Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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)

• Dan Froomkin: What White House Staffers Make
• David Ignatius: Middle East Peace for Dummies
• Robert Novak: Scandal at the Pentagon
• Dana Milbank: Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told