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I asked if people had a different quality of reader response to two separate, yet remarkably similar, "symbolic trouncing of the designated enemy" scenes: the Point Award at the end of PS/SS, and the conflict on the train at the end of GoF.
Eileen was the only person who answered me directly.
Eileen:
It is difficult for me, after reading an entire book which explores the ways in which the good guys are less than good, to read the Train Stomp without a certain degree of apprehension.
So do you think that the difference in your emotional reaction comes down to context alone? Or is there something in how the two scenes are actually written that makes them qualitatively different?
I guess this is really what I'm trying to figure out. I'm not quite sure what I think about the question myself, you see. ;-)
But whereas I felt that JKR was fine with dissin' the Slyths, the Train Stomp seemed to be much more ambiguously presented.
It felt that way to me, too. But why? Is context king? Or is there something specific about the presentation of the event itself that made us share that reader response?
What does it? Is it the quiver in the smirk? Is it the way that the scene leaves the issue of future ramifications unresolved? Is it the discrepancy between the description of Draco, Crabbe and Goyle as "menacing" and the ease of their actual dispatch? Is it the fact that earlier in the novel, we had the Ferret Bounce subverted by revelations about Moody's real identity, and that this makes the reader more suspicious of the pleasures of payback overall?
What precisely is it that makes this scene seem so much more ambiguously presented than the point award scene at the end of PS/SS?
And second, to what extent might Train Stomp actually invite a reevaluation of the point award scene? Were readers as bothered by the point award scene before GoF came out? Or is it the steadily changing tone of the series that is inviting readers to go back and look at past events in a new way, or from a new perspective?
Dicey:
I'd have to add that Harry's vision is growing, too. It's natural for an 11-year-old to see the world in black and white. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she planned the apparent shallowness of the first book.
I am beginning to believe that she did indeed.
This ties into the comment someone (forget who, sorry!) made a while back about childrens' books being written to "lead" the reader far more than "adult" books do.
In the case of the HP series, I think that the series as a whole is being written, to a certain extent, to "lead" the reader. Just as the maturity of Harry's POV is increasing with each passing volume, so is the sophistication of the moral universe that the books present -- as, for that matter, is the vocabulary and overall reading level of the writing itself. GoF is a much "harder" book than PS/SS is. It's longer, it uses bigger words, the plot is more complicated. Even the sentence structures are rather more complex.
Given that this is my take on the series as a whole, I do believe that there is a profound significance to the differences between how the PS/SS point award scene is presented to the reader, and how the scene on the train at the end of GoF is. They are parallel scenes in my mind, but I think that they are viewed through a very different lens.
The Point Award scene at the end of PS/SS is strangely innocent. It glosses the ambiguities inherent in its presentation and expects the reader not to look behind the curtain. It asks the reader to read as a child.
The train scene is not at all innocent. As befits its place within the overall arc of the series, it invites the reader to consider its ambiguities and by doing so, to reconsider many of the events which have come before in a new light. It asks the reader to read as an adolescent.
Train Scene = Point Award + Maturity.
Pippin:
I think we are going to see a broader spectrum of Slytherins in the books to come. Not all the Slytherins refuse to drink to Harry. This is the first indication that they are not all firmly in Malfoy's camp.
Yes, I agree. But why does the first indication of this come in the fourth volume?
Quite some time ago, Pippin wrote:
Perspective in a novel, like perspective in art, is an illusion....
This illusion, like the illusion of perspective on a stage, can only work from certain points of view.
Indeed. And when the point of view changes, then certain illusions are broken. Illusions like Slytherin=Evil. Illusions like Comeuppance=Harmless. Illusions like History=Destiny.
If the Slytherins are indeed "part of the background," then why does JKR herself not permit them to remain there?
If we are not supposed to look behind the curtain, then why does the author start inviting us to do so more and more as Harry, our POV character, comes to a more sophisticated understanding of the world around him?
The problem with viewing events in PS/SS as if they do not belong to the series as a whole, as I see it, is that the series was planned as a series. It does not, in fact, resolve with the end of Book One. The serial nature of the story makes it rather difficult to pretend that the events of the first book are taking place in an entirely different moral universe than the rest of the series. That really does start to feel like sloppy reading.
In fact, the series often seems to me to be designed to force the reader to reevaluate earlier assumptions and responses constantly as the lens of Harry's POV matures.
I was bothered by the point award scene on my first reading of SS. But I find myself wondering how much of the current reader discontent that we see expressed about this scene is to some extent retroactive. I wonder to what extent the series is "leading" us there, by the very nature of its structure.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 1, 2003 5:07 PM
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