Truth, Lies and GIGO

[nkafkafi]

> Pippin:
> I'm afraid your observation is incorrect.  In fact, the baddies do
> lie, and the  reader could conceivably catch them at it, and vault 
> them to the top of the suspect list on that basis. Harry often
> catches them at it also, but assumes  they have an innocent reason 
> or that the lie is unimportant. Then, in future, he assumes
> they are being truthful if he doesn't detect a lie -- and time and
> again he lives to regret it. 

And David wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1576 :
> Crouch Jr. gives us a whole lot of fun by saying things that take on 
> a new aspect of truth when we know who he really is, but there is no 
> doubt that he is lying all the time.  Just because we never catch 
> him *saying* "I am Alastor Moody" is irrelevant to that.  He knows 
> full well that his use of Polyjuice means that everyone around him 
> believes him to be Moody, and does everything he can to ensure that 
> they continue to believe it.  That's lying.

Neri:
I'll let Richard answer regarding his theory, which I don't wholly buy
either, but regardless of the theory I think he had made a very
interesting observation, which you seem to miss or explain away. As I
understand it, he's not talking about ANY lie, but about a specific,
well-defined category of lies. These are lies that the baddies (all of
them, not only Crouch Jnr., and suspects too) *tell* Harry, and
through them JKR tells the readers, in order to fool Harry and us.
Richard suggested that such lies do not exist in the series, which
would have been an extremely odd finding. I already gave examples that
such lies do exist, but they ARE surprisingly rare. So rare that it
can't be a coincidence. JKR must be making a conscious effort to avoid
such lies. This is the observation. Now let's look at Pippin's
counterexamples:

> GulPlum previously:
> a paragraph earlier (after Harry says he saw Crouch's name inside
> Snape's office on the Map):
> 
> "Well, he's not there anymore," said Moody, his eye still whizzing
> over the map. "Crouch . .. that's very - very interesting... ."
> 
> 
> Pippin responded:
> Which edition are you quoting from?  Mine (Bloomsbury, 2000) has
> :'Well, he's not _here_ any more."(emphasis mine.) That must be a lie.

Neri:
My version (Scholastic, 2000) also says "he's not here". However, this
is not a lie if Crouch!Moody is talking about Crouch Snr., and indeed
this is the Crouch that Harry was referring to and the reader was
thinking about (at this point in the book Harry and the reader don't
even know yet that Crouch had a son). Crouch Snr. was not at Hogwarts
at that time, so Crouch Jnr. didn't lie.

> Pippin:
> Quirrell lies about the turban: His turban, he told them, had been
> given to him by an African prince as a thank you for getting rid of a
> troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. 

Neri:
This lie is, IMO, a very weak counterexample, because JKR explicitly
writes that Harry and his friends didn't really buy this story, and
the reader probably doesn't buy it too. So this lie actually makes
Quirrell appear MORE suspicious, not less suspicious. This is not JKR
fooling the reader, it's JKR giving the reader a clue.

>Pippin:
> Voldemort lies to Harry:
> "They died begging me for mercy..."
> "LIAR!" Harry shouted suddenly.

Neri:
This lie is for taunting, not for fooling Harry and the reader about
Voldy's existence or identity. 

> Pippin:
> Also in PS/SS, Scabbers  appears to fake falling asleep
> after being thrown against the compartment window, which
> might have raised questions about Quirrell falling in a faint on
> Halloween, not to mention Scabbers himself.

Neri:
These lies are by action, not by spoken language. If you include them,
then of course Crouch Jnr. was lying just by drinking the Polyjuice
and pretending to be Moody, Peter was lying just by pretending to be
an ordinary rat, Quirrell lying merely by wearing his turban, etc. Of
course all the baddies lie via their actions, but Richard was making a
distinction here.

> Pippin:
> In Cos:
> Riddle lies to Dippet: 
> 'Riddle, do you mean you know something about
> these attacks?'
> 'No, sir,' said Riddle quickly.
> But Harry was sure it was the same sort of 'no' that he himself had
> given Dumbledore.

Neri:
Again, this doesn't count because it was not intended to fool Harry
and us, and it didn't fool Harry, as JKR explicitly wrote. It can't
fool us because at that point Diary!Riddle had already told Harry (and
us) that he did know "something" about the attacks.

> Pippin:
> Riddle lies again, about Hagrid. 
> 'It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how
> it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle,
> poor but brilliant, parentless but so *brave*, schoo Prefect, model
> student; on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble
> every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, 
> sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls.'

Neri:
He's admitting to a lie that he made to Dippet off page, 50 years ago,
but it's not a lie to Harry and us. By the time Riddle says these
words we already know he lied.

> Pippin:
> In PoA, Peter lies extensively, though he's not convincing at all:
> "Don't know...what you're talking about..."said Pettigrew
> again,more shrilly than ever.

Neri:
Precisely. Since now he's not convincing at all, he's free to lie
extensively. The interesting point is: no baddie lies extensively and
convincingly to us BEFORE he/she was exposed. 

> Pippin:
> In fact his lack of skill is one of the
> things that led me to ESE!Lupin. Lupin, of course, is a skilled
> equivocator. Consider his statements in Snape's office:
> 
> 'It looks to me as though it is merely a piece of parchment that
> insults anybody who reads it. Childish, but surely not dangerous?
> I imagine Harry got it from a joke shop--" <snip more>

Neri:
Again, Harry and us know very well that all these statements are lies.
These are what Richard called "good guys" lies, and (unlike the other
kind) these are VERY common.

> Pippin:
> Kreacher lies also <snip> Of course he lies again:
> "Where's Sirius,Kreacher?" Harry demanded.
> The house-elf gave a wheezy chuckle. "Master has gone out,
> Harry Potter."

Neri:
Now THIS is a proper counterexample. However, note that this lie is
made by someone who is already known to be a chronic liar ("Kreacher
is cleaning") and far from being a supporter. And indeed, most readers
didn't buy it, though Harry did. 

BTW, from my quick scan it seems we can add Dobby and Winky to the
list of non-liars, although they both had secret agendas and like
Kreacher they weren't supposed to have any problem lying to someone
who isn't their master.

> Pippin:
> Snape is probably lying when he says there is nothing that 
> concerns Harry in the Department of Mysteries. 

Neri:
Harry was not fooled by this. In addition, this was an admonition
rather than a lie (like: "there's might or might not be something
important in the DoM, but you're not in the need-to-know list", which
was actually true). In any case, Snape was not a suspect at the time.
He was a suspect in SS/PS and again in GoF, but not really in OotP.

> Pippin:
> Ginny is lying when she claims she never knew the Diary
> was dangerous -- she definitely knew that when she stole
> it back from Harry.

Neri:
She says these words after the truth was already known. This is not a
lie to fool Harry and us. During all the year that Ginny WAS fooling
Harry and us she never did it by speaking any explicit lie. 

> Pippin:
> She lies again in OOP when she tells
> her mum that Crookshanks threw the dungbombs against
> the door.

Neri:
Ginny is not a baddie or a suspect in OotP, she's just a girl there,
and we are told she's lying. As Richard mentioned, Harry himself lies
a lot. Ron, Hermione, Fred and George and most of the kids also lie,
especially to parents and teachers. This isn't the kind of lie we're
discussing.

I agree that there ARE some examples of spoken lies that fool Harry
and us to think that the bad guy is actually a good guy. IMO the
strongest is still the one I found by Diary!Riddle in CoS, Ch. 13, p.
241 US: "I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was
expelled". I like this simple example because it shows how EASY it is
to generate lies of this type, and thus how strange it is to find so
very few of them. You may also add Crouch Jnr.'s lies in the Pensieve
trial, although he didn't quite fool Harry and us to believe he's
innocent (both DD and Sirius said they didn't know if Crouch Jnr. was
guilty or not). Still, lies of this kind are extremely rare for a
mystery series that already includes 5 books and had managed to fool
us as readers time and again. So the point is: it seems JKR is making
a conscious effort to avoid this kind of lies. Why? As I wrote, I'm
not sure I buy Richard's theory, but I think his observation cannot be
explained away.

Neri