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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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from: Judith Shulevitz

A Lapse in Taste?

Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2000, at 1:32 PM ET

Dear Jodi,

The assignment of this "Book Club" is to work our way through the new, 734-page Harry Potter novel over the course of the week. But for true mimeticism, we ought to admit that we're also doing what every other Potter fan is doing--reading the critics reviewing the book and the journalists profiling its author, J.K. Rowling. Plus, since we're writing criticism ourselves, we're sneaking cheaters' peeks at the critics who held forth on past volumes in the series. Add to this the fact (let's come completely clean here) that we only finished the first three Potter books last week, and what we really need is a new adjective, something like knackered, to describe the addled mental condition that results from intense exposure to a mass cultural phenomenon in a short period of time. I don't know about you, Jodi, but I'm pottered.

I don't object. For once in my life as a consumer of pop-cultural hype, I find myself in pleasant agreement with just about everything I come across. Janet Maslin, in her New York Times review, pinpointed what I found most enchanting about the books: truly brilliant inventions such as the Pensieve, which holds thoughts you don't have time to think right now. (Actually, now that we've both committed the crime, I think we ought to ban all magical metaphors, such as "enchanting" and "bewitched.") A.O. Scott and Polly Shulman, in their wonderful exchange in Slate last year, named my two other favorite creations: muggle studies (muggles are us, plodding non-wizard humans) and dementors (prison guards who terrorize by feeding off their wards' happy thoughts, leaving them in the thrall of their most fearful imaginings). I'm also fond of the diary that writes back to you and was a little disappointed that it turned out to be a tool of the arch-villain, Lord Voldemort himself.

You say you like narrative better than moralism, and that sounds more or less right to me. My psychoanalyst, who reads the books to her sons, says she's thrilled by their moral realism, and I know just what she means about that. What gives Potter's world its depth, the sense that it's drawn with the emotional equivalent of linear perspective, is that on the whole (though with exceptions, which we'll get to in a minute) Rowling doesn't preach. Instead, she steeps her storytelling in moral ambiguity. When it comes to evil, she's fond of shadings, all the way from the sneering, but essentially harmless, teacher Snape to the sublimely chilly narcissist Voldemort. She's good at reversals too, as in the twist at the end of Book 3 in which Harry must trust his intuitions about character against reason and evidence in order to adjudicate conflicting accounts of how his parents were betrayed and killed. The wizard convicted of their murder, Sirius Black, muddies things by being menacing and intemperate (as well as, half the time, a biting dog); the only person who can back his story up is a man-eating werewolf. But Rowling doesn't micromanage. She allows Harry's protector, the kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore, to be infuriatingly remote. You could argue that a responsible administrator ought to be more vigilant about monitoring a sadist like Snape and the maliciously disruptive student Draco Malfoy. But the wizard world is complicated and uncertain, and Harry's got to grow up on his own.

Where Rowling does get explicit about morals, I tend to think she's spoofing--putting muggle concerns in wizard terms, to hilarious effect. A possible exception is Book 2, where she grows quite earnest about racism. Draco Malfoy and his father, Lucius, are at the center of a Nazi-like conspiracy to rid Hogwarts of "mudbloods," wizards of partial-muggle descent, and though I'm sympathetic to the impulse to turn all sarcastic bullies into pale blond fascists with weak chins, it did make that one volume much more Manichean than the others.

This leads us to your house-elves, the capital-I Issue of the book. So far, this is a comic subplot, and I like anything that makes Hermione more Hermione-like, nerdier and bossier and sweeter, which her elf liberation movement certainly does. (How about that acronym--Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, or SPEW?) But I can't help feeling a tiny bit uncomfortable at the way the elves speak, which sounds like it was lifted directly from Uncle Tom's Cabin. Actually, there's a more likely source for the elves' habit of marrying the first-person pronoun with the third-person conjugation of "to be," and their excessive use of the progressive tense ("I is not sure you did Dobby a favor, sir, when you is setting him free")--to say nothing of their cringing, wincing, self-flagellating behavior and their conflicted feelings about freedom. That source is grotesquely racist movie portrayals of house servants, black and subcontinental Indian. What exactly is Rowling doing here? Had she suddenly had a lapse in taste? Or will the elf narrative suddenly change in tone, and go from jokey to serious?

I'm only on Page 442: Two hundred and ninety-two to go before I can answer that question. Can you--without giving the ending away? The other cliffhanger of the morning is, when will Harry stop procrastinating and get to work figuring out his second task? It's unlike him to dither, and I can't help suspecting that he's going to have to pay. Can Rowling administer his punishment without delivering too obvious a lesson about the dangers of dilatoriness? I can't decide whether I want the answer to that. Probably not.

Best,
Judith

the book club
entries

1 2 3 4 5

from: Judith Shulevitz

A Lapse in Taste?

Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2000, at 1:32 PM ET

DISCUSS

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This week, a discussion of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling. Jodi Kantor edits Slate’s "Book Club," "Breakfast Table," and "Diary" features. Judith Shulevitz writes the "Culturebox" column. They both started reading The Goblet of Fire over the weekend and decided to compare notes. If you haven’t read any of the books in the Potter series, click here for an introduction to their charms.

Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum

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Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the most recent entry):

The main concern of an Edmund/Iago villain like Voldemort is not revenge but virtuosity. He must continually prove his own godlike superiority to the rest of the human race by reducing all around him to manipulated objects whom he allows, until the moment of cruel revelation, to enjoy the illusion of free will. Some philosophers have defined property as the projection of an individual's will into a thing, and this type of character is driven by resentment to convert every other human being into his property.

Whatever other failings Harry Potter may have as a human being, it is not surprising that he lacks resentment. Notwithstanding his ghastly upbringing among the Dursleys, his life since the arrival of the first owl from Hogwarts has been a succession of delightful surprises. He has discovered not merely that he is a member of a community of superior beings, but that he is an extraordinarily gifted and celebrated member, blessed with shrewd and powerful adult patrons. Certainly he has his troubles (who does not), and he is not universally loved (who is), but he is a born insider on the fast track to the highest levels of the Wizard establishment. What is there in his situation to drive him towards the Dark Arts?

Ron Weasley, on the other hand, is a natural candidate for seduction by the bad guys. Even in the first volume, his look in the magic mirror revealed him as someone who badly wants distinction. He has always disliked the handmedowns and humiliations imposed by his family's poverty; as he grows older in Vol. 4, he is becoming increasingly angry about it and increasingly greedy for money. He is jealous of his second fiddle status to Harry. From personal pride and family loyalty, he longs to destroy the Malfoys father and son. Ron is a decent fellow with the makings of a crooked cop in him, and there is a great deal that Voldemort could promise him to win him over. If Rowling wants to drive the Potter story in a morally complex direction, the temptation of Ron Weasley is the vehicle she should be using.

--Jack Cerf

(To reply, click here.)

You write that, while you read the book, you're "doing what every Potter fan is doing, reading the critics..." Judith, this is an understandable professional handicap/bias on your part. In truth, no Potter fans need critics to tell them what to think, or even care what "the critics" think. The idea of Harry Potter's audience turning to the NY Times to find out if it's right to like him is hilarious. By now we almost think that English professors (in existence for 80 years, at most) made Shakespeare and Milton and Dickens and company popular. This Saturday, midnight, watching the readers snatching up the books, I realized with joy that, although my own profession (English professor) has all but destroyed itself, literature never needed us anyway, and would do just fine without us.

--George Leonard
(Professor of Humanities, San Francisco State University)

(To reply, click here.)

I, like Harry Potter, am a 14-year-old adolescent who has experienced the trials and tribulations of both school and puberty. I have gone to many lengths to read this book. I haven't gone as far as curling up on the bathroom floor, but I have shunted my responsibilities for the past 3 days so that I could finish it. But in terms of a moral lesson being a part of these books, I don't think that there are any, nor should there be any. It is my opinion that one of the reasons that these books are so wildly popular is because they have a truly fantastical flair about them, not because they present good moral lessons and standards. I am by no means saying that I disliked Ms Kantor's article, I actually enjoyed it very much, but I think that perhaps not every book written that is geared towards a younger audience should have a moral lesson. Those of us who are not quite of age yet are having examples of good and bad morals forced upon us every day of our lives: I thought that the Harry Potters were a nice way to sit back, and let someone else go through things that would never, ever happen to us, and still be able to appreciate the fact that he can do the right thing without a moral lesson nagging at him, making him ultimately ask things like "now, what did we learn from all this?"

--Frocodile

(To reply, click here.)

[Notes from The Fray: There were a number of arguments about whether the books promoted Satanism--one starts here with a comparison with Alice in Wonderland. The Fray Editor also strongly recommends this post from James Grimmelmann: but--spoiler alert--only for those who have finished the book, as it gives away some secrets from the plot. This further post from Mr Grimmelmann not only continues the discussion but also has the best title in The Fray: "Nobody here but us Manicheans".]

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