Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Caution: This entire Book Club contains spoilers.
Dear Polly,
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StumbleUponIf you're looking for an emblematic example of how bewitched we readers have become by Harry Potter, and how eagerly we anticipate this weekend's release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final volume in J.K. Rowling's series, look no further than my wife and me. In preparation for P-Day, we are sending our toddler away to stay with her grandmother for the week, so that we may undistractedly devour the two hardcover copies of Deathly Hallows we plan to purchase Friday at midnight. That's right! We're spending our first weekend ever alone at home without our daughter, and we're not hosting a dinner party, or throwing a kegger, or even speaking to each other. We are ridding our house of children in order to read a children's book.
There will be time enough to talk about whether our passion for Potter—and that of the millions of grown men and women who will line up at bookstores this weekend, sans children, to make the first dent in Scholastic's reported 12 million first printing—is a sign of the infantilization of American pop culture, or of the triumph of the nerds, or of the death of serious literature. (Or none of the above.)
There will also be time, I'm sure, to discuss the inevitable articles revealing that the kids who started reading because of Harry haven't actually, as we'd all hoped, moved directly on to Thomas Hardy. We may even pause to consider Michael L. Kamil, professor of education at Stanford, who earnestly complained to the New York Times that all this emphasis on reading stories is misplaced, since "if you look at what most people need to read for their occupation, it's zero narrative." Jeez, how barren was your childhood, Michael L. Kamil?
Anyway, there'll be time for all that later, when we're joined on Monday by several other correspondents for a joyously spoiler-packed discussion of the book. For now, though, all I want to do is speculate, theorize, and predict. Most particularly, I want to hear what you think might be coming in Harry Potter 7, since it was you who, almost eight years ago in these very pages, predicted that the series' deeper themes would revolve not around the corruptions of power but around love. And this was years (and thousands of pages) before the scene in which Dumbledore tells Harry that "the power he has that Voldemort knows not"—the true magic driving the spirit and the plot of this tale—is the ability to love. (Other predictions from that long-ago Book Club were less accurate, such as, sadly, A.O. Scott's gleeful speculation that later volumes might explore the rich tradition of English boarding-school buggery. Only in slash fic, Tony!)
So, what do you think about the big questions surrounding Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Rowling has said that at least two key characters will die. Who do you think they'll be? Will Harry defeat Voldemort? What roles will Ron and Hermione play in the final battle? Is Snape really good or evil? Is Harry a Horcrux? Did Snape love Lily? What about the mysterious "gleam of triumph" Harry saw in Dumbledore's eye? Oops, sorry, my nerd is showing.
Most of all, I'm curious to know what kind of book you think J.K. Rowling has written for us—for me and you and my wife and (someday) our daughter? (Tony's observation, way back in your initial Book Club discussion of the young wizard's adventures, that the books feel to readers young and old remarkably as if they'd been written especially for them—despite being, perhaps, the most widely popular books ever published—has stuck with me all these years.) A war story? A hero's quest? A slowly unraveling mystery? A tragic tale of Christ-like martyrdom?
And, since you're such a close student of children's literature, I wonder if you have a model in mind for how a series like this might most magically end. The progressive darkening of the Harry Potter books, and Harry's quest for knowledge both of himself and of his world, remind me of Lloyd Alexander's five-volume Chronicles of Prydain, published from 1964 to 1968. The Prydain books similarly began with a light and almost childish touch but deepened by their finale, The High King, into an epic and wrenching tale of war—replete with honorable sacrifice, senseless death, betrayal, mortal peril, and true love. Most relevantly to Harry's story, The High King offered each beloved supporting character a moment to shine; redeemed a character once thought irredeemable; and showed a once-humble boy growing into nobility. Alexander died this year, and I can think of no better tribute to him than to hope that J.K. Rowling's series ends even more wonderfully than his did.
With love, natch,
Dan
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Remarks from the Fray Editor:
If you're spoiler shy... If you're following Harry Potter discussions... If you haven't yet finished the book... If you're experiencing all three of these conditions, yet you're reading this article... Then you, my friend, are a foolhardy reader.
There seem to be a lot of foolhardy readers out there.
If you're afraid of spoilers close your eyes. Close this page. Don't enter the Fray. Open your book and get finished already, so that you can join this discussion. Spoilers follow below. The Fray overfills with 'em.—G.A.
Remarks from the Fray:
I find it odd that people seem disappointed that 19 years down the road the characters lead seemingly humdrum lives, about which we don't hear much. [That's] just the point.
Folks, most people don't aspire to be under constant threat of death - mostly people want to live happy, relatively uneventful lives. They want to live in a house they love, do work they enjoy, raise kids, be comfortable. The fact that killing Voldemort allowed this to happen is, I think, poignant - Harry was never comfortable as the Boy Who Lived, and now he can finally get away from it. Maybe as readers we want excitement and adventure and really wild things on the page, but by not making Harry et al want these things, Rowling is respecting the characters she created.
On a certain level, I find it a profound commentary on what most people want out of life - not fame or fortune or power, but love and happiness. Odd that so many readers don't seem to see that.
--brennan
(To reply, click here.)
The continued short shrift that Harry gives Hermione is incredibly frustrating in this book, more than in any other. Perhaps Rowling's one effort to comment on this is when she complains about having to do all the cooking - which is not only immediately dismissed, but also like, come on! The one thing Hermione is going to complain about is something so easily dismissed by the unsympathetic reader as an 'age old' feminist complaint. How about the fact that Hermione does everything and never gets a shred of the credit, other than some astonished expressions and the occasional "Mione that's amazing!"
She is consistently the character who saves Harry's ass and I continue to be frustrated that in the last book Rowling does nothing to really acknowledge or challenge this within her book - it is not just enough to assume that readers who like Hermione are going to get it, especially when Harry remains on such a pedestal, or that the lack of thoroughgoing challenge to Harry and Ron's behavior will be picked up on by readers with feminist sympathies, especially when most readers do not share such sympathies! It is especially important to be challenging this, I think, in a children's book.
It is not really believable that Hermione wouldn't challenge Harry more when she so relentlessly stands up for those who are denied rights, equality, and dignity. Maybe it's that other tendency on her part (or Rowling's?) to view her guy(s) as the only ones who are not sexist - they're my best friends, how can they be sexist? etc
Does Rowling's overall failure to inject a feminist critique into Harry Potter reflect her desire to prevent the boys from having to engage in some serious self-critique, a caving in to popular dislike of feminism, or her own discomfort with feminism?
--heypop
(To reply, click here.)
The Problem with the final Harry Potter book is lack of sex. In books 5-6 the students at Hogwarts slowly start to come to terms with their maturing attitudes to the opposite sex. Rowling deftly negotiates the concerns and fears of adolescence as they begin to date, and finally "snog". Throughout book 6 Rowling has various students, including Ron, Harry, and Ginny snogging constantly as they realize their emerging desires.
In book 7 Rowling starts with a great scene showing Harry's awkward attitude towards himself, his body, and his friends. "He felt like asking them to show a little more respect for his privacy as they all began stripping off with impunity, clearly much more at ease with his body then they would have been with their own." This one line gives much insight into the mindset of a 17 year old and allows Harry and his friends to seem believable.
When you contrast that with the 3 teens spending months living together in a forest, with no one supervising, and no one else to disturb them and yet there's no real awkwardness or tension ever described, you begin wonder why Rowling took her characters and replaced them with figurines. By the time Rowling has the plot moving she's turned each of them into an extreme example of their singular character traits. Never is it more apparent then when each wishes for their favorite Deathly Hallow.
Had she bothered making her characters continuously feel real, she could have actually written an interesting finale to the book...rather than a plot-driven bore upheld by at least half a dozen deux ex machina moments.
--Joschenker
(To reply, click here.)
(7/25)