Over the last week so I have digested the whole 7 volume Harry Potter story. To preface, I am by no means a literary critic. Brazen Hussy is the book snob. When I read fiction, it tends to be of fantasy/sci-fi variety. While my tastes have matured (towards female fantasy writers, interestingly enough), I still have a soft spot for the ol' Swords & Sorcery Genre.
Which is why I originally greeted Harry Potter with so much skepticism. Years ago, I rolled my eyes at what appeared to be a very derivative plot rife with cliches and with only a very primitive cosmology. Then I married Brazen and she made me read the first one. And then I read them all. I'm still not a Potter-head (I don't think), but I have enjoyed them greatly.
From my point of view, the Harry Potter series is about a special kind of love. Not self-love (the most common variant), or romantic love (the most popular), or even love of family (although there's plenty of that), but the love grounded in friendship. There's an interesting genre developing these days (Buffy is another example with close parallels to Potter) of maturation themes based not on voyages of individual self-discovery, but collective ones. Harry can't figure out who he is, he can't grow up, without Ron and Hermoine, or even Hagrid, Sirius, Dumbledore, and even Voldemort. We don't grow up on our own - we grow up with others, and as a consequence the existential angst that I and so many others have fallen prey may not strictly speaking be very necessary.
I've generally thought that maturation stories, while frequently pitched to the young, are unsuited to them. They always seemed more appropriate for people who had already grown up. What's fascinating about the Harry Potter phenomenon is that it seems to have resonated with just about everybody. Maybe it's just that the kids are digging the magic and the adults the nostalgia, but maybe not.
Anyway, to the Deathly Hallows itself. To lay out all the spoilers, I think that emotion fulcra of the story are not Harry or Voldemort, but Neville Longbottom and Severus Snape. Both grow and change with the story (okay, the latter is really just revealed). That such unlikely characters should be such poignant heroes is truly moving. I loved how Snape at the end finally recognized that Harry was far more like the mother than the father. Not to take anything away from the nobility of Harry's self-sacrifice, but I was much more affected by Neville's pulling the sword of Gryffindor out of that sorting hat.
I do have some criticisms. I thought that Rowling was too quick to go for cheap death - deaths that do little to advance the plot, but whose primary purpose seems to be to make us cry. I know that - as a story of friendship & growing up - it wouldn't make any sense to kill off any of the Big Three. I always figured that one of the Weasely twins was going to go - in stories like these, if there's twins one of them always dies. But Dobby and Colin's death, and Hedwig's - they just seemed thrown in for effect. Maybe I'm wrong.
One other critique - I thought the whole "possession of the wand" thing was kind of muddled. It was confusing and didn't seem strictly necessary, which isn't exactly what you want for the dramatic climax of the story. And it seemed a bit odd to have 2 big battles where one would do.
That's all Quibbling, of course - small things beside what has been a major literary achievement. In theme, in pacing, in character development, in universality - I think Rowling has done something extraordinary. It isn't "Great Literature," maybe, but I wonder if Dickens in his day was any different. And I have to say that there are very few places I'll miss more than Hogwarts. Even if I do hate Peeves.
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4 comments:
See, the friendship thing is why I thought the 200 pages or so spent wandering around the wilderness were great - we got a chance to just get the main 3 characters interacting, getting on each others' nerves, having productive conversations, etc. I definitely didn't mind the lack of plot, although at one point I wondered aloud how on earth all the plot points would get tied up in the remaining pages.
I agree with most of that, but I thought that Dobby's and Hedwig's deaths served a purpose.
Hedwig's because it was the first death in this book, and occurred right at the start. So it set the tone of how serious the coming battle was going to be. Harry lost one of the most important things to him straight off. It kind of foreshadowed that he might lose so much else.
And Dobby's was interesting because Hermione was always the one who cared about the house-elf rights issue. Harry just kind of followed along to keep her happy. But when Dobby died, Harry's reaction showed that he had either changed, or that underneath he had cared about the house elves all along. Maybe not in the abstract "rights for everyone" way that Hermione did, but on a more personal level.
Fred's death, on the other hand, was totally gratuitous. And the wand storyline was just plain weird. It was almost like Rowlings couldn't figure out which plot to go for---maybe she originally had two different options in mind---and chose to try and blend both.
Seemed to me the seemly pointless deaths, were there to reinforce the fact that they were essentially in a war, and well, wars are full of death of all sorts. And typically, much of gets very little attention.
As for the wand business, I guess I can accept that the elder wand was so quick to change loyalties due to a technicality of it's being, but by the wand logic, every time any one disarms a foe, the foes wand should be theres. Ala Draco's regular wand being OK for Harry. Unless, Draco's whole self was permeated by 'owning' the elder wand so any defeat would render all wands of his the other persons. But yeah, muddled. I'd be curious to ask Rowling to explain that one a bit better.
Oh, and I think I might be heartless, but I expected so many people to die, when one did, my reaction, was, "Oh there's another!"
Or maybe I have lost all remorse for the loss of fictional characters.
I think that Hedwig's death was yet another isolating moment for Harry, who had already lost Sirius, then Dumbledore. H, H, and R had to be isolated, and even more so for Harry when he felt like the outsider because of Ron and Hermione's relationship, and then Ron's departure put everything off balance.
I knew Lupin was going to die - too close to Harry's parents and Sirius, too much of a father figure. Plus, they all had to accompany Harry to give him strength. But it really upset me about Tonks, right after the baby. And Colin Creevey - that was just plain mean.
I loved that Kreacher turned out to be just as lovely a houself as Dobby, and that Sirius' brother was the one who took the locket - that was a great part of the plot!!
Glad you finally got to read it :)
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