revelation involving a character he's misjudged throughout the series (and who, I realize, has also misjudged him), Severus Snape.

We see all of these characters either from the outside of, through the unreliable narrator, from Harry's perspective. In fact, the narrator is unreliable (in some, not all, matters) *because* he sees from Harry's flawed and incomplete perspective.

Harry does see a bit more clearly with each book. IMO. By DH, he's even starting to empathize with Mrs. Weasley (much more than Ron does). He's added Neville and Luna to the list of characters that he's stopped judging by appearances and started to see as people.

By the end of the series, we can finally add Snape and Dumbledore to the list. (They may be dead, but they're still important.)

Barty Jr., admittedly, is not included, but he doesn't need to be. From the moment he tells Harry, "I put your name in the Goblet of Fire," it's clear that he's not a good guy and that neither Harry nor the reader has seen him as he really is because JKR and her unreliable narrator have quite brilliantly tricked us as Harry himself was tricked.

Carol, who thinks that Draco's squeals of pain speak for themselves in a rereading of the bouncing ferret scene