Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
This musing may well be the last time I write about Harry Potter for publication for a while. It's very much time to get on with other things, things that had been put off while awaiting the arrival of the final installment.
Being a moderator of both the Harry Potter for Grown Ups Yahoo group and the hp_essays community here at Livejournal I had expected to be spoiled well before the book's release. Luckily some kind soul made the book available as a series of jpeg images a few days before the release. I, therefore, downloaded the same and read it. I finished on Friday night my time. I have no guilt pangs due to this as I will eventually own three copies of the book, that is one each of the Bloomsbury children's edition, the adult edition and the Scholastic edition.
Where to begin? I disliked the book. I felt let down after several years of, admittedly, rather high expectations for the final installment. It had a satisfactory outcome, but no more than that. The way that outcome was reached was somewhat predictable after the first two chapters of the novel.
Prior to book 7 and some time between books 5 and 6 I had begun to write up a few little theories and comments here and there around what is now a vast and multiplying Harry Potter fandom. I got a few things correct. It seems the minutiae were ultimately of some import, as I had commented they would be. There was a dragon at Gringotts bank for instance, Dittany played a role, not quite in the way I had predicted it would but close enough, Stan Shunpike, depite we readers being led to believe that he was an innocent patsy in book 6, was a Death Eater, notwithstanding Harry's rationalisation of the blank look on his face when Harry saw him and a few other little bits and pieces.
I also got several things spectacularly wrong, and I'm sure we all did. The thing is I had written that there would be something that was basically the opposite of a Horcrux and indeed there was. The mechanics of that were different from how I'd seen it, but nevertheless it was there and many people had scoffed at the very idea.
Points of Dissatisfaction
Harry used the Imperius Curse twice and succeeded in using the Cruciatus Curse. Why? As there is an opposite to a Horcrux, could there not have been an opposite spell for these two without actually having Harry break the law?
When one is fighting fire then it is acceptable to use fire would be one rationalisation to this, but I'm sorry it does not meet the case for me. Harry is supposed to be the shining beacon for the wizarding world, he should not have stooped to the level of those whom he opposed.
There was no need at all for Lupin or Tonks to die. That their son's story is in some way supposed to mirror Harry's is taken by me as the message we are to glean from that. It wasn't necessary, it was rather gratuitous. I suspect we may find out soon that the werewolf and the metamorphmagus were the two characters who were not originally slated to die. With the way Snape nauseatingly turned out to have never got a life, I find it unlikely that he was originally intended to survive. The character who was meant to die but received a reprieve may well have been Hagrid. I hadn't ever expected him to die and never gave much credence to what I call the alchemy death theories. I wrote an alchemy theory at Harry Potter for Grown Ups that actually turned out much nearer to being what happened and what can be extrapolated to have happened post Tom Riddle's defeat and pre the platform 9 3/4 epilogue.
All the characters turned out very much as could have been expected from a surface reading of the first six books, and yes, that includes Severus Snape. The only reason I was reluctant to cast Snape in the role of loving Lily was that it made me feel sick to contemplate it. It was his love for Lily that saved Harry as far as I am concerned. Voldemort had agreed to spare Lily and by not doing so he effectively achieved his own first downfall. Contracts in the wizarding world appear to do that to you, much as they would come back to bite you in the real world if you don't stick to them.
There was no evil Lupin, no evil McGonagall, no further traitors in either the Order or amongst the Death Eaters. This was all to be expected. Harry had a task to fulfil and he did so, there was no need to make it harder than it already was, and it was certainly hard.
Certain other things that we could plausibly have expected to get some resolution of, and which had been anticipated by many from various interview snippets of JKR, were left unresolved. That she may patch this up in future interviews is likely. Where, for instance, was the person who displayed magical tendencies later in life? What did the Potters do for a living? Why did Dumbledore not tell Harry how a Horcrux could be destoyed? This one's easy enough to give an explanation for, Dumbledore was expecting Harry to use the Deathly Hallows. Just as well Hermione was on the ball and summoned Dumbledore's books. Maybe he thought she would do so. There are others too, however I do not propose to list them here, they may get resolved eventually, as I say.
Overall
In many ways my reaction to this series was the same as it has been to all except one other well known fantasy series. It ended I thought with a whimper rather than with a bang and I doubt if I'm in that small a minority in this opinion.
Having never in my life, with one exception, read any Harry Potter fan fiction now is not the time to start. I never read any James Bond books not by Ian Fleming, I wouldn't contemplate reading anything else not by Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. I did read The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin and enjoyed it. He was a fantastic writer in his own right so I made that one exception. Good luck to you if you are either a fan fiction writer or reader.
My involvement with the fandom may continue up to a point, I do have my children to read the stories to in due course. They will, no doubt, enjoy them and I will also, up to a point, enjoy reading to them. I also enjoy the behind the scenes work that goes on in the fandom, moderation etc.
Some commonly written words on school reports would sum my feelings about the final book up rather well:
"Could do better."
Edit - 24th July 2007
Addendum - The Cardboard Cut-Out Villain
This just had to be added, it was plaguing me.
To quote Ronald Weasley in an earlier work by JKR: "How thick can you get?". How thick indeed. Lord Voldemort has been shown to be rather less intelligent than an amoeba. He never realised that Harry was seeing what he did. Nary a thought was given to the possibility that he should not under any circumstances dwell on his Horcruxes, and yet he did, allowing Harry to know where they were. Far too convenient a plot device and eminently unsatisfactory to this reader. Why, when he had apparently invested some time in blocking the link between himself and Mr. Potter was that link reopened? Couldn't Ms. Rowling have allowed the trio to figure out the locations of the Horcruxes in another way, thus cutting down on the pointlessness of their otherwise aimless search?
Lord Voldemort spent the greater part of the novel chasing around after the Elder Wand. All well and good but had he not thought to check his Horcruxes after he knew full well that the Diary one had been destroyed? The way that was explained was highly unsatisfactory and again went to show that Voldemort was singularly lacking in common sense. His further idiocy, that we are to just swallow, and the one that really got me, was the Diadem hidden in the Room of Requirement. How could Voldemort possibly honestly believe that a room chock full of the detritus of many many years had only ever been discovered by him? Just how did he imagine all the other junk got there, and did he never stop to think that others had preceded him in finding the room with the strong probability that future students would also not find it? That is unbelievable and even with the suspension of disbelief that goes with this kind of novel I feel not insulted but aggrieved that the readership is asked to simply accept Voldemort's arrogance as the explanation.
Being a moderator of both the Harry Potter for Grown Ups Yahoo group and the hp_essays community here at Livejournal I had expected to be spoiled well before the book's release. Luckily some kind soul made the book available as a series of jpeg images a few days before the release. I, therefore, downloaded the same and read it. I finished on Friday night my time. I have no guilt pangs due to this as I will eventually own three copies of the book, that is one each of the Bloomsbury children's edition, the adult edition and the Scholastic edition.
Where to begin? I disliked the book. I felt let down after several years of, admittedly, rather high expectations for the final installment. It had a satisfactory outcome, but no more than that. The way that outcome was reached was somewhat predictable after the first two chapters of the novel.
Prior to book 7 and some time between books 5 and 6 I had begun to write up a few little theories and comments here and there around what is now a vast and multiplying Harry Potter fandom. I got a few things correct. It seems the minutiae were ultimately of some import, as I had commented they would be. There was a dragon at Gringotts bank for instance, Dittany played a role, not quite in the way I had predicted it would but close enough, Stan Shunpike, depite we readers being led to believe that he was an innocent patsy in book 6, was a Death Eater, notwithstanding Harry's rationalisation of the blank look on his face when Harry saw him and a few other little bits and pieces.
I also got several things spectacularly wrong, and I'm sure we all did. The thing is I had written that there would be something that was basically the opposite of a Horcrux and indeed there was. The mechanics of that were different from how I'd seen it, but nevertheless it was there and many people had scoffed at the very idea.
Points of Dissatisfaction
Harry used the Imperius Curse twice and succeeded in using the Cruciatus Curse. Why? As there is an opposite to a Horcrux, could there not have been an opposite spell for these two without actually having Harry break the law?
When one is fighting fire then it is acceptable to use fire would be one rationalisation to this, but I'm sorry it does not meet the case for me. Harry is supposed to be the shining beacon for the wizarding world, he should not have stooped to the level of those whom he opposed.
There was no need at all for Lupin or Tonks to die. That their son's story is in some way supposed to mirror Harry's is taken by me as the message we are to glean from that. It wasn't necessary, it was rather gratuitous. I suspect we may find out soon that the werewolf and the metamorphmagus were the two characters who were not originally slated to die. With the way Snape nauseatingly turned out to have never got a life, I find it unlikely that he was originally intended to survive. The character who was meant to die but received a reprieve may well have been Hagrid. I hadn't ever expected him to die and never gave much credence to what I call the alchemy death theories. I wrote an alchemy theory at Harry Potter for Grown Ups that actually turned out much nearer to being what happened and what can be extrapolated to have happened post Tom Riddle's defeat and pre the platform 9 3/4 epilogue.
All the characters turned out very much as could have been expected from a surface reading of the first six books, and yes, that includes Severus Snape. The only reason I was reluctant to cast Snape in the role of loving Lily was that it made me feel sick to contemplate it. It was his love for Lily that saved Harry as far as I am concerned. Voldemort had agreed to spare Lily and by not doing so he effectively achieved his own first downfall. Contracts in the wizarding world appear to do that to you, much as they would come back to bite you in the real world if you don't stick to them.
There was no evil Lupin, no evil McGonagall, no further traitors in either the Order or amongst the Death Eaters. This was all to be expected. Harry had a task to fulfil and he did so, there was no need to make it harder than it already was, and it was certainly hard.
Certain other things that we could plausibly have expected to get some resolution of, and which had been anticipated by many from various interview snippets of JKR, were left unresolved. That she may patch this up in future interviews is likely. Where, for instance, was the person who displayed magical tendencies later in life? What did the Potters do for a living? Why did Dumbledore not tell Harry how a Horcrux could be destoyed? This one's easy enough to give an explanation for, Dumbledore was expecting Harry to use the Deathly Hallows. Just as well Hermione was on the ball and summoned Dumbledore's books. Maybe he thought she would do so. There are others too, however I do not propose to list them here, they may get resolved eventually, as I say.
Overall
In many ways my reaction to this series was the same as it has been to all except one other well known fantasy series. It ended I thought with a whimper rather than with a bang and I doubt if I'm in that small a minority in this opinion.
Having never in my life, with one exception, read any Harry Potter fan fiction now is not the time to start. I never read any James Bond books not by Ian Fleming, I wouldn't contemplate reading anything else not by Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. I did read The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin and enjoyed it. He was a fantastic writer in his own right so I made that one exception. Good luck to you if you are either a fan fiction writer or reader.
My involvement with the fandom may continue up to a point, I do have my children to read the stories to in due course. They will, no doubt, enjoy them and I will also, up to a point, enjoy reading to them. I also enjoy the behind the scenes work that goes on in the fandom, moderation etc.
Some commonly written words on school reports would sum my feelings about the final book up rather well:
"Could do better."
Edit - 24th July 2007
Addendum - The Cardboard Cut-Out Villain
This just had to be added, it was plaguing me.
To quote Ronald Weasley in an earlier work by JKR: "How thick can you get?". How thick indeed. Lord Voldemort has been shown to be rather less intelligent than an amoeba. He never realised that Harry was seeing what he did. Nary a thought was given to the possibility that he should not under any circumstances dwell on his Horcruxes, and yet he did, allowing Harry to know where they were. Far too convenient a plot device and eminently unsatisfactory to this reader. Why, when he had apparently invested some time in blocking the link between himself and Mr. Potter was that link reopened? Couldn't Ms. Rowling have allowed the trio to figure out the locations of the Horcruxes in another way, thus cutting down on the pointlessness of their otherwise aimless search?
Lord Voldemort spent the greater part of the novel chasing around after the Elder Wand. All well and good but had he not thought to check his Horcruxes after he knew full well that the Diary one had been destroyed? The way that was explained was highly unsatisfactory and again went to show that Voldemort was singularly lacking in common sense. His further idiocy, that we are to just swallow, and the one that really got me, was the Diadem hidden in the Room of Requirement. How could Voldemort possibly honestly believe that a room chock full of the detritus of many many years had only ever been discovered by him? Just how did he imagine all the other junk got there, and did he never stop to think that others had preceded him in finding the room with the strong probability that future students would also not find it? That is unbelievable and even with the suspension of disbelief that goes with this kind of novel I feel not insulted but aggrieved that the readership is asked to simply accept Voldemort's arrogance as the explanation.