Potter 7

Whole post is a spoiler.

Read it. A friend's wife read Potter 6 over 2 days, so I thought I'd do a little better and read Potter 6 in 1 day. Read Potter 7 over the weekend, wasn't in a rush, but I just couldn't put it down. Or at least I wanted to see how things panned out.

There's almost no Hogwarts in this book, which is just as well. There's no need to talk about Hogwarts under an evil regime because that has already been done in Potter 5. Hogwarts under Snape is not very interesting, because it will be Snape, as usual, pretending to be a bad guy because he's supposed to be a Death Eater.

Snape and Harry Potter make very interesting contrasts. Potter is a Griffindor with a bit of Slytherin in him. Snape is a Slytherin with a more than a bit of Griffindor in him. I don't think that Snape did what he did merely for Lily Potter. I think everybody on some level understands right and wrong. Harry Potter in the end calls Snape the bravest man that he has met, and when you look back upon the big picture it is not very clear who was braver. Harry Potter and Snape are Dumbledore's 2 most important lieutenants. My prediction that Snape will be killed is correct, although he didn't sacrifice himself to save Potter. Maybe that would have been too much.

It's suitable that Longbottom should be a hero in some way, that he should pull the sword of Griffindor out of a hat. I like that idea, because his parents were Aurors alongside James and Lily Potter, and because whatever happened to Potter could well have happened to him.

Death does hang over the Harry Potter books. But for some reason it's not Rowling's great strength to describe death scenes. Think about how Sirius, Dumbledore, Snape, Lupin, Mad Eye Moody and Tonks died. Yet again we can borrow that idea from Proust, that the real mourning doesn't happen immediately, or at the funeral, but takes place for the rest of your life.

I'm wondering if I should criticise the last book for being too much of a treasure hunt. Maybe not. But it does have a video game quality about it. "To get A, you must get B, to get B you must get C. You must do (blah blah blah) with C or else it will not work".

The climatic scene with Harry Potter and Voldemort was a bit of a letdown, because there was too much discussing of plot points. It's just not good practice for the author to us a character to speak directly to the reader.

"You know, Tom, you shouldn't have drunk my blood in book 4 because it's bad for you". etc etc etc.

People have criticised the fact that Harry himself is a Horcrux, but it should have been obvious as far back as book 1. The train station part is a little bit of a cop out. If you destroyed a living Horcrux, did you have to kill the container as well? Why did Potter live while Nagini had to die? Why did the only person to survive an Avada Kedavra live it twice?

Harry is shown in middle age in the Epilogue, sending his kids to school. He named one of his kids "Albus Severus", which is funny because while Severus was alive he was the one that Potter hated the most.

There is a parallel between Draco Malfoy and Snape. Just as Malfoy turned against Harry for rejecting his friendship, Snape turned against James because James didn't consider Snape part of the gang.

Harry Potter's great achievement is that it shows us that great classics in children's books need be written a hundred years ago, and need not be the exclusive domain of a bygone era before TVs, computers and airplanes were invented.

Alice in Wonderland may have portrayed a simpler and more innocent day and age. Harry Potter excels in great moral ambiguities. You could laugh at how Ginny Weasley became a pen pal of Voldemort's through the Tom Riddle diary, until Harry Potter found his own Half Blood Prince textbook. The feared criminal Sirius suddenly becomes a loving godfather. The evil potions teacher suddenly becomes a heroic martyr. The kindly headmaster suddenly becomes a Nazi youth.

You can imagine why the book has upset fundamentalists everywhere. There is no mention of a God or a supreme being in this book. If anything, all fundamentalists hate moral ambiguities because they are only comfortable with certainties.

A large part of the appeal of Harry Potter is how it has created a universe unto itself, and more interestingly still, one that is co-existent with ours. If they are wizards, it is only because in our day and age, computer geeks are on the ascendent. If there are death eaters, it is only because they reflect our obsession with terrorists. If there is Voldemort, it is only because we need to be reminded of Hitler.

Maybe people have criticised the book for a distinct lack of style. But for me the more important aspect is this intricate architecture of ideas and plot twists that Rowling more often than not manages to pull off.

Although there was a lot of plot that Rowling left very late. Rowena Ravenclaw's diedem was introduced and disposed of in only a matter of a few hundred pages, when it could have been dealt with in "Half Blood Prince" which was a little short on plot. Same for the Hufflepuff cup. Similarly all that stuff about the Deathly Hallows felt rushed and it seemed that the Elder wand was only a plot device to make sure that Harry the horcrux could die without Harry the human being dying.

A lot has been said about the epilogue at the end. Rowling mentioned that she knew from almost 10 years ago that the last sentence would have the word "scar" in it, and it is that last sentence which is the most important, and the whole point of the epilogue. Harry gets a break from having to fight evil for 19 years, and has a happy and normal life raising kids with Ginny Weasley. Which is very interesting. What sort of an adult is Harry Potter? It's like watching "400 Blows" and wondering what kind of adult Antoine Doinel is, and the answer is strange: Antoine Doinel as a boy seems to have had to grow up very quickly for his age, but he becomes damaged goods, and seems to be a man-child for the rest of his life.

Would Harry Potter be the Minister of Magic? Would he be Hogwarts headmaster? I don't really think you can repeat the Voldemort plot again. Rowling seems to be putting paid to the possibility that you could make an easy sequel to Potter. Maybe he could be a minor character in some other fantasy story, but it's difficult. The universe of Harry Potter was so centred around the Harry Potter - Voldemort axis. Even Snape and Dumbledore have to play minor fiddle to them.

A prequel is possible, but we know the hazards of writing a book for which the ending is already known. Think about Star Wars.

As for JK Rowling writing something else as big - I'm trying to imagine Proust writing something that's not "Remembrance of Things Past" or Cao Xueqin writing something that's not "Hong Lou Meng". She could be like Balzac, writing a lot of books which are about the same universe. The adventures of Durmstrang, anyone?