Deathly Hallows, Chapter 29: The Lost Diadem

[oneandthetruth]

Neville hugs the Trio and rather high-handedly tells Aberforth reinforcements are coming, and they should be sent along through the portrait hole, too. It’s no wonder Aberforth’s quarters look so shabby, with all those people running through them day and night.

As Neville and the Trio walk through the tunnel into Hogwarts, they update each other on

Comments

[oneandthetruth]

I think you've hit on why the Harry Potter books are not classic literature and never will be: In classic books that purport to promote good, the more closely and more frequently you read the books, the more good you see in them. (I can't think of classic lit that promotes evil, except maybe The Prince. Come to think of it, I wonder if JKR was referring to that when she had Severus call himself the Half-Blood Prince?)

But in HP, the more closely you read these books that ostensibly promote good, the more evil you see in them. A good example is how terri_testing, a normally very astute analyst of the series, completely missed that Xeno Lovegood had been TORTURED--yes, I said it, Brad! Here's another T-word for you: tough luck--in chapter 24, even though she'd read it several times. There's so much bad stuff--writing, editing, behavior, morals, double standards, etc--that it overwhelms the reader and becomes impossible to process. This is the third sporking of DH that I know of. All three are thorough; all three cover mostly different aspects of the book; but even the combined sporkings still leave a lot of bad stuff on the page because there's just so much that even three 200+-page sporkings are not enough to cover every way in which DH sucks. HP is the Energizer Bunny of kid lit: the suckiness just keeps going and going and going.

[oryx_leucoryx]

There were so many theories about the supposed connection between Severus Snape, Machiavelli and Lucius Septimus Severus - the Roman emperor that served as the model of the Prince (he killed Albinus! and died in York!). Oh well...

[jana_ch]

And before killing Albinus, he killed another rival named Niger (Black), something that our Severus could only dream about.

[terri_testing]

Aww, I'm so flattered, oneandthetruth, that you could use me as an examplar of how even a dedicated--for-six-years analyst of the series could utterly miss for all that time one of Jo's flagrant mis-presentations of Evil-as-Good (or at least, as-Acceptable).

That may sound sarcastic, but I mean it most sincerely.

But, courage! Even the Energizer Bunny may eventually be worn down, and replaced with a glum Eeyore, adhering to reality....

Not nearly as bouncy, or happy, or self-righteous, or oblivious of correction. But with the advantage of noticing the fewmets in its path.... and the pellets it's emitting.

[oneandthetruth]

I'm glad you're not offended. What I meant was, there's so much bad stuff in this book that even the very best analyst can be overwhelmed by it and miss something, even something that seems obvious, even after several readings. The awfulness of DH is rather like the national debt: There are 17 trillion things wrong, so nobody can catch all of them, no matter how good they are. :D

[sunnyskywalker]

Who was it that called the series fractally stupid? I think fractal evil deserves a nod as well. You think you see the pattern, and then you look smaller, and lo! more evil! No matter how small you go, there it is! And no matter how much you think you've reduced it to its smallest components, you're wrong; there's always another layer.