"All was Well"

[erastes]

I consider that, in years to come, this particular phrase will be discussed and dissected by people more educated than I, and will (if Potterfiction stays as popular) be considered to be one of the greatest literary lies ever. For me it ranks along with "All animals are created equal" and will - just as that phrase was shown to be a nonsense -lose

Comments

[solar_type_star]

I think it really becomes clear with those statements that "all was well" is a something written exclusively for Harry, or from Harry's POV (like the whole series -she hasn't been able to let go of that even at the very end of the series). I guess the Epilogue had such a loose 3rd person subjective POV that it was natural to assume that it was a general statement. But JKR was still inside Harry's head, thinking about Harry and what relates to him.

In that context, "all was well" is not half as ridiculous, and even understandable. But when you have created a whole wizarding world for your readers, and you've tried to keep them interested in it throughout the years so they would keep on reading what happens to it next, it's a bit short-sighted to think that the ending of the series could be exclusively about the hero's peace of mind. Especially since that peace of mind isn't directly related to the order and justice that he might or might not have brought about with his actions, as one can see even while giving Harry the benefit of the doubt.

It seems to me that if JKR had written Harry into the real world and had given him an equivalent coming-of-age/heroic storyline, we would have been satisfied with "all was well". In that case, we would have been aware that the real world goes on, and that we couldn't expect a single teenage boy to bring peace, economic balance and social reform, so "all was well" wouldn't ring like a such general, untruthful statement about the whole world, but something that applied to Harry only. And that would have been ok.

(Mmmm, getting a bit woolly there...)