Narrative Misdirection: Why All Our Theories are Probably Wrong

We’ve spent a lot of time on this site going round and round the theories about Book 7, especially in the comments sections here and here. When I began Book 7 speculation, I was quick to use this disclaimer:

I tend to think that predicting what will happen in the final book is one of the most fruitless endeavors, albeit interesting. JKR is just too good at the surprise plot turns and endings.

I want to investigate that a bit more by referring to some excellent stuff from John Granger’s article “Why Half-Blood Prince is the Best Harry Potter Novel.” The reason speculation is so difficult is because J.K. Rowling employs the “third person, limited omniscient” voice throughout the novels. The “third person” is almost always Harry, about whom we all feel very strongly. We’re all cheering for Harry, in other words. By telling us only part of the story but not really making it sound that way, she employs a technique called “narrative misdirection.”

Here, I’ll let John explain it for you:

All “narrative misdirection” amounts to really is our being suckered into believing, because the story is not being told by Harry himself, that we are seeing the story as God sees it. Of course this isn’t the case but over the course of the tale our looking down on Harry and friends (and enemies) from “on high”, even if “on high” means only from a few feet over Harry’s head, we begin to think we have a larger perspective than we do.

This trick works because we like Harry and sympathize with him and his struggles. In short, we begin to identify with how Harry thinks and feels, and, because Harry is not telling the story, we think we have to this position of sympathy and identification with the hero because of our unprejudiced view.

When you’ve arrived at this position – and, confess, we’ve all been there, this woman is really good at what she’s doing – Ms. Rowling has you wrapped up. She can take you anywhere she wants to take you and make you think almost anything she wants about any character because, by and large, what Harry thinks is what we believe.

Think of Philospher’s Stone. We’re all convinced Snape is the bad guy, until the surprise ending when Quirrell is standing in front of the mirror. Or Chamber of Secrets: Tom Riddle seemed like such a nice guy in the diary. Or Prisoner of Azkaban: Who didn’t think Sirius was out to kill Harry? You see what I’m getting at.

JKR is so good at this, she has us guessing in about a hundred different directions about even the most important issues of the books (horcruxes, for example). I’ve come to lean heavily towards the horcrux scar-as-horcrux theory, but who knows if she’s just sending me in the wrong direction?

So let me add one more disclaimer to all the theories I propose and urge you to do the same: I’m probably wrong about every guess and theory I’ve got. And I certainly don’t want to be married to any particular theory, because my hunch is that if I go into Book 7 expecting a certain thing to happen, thinking I’ve got it all figured out, I’ll not enjoy the book quite as much. Let’s have fun with the theories, but better to let her storytelling be what it is, rather than what we’ve theorized it to be, when Book 7 arrives.