| 1 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users) |
|
Underlying Themes and Dual Interpretation Part II, Continue the discussion! |
|
|
|
 Mar 17 2008, 02:13 PM
|
Terrortours Travel Agent
Posts: 6,828
Joined: 12:34pm January 24, 2007
|
QUOTE You're right, and it doesn't follow that Lily wouldn't tell James amd Sirius. In fact Sirius says he never heard any say this, although I'm certain Snape became a Death Eater at the same age as Regulus and the others, around sixteen or seventeen. Maybe someone else saw Snape in the wrong, company. Or Lupin, who was suspected by Sirius, (therefore possiby James and Lily) of being the traitor. We here of Peter visiting, but no word in the Letter about Moony--who James was said to have financially supported. I wonder what Peter did to make Lupin look guilty?
Everyone knew what company Snape kept at school, but it isn't clear who knew or could have known with whom he hung around later.
What I wonder about is what was going on between Remus and the rest. On the one hand, if he was suspected then Sirius and James would be less in touch with him. Yet in POA, when he says "unless you switched ... without telling me" (not 'without telling anyone') it seems as though he expected to have been in the know of such details based on their level of communication at the time.
(Sorry to start a new thread without anything earth shatering.)
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 17 2008, 03:27 PM
|
Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner
Posts: 232
Joined: 3:54am June 9, 2005
|
Maime the Hunter focuses on the James/Lily relationship, but there's actually a much more important aspect to her comment:QUOTE Other than speaking of his boyhood escapades when does Dumbledore speak of James as man, of his virtues, of Lily and James as a team?
You've hit upon one of the most critical elements and themes of the overall storyline in the books - the almost total lack of information which Harry has about his parents. In fact, concealment of information, misleading details, and even outright deception are quite critical to the books as far as Harry's knowledge of James and Lily goes. It's rather like a detective story (which has been mentioned on another thread, including JKR's own reference to Dorothy Sayers): Harry not only has to survive his own battles, but has to find out essential information, much of which people don't think he should know, or needs to know.
In PS/SS, DD tells Harry that Lily died to save him, and that love leaves its mark; he mentions the rivalry between Snape and James, but skates over it and almost trivialises it; DD also mentions that James owned the Invisibility Cloak which he used for sneaking to the kitchens. DD of course doesn't let on anything about the real significance of the Cloak, which we much later realise is a very important bit of concealment as well. The next 'real' bits of information come in POA, and much of that was the conversation in the Three Broomsticks which Harry overheard concerning Sirius - in other words, nobody thought he ought to be told about the friendship between his father and Sirius. So Harry has to 'overhear' hidden details. Lupin avoids the issue as much as possible, and it is only in the Shrieking Shack scene that we start getting down to the 'real' information. In the aftermath of that, DD mentions that he knew James well at school and also afterwards - but there is no mention of Lily, or the possibility that she too might have spared Wormtail. It's only in Book 7 we realise that she too was the sort of person who would have been merciful in that situation. So DD has engaged in yet another really neat bit of concealment - he focuses on James, because (as we now realise from the Lily/Snape subplot) DD probably does not want Harry to start asking too many awkward questions about his mother and what she was like.
The theme of concealment goes on, and in OotP we have an important parallel to POA, when Harry sees SWM in the Pensieve, and finds out about his father, and also - critically - gets his first look at Lily and schoolboy Snape. Like POA, Harry wasn't supposed to find this out at all: JKR has to use another device (the Pensieve) for him to discover hidden knowledge and begin to understand what adults are hiding. He tackles Sirius and Remus about it, but the situation means they cannot talk to him at length, so once again, all of Harry's natural follow-up questions are 'conveniently' cut off. Also obvious to many of us is the apparent lack of conversation between Harry, Sirius and Remus when Harry is at GP: for a boy who was so desperately interested in his parents, it has always seemed strange to many of us that Harry didn't use that time to have some long talks (to Sirius at least) about James and Lily. But JKR couldn't have that, because in those discussions, Harry might have discovered the original friendship between Snape and Lily. So she creates a somewhat artificial situation where Harry - for once! - doesn't ask questions and get curious.
It is only after Sirius's death in OotP that DD starts to level with Harry about certain things, but even then, we come to suspect that there is so much he is still not saying. The truth finally comes out in DH (as with all good detective novels, LOL), and we realise just how much DD and Snape have been concealing all these years.
So in the context of all this, and to go back to MtH's comment about James/Lily as a couple, I would not expect DD to have ever talked about James and Lily as a couple. It never arose in any context where DD "had" to make any comment; Sirius and Remus "conveniently" didn't talk to Harry in OotP. And of course, DD really didn't want Harry asking too many questions about his parents at all, because any questions about their romance, or about Lily at school, would have risked disclosure of her friendship with Snape. And that could easily have led to a whole box of other questions which both Snape and DD wanted to keep closed.
We can interpret the HP books as a classic Hero's quest, with the Hero gradually growing up, discovering his own strength, and ultimately achieving his goal by defeating the monster. But the books are also a type of detective story, where the hero detective and his assistants have to discover critical information - and for various reasons, people don't want him to know that information, or not know it "now". And so we have this underlying pattern of half-truths, concealment and chance discoveries in relation to Harry's parents (and other things), all of which are designed to lead the Hero to "the Truth" at the appropriate time.
Alkari
This post has been edited by Alkari: Mar 17 2008, 03:33 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 17 2008, 03:56 PM
|
Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner
Posts: 232
Joined: 3:54am June 9, 2005
|
QUOTE Why would they want to tell Harry about Lily and Snape? They wouldn't - that's just the point! One of Harry's first questions to DD, back in PS/SS, was why Snape disliked him so much yet worked to save him, and we get DD's comment about Snape's 'debt' to James and going back to hating James in peace. A very neat piece of deception! ANY mention of the Snape / Lily friendship from anyone, even in passing, as a comment on Lily and her friends at school for example, could have led Harry to ask some questions about why Snape still hated him if he was friends with his mother - and that could have led Harry down a dangerous trail, which might have given away Snape's spy status. So no-one mentions Lily and Snape in the same breath: the emphasis is very carefully kept on James.
And as a teenage boy, Harry's own focus is rather more on his father, and a father figure, than on his mother. JKR cleverly uses this 'natural' focus to have all of Harry's questions and attention directed towards James and his friends, rather than on what his mother was like.
Alkari
This post has been edited by Alkari: Mar 17 2008, 04:01 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 17 2008, 05:53 PM
|
Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner
Posts: 252
Joined: 7:34pm September 10, 2007
Location: Wandering through wondering...
|
QUOTE(Alkari @ Mar 17 2008, 04:56 PM)  QUOTE Why would they want to tell Harry about Lily and Snape? They wouldn't - that's just the point! One of Harry's first questions to DD, back in PS/SS, was why Snape disliked him so much yet worked to save him, and we get DD's comment about Snape's 'debt' to James and going back to hating James in peace. A very neat piece of deception! ANY mention of the Snape / Lily friendship from anyone, even in passing, as a comment on Lily and her friends at school for example, could have led Harry to ask some questions about why Snape still hated him if he was friends with his mother - and that could have led Harry down a dangerous trail, which might have given away Snape's spy status. So no-one mentions Lily and Snape in the same breath: the emphasis is very carefully kept on James.
I'm not quite sure I follow you here. I can certainly understand why Dumbledore and Snape would want to keep the information that Snape and Lily were friends from Harry - but I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'giving away Snape's spy status'. It wasn't a secret that Snape was working for the Order as a double-agent, was it?
As for Sirius and Lupin and the rest, I'd have to agree with Oryx here and state that neither of them cared much for Snape - they had probably conveniently forgotten the fact that Lily and Snape were friends at all, and if not, they certainly weren't going to bring that fact to light. But I'm not sure why they'd want to keep mum about that in order to help protect Snape's status...?
Forgive me if I'm missing the obvious - I'm rather tired at the moment, but if you could clear this up for me, I'd appreciate it!
--------------------
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions - Leonardo da Vinci
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 17 2008, 08:32 PM
|
Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner
Posts: 232
Joined: 3:54am June 9, 2005
|
QUOTE I'm not quite sure I follow you here. I can certainly understand why Dumbledore and Snape would want to keep the information that Snape and Lily were friends from Harry - but I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'giving away Snape's spy status'. It wasn't a secret that Snape was working for the Order as a double-agent, was it?
Sorry Oryx - should have made it clearer! What I meant was that JKR wouldn't have wanted to "them" i.e. any of her characters, to discuss the Lily/Snape relationship in any detail, or even mention the fact that they were friends, because that would have given rise to obvious questions which Harry should have asked, and would have given away very obvious clues as to the likelihood that Snape may have been motivated in some respects by feelings for Lily. And as a plot point, she wanted to keep the Lily/Snape part as something that was open to speculation until Book 7.
I don't believe that the staff at Hogwarts are blind and deaf to student relationships, feuds or friendships. In a boarding school, where it seems that most of the staff live-in, they see the students 7 days a week, both in and out of class, and the staff would have to be deaf, blind and downright dumb not to notice who was holding hands with whom in the corridors, who was keeping company out of class, who was hanging around with whom on weekends, etc. They all knew of the James/Sirius friendship, and even though that was an obvious one because of the boys' general status in the school, some staff would probably have also known of Lily's friendship with Snape. Clearly, no-one apart from DD and Snape knew of Snape's spy status when he returned to teach at the school: but when he was a student, I cannot believe that by the time he was in fifth year, staff such as McGonagall wouldn't have noticed the Lily/Snape friendship, even in general terms, and were therefore likely to have mentioned it in a casual discussion about Harry's parents. Just something simple along the general lines of someone musing: "Funny how things work out, isn't it - Snape and Potter were enemies from the first, yet Lily was a friend of Snape's for quite a while. Yet she ended up falling in love with Potter and marrying him... And the responses to that." Imagine if Harry had overheard that sort of discussion in POA in the Three Broomsticks!
Of course, there was a general reluctance from everyone to talk about Lily + James to Harry, and given the small size of the wizarding world, it seems remarkable that none of the students at school ever said something to Harry like "my Mum says she was a friend of your mother's at school".
So from this perspective, I am suggesting that it was "convenient" for JKR to ensure that Harry only ever heard comments concerning his father and Sirius. It was also essential that any discussion of his parents was very limited, with a James focus, and that Harry himself was not curious about his mother.
Alkari
This post has been edited by Alkari: Mar 17 2008, 08:34 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 17 2008, 09:09 PM
|
Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner
Posts: 252
Joined: 7:34pm September 10, 2007
Location: Wandering through wondering...
|
QUOTE(Alkari @ Mar 17 2008, 09:32 PM) Sorry Oryx - should have made it clearer!
I'm Oxymoronic - not Oryx - but no worries, those O's, X's and Y's can get tricky! 
I also appreciate your explanation. I too always wondered at Harry's lack of curiosity regarding his parents, particularly when he was stuck in that wretched house in OoTP.
However, for my sake (as all us readers tend to work things out for ourselves in our minds), I told myself that Harry was rather preoccupied with getting over the come-back of Voldemort, worrying about what was happening, and dealing with his growing pains.
Doesn't entirely make up for the fact that he never bothered to sit down for a heart-to-heart with his godfather, but there you have it.
--------------------
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions - Leonardo da Vinci
|
|
|
|
  Similar Topics
 Similar Topics
|
Our reading groups will begin sorting on July 30! Stay tuned for a note from Ivanna!
Shopping at The Cauldron Shop supports this forum!
|
(just kidding)! The lack of communication could be explained by the fact that Lupin seemed to be active for the Order just like Sirius was and that maybe he had gone underground again on Dumbledore's orders to infiltrate the werewolves and gather information, just as he does in the second war. Or his duties entailed entirely different purposes. And if Lupin was suspected, that could explain Sirius' and James' caution in not telling him about the change in SK, or maybe not telling Lupin was merely for his own protection.
