I…. Um…. Hi. Look, I said I’m not reviewing Harry Potter (yet), and I’m not. And there will be no spoilers of any kind in this post.
But I did want to say that the reason I read Harry Potter is because the real world goes away while I do. I’d read like that all the time when I was a kid — people would try to get my attention, and I wouldn’t hear them until they’d yelled my name a few times. It’s hard now to get into a book in that way. But JK Rowling’s a good enough storyteller — and god knows I’m a sucker for a good story — that the Big Earthquake could have happened last night and I’d've kept reading.
I’m glad she wrote them and made the books so entertaining.
In other news, I’m sappy.
The Guardian has a profile of JK Rowling. My favorite bit:
Anticipation hasn’t run this high since George Lucas turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, and Deathly Hallows, which is expected to appear this summer, will undoubtedly outperform its predecessors. That’s no mean feat: the last three were the fastest-selling books ever; 2005’s Half-Blood Prince shifted more copies in 24 hours than The Da Vinci Code did in an entire year.
Twenty-four hours.
Since I’m a Harry Potter freak, this seems like news to me.
The seventh and final volume of the Harry Potter series, most keenly awaited children’s book of all time, almost became collateral damage in the international security panic.
JK Rowling, returning from a charity book reading in New York just days after the security clampdown, was confronted with a demand that she consign the unfinished manuscript to the hold.
She pleaded with security staff in New York to allow her to keep the manuscript with her. They relented finally, and allowed her take it into the cabin, unwrapped and bound together with elastic bands.
In a revelation which will have left her publishers shuddering, she disclosed that the manuscript was largely handwritten and with no back-up copy.
Due to the fact that my daughter is subjecting me to Harry Potter movies at least once, sometimes twice daily for the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about that universe a lot. Sometimes, in order to stop thinking about something, I need to write it down. Congratulations. You, dear reader, are the recipient of my overactive brain.
But, before you read what I have to say, please go read this, this and this. Be forwarned that this post contains lots of wild speculation.
Without further ado:
- There’s only one way that I can think of for Harry Potter to die in a way that benefits the story (because if she kills him just so that no one else can write a story about him – an understandable thought, but not true to the story – that’s just wrong): if he has to die in order for Voldemort to die. I don’t think it’s that he’s a horcrux – at least he’s not a deliberate one.
He’s got a number of skills that Voldemort gave him, like being a parselmouth. If you think about who Harry would be if Voldemort had chosen Neville instead of him, you end up with someone kind of like James in that flashback during the fifth book – good at quidditch, a decent student, probably popular, probably nicer than his father was at 15 – but not someone who’s a leader at defense against the dark arts, or someone who could throw off the imperious curse. (An interesting thought exercise is to imagine Neville if Voldemort had chosen him instead of Harry, and that the same thing had happened.)
Dumbledore tells us that Voldemort chose important deaths to make his horcruxes; killing Harry would have been an important one. It would probably have been the last. What if the reason that Harry has all those powers is because of the side horcrux spell that was happening at the same time?
Which isn’t necessarily to say that he *is* the horcrux – not being JK Rowling, I don’t know the physics of magic or how spells like that would interact when one went wrong. It could just be that some of his skills got siphoned off and the horcrux got made anyway.
Hm. Which probably means that it’s still sitting in the ruins of Harry’s parent’s house. Assuming that it’s still in ruins. And assuming that Harry’s not the horcrux himself. Harry says at the end of the sixth book that he’s going to his parents house, which might lead him to discover something. And it would be sort of appropriate for the final battle to take place there.
Anyway, my point is that there is a good reason to believe that Harry does have to die in order for Voldemort to die – but if that’s true, then they’d have to die simultaneously, since the prophecy says that one of them has to kill the other.
- That whole point, of course, rests on the assumption that Voldemort will lose, and that Good will triumph over evil. My main evidence is that whenever the books talk about Voldemort, it’s not good. It’s not that he’s cool, it’s not that he’s that alluring. He’s evil and that’s bad. Even his followers don’t particularly like him. It’s more that they like the power he gives them is worth putting up with the fear.
I can’t imagine that after six books of that, she’d have him win in the end.
- I’m pretty sure that Dumbledore’s the Christ figure, mostly because of his uncommon kindness. Take the Snape thing – why would he trust Snape for such a *bad* reason? If he doesn’t trust Snape, Snape will have been rejected by the Good side, and go back to the Dark side (I never noticed how Star Wars-y that was before). If he does trust him, then there’s a chance that he really will reform. Trusting Hagrid is sort of the same bet: Hagrid could have gone bad after being expelled, but didn’t, and part of that is because Dumbledore trusts him. (That’s not really a fair comparison, because Snape and Hagrid have different natures.)
Dumbledore’s also got followers: The Order of the Phoenix. I haven’t counted the named members, but I’d bet it’s around 12. (Snape, Sirius, Arthur and Molly Weasley, Bill Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, Mundingus, Arabella Figg… uh… I can’t remember any others off the top of my head, but that’s only 11. Harry would be the obvious candidate for the last spot.)
I’m pretty sure that means Snape = Judas. Which could still leave it open for him to be good, given what we’ve recently learned about the gospel of Judas. I also stand by what I said in another post – that Dumbledore wouldn’t have given Snape the cursed Defense Against the Dark Arts job if he hadn’t at least suspected he was going to go bad at the end of the year.
Regardless, you don’t get a second chance at redemption, and Snape’s had his and failed, I think. Unless he pulls something miraculous out of his hat, I don’t see him making it through the seventh book.
- JK Rowling said that she’s going to kill off two more main characters, and it’s unclear if one of them is Voldemort (or Harry). If not, I’m betting on Snape and Hagrid, but I’m willing to consider a Weasley to be named later. A Weasley parent would probably mean that Percy could be forgiven and brought back into the fold, but Percy dying would probably set the stage for lots of regrets from Molly, if no one else.
There’s more that’s swirling around in there like: what should happen with the Dursleys and why on earth does the Order of the Phoenix need a headquarters anyway? There might be another post about that at some later date.
Thanks for reading this far.
Did you ever see The Body, the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where they deal with her mom’s death? If you never lost someone suddenly, let me tell you one thing: they nailed it. There was not one single thing wrong with that episode. I bring it up because of a conversation that I had with a coworker after we both read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We came to the same conclusion. JK Rowling and Joss Whedon slowly dismantled the adult support structure that their characters had. They were doing the same damn thing. Joyce dying == Dumbledore dying.
As a whole, the book is kind of boring; it’s more about Voldemort and his childhood and making sure that Harry knows what he needs to to get the four final horcruxes and kill Voldemort than it is about fun and action. It seems like JK Rowling has a plan for the last book (and it damn well better be the last book) and this book was there to set it up. Which is why it’s kind of surprising that it’s taken her more than a year to write the last one. That bothers me.
But the end is devestating. I think Dumbledore at least suspected — why else give Snape the Defense Against the Dark Arts job that you know is cursed?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Recommended
This one is turning out to be my second-least favorite, I think. The problem is that it follows the fourth one, which is the best. If you contrast the two deaths, Sirius’ should be the more traumatic of the two. But I always cry (shut up) at the end of the fourth one, but Sirius’ doesn’t affect me the same way. Maybe it’s because Cedric’s death is tied up with Voldemort’s return, and Harry basically loses that fight. He escapes, but that’s not a victory, it’s more of a strategic retreat.
Ahem. I’m supposed to be talking about the fifth book. It’s definitely full of scenes that shouldn’t have made it to publication — the whole bit about the Black family tree, for example. Interesting, but not necessary. Harry’s also so angry at the beginning and end, but not in the middle so much. He’s still supposed to be discontent, but it doesn’t come across so well here as it does even at the start of the first book.
I’m still recommending it, but that’s because you need to read it to understand the whole series. There are some you could read independently of the rest of it, but this isn’t one of them.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Recommended
It’s still my favorite, despite the length. A lot needs to happen in this one, so the ratio of what needs to be there over what’s extraneous is pretty high.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Recommended
It competes with the fourth one for my favorite. It’s still a book for kids, but her writing’s getting better and the shades of grey, not just good and evil, start to show. Best of all, she listened when her editor said, “You know, I don’t think that needs to be there.” Since then, they’ve all been longer than 600 pages. Book 3 was a sweet spot.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
: Recommended
It’s hard to write intelligently about the Harry Potter books — I mean, who hasn’t read them or seen the movies? They’ve been reviewed and talked about to death. I’m re-reading them, though, as before-bed, relaxation books to take the edge off The Theory of the Leisure Class.
In short: I like this one because JK Rowling so clearly enjoys the world she’s created and she’s enthusiastic about introducing us to it for the first time. The names she’s thought of — like Diagon Alley — are clever and fun. The story is crafted well for children, too, with each chapter being a small adventure in its own right, since kids aren’t known for their long attention span. The later books are written for teenagers and adults, but the first two or three are clearly aimed at kids.
I don’t want to get into anything about how Harry Potter’s world compares to Tolkein because I think that gets into too much literary thought for a set of books that I read primarily for escapism. But that’s not to say that I haven’t occasionally thought about it — and if the Harry Potter books had been written to be literary, that would be one thing. But I don’t think JK Rowling was out to do anything other than write a book series that would entertain us and make her some money. She’s accomplished both tasks.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Recommended
Alas, this is probably the weakest of the series (excepting book 7, which hasn’t yet been published, but since that one’s the finale, I imagine it’ll be gripping). When I re-read the series, I normally start at the third book, which is one of my favorites. My usual excuse is that the first two are written for kids and I’m not a kid. But I think it’s because I’d feel guilty reading the first book, but not the second.
Part of the problem is that JK Rowling just doesn’t have a good villain. We know it can’t be Snape, Gilderoy’s just kind of a putz, and she doesn’t bring Voldemort into the story in a particularly scary way. I mean, a memory left in a diary? Ginny does all the dirty work? I…it just doesn’t work for me.
And yet, it’s still fun to read for all the same reasons the others are fun: escapist, lots of action, fun. Just because it’s the weakest doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Recommended
MSNBC is reporting that the new Harry Potter book will be out July 16th. About halfway through the article it reports that Bloomsbury (her UK publisher) shares rose 7 percent on the news. I feel like I should make a snarky comment about commercialism or maybe something about what one book series is doing to help the publishing industry, but a) my coffee hasn’t kicked in yet and b) I’m pretty happy the book’s going to be out next summer.
