"But what I don't understand, Inspector..."

[GulPlum]

Y'know, it's a bit strange that this general "theorising" thread popped up 
today. As I've indicated in a few of my messages since my return a few days 
ago, I've been slowly but surely clearing out a backlog of emails I've not 
had a chance to read (over 500 of 'em!). Today I've been going through some 
threads from February, when this very topic came up (in a very similar 
thread, discussing Possession Theory). :-) As I've been jumping from old 
messages to new ones (as they arrive) I've had at least two moments of not 
being sure whether I've been reading new threads or old ones... As this 
message arrived, I was reading what Neri said in msg 1186 (quick link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1186). I felt as if 
we're doomed to repeat the same arguments over the same theories forever 
(or until Book 6 gives us some salient facts for some people to change 
their minds, whichever is sooner...). In particular, the metaphor of the 
jigsaw puzzle I mentioned yesterday was already done to death. :-)

At 15:32 13/06/05 , Barry Arrowsmith wrote:

<snip>

>Jo has created a marvellously complex and
>detailed world, so much so that some have a hankering to prise the back
>off and see what makes it tick. Tinkerers, that's what they are. How the bits
>fit together, what drives them, is the way they are presented a true
>representation of the plot arc or can they be made to slot together
>differently? And is there a bit of the old smoke and mirrors in play,
>should we be watching what her other hand is up to?

Except that, as has been stated over and over again, JKR's universe is not 
entirely consistent. Some of the old threads I was reading earlier today 
(sorry, I've deleted them and finding them again isn't easy) went into this 
issue in more detail, so I won't bother repeating the arguments or 
examples, all of which we know. But a relevant point worth repeating when 
it comes to theory building and attempting to slot the pieces of that 
universe together in the order Herself intends, never mind any other, is 
that, given JKR's tendency to leave things unsaid all over the place and 
her simultaneous tendency to make mistakes means that we simply don't know 
which bits are clues and which bits are mistakes. Hence the importance of 
her non-book statements which occasionally clarify things. And hence the 
need to be ultra-careful about which bits of canon a theory manages to glue 
together, and which bits it doesn't.

>We've known from early on that Jo is a devotee of whodunnits - Aggie
>Christie - and judging by the bookshelf on her site, Dorothy L. Sayers too.
>Encouraging indications that there may well be more surprises in store,
>that all is not what it seems. The classical whodunnit always had surprises
>saved for the final few chapters, maybe a shocking revelation, but more
>usually an heretofore unconsidered trifle turns out to be critically 
>important.

Except that, as you yourself stated in the thread I referenced above, 
Aggie's whodunnits are very unsatisfying for the reader because she always 
keeps a vital piece of information to which whichever Sleuth the story 
features has access, but the reader doesn't. And her plots frequently 
involve such leaps of logic that the thing simply doesn't make sense. I 
gave up on reading whodunnit fiction a great many years ago because they 
almost inevitably use the same tricks. One of my expectations when reading 
a "mystery" is that I should be entitled to beat the sleuth to the truth; 
my preference nowadays is for heist or con artist type stories which depend 
on a twist at the end (sure, they're all formulaic, but the formula at 
least allows space for reader deduction of what the twist might entail). 
The HP books fit this mould: we can't really guess whodunnit (JKR always 
keeps a vital piece of information until the end), but we can attempt to 
guess what the twist might entail. And then there are the "big" mysteries 
at the core of the series itself, which I believe to be guessable not 
because of the mechanics of the Magical World, but the themes covered.

>Jo herself adds substance to such possibilities -
>"I love a good whodunnit and my passion is plot construction.
>Readers love to be tricked but not conned."
>
>To assume that any trickery and obfuscation ceased with book 5 is a bit
>unimaginative IMO. At a rough estimate there are still 1000+ pages to
>come. Even allowing a generous 100 pages for resolution, tying up loose
>ends and explication, that still leaves a lot of space to be filled; it 
>can't all
>be Snape snarling and Harry being petulant, can it? Plenty of room for more
>dirty work at the cross-roads and a few more red herrings to waft their
>deceptive scents across the noses of bloodhound fans.

Well, JKR did say at some point (sorry, too lazy to look it) that it's time 
to start  providing answers rather than ask more questions, but I agree 
that there's still plenty of scope for obfuscation.

<snip>

>And what does an enthusiast of mysteries
>generally do? Try to beat the author to the punch, to deduce the solution
>before having it explained in the final wash-up. And roughly, that's what
>theorising is about. But to do it some 'facts' have to be regarded as fluid,
>incomplete, not seen in their true context, even deliberately misleading.
>Fine, so turn 'em on their heads, slot 'em back into the equation and
>estimate what the effect will be.

Except, as I said above, when the entire mystery is to be unravelled in one 
work created fluidly, with clues, hints and (of course) red herrings 
judiciously placed in one creative spurt, the probability for making 
mistakes is fairly limited. When the creative process is dragged out over a 
decade in full view of eagle-eyed critical analysts, and the Author is 
clearly more interested in the clues, etc, she's deliberately leaving 
around while not paying as close attention to mechanical details in a 
mechanically incoherent universe, the issue is to determine which are which.

>And the resultant speculations range from
>the possible via the unlikely to the just plain loopy. Personally I relish
>reading a well thought out theory, no matter how unlikely. You can't help
>but admire some of the analyses/constructions from the fertile minds
>that contribute to the boards, even while accepting that they're gonna be
>wrong - probably - possibly - or - let me think about that one a bit more.

I agree entirely. There have been very few theories which I consider to be 
even possible, and fewer which I consider to be even slightly probable. I 
do, however, like and admire the intellectual game of putting together a 
theory which is both internally and externally (i.e. thematically) 
consistent. And the vast majority of them are not.

>It's the plot construction that matters; the whys, wherefores, motivations,
>possible hidden agendas, all skillfully concealed by authorial sleight-of-
>hand but ultimately deducible that fascinates.

Ahh, but *are* they ultimately deducible? I don't think any of the 
who-how-why mysteries in the individual books to date were deducible before 
Harry received the key piece of information right at the end, *after* the 
"who" had revealed themselves and explained the "how". And we normally need 
some extra input (generally from Dumbledore's debriefing) to guess the 
"why". It's only in retrospect that we can see where the clues were 
leading, because they are so often couched in what is NOT said or done. 
Heck, it's difficult enough at times to determine just what the central 
mystery is, never mind who's responsible. The one thing we do know is that 
it's never the individual Harry suspects.

A few examples:

Quirrell can't touch Harry, but why are we to deduce that this is salient, 
considering few people shake his hand or otherwise touch him (the 
stereotype of the non-tactile Brit has a huge element of truth in it).

We don't even know that the central mystery in CoS is not the Chamber 
itself; but who's attacking the pupils (and yet more importantly, how). And 
we have no basis to assume that Ginny is responsible until we're told.

Perhaps we should see significance in PoA when we're informed that Scabbers 
has a toe missing when the kids are in Diagon Alley (or that the shopkeeper 
wonders about any power he might have), but this, the first time we're 
informed that Scabbers isn't whole, is part of the description of his being 
run down. And the lessons about Animagi only become important in 
retrospect. Unlike Hermione, we don't have information about lunar cycles 
to correlate with Lupin's illnesses, so we can't guess at his condition.

(Small digression: last spring, my brother-in-law spent some time in 
hospital and I suggested he read the HP books to while away the time, 
insisting that he'll want to read them again when he finished if he hadn't 
got out yet. I visited him when he was half-way through PoA - just before 
Snape finds the Map - and grilled him about where he thought the plot was 
going. He insisted that Lupin's illnesses were connected to Scabbers' in 
some way [not bad!] but that Lupin was Polyjuiced!Black and his illness was 
the transformation going wrong because he'd been maintaining it for too 
long. As far from the eventual outcome as that was, it was consistent with 
what was going on. I told him to bear those thoughts in mind - by the time 
he was halfway through GoF, he'd guessed that Polyjuice came into it, but 
he didn't know how. End of digression.)

OK, after three books, perhaps we should be starting to learn JKR's tricks, 
but should we have guessed that Polyjuice will be the "how" of one of the 
mysteries in GoF? Or that of the characters seen in the Pensieve, it's 
Crouch Jnr. we should be thinking about for the "who"? Or that Voldy would 
need to wait the whole year (for reason which still have to be fully 
explained) to get his hands on Harry rather than grabbing him at the QWC?

By the time OotP came out, things had changed. The fandom had had three 
years to think about some things, not to mention that the number of readers 
ballooned as a result of the first movie. So whilst we couldn't guess that 
the prophecy orb would be the main "why" until it was too late, we'd 
already worked out the gist of the first prophecy and the importance of the 
room of Requirement. Not to mention that Neville was hiding something, or 
that Hagrid was off to see the giants, or what the Order was. Oh, and 
Sirius was high on the list for "the death". I suspect that all of this 
pre-analysis was one of the reasons I was disappointed in the book. Was 
everything really so obvious, or did it just seem to be because of the 
hours and months of discussions? (The one thing I felt was well done was 
the one thing nobody could have guessed, namely Umbridge.)

So now, waiting for HBP, we have lots of ideas floating around, and lots of 
ideas of what bits of OotP may have been clues, but I'm fairly sure that 
nobody will be able to guess which until it's too late. Heck, we're nowhere 
near a consensus on who the dratted titular royal personage might be.

>Of course I may be wildly wrong in my assessment of what HP is, I admit
>that - though I have noticed that there are a few among those who take the
>resolutely bread-and-butter approach who rarely seem to acknowledge
>the possibility of error on their part. The theorists are just being 
>"silly" or
>"ridiculous".  So what if they are? No extra points for imposing orthodoxy,
>is there?

Well, seeing as the point of the intellectual game upon which we're all 
embarked, in this respect, is to guess the outcome before it happens, it 
helps if the theorists are honest about their expectations for success, and 
accept that their pet theory *probably* won't come to pass. Whilst I'm 
happy to discuss more far-fetched theorising, I do not consider it part of 
an effort to discover the secret, but an intellectual game to while away 
the hours. And it's important to distinguish between the two.

>To the serial offender Harry's trials and tribulations, even the final
>resolution *of itself* is less important than the style, dexterity and ... 
>um...
>satisfying completeness (for want of a better phrase) of how it is achieved,
>the eventual realisation, the "Ah! So that's what that meant!" moment.

I would add that this is true of each individual book, and one of the 
reasons why so many people have read each of the books so many times 
(personally, I've read each of the five to date twice through from 
beginning to end, and apart from the odd dip into them looking for bits & 
pieces, I cannot manage to read any of them through a third time - bear in 
mind that my re-reads were slow and deliberate affairs).

>It's probably asking too much to expect that every loose end is neatly tied,
>that there won't be many a question paralleling the classic "But what I
>don't understand, Inspector, ....." but all the major wrinkles will be ironed
>out at the very least. As for the minor ones - well, we can always speculate.

I maintain that what I term "holistic" theories will come into their own 
only after Book Seven is published, when attempts will have to be made to 
iron out all of those wrinkles. Because wrinkles there will be, I'm 
absolutely certain. And some of them, I fear, will be fairly significant. 
Discussions at that stage will take on a different tenor because there 
will, effectively, not be a "right answer"; the story will have been told, 
and all that will remain will be fixing things in retrospect rather than 
looking forward. I fully expect that some of the theories currently 
floating around which will have been neither proved nor disproved by the 
end of Book Seven will re-appear in some modified form.

ESE!Lupin, for instance, depending on Lupin's behaviour in and impact on 
the remaining plot arc, might never be proved, but at the same time, it 
might not be *dis*proved, leaving it open to modification for use as an 
explanation for some of the niggles some people have. Discussions at that 
point will be pure fun, and won't serve any actual plot purpose inasmuch as 
we won't need it to work out any remaining plot.

One snail may yet remain in the ointment, though, because JKR may decide to 
go through the books and prepare a Second Edition (a la Tolkien, etc) in 
which various mistakes, etc. discovered by readers would be ironed out (at 
least, those fixable by re-writing individual scenes rather than whole 
books or the whole plot arc). I think JKR has even hinted that she may do 
this one day.

Of course, the fun will then *really* begin, because the die-hard fans will 
go to town on the Second Edition and re-modify their pet theories to make 
them fit the new facts. Such is the wonderful world of lit crit!

--
Richard AKA GulPLum, who's spent too much of the day reading old posts and 
thus hasn't had time to write many.