So my roommate and I have been reading Harry Potter aloud to each other, one chapter a night, as part of the 94 Days 94 Chapters idea. Last night we read Chapter 13 of CoS– The Very Secret Diary. There’s a lot of stuff in there that gave us both food for thought. I’m more convinced than ever that CoS is a very overlooked book, and I still consider it my favorite of the four so far. Anyway, here’s a few things Jen and I noticed last night:
1) The Diary
Many people lately have been lambasting poor Ginny for being stupid in writing in the diary. I’m inclined to give her a lot more leniency than many people have. This is why:
“Harry couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he didn’t just throw Riddle’s diary away. The fact was that even though he knew the diary was blank, he kept absentmindedly picking it up and turning the pages, as though it were a story he wanted to finish. And while Harry was sure he had never heard the name T.M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he’d had when he was very small, and had half-forgotten.”
Why is Harry so obsessed with it? I know the boy is extremely curious, but this goes beyond that. We find out later that Harry carries the diary around with him, even– because it falls out of his bag at the Valentine incident. Could it be that Riddle is exerting some kind of influence over Harry without even needing Harry to write in the diary? Diary!Tom is pretty strong by this point– we’ve already had the attacks on Mrs. Norris, Colin, Nearly Headless Nick and Justin. Ginny’s become frightened enough of it that she’s thrown it away–which I still boggle at, it must have taken an enormous amount of willpower to be able to do it. In any case, I think it’s very possible that Diary!Tom is exerting at least a small amount of influence on Harry. Not much, but enough that he can’t stop thinking about the diary.
Which leads me to Ginny. If the diary can exert an influence over Harry without him even writing in it, what’s to say that Ginny wasn’t influenced from the very first time she wrote in the diary? Writing in it at first would be totally innocent– she doesn’t have any reason to know that the diary can think for itself until it writes back– and once it does, it’s too late. I doubt Diary!Tom was strong enough to do much more than subtly override her reservations from her father’s warnings– but that would have been enough. Just enough to make her trust him. And Ginny was trapped before she even realized the danger.
I think it makes sense.
2) The Valentine
Alright, the more I look at this scene, the more I am convinced that Ginny did not send that singing Valentine. I think JKR wants us to think she sent it, to cover up the fact that she’s actually reacting to the diary. But I really don’t think she did.
First off, we know that Ginny is aware of Harry’s dislike of attention. “He didn’t want all that,” after all. Would Ginny then send Harry a singing Valentine, of all things, that brings attention to his fame? She must have known it would embarrass him. Only someone that was unaware of Harry’s modesty would have sent it (or someone who WAS aware of it, and wanted to play a joke, which is my theory).
Second, we know that Harry gets the Valentine in front of Ginny. But we don’t get to see Ginny’s reaction to the Valentine. If there’s one think I’ve learned from the DT, it’s that if JKR didn’t write a reaction, it’s not important. If Ginny had sent the Valentine, JKR would at least have written in a blush. But we don’t get a blush. We don’t get a single reaction from Ginny from “Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley, Harry tried to escape.” to “A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.” And don’t say that Harry was deliberately avoiding looking at Ginny, because it doesn’t say that at all, and in fact Harry was observant enough to notice that some of the crowd were “crying with mirth.” He’s noticed Ginny putting her elbow in the butter dish; he would have noticed her blushing.
The only evidence we have that Ginny sent the Valentine is this:
“Malfoy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed him to enter her classroom, he yelled spitefully after her, ‘I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!’
“Ginny covered her face with her hands and ran into class.”
Besides the fact that Malfoy isn’t the most trustworthy of characters, I think Ginny’s reactio here is completely understandable. She’s just been accused of sending Harry, the boy she likes, a very stupid and very embarrasing valentine. She saw his reaction, knows he didn’t like it. And now Harry thinks that she sent it. If she didn’t, as I believe, what a horrible thing to be associated with!
Ginny’s reaction to the diary is understandable too. First of all, she’s afraid that Harry knows her secrets– that Tom has told him. In fact, that makes it doubly embarrassing for her, since Harry might already know about her crush. That’s the reason Tom gives in the Chamber for her stealing it back. But we already know Tom’s a liar, I doubt that was her only reason. She knew the power of the diary, she knew that it had controlled her somehow, and now it was in the hands of Harry Potter– the boy she liked, the boy who had saved the world. What if it took over him too? In that light, Ginny’s stealing the diary back was not stupid, it was brave. She was trying to save Harry. But that’s off topic, anyway. I probably should have put that under number one. Oh, well.
Thirdly, there’ this:
“This was partly because he didn’t think he could stand Fred and George singing, ‘his eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad’ one more time.”
Fred and George know the song. They weren’t there, they didn’t hear it first hand. I suppose someone could have repeated it to them, but how well do you remember songs on a first hearing? It took me a while to remember the whole thing, even after reading it several times. The most logical explanation behind Fred and George knowing the song is that they wrote it. Think about it. “His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad?” Sounds Fred and Georgish to me. No first-year girl would use that as a similie, especially not if she were trying to impress someone.
I’m thoroughly convinced. Ginny didn’t send the valentine.
And that’s just from one chapter. There’s SO much to think about in CoS, there really is.
1 response so far ↓
1 Teri // Apr 18, 2003 at 11:23 pm
Mm, you know, I really ought to read this book again; believe it or not, I haven’t read CoS in its entirety all during this time I’ve been writing Tom — bits and pieces, yes, but not the whole thing through.
A couple of thoughts on the diary (since this is, of course, one of the areas to which I give the most attention :)):
Of course Tom enchanted the diary so that he can get his grip around the writer from the very beginning — in fact, it’s even possible that there might be a charm of some sort to make it enticing to a person even before it’s opened — almost a veela-effect, if you will, only it’s the book that is attractive. It’s a very potent, powerful object — one that I’m sure Malfoy had closely guarded away, with much caution. When Ginny writes in it, even for the first time, even those simple words “Dear Diary”, she is in essence beginning to bond herself to Tom — putting bits of herself into him, until he has the power to return the favor, so to speak.
I do agree that Tom is technically powerful enough to specifically exert force on Harry when he finds the diary, in order to ensure that he writes in it — after all, if Tom eventually gains enough of his own… “lifeforce”, I guess, to become an actual physical being of sorts — then surely by the time of Harry’s discovery of the diary, Tom is strong enough to influence him. BUT, I don’t think that he’s specifically influencing *Harry*. I don’t think that the diary is “conscious” by that time, actually — so the subtle power that Harry feels is one of two things (or, possibly more likely, a combination of them):
1. A charm, as mentioned above, that makes the book very enticing to whomever has it in his direct possession (my mind goes back to the book that Ron mentions, that you literally cannot stop reading).
2. The influence is actually just Tom’s normal “calling” that he has for Ginny Weasley — only since Harry hasn’t yet written in the diary, he feels it not as an irresitable urge, but as a weak pull on his consciousness.
In any case, I don’t think Tom is aware, before Harry writes his name in the book, that he is actually in Harry’s possession. Quotage:
“Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny writing to me, not you…”
Even though Tom is a liar, I don’t believe he’s lying (or has reason to) here: He didn’t know who had picked him up and when — he’s only truly “conscious” when the diary is opened — at least at this stage of his, shall we say, literary growth and development.
I wonder if the diary had been found by anyone else, if he’d have floated up the words “Property of Ginny Weasley” in order to get back to Ginny’s hands?
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