Into the Valley of Death[ly Hallows]: An Introduction
In the Deadly Hollows Sporking Community, erastes began the festivities by saying this: “I have to just mention the preface page with excerpts from Aeschylus and William Penn. This made my heart sink, because invariably I find that crap books are prefaced by arty-farty poetry and prose. Just once I'd like to see a preface quoting Enid Blyton or Dan Brown. It would sing to me of hope.” With that in mind, I decided to emulate JKR by beginning my sporking of DH by quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” seems to express the attitude a person needs have when sporking the second-longest and (first) dullest of the Harry Potter books. If that sounds grandiose, well, just remember that in the five-and-a-half years since DH came out, only one person on DTCL, montavilla, has made it through sporking the entire book. Saylee tried, but had to quit after seven chapters because she just couldn’t take any more.
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
...Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
...Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred....
My first quarrel with DH is with its title. To “hallow” something is to hold it holy or revere it, according to the dictionary that came in my computer:
(verb, transitive)
honor as holy
(formal): make holy, consecrate
(as adjective): greatly revered or respected
(noun, archaic): a saint or holy person
But what are the “deathly hallows”? Nothing but three trinkets given by Death to sucker humans into either dying quickly, or throwing their lives away by hiding and cowering for decades in a vain attempt to avoid dying, i.e., a kind of living death. In other words, they’re particularly nasty gag gifts or practical joke toys. This makes Death look like a superhuman, immortal version of the Weasley twins; he certainly has the same nasty sense of humor.
Hmmm. That would make an interesting fanfic: Fred and George vs. Death in a practical joke duel to the death. Two against one isn’t really fair, though, is it?
No, not for this silly book is the simple dignity and nobility of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address:
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
I’m sometimes sorry Lincoln became a politician. He was one of America’s best prose stylists.
Before I started this project, I reread David Hemmens’s sporking of DH on Ferretbrain. One of the salient points he made is that JKR has a habit of writing chapters with portentous titles in which nothing much happens. That reminded me of something I read many years ago about Henry VIII’s wives. It said that if a woman is beautiful, she should wear plain gowns and a minimal amount of jewelry so as not to compete with or cover up her own natural charms. But if a woman is not great-looking, she should wear elaborate clothing and jewelry to compensate for her lack of beauty.
That applies to things besides feminine pulchritude, couture, and accessorizing. Think of all the novels, plays, and movies with bland titles that are nonetheless masterpieces: e.g., The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Misanthrope, and The Haunting (1962). These works don’t need fancy titles because their greatness is where it counts: on the page or screen. Elaborate titles would only distract the reader or viewer from the excellence of the final product.
This sporking took three months to write rather than the one I expected for two reasons: (1) DH is such a turgid, depressing book that by the time I reached the last third of it, I was so worn down emotionally I had to take some time off. (2) The series quickly evolved from a straight sporking into something much bigger. While most of the shorter installments are just sporks, the longer ones include essays on subjects relevant to the chapter content, such as an explanation of J. K. Rowling’s underdeveloped spirituality and how it affected the series and characters, a definitive diagnosis for Ariana Dumbledore (she wasn’t crazy), and an examination of the impossible bind communication patterns of Albus Dumbledore and how he used those patterns to ensnare and control Severus Snape. I was even inspired to write an original song for one chapter.
Because the Rowling sycophants like to spy on this forum so they can throw tantrums about our unauthorized beliefs, I wanted to quote a very astute observation that explains what I’m doing here. On the 2/18/13 edition of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, political commentator Ari Melber talked about the enmity between President Obama and the Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives. He said, “It goes to the difference between critics and haters. Critics may disagree, but they disagree for a reason. They usually have a point or an alternative. Haters are just gonna hate.” I don’t hate either J. K. Rowling or her books. I am convinced the Harry Potter series is very screwed up, technically (i.e., grammar and sentence structure), morally, and artistically. My anger and frustration with the series stems from my feeling of being ripped off by something that could and should have been a lot better than it was, and that gets undue adulation, particularly for being something it’s not: a paean to love and self-sacrifice.
I used the American Scholastic hardcover edition of the book when writing this spork. Thanks go to my local library for allowing me to check DH out for three months so I could complete this project.
Installments will be posted twice a week, on Sunday and Wednesday, probably in the evening, Central Time U. S.
On with the sporking!