. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban continues the process by
introducing layers of complexity and shades of grey. The book challenges
Harry’s – and readers’ – preconceptions about Harry’s world.
In
the previous Harry Potter books, adults were at best distant authority
figures, like Dumbledore, and at worst arbitrary bullies, like Vernon
Dursley. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets began to demystify
adult authority figures by deconstructing the celebrity Gilderoy
Lockhart and proving Hagrid’s innocence. Prisoner of Azkaban allows
Harry to develop meaningful relationships with adult characters and to
see them as friends.
For the first time, Harry finds a mentor
and confidant in the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus
Lupin. Previously, Harry’s instinct had always been to mistrust adults
and refuse to share his concerns with them. At one point, Lupin asks
Harry if anything is bothering him. At first, Harry lies and responds,
“no,” but then immediately changes his mind and says, “yes.” He then
asks Lupin why he had prevented Harry from confronting the Boggart
during one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. It’s an
important moment because Harry makes himself vulnerable by opening up to
an adult. He realizes that he doesn’t have all of the answers and that
he can turn to adults for help – at least some adults
Harry also
develops an unexpected relationship with Sirius Black. At the beginning
of Prisoner of Azkaban, the Ministry of Magic warns that convicted mass
murderer Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban Prison. The book builds
Sirius up as a major threat, especially after Harry overhears a
conversation in which a Ministry official claims Sirius killed Harry’s
parents. Then, near the end, the book pulls the rug from under readers
by revealing that Sirius is innocent and is in fact Harry’s godfather.
However, it’s important that Sirius never treats Harry as just a kid;
Sirius always seemed more like Harry’s cool older brother than a
parental figure. In a way, he acts as a bridge figure in Harry’s
interactions with adults.
Prisoner of Azkaban trains readers to
not trust first impressions. Everything in the first three-quarters of
this book – the Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts professors, the media –
tells Harry and the reader to fear Sirius. Only Sirius and Lupin’s word –
and Harry’s instincts – suggest otherwise. It’s a sign of Harry’s
maturity that he’s able to abandon his preconceptions when confronted
with new evidence and accept Sirius. This twist also helps prepare
readers for more dramatic reveals about major characters later in the
series.
That said, I felt the ending cheated a bit. Harry and
Hermione to use a Time-Turner to travel back in time and rescue both the
Hypogriff Buckbeak and Sirius Black. Time travel stories are always
problematic because of paradoxes. If somebody goes back in time and
changes the past, then wouldn’t that remove the initial reason for that
person to originally go back to the past in the first place? Prisoner of
Azkaban cleverly acknowledges this by not actually having Harry and
Hermione change the past, but rather fulfill actions in the past that
were simply “off-screen.” It turns out that future versions of Harry and
Hermione had already rescued Buckbeak and Sirius; we the reader just
didn’t realize it. However, this then opens the question of why the
characters couldn’t just use the Time-Turner to solve almost every
problem they encounter (as spoofed by How It Should Have Ended).
Ultimately,
time travel stories can’t get around these problems, which is why the
best time travel stories use time travel as a device to tell a story,
rather than merely as a device to solve a problem in the story. My
favorite time travel stories put familiar characters in an unfamiliar
time and place, the classic “fish out of water” scenario. Star Trek IV:
The Voyage Home did this effectively, not only providing laughs as the
Enterprise crew wanders around San Fransisco during the 1980s, but also
warning against overexploitation of natural resources. Back to the
Future, arguably the most famous time travel movie, is really a movie
about characters, with time travel simply an excuse for Marty McFly to
meet his parents as teenagers. Stories that use time travel too freely,
such as Looper, tend to get bogged down in internal inconsistencies and
plot holes.
Unfortunately, Prisoner of Azkaban uses time travel
as a plot contrivance to get Harry out of an impossible situation. Not
only does it create plot holes, but it also undermines the themes of the
book. By enabling Harry to save both Buckbeak and Sirius, time travel
conveniently allows the heroes to have their cake and eat it too. This
seems contrary to the idea layered complexity and moral ambiguity that
the book introduces. I give the Harry Potter series credit for not
relying too heavily on gimmicks and magical devices to resolve the
characters’ problems The later books don’t shy away from forcing the
heroes to make sacrifices. Perhaps Prisoner of Azkaban is meant to be
one last hurrah for easy answers to tough problems.
Next week, I review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the Harry Potter series…
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
** spoiler alert **
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince should have been
called Harry Potter and You-Know-Who because the primary plot gives
Harry – and the readers – a glimpse into Voldemort’s backstory.
Dumbledore schedules private lessons in which he uses the Pensieve to
show Harry memories from key moments in Voldemort’s life.
Up to this point, the Harry Potter series had primarily presented Voldemort as an ominous threat. Other wizards so fear him that they dare not speak his name. For the first time, Half-Blood Prince shows Voldemort as an actual character. However, this doesn’t necessarily humanize him. On the contrary, it demonstrates a different facet of Voldemort’s inhumane evil.
There’s a dilemma for any writer who wants to create a strong villain. On the one hand, the villain must present a worthy threat for the hero. A good story requires the hero to overcome obstacles to defeat the villain. This means the villain must be – or at least appear to be – smarter and/or more powerful than the hero. The most intimidating villains can inspire fear just through their reputations. Mystery helps to build such reputations; villains – like real-world dictators – seek to control and manipulate personal information. Villains want other characters to talk about their strengths in order to distract them from their weaknesses (learning about a villain’s high school love poems would probably reduce the intimidation factor).
On the other hand, smart writers recognize that evil has a pathetic side as well. Both in real life and in fantasy, evil actions suggests a lack of maturation and moral development. In doing research for The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick was taken aback by the lack of empathy a Nazi official showed in his private diary when describing Jews. People who pursue morally questionable choices often do so because they cannot or will not form healthy human connections to friends and family. They pursue greater wealth or power because they cannot find happiness. Their lives are defined by deficiency rather than by contentment.
Better authors find a way to explore both facets of evil. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created two villains – Sauron and Saruman – to embody different aspects of evil.* The two are clearly linked, not only by the similarity of their names, but also by their desire for the One Ring and world domination. Yet, throughout the books, readers learn little about Sauron, other than that he is a godlike being who commands vast armies. The narrative never provides the Hobbits with a Sauron “origin story” (although The Silmarillion reveals more); indeed, we never actually see Sauron firsthand in the novel. The heroes do not even attempt to fight him directly and instead rely upon subterfuge. Sauron appears intimidating and unbeatable right until his final defeat in Return of the King.
By contrast, readers learn much about Saruman’s history and his personality. We see Saruman directly several times. Each time, he is defanged by the protagonists. In The Two Towers, King Théoden resists Saruman’s entreaties and Gandalf breaks his staff. At the end of The Return of the King, Saruman chooses to enact petty revenge against the Hobbits by wrecking havoc upon the Shire. The man who sought to rule Middle-earth is reduced to bullying little people. Ultimately, Frodo takes pity on Saruman and refuses to kill him. In a backstory Tolkien wrote (published in Unfinished Tales), Saruman appears even more pitiable and consumed by jealousy of Gandal
In Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling combines intimidating and pathetic into Voldemort, as if Sauron and Saruman were a single character. It’s tricky because those two character traits work against each other. Before Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort was so successful at managing his reputation that few wizards even dared to speak his name aloud. Only a handful of wizards realize that in his youth Voldemort was Tom Riddle, and only Dumbledore seems to have pieced together his backstory. We only saw Voldemort a few times, and whenever he appeared somebody usually died. In Goblet of Fire, he demonstrates his casual disregard for life by telling Peter Pettigrew to “kill the spare” [Cedric Diggory].
After Half-Blood Prince, readers learn that Tom Riddle’s hatred of muggles all comes down to daddy issues. Riddle’s mother tricked his muggle father into loving her, only to leave her when the spell wore off. Riddle’s mother died after childbirth, leaving young Tom in an orphanage. The book strips away the cool, cruel image that Voldemort created for himself and reveals him to be deeply insecure and emotional. With the veil of mystery lifted, Voldemort becomes less scary and more pathetic. In fact, if the young Tom Riddle weren’t such a creep, I suspect many readers would have felt bad for him.
But readers don’t get to feel sympathetic for Voldemort because the backstory never actually “humanizes” the character. In my review of Chamber of Secrets, I claimed that Voldemort was inherently evil, and nothing in his backstory changes my assessment. There’s no tragedy about Tom Riddle, no sense of missed opportunities, no possibility of redemption. We never get the sense that Voldemort had good in him, or that he might have turned from evil had his mom and dad loved him. When Dumbledore first meets Tom in the orphanage, he already bullies other kids and steals from them.
Ultimately, Half-Blood Prince manages to leave Voldemort’s evilness intact even after removing some of the mystery; it’s just a different type of evil. It’s a good balance that makes Voldemort just enough of a threat for Deathly Hallows. Voldemort is still scary, but he’s also a loser. Unfortunately, Voldemort is still a very one-dimensional character, inherently evil. I think it might have been more interesting had Rowling given him a few positive virtues.** That said, even if Voldemort doesn’t rank amongst my favorite villains, I give Rowling a lot of credit for exploring different facets of evil.
Up to this point, the Harry Potter series had primarily presented Voldemort as an ominous threat. Other wizards so fear him that they dare not speak his name. For the first time, Half-Blood Prince shows Voldemort as an actual character. However, this doesn’t necessarily humanize him. On the contrary, it demonstrates a different facet of Voldemort’s inhumane evil.
There’s a dilemma for any writer who wants to create a strong villain. On the one hand, the villain must present a worthy threat for the hero. A good story requires the hero to overcome obstacles to defeat the villain. This means the villain must be – or at least appear to be – smarter and/or more powerful than the hero. The most intimidating villains can inspire fear just through their reputations. Mystery helps to build such reputations; villains – like real-world dictators – seek to control and manipulate personal information. Villains want other characters to talk about their strengths in order to distract them from their weaknesses (learning about a villain’s high school love poems would probably reduce the intimidation factor).
On the other hand, smart writers recognize that evil has a pathetic side as well. Both in real life and in fantasy, evil actions suggests a lack of maturation and moral development. In doing research for The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick was taken aback by the lack of empathy a Nazi official showed in his private diary when describing Jews. People who pursue morally questionable choices often do so because they cannot or will not form healthy human connections to friends and family. They pursue greater wealth or power because they cannot find happiness. Their lives are defined by deficiency rather than by contentment.
Better authors find a way to explore both facets of evil. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created two villains – Sauron and Saruman – to embody different aspects of evil.* The two are clearly linked, not only by the similarity of their names, but also by their desire for the One Ring and world domination. Yet, throughout the books, readers learn little about Sauron, other than that he is a godlike being who commands vast armies. The narrative never provides the Hobbits with a Sauron “origin story” (although The Silmarillion reveals more); indeed, we never actually see Sauron firsthand in the novel. The heroes do not even attempt to fight him directly and instead rely upon subterfuge. Sauron appears intimidating and unbeatable right until his final defeat in Return of the King.
By contrast, readers learn much about Saruman’s history and his personality. We see Saruman directly several times. Each time, he is defanged by the protagonists. In The Two Towers, King Théoden resists Saruman’s entreaties and Gandalf breaks his staff. At the end of The Return of the King, Saruman chooses to enact petty revenge against the Hobbits by wrecking havoc upon the Shire. The man who sought to rule Middle-earth is reduced to bullying little people. Ultimately, Frodo takes pity on Saruman and refuses to kill him. In a backstory Tolkien wrote (published in Unfinished Tales), Saruman appears even more pitiable and consumed by jealousy of Gandal
In Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling combines intimidating and pathetic into Voldemort, as if Sauron and Saruman were a single character. It’s tricky because those two character traits work against each other. Before Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort was so successful at managing his reputation that few wizards even dared to speak his name aloud. Only a handful of wizards realize that in his youth Voldemort was Tom Riddle, and only Dumbledore seems to have pieced together his backstory. We only saw Voldemort a few times, and whenever he appeared somebody usually died. In Goblet of Fire, he demonstrates his casual disregard for life by telling Peter Pettigrew to “kill the spare” [Cedric Diggory].
After Half-Blood Prince, readers learn that Tom Riddle’s hatred of muggles all comes down to daddy issues. Riddle’s mother tricked his muggle father into loving her, only to leave her when the spell wore off. Riddle’s mother died after childbirth, leaving young Tom in an orphanage. The book strips away the cool, cruel image that Voldemort created for himself and reveals him to be deeply insecure and emotional. With the veil of mystery lifted, Voldemort becomes less scary and more pathetic. In fact, if the young Tom Riddle weren’t such a creep, I suspect many readers would have felt bad for him.
But readers don’t get to feel sympathetic for Voldemort because the backstory never actually “humanizes” the character. In my review of Chamber of Secrets, I claimed that Voldemort was inherently evil, and nothing in his backstory changes my assessment. There’s no tragedy about Tom Riddle, no sense of missed opportunities, no possibility of redemption. We never get the sense that Voldemort had good in him, or that he might have turned from evil had his mom and dad loved him. When Dumbledore first meets Tom in the orphanage, he already bullies other kids and steals from them.
Ultimately, Half-Blood Prince manages to leave Voldemort’s evilness intact even after removing some of the mystery; it’s just a different type of evil. It’s a good balance that makes Voldemort just enough of a threat for Deathly Hallows. Voldemort is still scary, but he’s also a loser. Unfortunately, Voldemort is still a very one-dimensional character, inherently evil. I think it might have been more interesting had Rowling given him a few positive virtues.** That said, even if Voldemort doesn’t rank amongst my favorite villains, I give Rowling a lot of credit for exploring different facets of evil.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows
I know many fans find Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
disappointing. In one sense, I understand the feeling. The book differs
drastically from its predecessors in both structure and tone. This is
not simply “year seven” at boarding school. Harry, Ron, and Hermione
have left Hogwarts to embark upon a more traditional epic fantasy quest
to find magical artifacts.
Although Deathly Hallows probably could never have satisfied the fevered expectations of fans in 2007, the book does suffer from introducing too much plot too late in the series. Almost everything the heroes needed to do in order to defeat Voldemort they learn and accomplish in this book. It makes the book and the series as a whole feel unbalanced.
In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore discovers that Voldemort created seven Horcruxes in order to preserve his soul. One – Tom Riddle’s diary – was destroyed in Chamber of Secrets, while Dumbledore destroyed another – Marvolo’s Ring – sometime before Half-Blood Prince. That means Harry, Ron, and Hermione still have to find and destroy five additional Horcruxes in this final book. In theory, the Horcruxes could be anywhere and anything. That alone would pose a huge obstacle, enough for most epic fantasy novels.
Because the task is so daunting, Deathly Hallows – rightly – tries to make the process of searching for Horcruxes seem difficult. We needed to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione wandering in the woods at a loss for what to do. Yet, because none of the previous six books featured Horcruxes, Deathly Hallows bears this burden alone. In other words, this one book – which supposedly finishes the series – also acts as the beginning, middle, and end of the Horcrux subplot. Thus, it feels like a cheat when Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to destroy all of them (with an assist from Neville Longbottom) so quickly. It’s quite convenient that Voldemort hid all five Horcruxes in the greater London metropolitan area rather than, say, in a junkyard in China or in a deep ocean trench.
On top of that, halfway into Deathly Hallows, the book adds yet another artifact quest.* Harry, Ron, and Hermione must not only destroy Horcruxes, but also stop Voldemort from obtaining the Deathly Hallows. I actually like the concept behind the Deathly Hallows. In my discussion of Order of the Phoenix, I said Harry still needed to learn to truly accept death as a part of human life. However, you’d think that by book seven in the series the characters would basically know what they have to do and have already started doing it. Because the book needs to spend so much time on exposition for these additional quests, it has less time to spend exploring the implications of these plot developments.
Deathly Hallows feels more like the end of the beginning than the end, or even the beginning of the end.
For example, there’s a moment when Harry briefly considers pursuing the Deathly Hallows for himself. He already has the Resurrection Stone and Invisibility Cloak, and he knows where to find the Eldar Wand. With these three, he would become master over death and supposedly have the power to bring the dead back to life. Even with everything Harry has learned up to this point, I still think this was – or should have been – a difficult choice. Wouldn’t he have been tempted to bring his parents back? Even Dumbledore couldn’t resist trying to use the Resurrection Stone to resurrect his sister. Harry’s decision should have been a crucial moment for the character, but the book barely touched upon it. I felt that we as readers needed to see Harry struggle at least a bit to make the right choice.
And yet, even if the denouement feels rushed, emotionally Deathly Hallows works as a story about accepting death. “The Tale of Three Brothers,” with the youngest brother who wore the invisibility cloak and then welcomes death as an old friend, is a beautiful metaphor for passing on gracefully. Harry’s walk through the Forbidden Forest to meet his own death at Voldemort’s hands reflects a mature acceptance and acknowledgment of the human condition (a far cry from “I don’t want to be human!”). I’m sure many readers cried when the ghosts of James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin appeared to comfort Harry.
I wouldn’t consider Deathly Hallows to be the greatest book in the series, but I’m also not disappointed. It has some good ideas and the slower parts – the character development, exposition, even the wandering in the forest – were necessary to obtain the emotional payoff at the end. I just wish J.K. Rowling had spread a bit more of the plot and exposition amongst the other six books. Deathly Hallows doesn’t feel like the final installment of a seven-book series building to a climax. In fact, taking the Harry Potter series as a whole, I’d say Deathly Hallows contains around 80% of the crucial plot and character development, making the previous six books feel like glorified backstory.
Epilogue
The epilogue of Deathly Hallows has become infamous. Deservedly so. The final book in a series should provide a sense of closure. The Deathly Hallows epilogue really only reveals the marital status of the main characters, which readers probably could have guessed (Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny). It does not resolve the many remaining questions. Did Hermione succeed in promoting Elfish welfare? Did Harry ever become an Auror? Did Draco Malfoy find redemption – or is he still a shady Slytherin? How did wizarding society achieve peace and reconciliation after such a bloody civil war? After all, many wizards, such as Dolores Umbridge, willingly supported Voldemort’s anti-muggle policies.
Apparently, the Pottermore website has short stories about the lives of the main characters after Deathly Hallows. I’d like to check it out. At the same time, readers shouldn’t have to do extracurricular homework just to get a sense of closure.
Although Deathly Hallows probably could never have satisfied the fevered expectations of fans in 2007, the book does suffer from introducing too much plot too late in the series. Almost everything the heroes needed to do in order to defeat Voldemort they learn and accomplish in this book. It makes the book and the series as a whole feel unbalanced.
In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore discovers that Voldemort created seven Horcruxes in order to preserve his soul. One – Tom Riddle’s diary – was destroyed in Chamber of Secrets, while Dumbledore destroyed another – Marvolo’s Ring – sometime before Half-Blood Prince. That means Harry, Ron, and Hermione still have to find and destroy five additional Horcruxes in this final book. In theory, the Horcruxes could be anywhere and anything. That alone would pose a huge obstacle, enough for most epic fantasy novels.
Because the task is so daunting, Deathly Hallows – rightly – tries to make the process of searching for Horcruxes seem difficult. We needed to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione wandering in the woods at a loss for what to do. Yet, because none of the previous six books featured Horcruxes, Deathly Hallows bears this burden alone. In other words, this one book – which supposedly finishes the series – also acts as the beginning, middle, and end of the Horcrux subplot. Thus, it feels like a cheat when Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to destroy all of them (with an assist from Neville Longbottom) so quickly. It’s quite convenient that Voldemort hid all five Horcruxes in the greater London metropolitan area rather than, say, in a junkyard in China or in a deep ocean trench.
On top of that, halfway into Deathly Hallows, the book adds yet another artifact quest.* Harry, Ron, and Hermione must not only destroy Horcruxes, but also stop Voldemort from obtaining the Deathly Hallows. I actually like the concept behind the Deathly Hallows. In my discussion of Order of the Phoenix, I said Harry still needed to learn to truly accept death as a part of human life. However, you’d think that by book seven in the series the characters would basically know what they have to do and have already started doing it. Because the book needs to spend so much time on exposition for these additional quests, it has less time to spend exploring the implications of these plot developments.
Deathly Hallows feels more like the end of the beginning than the end, or even the beginning of the end.
For example, there’s a moment when Harry briefly considers pursuing the Deathly Hallows for himself. He already has the Resurrection Stone and Invisibility Cloak, and he knows where to find the Eldar Wand. With these three, he would become master over death and supposedly have the power to bring the dead back to life. Even with everything Harry has learned up to this point, I still think this was – or should have been – a difficult choice. Wouldn’t he have been tempted to bring his parents back? Even Dumbledore couldn’t resist trying to use the Resurrection Stone to resurrect his sister. Harry’s decision should have been a crucial moment for the character, but the book barely touched upon it. I felt that we as readers needed to see Harry struggle at least a bit to make the right choice.
And yet, even if the denouement feels rushed, emotionally Deathly Hallows works as a story about accepting death. “The Tale of Three Brothers,” with the youngest brother who wore the invisibility cloak and then welcomes death as an old friend, is a beautiful metaphor for passing on gracefully. Harry’s walk through the Forbidden Forest to meet his own death at Voldemort’s hands reflects a mature acceptance and acknowledgment of the human condition (a far cry from “I don’t want to be human!”). I’m sure many readers cried when the ghosts of James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin appeared to comfort Harry.
I wouldn’t consider Deathly Hallows to be the greatest book in the series, but I’m also not disappointed. It has some good ideas and the slower parts – the character development, exposition, even the wandering in the forest – were necessary to obtain the emotional payoff at the end. I just wish J.K. Rowling had spread a bit more of the plot and exposition amongst the other six books. Deathly Hallows doesn’t feel like the final installment of a seven-book series building to a climax. In fact, taking the Harry Potter series as a whole, I’d say Deathly Hallows contains around 80% of the crucial plot and character development, making the previous six books feel like glorified backstory.
Epilogue
The epilogue of Deathly Hallows has become infamous. Deservedly so. The final book in a series should provide a sense of closure. The Deathly Hallows epilogue really only reveals the marital status of the main characters, which readers probably could have guessed (Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny). It does not resolve the many remaining questions. Did Hermione succeed in promoting Elfish welfare? Did Harry ever become an Auror? Did Draco Malfoy find redemption – or is he still a shady Slytherin? How did wizarding society achieve peace and reconciliation after such a bloody civil war? After all, many wizards, such as Dolores Umbridge, willingly supported Voldemort’s anti-muggle policies.
Apparently, the Pottermore website has short stories about the lives of the main characters after Deathly Hallows. I’d like to check it out. At the same time, readers shouldn’t have to do extracurricular homework just to get a sense of closure.
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