HBP - Chapter 9 The Half Blood Prince
Chapter 9 - The Half Blood Prince or Harry's first day of classes, year six
There's no need to call me 'sir,' Professor." Ah, probably the best line of the series - definitely the highlight of this chapter. We are greeted with the requisite trip to the Great Hall for breakfast, Ron's bad table manners and McGonagall inexplicably setting schedules ( Read more... )
There's no need to call me 'sir,' Professor." Ah, probably the best line of the series - definitely the highlight of this chapter. We are greeted with the requisite trip to the Great Hall for breakfast, Ron's bad table manners and McGonagall inexplicably setting schedules ( Read more... )
And
That's how I see it, actually. I just think that it's stupid to get upset over scribbled words, since publishing doesn't magically make what's written in a book safer or more valid.
Agreed. Which makes Ginny look like an airhead when you really stop to think about it since her venture into stupidity was to mess around with a book that could think for itself, not a used book that had someone else’s notes written in it. Duh. It’s not like the book is whispering things to Harry.
This whole character snit about a used book having someone else’s notes in it is not at all clever and it falls flat when you recall that Hermione herself wrote her own note on a page from a book in CoS.
And no, I don’t buy this all of a sudden stick-only-to-the-books Hermione, although JKR wants me to, since Hermione has been shown in five consecutive books to have the ability to not only remember large quantities of printed material, but to apply that knowledge to required tasks sometimes under pressure. She always sounds like she has swallowed the text whole when she is asked a question in class, but in dire straights, she is both perceptive and analytical with the memorized material she uses. She also has a healthy curiosity about things she doesn’t know. Ask any teacher, these are very high-level thinking skills that put her in a far different class than the average egghead. The Book 1-5 Hermione would have been perhaps a bit miffed at Harry for besting her in that first class without commensurate skill of his own (especially if she wanted the ff for something special), but the lesson only required that the students follow written instructions. Surely after seeing that the potion came out so well, the Hermione from Books 1-5 would have wanted to try a different potion, perhaps on her own to investigate the validity and usefulness of the written notes. (Think of the CoS Hermione who was so curious about TR’s diary.) It should have been clear to her after a couple of test potions that the previous owner of the book had been a potions prodigy. If the characters had been allowed to develop from their previous selves, a few weeks into the term, all three of them would have been potion-making with the Prince and the mystery of discovering who the Prince was would have been a group project, which Ron would have probably not been very interested in at all.
This, then would have lead to another adventure featuring Harry and Hermione and we can’t have that sort of thing in HBP. The Plot calls for Hermione to transform into a harpy over Ron and by-jingoes, that’s what had to happen.
This is the reason this book feels so strained and artificial, some of the characters are being required to fit depictions that are not true to their previous development.
We discussed yesterday about Rowling seeming to be rather tired of her world as if she is just going through the mechanics of somewhat familiar plotting elements without any enthusiasm although I must give her proper ‘snaps’ for the “you don’t have to call me sir, professor” line which was priceless.
Nia
Reply
My daughter just turned 9. She has listened to me read books 1-5 to her twice. She is having a terrible time listening to HBP. Several times she has said, "This is boring." Once she said, "I think JK Rowling is getting tired of writing Harry Potter."
out of the mouths of babes?? Who knows.
Reply
These were almost my exact words after I'd finished the book after I said that the subplot read like bad, bad fanfiction. LOL
Nia
Reply
I was stunned by the changes in the characters. But after reading Jo's comments from several interviews, before and after the release, and realizing that this book had lots of editors from Bloomsbury and Scholastic, I just have to conclude that it was on purpose. It has to be from twists and deceptions.
She said on her website:
Q: "Do you like ‘Half-Blood Prince’?"
A: "I like it better than I liked ‘Goblet’, ‘Phoenix’ or ‘Chamber’ when I finished them. Book six does what I wanted it to do and even if nobody else likes it (and some won’t), I know it will remain one of my favourites of the series. Ultimately you have to please yourself before you please anyone else!"
"It does what I wanted it to do", seems fishy to me. I'm not ready to believe she's that bad a writer. I suppose book 7 will tell us which it is, playing tricks, or bad writing.
Reply
I think that JKR is a wonderful storyteller. To be able to hold readers' focus on a school story that has the same basic setting year after year with all the variety and suspense she has created is really remarkable. But there is a difference, I think, in being able to tell a story and being able to write it all down so that the story unfolds with logical and consistent characters and themes that overarc the whole.
Writing such an incredibly long story with adult characters is not nearly as difficult as writing growing children, who must appear to mature over time. This is an exceptionally difficult task. That is why so few people attempt it and those who do, tend to not allow their children characters to really grow up. This story has engaged us all, but the writing of it, I think, will have to be judged when all the hoopla dies down. Then, and only then, when people are divested of their attachment to the characters, can honest analysis take place.
Nia
Reply
Application isn't innovation. The closest example to innovation I can find is Hermione's use of the Protean charm, which is actually adapting Voldemort's use back to the original, text-book use, as far as I can tell. Hermione may be bright, but she's a book learner, and always has been. I find HBP!Hermione's opinion on the Prince's book to be fully consistent with Hermione's tendency to be a stickler to the rules. More importantly, I think her primary source of ire is being outshone (and not needed by Harry), something that has never happened to her, and which I think is effecting her judgment on the Prince's book more than a little. And remember, Hermione was called the best student in their year only about an hour before Harry showed her up. I think that stung a lot. I don't think that this undermines the depiction of the character, however. I think that HBP is probably the book that confronts Hermione's insecurity head on, and that academic jealousy is a big area for that.
As well, Hermione does not consistently demonstrate higher level thinking skills -- if by that you mean thinking critically and analytically about a text. Upon learning that Hogwarts: A History contains biased and skewed information, what does she do? She continues to cite it as valid source about everything except House-Elves. And consider the way she "analyzes" the DADA text from OotP. She allows her hatred of Umbridge to bleed over into her interpretation of the book, especially when she says that Slinkhard "doesn't like" counter jinxes. If she were thinking critically she would realize that Slinkhard is right -- there's nothing that magically differentiates a counter-jinx from a jinx. It's just that people call them that to sound justified in their attacks. Just because a book critical of battle mentalities isn't suitable for teaching people to fight, it doesn't mean that it isn't a valid critique in it's own right.
Reply
I also felt that Hermione was fully consistent in this book -- if anything, she was finally going through the age-old teenage angstfest than Ron and Harry had already gone through. She's very late in maturing -- she's grown very slowly over the past few books. She's always been over-emotional, insecure, a stickler -- now, she's just in a foul mood all of the time because of her various insecurities (namely, about her intelligence and attractiveness -- aka Harry/HBP and Ron/Lavender plot lines) so all of those quantities show up more often.
Reply
OMG, my brain just went to such a Scrubs place with that. I'm so twelve.
Reply
Leave a comment