Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Caution: This entire Book Club contains spoilers.
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StumbleUponHow scary is it to write characters who have become so well-known as to have lives of their own?
The hardest part of writing well-known characters is that they belong to so many other people. Superman, Batman, Harry, and Hermione—for better or worse—have millions of readers who feel possessive of them. Part of loving is taking ownership in what you love; real Superman fans feel that he is somehow "theirs." The result for the writer is reaction and criticism that's a hundred times more ruthlessly focused.
When I wrote my first Batman scene, well … I'd waited my whole life to write that scene. Batman had always been my favorite; I spent most of my youth wearing a Batman cape everywhere I went. Before I started, I came up with a storyline that I thought would work well. But when I wrote the word Batman in the script and I waited to see what his first words would be, I realized: You know what? Batman would never be in this scene. I know it sounds insane, but for that moment, the character was just so much bigger than me. At the crucial moment, my internal sense of how Batman would and wouldn't behave outweighed my own desires about plot and narrative. The key, when writing well-known heroes and heroines, is to trust that internal sense of character. And to trust your own sense of it, not the readers'. Indeed, my biggest problem with Internet feedback is that writers become so worried about being liked that they change their writing for the sake of that instant online popularity.
Reader feedback is even harder to handle when it's time to kill off a beloved character. In my years of writing comics, I've killed three of them. During that time, I've gotten three death threats. And that's from three different people who suddenly went all Misery when they saw the body show up in the story.
So, is it hard to kill off a popular character? If it isn't, you don't love the character. But does that mean you shouldn't do it? Of course not. (Still, I suspect that's why Hagrid got saved in the end—Rowling just loved him too much.)
Which brings me back to my original wish for the final book: I wanted Harry to die. It's something I didn't think Rowling would do (and we all want what we can't have). But looking back on it, I've reconsidered: Wanting Harry dead is cool. But it's unfair. And it comes from us wanting her to write OUR book. A book for us. And at the end of the day, as epic and beautiful and realized as the Potter world is, it's still a book for young people first. As much as I love lessons of loss and sacrifice, I'm starting to realize that when I read it with my children, the lesson needs to be that Harry LIVES for being good, not that Harry dies.
And so ... when it comes to the book, I've decided to be thankful. Like the walk-to-death chapter says: Thankfulness is what the world needs more of. Take it all in and enjoy it. (Then bitch about it online.)
Brad
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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
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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)