OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

In trying to account for a sudden change of focus in my Neville argument, I explained my shift in interpretive style by explaining that I had felt that David "might feel a bit more comfortable with a far more academic/analytical and far less popular/'fannish' (personalized, interactive, extrapolative, rebellious) approach to the text."

David responded:

I have rather stacked the case against myself recently, haven't I? But I only get uncomfortable when one approach is implied to be superior to another.

Okay. I'm sorry if I was unjustly stereotyping you there, BTW. I was just trying to keep the lines of communication open.

Personally, I don't consider any interpretative style "better" than any other. I tend to view them primarily as tools of analysis: like all tools, they have different uses and are suited for different tasks.

In a forum like this one, though, they also serve double-duty as the tools of interpersonal communication. And when it comes to communication, the most important first step, IMO, is to settle on a language that everybody involved can feel reasonably comfortable with — or at least to make some effort to signal the shift if one plans on switching suddenly from one mode of discourse to a different one.

In my last message, I stated my belief that my own interpretation of Neville's character is most likely not the author's own, adding my opinion that JKR does not really understand, or "get," people like Neville.

I then, however, suggested that by revealing in GoF that Neville is not, in fact, nearly as emotionally transparent a character as he may have appeared in the previous three volumes, Rowling has left him in a somewhat indeterminate state. By signalling to the reader that Neville does indeed have a hidden internal life, but by not yet choosing to reveal what that internal life might actually be, she has effectively made him a "black box."

Finally, I listed a number of places in the text where I felt there existed a strong possibility that the reader's initially-encouraged reading of the character might turn out not be the truthful one. I concluded with:

What does Neville think about? What are his real opinions? His real motivations? We really just don't know. He's a highly opaque character who has been masquerading for three books as an extremely transparent one, and that makes you wonder (or it makes me wonder, at any rate) what else might be going on there.

David wrote:

I'm slightly lost. Doesn't that list of points suggest that JKR does 'get' Neville?

Not necessarily. To me, all that it really suggests is that JKR does indeed wish to introduce the reader to the notion that Neville does have a hidden inner life: that he thinks about things that he does not share with the protagonists, that he is capable of keeping very big secrets, that he is not at all as transparent a personality as he may at first have appeared. In short, I do think that GoF sets out to establish quite firmly in the reader's mind the understanding that with Neville, What You See isn't necessarily really All That's There.

But that doesn't mean that what JKR will eventually establish really to be there is anything like what I imagine to be there. She's just shown us that he has a hidden inner life. What the nature of that inner life might be, however, is as yet undetermined. When it finally is determined, I will in truth be very surprised (although obviously also very pleased) if it should turn out to be anything like what my own personal identification with the character has led me to imagine it to be.

Or is that a third Neville, different from that of Hermione's imagination and your identification?

Well, in some ways I guess that he is a kind of Third Neville! The post-GoF Neville is Indeterminate Neville: because the author has chosen to leave him in a highly indeterminate state at this point in the narrative, until Book Five comes out it remains possible for him to be simultaneously the Neville of Hermione's imagination and the Neville of my own identification, thus allowing me to maintain my favored reading without running into any strong canonical contradictions.

Once the author chooses to open that box, though, then Indeterminate Neville will likely collapse, and I'll just be stuck with JKR's Neville...whoever he should turn out to be.

Or are you just unconvinced by your own argument?

There are in fact two separate arguments here: one of possibility; and one of probability, or plausibility.

I certainly think that the argument of possibility holds firm. The possibility does exist that the author intends to do something that I will personally find highly enjoyable—compelling, convincing, satisfying, what have you—with Neville. The character is in an indeterminate state at this point in the narrative; he could therefore still be taken in a direction that I would enjoy.

But do I think it probable that JKR's intentions towards the character are what I would prefer for them to be? No. Quite frankly, I don't. I consider it highly unlikely.

David, now dreaming about the kitchen table in the Elkins household

::blink::

The kitchen table?

::sudden look of comprehension::

Oh! You mean that thing in the kitchen? The thing that's covered with all of those stacks of books, and the CDs, and the art supplies, and the polyhedral dice, and the "To Do" lists, and the potted Christmas Cactus that we meant to find another place for sometime last year, and all of those unopened envelopes marked: "Dated Material — Open IMMEDIATELY?"

Yeah, I kind of know what you mean. Sometimes I have dreams about that thing too.

—Elkins, who thinks that she ought to get some sort of special prize for refraining from ever once referring explicitly to that #%&@ feline of Mr. S. in the main body of this message.