path: root/literature/aristotle-unities.rst

Harry Potter and Aristotle
##########################

:date: 2018-11-15T12:56:20
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter

Aristotle in the seventh and eighth chapter of his Poetics 
writes:

   Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation of 
   an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain 
   magnitude … As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the 
   imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, 
   being an imitation of an action, *must imitate one action* and 
   that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such 
   that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole 
   will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence 
   or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part 
   of the whole. (emphasis mine)

Based on *Poetics* many literary critics of Renaissance and 
Baroque developed theory of “`Classical Unities`_”, which then 
governed most of the writing from the seventeenth century 
onwards. Unfortunately, it rather quickly degraded into rather 
silly discussions about unity of time and place (which were never 
specifically mentioned by Aristotle as necessary, perhaps only as 
commonly occurring), both of which were largely ignored not only 
by the Greek writers of the classical Era, but by almost every 
other writer outside of the tight confines of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth century classical drama. 

Sometimes the reviews of particular theatre play went 
unbelievably silly like when Shakespeare (who either didn’t know 
about the Classical Unities at all, or he didn’t care about them) 
was criticized that only two less known plays of his actually 
follow the rules and for example most of historical plays cover 
length of tens of years.

Perhaps because of the silliness of these discussions or perhaps 
because of decline of the classical education, classical unities 
were mostly abandoned in its original form, even more so with the 
rise of the literary styles completely unsuited for them. There 
is just no way how a standard length novel could fulfil unity of 
time and place. Post-Joyceeian novels drove the last nail into 
the coffin of the classical unities with many extremely 
non-classical variants of structure of style.

And yet …

In the last couple of years I read many many fanfictions on the 
Internet. While reading one cannot ignore how few of them achieve 
at least resemblance of quality of the normal literary works. 
Certainly, the Sturgeon’s Law, that ninety percent of everything 
is crap, applies, but there are some pieces of fanfiction which 
are rather good and it is sad to see them failing.

In the following I will not deal with the overwhelming amount of 
utter crap coming from graphomaniac teenagers who have problems 
with the basics of the English language and style, but with those 
few pieces of writing which are worthy of consideration and where 
one feels the pain of how far they reached and yet they failed to 
achieve the greatness.

First problem is common to almost all fanfictions longer than one 
chapter, and that is their excessive length. If somebody claims 
that with the Internet and its endless opportunities for 
self-publishing, we don’t need old publishing houses any more, 
most of these stories show how most authors are in need of the 
second opinion of the experienced editor. It is said that half of
the success of the French author `Jules Verne`_ was in his
publisher and editor `Pierre-Jules Hetzel`_, who forced Verne to
cut his novels sometimes up to the half in length and sometimes
completely rewrite the main plot of the novel. When Hetzel died
in 1886, the quality of Verne’s novels went noticeably down. Mrs
Rowling herself complained that Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix was published in too much haste and a way too long for
her taste. For the record, that’s 38 chapters (average length of
HP books is 28.43 chapters). What should one think about novels
like “The Accidental Animagus” (112 chapters and it covers only
the first four years of Harry’s school, another volumes have
8 chapters, and very much unfinished third volume another 12
chapters) or “The Arithmancer” series (84 and 82 chapters
covering the HP series time frame, and another 5 chapters of just
starting third volume; this series is probably slightly less
overboard than The Animagus one)? Just to emphasize, “Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, the book which brought Ms.
Rowling to the world-wide fame, was 17 chapters. Each of these
mentioned fanfiction books contain some excellent parts, which
are truly outstanding, but they unfortunately contain a lot of
other parts as well.

And not to put all criticism on White Squirrel, first five
percent of the current (still quite unfinished, so we don’t know
what will be the final length) text of “`Friends and Foes`_” by
Northumbrian is Harry and Ginny stepping down from the bike.
Really. It has later some best chapters I read from one of my
beloved author (everybody must love Bobbie Beadle!), but first
four [!] chapters could be either completely eliminated
(detective is woken up in the middle of night by a phone call is
very stereotypical, but rather useful start of the story), or if
not that, they should be in my opinion at least cut to at least
one third of the current size and spread later in the story.

My deep suspicion is that this excessive length of fanfiction 
novels are caused by the ease of writing in the computer age, 
lack of editors, but also crazy idea, that novels can be 
published one chapter at time. I know that many novels in history 
were written in that style, when they were originally serialized, 
but with existence of text editors, I believe readers expect 
higher quality than what could be found in some originally 
serialized novels (yes, Grimaud_ should be struck out of the Three 
Musketeers).

Excessive length of so many novels is by far not the biggest 
problem of many fanfiction stories. Of course, as you expected 
(or were afraid of), I think Aristotle’s unities are something 
which can help in producing better stories.

I think we need to return to the original quotation from 
Aristotle I presented above. In light of the seventeenth century 
discussions and fashion, it is interesting to note, Aristotle 
didn’t seem to say anything about the unity of time and place, at 
least there doesn’t seem to be anything about the need for 
tragedy happening in one day or just in one place (although, 
technically, classical theatre with very limited stage technology 
was probably not changing scenes much). It is a way about “the 
object imitated is one”. Translated to the most fanfiction 
stories I would say that *there should be one main story, one 
main world-view*.

Let me present here two examples of stories which I think 
departed from this rule to their own detriment. Again, let me 
emphasize, both of them are from the best fanfiction stories 
I read anywhere, so when criticizing them, it is more from my 
admiration and frustration that they were so close of being 
really good.

----

The first studied item is “`Strangers at Drakeshaugh`_” by 
Northumbrian. He (or she?) is probably generally my most beloved 
fanfiction author of all, and most of his stories are just 
awesome. I have in my brain another essay about the style of 
magician’s realism, which is rather strange and absolutely 
awesome thing, and one of few paths which can lead fanfiction to 
the levels of the generally good literature. However, there are 
things lacking. First of all, this story is one of the examples 
of excessive length, story could be helped by severe cutting 
through it. Apparently the author was so excited by his new 
family(-ies), that he spend just too much time enjoying talking 
about Charltons and Potters, and the beginning of the novella 
before the main story picks up is a bit boring.

But that is a minor problem in my opinion. The worse problem is 
that the author hasn’t managed to keep the story unified. 
Generally the story is written from the point of view of 
Jacqueline Charlton, the mother of one of two families the story 
is about. They are complete Muggles (well, it is probably 
a little bit more complicated, but that’s not fully revealed in 
this story, and it will get even more complicated in the sequel 
“`James and Me`_”) and so they at the first do not suspect 
anything unusual when apparently rather well off London family of 
Potters move in to their Northumbrian valley and buys a deserted 
farm house (called Drakeshaugh [Drakes-hoff], hence the name of 
the story). Only later they are bit surprised how strange these 
strangers are: they have no electricity in their house, no TV, 
but their relatives and friends are coming regularly and 
obviously with ease from quite long distances all over the UK. 
Moreover, the father of the Potter family, Harry, is very 
secretive about his work, and only after couple of strange 
slip-ups and weird statements, admits his job is covered by the 
Official Secrets Act, and he is probably somehow working for 
Intelligence or something. Even more interesting is that he is 
somehow involved in the investigation of the nationally famous 
series of brutal murders called “Werewolves murders” (all deaths 
happen on full-moon), and so this story is also a bit of 
a detective story. However, investigation is just in the 
background and main focal point of the novella is just family 
life of Charltons and Potter, and their troubles with their 
children and such.

And then suddenly during the story there are seven chapters 
scattered which are from the wizards’ point of view. Some of them 
are probably necessary (in the end obviously the case cannot be 
truthfully explained to Muggles, so at least in this novella the 
narrator never learns what actually happened, and it would be too 
disappointing I guess if even reader wouldn’t learn), but some of 
them seem more like the author couldn’t resist writing down an 
idea even when it breaks the flow, style, and world-view of 
the text. One of the Aurors, who is a passionate lover of the 
Goth subculture (or punk, I don’t understand these enough to be 
able to distinguish), is killed in the action. During her funeral 
where most Muggle participants are dressed so extravagant, that 
wizards and witches are conspicuous by their normality, she 
arrives as ghost to the surprise of few Muggles who could see 
her. A lovely one-shot story, which would work very well on its 
own, doesn’t seem to have any reason to exist as a part of 
“Strangers”.

There is another from-wizards-point-of-view chapter (surprisingly 
narrated by a Muggle policewoman who however works as part of the 
Auror unit as a Muggle Liaison Officer), which suggests it would 
be probably possible to write whole novella at least partially as 
two interwoven stories narrated by two ladies, one from the 
Muggle, other from the wizarding world point of view. It could 
probably work, and Northumbrian have already written this type of 
story narrated from two interwoven points of view (“Hunters and 
Prey”, one of the best stories he wrote), but it doesn’t happen 
here, and instead of creating some new structure, these chapters 
just break up unity of the main story.

----

The second story which suffers from this disease of not keeping 
unity is also otherwise really good story, already mentioned 
above, “`The Accidental Animagus`_” by White Squirrel (according 
to “`PotterFixWeekly`_” it is him). It is strictly speaking 
alternative universe story, but it generally loosely follows 
Harry Potter books. Abused five year old Harry just couldn’t take 
it any more, and when Vernon Dursley actually beats him (up to 
that point he usually had left any physical violence for Dudley 
to administer), Harry runs away using accidental magic. However, 
he not only switches off lights and destroys all obstacles which 
stand in his way (starting with the door to his broom cupboard), 
but also unlocks his ability to be animagus cat, and spends next 
two months as a small kitten wandering through Southern England. 
The weather is getting cold, too close to winter to make life 
outdoors comfortable, so he starts to look for a family, which 
would take him in. And one day, still as a kitten, he finds house 
in a garden, where a girl of his age with brown bushy hair sits 
on a bench reading a book. She smells somehow nice to him (we 
later learn, that cats can smell magic), so he tries to be 
friendly with her. When she asks him what’s his name, he changes 
into a small boy to answer her, and hilarity ensues. Grangers 
decide (even knowing he might be pursued by bad wizards) to adopt 
him, and so he grows up in a nice loving family with super-smart 
albeit a bit bossy sister (one small difference from the canon is 
that they also train in karate since age of six, so this Hermione 
is actually physically very fit and later plays as a substitute 
Chaser for Gryffindor). 

There are many things in this story, which are very good. This is 
one of stories, which try to avoid people behaving like idiots 
just to keep plot going (which unfortunately happened even to Ms. 
Rowling), and most of the time it manages to do so. Of course, 
people do mistakes and behave in anger, but for example, Harry 
& co. just don’t run to the midnight duel provoked by Draco 
Malfoy, because that would be silly. Also, given the change in 
universe, there is no Harry’s deep distrust of authorities and 
working relationship with his adopted parents (and the same goes 
for Hermione, of course), so parents are very much part of 
planning and generally are part of the world kids live in. Even 
though story (with some exceptions) more or less loosely follows 
the main plot points of the Harry Potter books, the author 
managed to make people actually communicate and not behaving that 
much irrationally.

The main deviation from the Harry Potter books is in the third 
year. Given that Harry is a cat animagus, it is not that much 
surprise, he discovers in his first year just after few weeks of 
living together with Ron in one dormitory, that the Rat is an 
animagus and catches him. Great Wizengamot hearing follows, where 
Sirius Black is acquitted and Peter Pettigrew is to every 
reader’s satisfaction sent to Azkaban for life. This happens in 
fan fiction stories quite often (because everybody hates Peter 
Pettigrew so much), but usually it leads to bizarre convoluted 
stories which don’t make much sense. Special trouble is usually 
the third volume, which is obviously all about catching Sirius 
Black, but here the author found a good solution (and as usual, 
the originally story is always better than just rewritten canon). 
He just dropped that theme altogether and created his own story: 
Fenrir Greyback invades England (he was hiding somewhere in 
Eastern Europe before) and with his pack of werevolves terrorizes 
both Muggle and wizarding world in the same time when Wizengamot 
discusses controversial law on the control of werevolves drafted 
by Dolores Umbridge, and you can probably easily imagine just how 
horrible it was. The whole school year ends in the double-ending: 
brutal battle with the pack of thirteen werevolves in the 
Hufflepuff Common Room (which as everybody knows has so laughable 
protection that even transformed werewolf can get through it), 
and political battle in Wizengamot to push through law providing 
legal protection for werevolves. Probably, because the author 
wrote his own story and he didn’t have to write into the plot 
made up by Ms. Rowling, this third year is probably best written 
year of all covered Harry’s years.

Another temptation avoided by the author, which could end very
poorly (and yet I have read stories like that) is that it turns
out membership in Wizengamot is hereditary and Harry is the head
of the Potter noble family. There are two sides of this idea.
When thinking about possible political organization of the small
community living in hiding for centuries, it is quite possible
that some kind of parliament (local council) with seats at least
partially hereditary could happen. That’s from the
theoretical/sociological point of view. However, from the
fanficiton author point of view, everybody who tried to dabble in
the Lord Potter and Lord Malfoy usually ended up with disaster. 
Original books by Ms. Rowling are very much middle-class in their 
nature, and all attempts to spread too much of nobility, Lords 
and Ladies, duels, arranged marriages, could very easily lead to 
completely destroying the atmosphere of the original books [#]_. 
(“Lord Malfoy, would you please pass salt to Heiress Greengrass, 
Scion Longbottom is in the way?” … that’s just too cruel
punishment for one’s sins.) Even here White Squirrel managed to 
tone this down and make all business with students as nobles 
believable. However, the author stresses strongly on the idea of 
small size of the wizarding community in England (just ten 
thousand, even less than what’s assumed by the fanfiction essays 
I found on the topic), and the size protects enough 
Gemütlichkeit to be still more bourgeois than feudal.

Another important trait of the story is that the author has 
tendency to include wizarding politics, and he does a very good 
job with that. It makes the whole universe a way more logical and 
rational. Also, it tries really hard to embed magical world in 
the real world history, so Mr. Granger celebrates when Mikhail 
Gorbachev abdicates (and he is told that there is a Konstantin 
Jugashvili, the Dark Lord of Leningrad, who stood behind the 
Soviet power). Mr. John Major has one small role in the story to 
play (and putting completely incompetent Minister Fudge in line), 
although they miss that during their first visit to the Diagon 
Alley couple of streets away the same John Major stood on the
steps of the Downing St. 10 announcing the Iraq War. Also, one of
the large subplots relates to the 1994 Rwanda genocide (which was
caused in reality by the Dark Lord Kinani Ngeze and his nundu).
Related to that is the author including also international point
of view, which is very nice, because the wizarding world of the
Harry Potter universe is usually horribly English-centric and
ignorant of the world around.

One tiny complaint to the general feeling of the book. English 
are really more reserved than your average American (Australian, 
I don’t know where the author is from). Their stiff upper lip may 
be not that stiff lately as it used to be, but still this story 
seems to me to have just too much hugging, crying, sniffling into 
another’s arms, etc. And yes, I can happily imagine, that after 
Harry had his emotional moment with Snape (after returning from 
the Heavenly Heathrow), he could kill the pathos by delivering 
the message from his father. That’d exactly fit. There is 
a possibility Snape would kill Harry, but most likely he would 
feel the duty of every Englishman to accept a joke (even when he 
doesn’t), and he would just laugh it out.

I have already mentioned, that it very much not succeeded in the 
“brevity is a sister of talent” department. I would blame 
serialized writing of the story, but sometimes it feels like 
author tried couple of times to achieve some idea, or sometimes 
perhaps he just started subplot which didn’t lead anywhere so it 
just stands there alone (Harry meets Dudley in an amusement park, 
just what Aristotle’s “visible difference” that chapter was meant 
to make?).

Much bigger problem in my opinion is that again the author didn’t 
manage to keep focus on his main story. Until the end of the 
first or second year the story is clearly rewrite of the Harry 
Potter books with some special additions. The main hero is Harry,
and although Hermione is certainly a way more important than in 
the canonical books, still the story is talked manly from the 
Harry’s point of view, and (fortunately) Hermione is not here to 
take Harry’s glory (like in some films, ehm). Then there is in my 
opinion brilliant third year with werevolves, and then suddenly 
the unity of the story goes down the drain.

Suddenly, the end of the second year passes us, and in the 
chapter 62 the book completely changes and not for more concise. 
Suddenly, Carrows are running all over the Europe, Edward Greyson 
runs from Australia to Siberia, and there are plenty of 
completely unrelated stories which are competing for our 
interest. It is obvious that the author fallen for the trap of 
superhero literature and needs even badder anti-hero than the 
previous one, so in the end there are four (or five?) 
supervillians of the Voldermorts calibre being fought by 
additional Grand Sorceres (mentioned Edward Grayson is one of 
them), but it certainly doesn’t explain why the story changed in 
its character so much.

Moreover, in order to introduce these additional characters, 
there are plenty of smaller stories which are completely 
unrelated to the main one. Some of them would work very well as 
independent stories. For example, in the first part of the 
Chapter 75, Edward Grayson cuts through the jungle to find 
a muggle-born wizard in the local native tribe, which could (and 
should) very well stand out on its own as a single-shot. If 
Professor McGonagall thinks her task to inform muggle-borns is 
difficult, then she should try to find her muggle-borns in the 
jungle of South America with machete, tropic helmet and all that 
jazz. It could be a lovely one-shot even better because of its 
non-European location, which is so rare, but I wonder whether it 
contributes anything good to the main story of the Animagus.

Another similarly problematic story is the chapter 83, “The 
Battle of Gisenyi”. Again, it is perfectly written short story of 
the magical battle, which would perfectly stand on its own as 
a one-shot. Moreover, contrary to the previous one, this one has 
an obvious important function for the whole story. One problem
with the persona of Albus Dumbledore in the canon is that
everybody talks about him as a biggest wizard walking the England
(or Scotland), the only one Voldermort is afraid of, but we
almost never see this magical power in practice. The only
exception in books is The Battle of the Department of Mysteries,
and even that is rather brief and I am afraid not enough. This is
one very few exceptions where the films are better than the books
just by their nature, it is very obvious there that battle is in
fact the most advanced magical duel of whole series. It seems to
me that this power of Albus Dumbledore is one place where Ms.
Rowling seriously failed in the task “Show, don’t tell”.

So, I welcome very much that there was an occasion for Albus 
Dumbledore to show his real power, I am just unsure whether it 
was worthy to break whole continuity of the story for that. 
Couldn’t this be just part of the current chapter 84, with 
Hermione reading and explaining to their parents article in *The 
Daily Prophet* (**NOT** from Rita Skeeter, just some random East 
African correspondent, or English Hitwizard sent with ICW 
forces)? It would convey the message as well, and kept the story 
more united.

And when I am saying the story should be unified, it doesn‘t 
necessarily mean, it should have *one* united plot, or one 
storyline. Tolstoy's “War and Peace”, Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, 
Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, all these novels certainly 
don't have only one plot, but they are stunning mesh of tens of 
subplots. The difference from the Animagus is that they are of 
this character all the time from start to finish. They have their 
own unity, and they don't change it.

The Animagus starts as Harry Potter-style novel, basically story 
of small group of children going through their school, like my 
brother characterized Ms. Rowling’s novels, “something between 
Kipling’s Stalky & Co., Arthur Ransom’s children stories, mixed 
with a bit of Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’ for action, and perhaps 
even Hercule Poirot for the mystery solving”, all of which are 
rather (using musical analogy) chamber music. And then suddenly 
in the beginning of the fourth year The Animagus switches without 
warning to the Beethoven’s Ninth or the Bach’s Mass in B minor. 
It just doesn't work well together.

So, for example, Draco’s subplot of discovery of true character 
of his family in history is perfectly in line with the Stalky 
& Co., Edward Greyson in the Amazonian jungle or Barty Crouch jr. 
flattering La Panthera in the Mayan temple are too much in my 
opinion.

Also, on slightly unrelated and more personal point, I don't like 
to see the story from the point of view of Voldermort & Co. (or 
the Riddle's conversations with Ginny). Harry didn't know it, and 
we shouldn't know it as well. However, here it is perhaps just my 
own personal preference, not so sure about that. I didn't like 
too much of Saruman in “The Fellowship of the Ring” as well (and 
there was a way less of him than La Panthera in the Animagus).

This is just my brief theory of Aristotelian Unities, or how to 
make stories a way more homogeneous and I believe more enjoyable.


.. [#] “`Royal Ward`_” by Catstaff comes to mind, it can be 
    accepted only if it was meant to be a parody, but for that it 
    seems to be running little bit long (again, 53 chapters); its prequel 
    “`Hatal Fart Attack`_” by Corwalch is however a true parody 
    and a real piece of beauty.

.. _`Jules Verne`:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne

.. _`Pierre-Jules Hetzel`:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Jules_Hetzel

.. _Grimaud:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Characters

.. _`Royal Ward`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10556030/

.. _`Hatal Fart Attack`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2814791/

.. _`Classical Unities`:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_unities

.. _`Friends and Foes`:
   http://www.siye.co.uk/viewstory.php?sid=129782

.. _`Strangers at Drakeshaugh`:
   http://www.siye.co.uk/viewstory.php?sid=129036

.. _`James and Me`:
   http://www.siye.co.uk/viewstory.php?sid=130180

.. _`PotterFixWeekly`:
    http://potterficweekly.com/archives/1813

.. _`The Accidental Animagus`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9863146/