BOOK DISCUSSION: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

[cmere]

“Why are you worrying about YOU-KNOW-WHO, when you should be worrying about YOU-NO-POO? The constipation sensation that's gripping the nation!”Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published in 2005. Clocking in at slightly shorter than its predecessor, the book nevertheless contained a wealth of new information for fans. Book Six included new

Comments

[portkey]

Regarding Harry seemingly getting over Sirius's death 'too easily', I have to say right here that to me, as someone who was in a very deep pit of depression - partially because of horrific personal tragedy - while the series was going on that I started to claw my way out of (with the help of the books and the fandom), it actually rang rather true to me. Harry, as unhappy as he had been, must have had a LOT of time to think during his enforced isolation at the Dursleys', and with everything that he had going on in his life he had to come to the decision to simply put things behind him. It's actually been a couple months since we last saw him, so it may seem a bit more of an "instant" change than it really is since it happened off-screen.

I think the book shows a few times that he's not as over it as he'd like to pretend, and that's understandable as well, but.. just on a personal note, I got to a similar point in my life where I had to basically make a choice between continuing to wallow in despair or start to function as a human being again. So not only did that feel believable to me, it even helped my own attempts to put the past behind me.

[philstar22]

I think it would have rang true to me if he had been pretending and burying his feelings. Because that is exactly what I did with my trauma. But to me the book did not read like that at all. To me it read like we were supposed to believe Harry was just genuinely over everything. And I don't think that one summer would have been enough time to actually get over it. Burry it and put it aside to do what he had to, yes (although considering that Harry didn't even seem really focused on the war and Voldemort in book 6 it didn't seem like he even much cared about that either), but not to genuinely be over it. Which is what it seemed like we were supposed to believe about Harry, at least to me.

[portkey]

I guess I'm a little forgiving just because realistically, the need to drive the plot forward meant that there could only be so much dwelling on it. I do disagree that there are no hints about it, but I do think it's understandable that Harry's, well, distracted. There's a lot going on in his life, things that are both life-and-death but also more mundane.

And I guess just in general, the books just really wouldn't work if Harry wasn't pretty resilient? I mean, you could argue that his childhood should have made him angry and antisocial from the start. (And again, I would argue that if you read between the lines there are hints of the more mundane trauma of his childhood affecting him as well.)

I dunno, I guess I could just be reading too much into things or filling in the blanks of some of the things I wish were different or improved in the books, but I think that with Harry's background it's easy to believe that he could be putting on a facade.