Keeping Secrets (was Re: CHAPTER DISCUSSION: PS/SS 2, The Vanishing Glass

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187790

Potioncat wrote:
<snip>
> Getting back to canon discussion, I'll pull a line from Carol's comments, "But I think that the breakdown or failure of communication is also a persistent motif..."
> 
> Motif! That's the word! Not a theme really.
> 
> We used to bemoan and complain that Harry never asked the right person the right question---or hardly ever asked questions at all. Yet JRK tells us very very early that Harry learned not to ask questions. On those rare occasions when he asked a question, he usually got the wrong answer.
> 
> I think JKR did a very good job of keeping "her" secrets, and of giving the characters the right backgrounds and motivations for their secrecy and behaviors. So whether we approve or not, we can understand where DD gets his secrecy, why Snape automatically distrusts Harry's actions, and why Harry doesn't go to adults.
>
Carol responds:
But Harry himself can be guilty of (accidental or unknowing) miscommunication. His version of the events on the tower in the hospital wing in HBP--Snape's supposed treachery, etc.--is another example. All the characters present, and the reader, get Harry's interpretation. I wonder how many people outside this list and similar discussion groups questioned that interpretation. And yet if we compare his version of the reason DD believed Snape to the actual words DD (himself carefully concealing information without actually lying) actually said, we have sufficient reason to think that Harry hasn't quite got his facts straight. The other characters, however, especially Lupin, seized on his version of events as the full truth and added to them. Lupin went so far as to say that Snape would almost certainly have killed Luna and Hermione if they hadn't instantly obeyed him--obviously wrong in retrospect, but misinterpretation of events accepted without question by every character present. In fact, the misinterpretation of Snape, initiated by JKR herself with the "murder" of DD (setting aside her ambiguous presentation of him in earlier scenes and books) is sustained--with a few counterhints to which the characters are oblivious--until "The Prince's Tale."

So miscommunication is not only a motif, a recognizable and frequently repeated thematic element, it's also an important plot device. JKR simply doesn't want either the characters or the reader to know exactly what's going on until she's ready to reveal it. Certain characters, notably Dumbledore and Snape, share her goal for their own reasons and deliberately withhold or distort information. Other characters, notably HRH, frequently misinterpret events and jump to the wrong conclusions (as does Snape on at least one occasion, in PoA). Add in the unreliable narrator, reporting events from Harry's perspective, and the reader really needs to be on his or her toes, distinguishing clues from red herrings and communication from miscommunication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.

Makes the books a lot more fun than books in which all the characters know exactly what's going on or an omniscient narrator interprets everything for us as the author sees it. IMO, of course.

Carol, thanking Potioncat for this delightful question