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Porphyria wrote (as an addendum to her excellent post on Lupin's teaching skills, to which I can add nothing but agreements):
Elkins' original concern, if I understood her correctly, was whether Neville himself feels *condescended to*.
Yes, that was precisely my concern, and I believe that it originated for me in the way that Lupin uses Neville's first name in the boggart sequence. He addresses Neville by name in very nearly every sentence that he speaks to him, and that really did made me squirm just a bit as a reader. It's the way that one talks to a much younger child — or to a dog.
It is also, of course, the way that one talks to a frightened person, or to someone in crisis, which I'm sure is the reason that Lupin does it in the first place. Neville is frightened—far more of being put on the spot in front of the entire class, IMNSHO, than of the boggart itself—and he's known to have some problems with attention and focus, particularly when under stress. I assume that Lupin's repeated use of his first name was intended not merely as a form of reassurance, but also as a means of keeping Neville's attention anchored on the task at hand.
And it works. Neville does indeed manage to stay well enough focused, despite his nervousness, to fend off the boggart, and I agree with Porphyria that his self-esteem is clearly bolstered—in the short term, at any rate—by the experience.
But, but, but.
But.
I don't think this is the reaction of someone who feels that they are being pitied; I don't think Neville is second guessing Lupin's treatment of him at all at this point. Whether he ponders it at length in private is anyone's guess...
Yes. It is anyone's guess at this pont in the game, and this was the reason that I took some pains to qualify my reading of Neville as intensely (and quite possibly utterly unreasonably) personal. I have alluded elsewhere (messages 34381, 34856) to my anxiety with Neville as a character, an anxiety which is rooted in my uneasy suspicion that while JKR certainly knows how to depict Neville-types from an external perspective, she doesn't really "get" them on a deeper level — doesn't understand how they think, has little insight into the real challenges facing them, does not deduce correctly the nature of their internal lives.
From the perspective of many types of orthodox analysis, of course, this is an absurd notion: as the author, JKR is free to declare Neville's internal life to be whatever she imagines it to be; so long as the character remains internally consistent, the author cannot be "wrong."
From the point of view of a slightly different type of engagement with the text, on the other hand, authors can err when it comes to character, and this was the perspective from which I was speaking when I wrote my original throw-away comment about Lupin's boggart lesson. I later backed off from that approach—and stated far more explicitly my personal bias—largely because I had then gone from speaking to Kimberley to speaking to David, someone I was guessing, on the basis of some of his previous writings, 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.
But if I may return briefly to the realms of the personal, my reading that Neville might indeed have considered Lupin's pedagogy to be pitying or condescending was based on identification and familiarity with my own responses when faced with similar behavior at that age. I remember all too well the strange mixture of emotions that that sort of thing used to inspired in me: a peculiar blend of gratitude, irritation, and a certain degree of sympathetic (and even at times somewhat contemptuous) bemusement over the oblivious habits of well-intended adults. Most of my housemates, themselves Neville-types as children (what can I say? we tend to stick together), instinctively read the scene much as I did.
Does JKR's Neville feel the same way though? Oh, probably not. As I've said elsewhere, I suspect that my reading of Neville and JKR's intended reading are widely divergent.
Does canon exclude the possibility that he perceives condescension in how he is treated by others, and that this bothers him?
No. I don't think that it does. In fact, I think that in places, it supports it.
Naama wrote:
Moreover, my sense of Neville is that he feels so weak, luckless and skill-less that he is humbly grateful for any help or kind attention that comes his way. . . . He's very lovable that way and very pitiable too - like a lost child in a panicky search for someone to lean on. . . . To me, what is so heart rending about Neville is that he has no self-belief at all.
He certainly does not have nearly as much self-belief as he needs. If he did, then he would have stuck to his guns in PS/SS, rather than being suckered into parroting other people's notions of what he should say and do and be.
However, the picture of Neville that you are painting strikes me as inconsistent with what we learn about him in GoF: namely, that he is not, in fact, nearly as emotionally transparent as Harry (or the reader) initially imagines him to be. He is keeping secrets. He has a hidden inner life. And far from seeking out others to lean on, he in fact tries to gloss over his vulnerability when Hermione actively offers him a shoulder. He is obviously appreciative of her in many ways, and he likes her well enough to ask her to a ball. He is perfectly willing to beg for her assistance when he believes his pet's life to be in danger. But in the corridor outside of that DADA class, Neville effectively rejects her.
And once we realize this about Neville, many of his actions throughout the previous three volumes start to appear in a somewhat different light, IMO. His utter silence, for example, at the beginning of the first book, while Hermione is parading him around from compartment to compartment, helping him to find his toad. The fact that while Harry obviously assumes that his reaction to winning the House Cup for Gryffindor at the end of PS/SS is one of undiluted pleasure at finally receiving some praise—and while this is certainly the interpretation encouraged in the reader—the text never actually gives so much as a glimpse of a happy or pleased expression on his face during the event: he is, in fact, merely described as "white with shock." The fact that he never once mentions to any of his classmates that he has "lost" his list of passwords. The way that he chooses to curl up to sleep on the floor outside of the Gryffindor common room when he cannot remember how to get in, rather than seeking out the relevant authority to let him in. The way that he seems so often to vanish from the narrative view — one moment he's there, the next moment he's not. The fact that although he would seem to have no friends at all, other than perhaps Hermione, we only see him press his company on any of the protagonists twice in four novels: once in PS/SS, when he is terrified of the Bloody Baron; and once in PoA, when he and Harry are the only students in their year still in Hogwarts.
Not to mention, of course, the fact that the Sorting Hat took a very long time with him.
Neville does indeed send an unspoken but clear message that he is vulnerable, and that he is in a position neither to resent the form in which any help might be given nor to defend himself against those who would take advantage of his vulnerability. But the message that one sends through ones demeanor and the message that one sends through ones actions are not always aligned — and both of these are even more often misaligned with ones own personal thoughts on the matter. In Neville's case, I see a very strong disconjunct there, and to my mind, this grants him a certain degree of indeterminacy as a character, which in turn makes him rather intriguing. 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.
Elirtai wrote, on JKR's character list:
Neville's entry is not only hard to read, it has no symbols or house at all.
There, now. You see? Didn't I just tell you that Neville was a strikingly indeterminate character? *vbg*
Naama signed off with:
Naama, horrified to suddenly realize that Neville is no. 1 candidate for Forthcoming Death (but would sacrifice Neville in a minute if it would save Hagrid)
You'd trade Neville for Hagrid? Gee whiz. No wonder the poor kid has self-esteem issues. ;-)
But I feel fairly certain that Neville's safe until Book Seven.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on March 13, 2002 12:31 PM
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