Truth or consequences

[Amy Z]

Kneasy wrote:

>"There wasn't a single witch or wizard who went bad
>who wasn't in Slytherin."  Nice straightforward
>statement. See any ambiguity? No, nor me. But do 
>you believe it? Is it the truth? 

Not to belabor the obvious, the words are unambiguous,
but the assertion is highly ambiguous--that is, not to
be taken as gospel--for the simple reason that it
comes from a person.  People lie, exaggerate, forget
inconvenient facts, and overstate things for
rhetorical effect.

While HP can be analyzed as a mystery series, the
books are also novels of character and theme, so that
interpreting them purely by the whodunnit
formula--facts, red herrings, clues all mixed in, 'til
they all become clear with the revelation of the final
Truth--doesn't encompass the whole picture.  Hagrid
isn't just a fact-, clue-, or red-herring-delivery
system.  He's a character, inconsistent and flawed the
way human beings are (though fictional characters tend
to be more consistent than real people).

If JKR doesn't reread mysteries, it is probably
because she reads them as puzzles, and redoing a
crossword puzzle is very boring.  She does reread
novels of manners and character--_Emma_, famously--and
mysteries, too, can be read that way, if they are
written that way.  (_Emma_ could even be called a
mystery in the sense that a truth is invisible to the
heroine throughout the book, despite numerous clues
that both she and the reader might miss, and is
finally revealed at the satisfying end.  But it isn't
a whodunnit.)  In novels like HP that are not simply
whodunnits, the truth that is to be discovered by both
the characters and readers is revealed *through
character* and through theme, that is, the meaning
embodied in people's actions.

Part of the truth of the books is that Hagrid is
prejudiced and Dumbledore is (in the good sense)
Machiavellian--two things that make people tell
untruths.  And by "the truth of the books" I don't
mean just "facts that are in the books," but "lessons
we can take from the books"; I for one read books
partly in order to learn some truths that I can apply
to the rest of life.  As Talisman's examples make
clear, one such lesson is that our daddies can lie and
still be good.

Amy Z

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 "Don't you call me an idiot!" said Neville. "I don't
think you should be breaking any more rules! And you
were the one who told me to stand up to people!"
  "Yes, but not to =us=," said Ron in exasperation.
                -HP and the Philosopher's Stone
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