The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Malcolm gives Harry more to bargain for
Mira:
--- Quote ---Three(4?) magicians: Harry Houdini, David Copperfield, & the Blackstones (Sr. & Jr), if you'll forgive the nitpick.
--- End quote ---
You are right, been down with COVID, forgot about Blackstone.. However nothing really magical about the names except the men who had them.. However though all three were great illusionists and vanilla magicians, it was all stage craft and no wizard powers involved. Natural that they would be Malcolm's idols and that he'd name his son after them and hope that someday young Harry would follow in his footsteps.
g33k:
RE "Harry the Unreliable Narrator" --
--- Quote from: Mira on March 27, 2024, 09:53:30 PM ---Is he? Everyone says that yet outside of a few short stories he is the only narrator we've got. So is he a liar? Just stupid? Maybe senile when he wrote his story? Unless you got an alternative story out there ...
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Harry is simply ignorant; that's different from "stupid." But most of his training came from Justin, who seems to have kept him intentionally-uninformed about many facets of the supernatural world. There's good Doylist reasons for this -- we have the talking-head character who can lore-dump to us (the readers), even as he educates Harry on the fundamentals.
It's a 1st-person-POV story, so Harry only "knows" what the author writes him as knowing... and as noticing, in the moment (for example, there's the scene where Lash reveals there was a veiled figure at the Ordo Lebes meeting); though Harry is a keen observer, e.g. Harry noticed Abby's medic-alert bracelet.
But most of all, Jim himself attests that Harry is an unreliable narrator, and that Harry has a fairly simple & "straightforward" perspective, and mostly doesn't grasp the subtler (and more-correct) nuances of many situations & individuals.
Some examples where Harry "narrates unreliably:"
* Early Morgan was written as a flat, 2-dimensional, nearly-villainous character; a bully who had pre-judged Harry and was unwilling to revise his thinking. Later we learn a much more favorable and nuanced view of Morgan, making him a hard but heroic figure & decidedly one of the "good guys," who was continuously testing Harry, but always giving him room to prove himself.
* Early Mab was written as the stereotypical "mythical villain" figure, the archetype and prototype of all Evil Queens (and Kings, &c); later we see that she's cold&hard because she's Winter, but possibly the single mightiest champion who's fighting on behalf of Creation.
* Early Demonreach is written as "spooky ruins," whereas in reality it's a vitally-active prison, and the strongest we know of (other than places like Hades' realm).
* All of Proven Guilty was a long-con story (probably Mab's), whereas Harry saw it as just the phobophages preying upon SplatterCon!!! attendees, likely with some spell-caster who was summoning them in a bid for personal power.
In the end, Harry must be an "unreliable narrator," for the sake of the story. He grows in power throughout the story, but more importantly he grows in perspective and knowledge. If he began the story fully-informed, there wouldn't be much of a story to tell (or at least, it'd be a very different one).
Harry's "unreliable" narration is from a place of ignorance, & an unrealistically-simplistic perspective.
Mira:
--- Quote ---It's a 1st-person-POV story, so Harry only "knows" what the author writes him as knowing... and as noticing, in the moment (for example, there's the scene where Lash reveals there was a veiled figure at the Ordo Lebes meeting); though Harry is a keen observer, e.g. Harry noticed Abby's medic-alert bracelet.
--- End quote ---
It is, what it is, right?
--- Quote ---But most of all, Jim himself attests that Harry is an unreliable narrator, and that Harry has a fairly simple & "straightforward" perspective, and mostly doesn't grasp the subtler (and more-correct) nuances of many situations & individuals.
--- End quote ---
Or more to the point, the author is giving himself wiggle room for changing his mind later in a long series or CYAing for his own mistakes that his "Beta Readers" might miss. So it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. I just think too many times it is a convenient excuse for posters who fail to adequately back up their own posts. If they can't prove their point the fall back line is Harry is an unreliable narrator..
--- Quote ---Early Mab was written as the stereotypical "mythical villain" figure, the archetype and prototype of all Evil Queens (and Kings, &c); later we see that she's cold&hard because she's Winter, but possibly the single mightiest champion who's fighting on behalf of Creation.
--- End quote ---
But Harry's early perceptions of Mab,or of Morgan for that matter, don't make Harry an unreliable narrator. They were accurate as he saw them at the time as a young inexperienced wizard. When we first meet Harry he is a young wizard in his mid-twenties, a lot has happened to him, the characters, and the world around him in the last 35 years, and with them his perceptions Though he writes in first person, he writes not as a historian beginning the first page of the book," back in 1982 these are the events as I remember them.." No, his tale reads in first person, in that time period, as he perceived it in that time as a young man. I bet if you were to try and narrate a story about your life at 25, even with a daily diary, you'd do some correcting about the people you've met and how you saw the world at that time, at 50 you see the people you have met and the world around you differently. So for as he saw it at the time, right or wrongly, I think Harry is quite reliable.. That doesn't make him always correct, but for that moment as he saw it, he was.. Now often he will correct or admit he was wrong about events and characters as the series goes along. Events, information have changed his impressions of characters like Mab and Morgan in addition to his own maturity.
--- Quote ---Harry's "unreliable" narration is from a place of ignorance, & an unrealistically-simplistic perspective.
--- End quote ---
No more than any human perspective, looking at the series as a whole, I think you can say Harry's perspective is a hell of a lot less simplistic in the last five books, from what it was in the first five.. Harry's narration is reliable for the time period he was writing in, it has shown mental and emotional growth over the series. His world has become more complex, he has a character has become more complex and matured.
--- Quote ---"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." -Mark Twain.Mar 24, 2015
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The same can be said of Harry.. ;)
g33k:
--- Quote from: Mira on March 28, 2024, 04:43:57 PM --- ... But Harry's early perceptions of Mab,or of Morgan for that matter, don't make Harry an unreliable narrator ...
--- End quote ---
Yes they do.
--- Quote from: Mira on March 28, 2024, 04:43:57 PM --- ... They were accurate as he saw them at the time as a young inexperienced wizard ...
--- End quote ---
"Unreliable narrator" is a specific literary term, a method/technique authors use; it has a specific meaning. Jim Butcher says he's using it, and shows us this in the books.
Being "naive" (inexperienced, ignorant) is very-specifically one well-known form of this "unreliable narrator" method.
Mira:
--- Quote from: g33k on March 28, 2024, 08:20:17 PM ---Yes they do.
"Unreliable narrator" is a specific literary term, a method/technique authors use; it has a specific meaning. Jim Butcher says he's using it, and shows us this in the books.
Being "naive" (inexperienced, ignorant) is very-specifically one well-known form of this "unreliable narrator" method.
--- End quote ---
I understand, but if you go back and read the different definitions of what an unreliable narrator is, Harry really doesn't fit, at least not consistently. Yes, he makes mistakes, can be inexperienced, and sometimes ignorant, but not consistently. I would like to see in context of what Jim actually said about Harry. Is Harry more reliable in the later books as he and we the readers learn more? Or can anything be believed since 95% of the time it is Harry who is doing the story telling? Harry who is lot more experienced and a lot less ignorant than he was in the early books, is he more reliable now? What I am saying is both can be true at the same time. Too many times the term "unreliable narrator" is the fall back crutch when there is no evidence to prove the poster's point one way or another.
The series is told in first person, this does present problems in the narration of the story. The teller can be wrong as Harry has been from time to time, especially in the early books when he was younger and trying to figure out what was going on. If this was a consistent pattern of his through out the books, would you enjoy reading the story if you believed the story teller was full of BS 90% of the time? Don't think so, and as the series has gone on, Harry alters his views about other characters and events as we do in life..
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