Reading HP Aloud -- OotP Chapter 1
I read Books 1-4 aloud to my husband just a couple months after GoF came out -- he enjoys the stories but doesn't read for pleasure -- and tonight we finally started on OotP. I have great fun doing this, because it appeals to the buried actress in me: I try to do as professional-sounding and nuanced a reading as possible, including all the voices
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I have to say (after some pondering) that I agree with this theory. Amazingly, in all the discussion over on the Sugerquill forums and other places, this particular explanation for Harry's emotional state hasn't even come up. Yet it's so much simpler and more elegant than the convoluted explanations about Harry being 15 and post-traumatized, however true those may be.
Ack. I'm just finishing my second read of OotP, and it's amazing how much evidence I'm seeing for this even in the last few chapters (just read Dept. of Mysteries...can't quite bring myself to read Beyond the Veil tonight). I might be inclined to be skeptical, but the unconscious reaction Harry has to Dumbledore *throughout* the book just about clinches it. It's chilling...I mean, obviously it's not like Harry is under Imperious or anything, but once Voldemort figures out what's going on, it's almost worse, seeing Harry's noble insticts and his worst fears being manipulated, knowing that while the choices may be his, the emotional "information" on which he is basing them may not be.
Interesting, then, that it is emotion (or love? that's no clearer than the means of Sirius' death) which enables him to resist Voldemort's possession in the end....
Thanks for turning my read of this book upside down and giving it a shake!
Sarah Izhilzha
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