Soon-Forgotten Harry
Everyone at the airport had extra baggage with them this weekend, namely the 750-odd-page hardcover Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Some readers had just started, others seemed to be over halfway through already, their faces a mask of exhaustion and anticipation. If it seemed like a race, that’s because it was. The point was to finish the book as fast as humanly possible before the ending or any major plot points were ruined by the professional spoilers who were eagerly posting pages on the Internet and spreading the word as fast as possible. (Anecdotal evidence points to adolescent kids, the same kind who like to tell their younger classmates that Santa Claus doesn’t exist—when, that is, they take a second from pulling the wings off flies—shouting out plot spoilers at the midnight release parties.) In some sense, it wasn’t necessary, as most all the rumors floated before the books went on sale turned out not to be actual spoilers but just snarky guesses. For some reason all this guesswork was deemed grand entertainment by many, including the irritating pair of fellow travelers sitting near me who demanded to know, “Who dies?!”
In any case, the weekend is over, the sales totals are still being counted and exclaimed over (8.3 million!), and the book is finished; what next but the hangover? As someone who has never quite felt comfortable with the term “guilty pleasure,” I do find that to be the term that came up in my mind time and again upon completion of each J. K. Rowling book, and now that I have closed the cover on the series as a whole and thought of the books that I could have read in the same time period, I can safely say: I think I wasted my time.
This is not to claim that all seven of the Harry Potter books, and at least a couple of the films, haven’t provided a decent amount of distraction and escapism over the past several years, and isn’t that all that many books are supposed to give us? Rowling can plot like a demon, and she knows how to implant in readers’ minds an extremely enticing vision of a world where cozy Anglophile reassurance (who wouldn’t want to attend Hogwarts, or have the Weasleys as your surrogate parents?) coexists in intoxicating proximity to extraordinary and duplicitous evil (is that teacher a Death Eater? Are any of my friends?). But there’s a definite shallowness to her writing and characterization that’s hard to escape, and which became more pronounced as the series went on. Each of the characters were given one basic trait—Dumbledore=wisely inscrutable, Harry=impetuous, Hermione=high-revving overachiever; and so on—that was then played upon ad nauseum, with little variation. This becomes especially problematic in Deathly Hallows, a good part of which sticks us with only the Magical Trinity (Harry, Hermione, and Ron), in hiding and on the run after Voldemort’s Death Eaters make serious inroads against the Order of the Phoenix. It’s a tiring situation, and one that makes many sections of the book fly past with little notice, at least until evil rears up again, as it always does.
What, then, is the point of it all? C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Philip Pullman created their fantasies as world-defining and philosophical-motivated epics, where entire nations and societies rose and fell in the midst of earth-shattering struggles. To be fair, Rowling was always trying to paint on a smaller canvas, focusing in tightly on Harry and his friends, more intent on exploring the personal dynamic than in making some huge and otherworldly portrait. There’s an intimacy there that Lewis and Tolkien (though definitely not Pullman) missed. But given the sheer number of pages she devoted to her story, Rowling missed a great many opportunities, which became even more apparent by the end of Deathly Hallows. That is to say, the glimpses she gives us of this magical world that coexists with the Muggle one are not just tantalizingly but frustratingly brief. What of magic outside England? How do most wizards make a living? And what is life like for all those people busy fighting off Death Eaters while Harry makes plans with his small band of Dumbledore-chosen compatriots? Rowling’s point of view is so narrowly limited to Harry that it isn’t long before one begins to wish for a different vantage point.
So, who does die? Well, plenty of people; like most fantasy series this one ends with a thunderous battle. But it would take me a moment to remember who most of them were, because even though the series has a large roster of characters, very few of them stand out, except as useful cogs in Rowling’s plot machinations. Already, within a day of finishing Deathly Hallows, its particulars are starting to fade from memory. What stays is a series of iconic images, mostly centered around Hogwarts, and pilfered primarily from the films. The story? It got you from Point A (evil identified) to Point B (evil defined and feared) and Point C (evil confronted) easily enough, but little of it remains with you. Harry himself was a passable enough hero, though by the end the heroics (and sacrifices) of several weaker and more minor characters was much more emotionally affecting.
No Frodo, he. That doesn’t mean Harry had to be, as Rowling shouldn’t be criticized for not writing as dramatically and mythologically as a Tolkien, as smartly as a Pullman, or with as much world-defining intelligence as a Terry Pratchett (whose Discworld books put Rowling’s series to shame in their scope, wonder and humor). But she should be criticized for writing what ultimately comes off as more of a thinly-imagined, young adult, fairytale soap opera than a genuine work of the fantastic. Soap operas can obviously be extremely engaging and intoxicating; they just aren’t well remembered in years to come.
Comments
i don’t agree with u. u call it a soap opera, yet the only similarities, as u urself has said, is the way the books are engaging and intoxicating. no soap opera is seen over and over again, while the harry potter books will be read for many years to come, maybe even many centuries. nothing that can cause such a huge following will be forgotten easily. sure, only the fanatic will recall every single detail, but the stories of the “magical trinity” and harry vs. voldemort and good vs. evil will be remembered. even if u do not remember the story straightaway, the thing about these books is that they WILL be read again and again. the lure of “escapism,” and the “guilty pleasures” will be so strong that u cannot avoid the magic of the harry potter universe.
Comment by thedoosra — July 23, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
Stumbled on this from a Google alert I have on Terry Pratchett. I stopped readed the Potter books after the third one, I think, and managed about two of the movies. I like escapist literature as much as the next person (I have been reading any science fiction I could lay my hands on since age 13, which means I have read a LOT of junk) - but I just can’t being myself to find the Potter books any good. Particularly irritating is the lack of any attempt to explain the mechanics of the magic. Most fantasy at least pays lip service to the idea that the use of magic power exacts a price (see particularly Le Guin, who does a lot more than pay lip service). In the Rowling universe, magic appears to be little more than a set of Lego blocks - toys for Potter and his friends to play with. Just not good enough, I’m afraid.
Comment by Renee from Cape Town, South Africa — July 23, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
To compare the expansive HP series to, say, “Days of our Lives”, is ridiculous…soap operas thrive on trite emotions and underdeveloped characters. The characters Rowling creates, however one-dimensional you seem to say they are, are densely described and fully realized through pages of background information and details about their families and pasts. For example, you pegged Dumbledore as an “inscrutable” character…but inscrutable in itself implies a depth of mystery and past that was revealed to us throughout book 7—how can such a developed character be considered one-dimensional?
To think that the Harry Potter series will not be remembered in years to come is a terribly poor prediction. Perhaps Rowling’s writing is not as dramatic as Tolkien or as smart as Pullman, but that’s unimportant. If we are forced to make comparisons, however, it must be realized that these books sparked millions of people to read books when they otherwise wouldn’t have. Never (never) before has a book meant so much to so many people. A soap opera?! Episodes of Days of our Lives are forgotten almost immediately. The Harry Potter series has engaged millions of readers - in multiple languages - worldwide for over 10 years ... the notion that the series will not be well remembered in the years to come is laughable. Tolkien’s writing is brilliant, of course, and Rowling’s is less so, in certain ways, but more enchanting in that she is able to affect a demographic with no limits - people of every age and dozens of nationalities appreciate and adore her books. You may not be a part of that demographic, but how can you deny that her work is incredibly valuable to modern literature?
Comment by Elizabeth Newton from USA — July 24, 2007 @ 12:13 am
I always find it funny that people keep comparing the Potter phenomenon to fantasy literature like Tolkien, Lewis and Pullman when the closest cultural comparison is actually the original Star Wars trilogy - another “thinly-imagined, young adult, fairytale soap opera” “more intent on exploring the personal dynamic than in making some huge otherworldly portrait” that just happened to capture the imagination of an entire generation.
And given that yes, people are still watching Star Wars 30 years later, I think it’s fair to assume a similar legacy for young Mr. Potter and friends.
Comment by McNutt — July 24, 2007 @ 7:40 am
I’m going to agree with Elizabeth here. My defense may be that of a fan, and therefore I’m defending my own tastes, but even then some of the ideas here are ridiculous. You mention Pratchett, but which THREE Discworld books would you hold up against the last three Potter books? If you had to choose out of the… oh, thirty or forty or so that have elaborated on that world? Similarly, stripped of their Christian philosophies, a fair number of the Narnia books are pretty slight, both in terms of writing and information offered.
Is there room for more? Definitely. I think any of those who consider themselves fans of the books (as opposed to those who are reading simply to be engaged with the popular discourse) are currently rather desperate for Rowling to continue to explore her wizarding world, and to explain it in more detail. But that is, as you say, not really the point of these stories. And as other here have mentioned, I have a hard time swallowing the line that characterization has been one-dimensional, even if the characters make the same mistakes over and over again. One of the greatest devices of engaging literature is to provide the reading audience with more information than the characters possess, and to know what they should do and be frustrated when it takes them so long to figure it out. But anyone who has spent any time engaging with these characters on anything more than a perfunctory reading (and letting the extremely weakened movies influence your opinion is inexcusable) could probably tell you more about them than the vague motivations of Frodo (which I read as a child and which still remains among my favorite treasures).
Comment by Patrick Schabe — July 24, 2007 @ 8:18 am
(spoiler alert in this comment…)
I agree… had she put in the time, these books could have been incredibly expansive. There were many times during the deathly hallows that I wished she’d switch to a different view-point… like what problems Mr. Weasley was currently facing while Harry was on the run with no leads, and when you learn all the sudden that Percy is a good guy again, you can’t help but think that there was probably a good story there about his rebellion with against the ministry, but instead of detailing it Rowling just tells us “Here’s percy he’s back! forgive him!” And that’s why the book takes literally only hours to read. But nevertheless, it was a very entertaining book, will probably make a very entertaining movie, but you can’t help but wish that maybe she’d go back and expand every book and re-release them to include storylines from the other characters.
Comment by Brett — July 24, 2007 @ 11:34 am