I realize that I’m late to this, given the speed with which devotees of the series tend to gobble up the books, but I just finished reading the 7th and last book in the Harry Potter series: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. I know, not some people’s idea of “great literature” but I loved this series!! I loved the engaging story, the powerful messages and the fact that so many kids – from young to old – are reading!! I just hope that now that JK Rowling is finished with this series, maybe she’ll do another one, this time with a girl as the hero.
For those of you who may not have been so inclined, I’d like to demonstrate how deeply Rowling gets at human nature in these stories. There are lots of messages in the book that I would call “spiritual” and not in the way most fundies worry about related to witches and warlocks. She wraps a lot of themes around the concept of “soul” and “humanity.” Using Voldemort and his supporters, who are called “Death Eaters,” she explores the dark side of these concepts.
The first of these was introduced in the third book (and my favorite of all of them) “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” The guards of the prison are “Dementors” and here is how they are described:
“When they get near me–I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.”
— Harry PotterDementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soul-less and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.
Now that’s some pretty dark stuff for a children’s book. At one point Harry asks his teacher Lupin why the dementors seem to be so attracted to him. As you may know, Harry’s parents were killed by Voldemort when he was just a baby and Lupin tells him that the dementors are especially attracted to those who have experienced trauma.
But Rowling, who has known death and depression in her own life, does some wonderful things with the anecdotes to dementors. First of all, when Harry has a brief brush with dementors, the clinic at Hogwarts (the wizarding school) treats him by giving him loads of chocolate to eat (Rowling also has a wicked sense of humor!). But, to battle off the dementors face to face, the spell he has to learn is the Patronus Charm.
The Patronus Charm conjures an incarnation of the caster’s innermost positive feelings, such as joy, hope, or the desire to survive.
The six and seventh book of the series focus on Harry and his friends trying to find and destroy the 7 “horcruxes” that Voldemort has created. This is another place where Rowling dives deep into the human soul to explain the depth of Voldemort’s evil as well as the power of humanity he has given up in the process. Voldermort wanted immortality more than anything else. As a young student he learned that if one commits the supreme act of evil – murder – your soul is split in two and you become less human. This prospect didn’t worry Voldemort though. That’s because he also learned that he could take one half of that split and put it in a “horcrux” to be preserved. The horcrux can be any object, animate or inanimate. But Voldemort doesn’t take any chances, instead of creating just one horcrux, he creates 7 – imagining this gives him immortality.
Here is how Dumbledore explains it all to Harry:
Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call “usual evil.”
But evil does have its limitations. Here’s Dumbledore again in the final book:
That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of children’s tales, of love, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.
Just how many times do you suppose Cheney’s soul has been split? I would venture to say that it has happened so often that what’s left intact is almost indiscernible as human. But still, he knows nothing…nothing of children’s tales, of love and innocence. And therefore, there are mighty forces of power that will forever remain beyond his grasp.
In case you haven’t heard already, the “Cheney/Voldemort 08” bumper stickers are available at Cafe Press. I just have to laugh wondering in the wingers will “get it.”
I loved Harry Potter also, the series certainly transcended being just books for children. I was consistently amazed at the underlying themes and how powerful the messages were. About family, racism, prejudice and much more.
The ridiculousness of all the Jerry Falwell types railing against the series being evil and enticing children into witchcraft was almost beyond belief but then again if Tinky Winky could be gay then Harry Potter could be beckoning children into witchcraft…
I know Cheney has been compared to Darth Vader also but Voldemort seems so much more apt.
I read that she is writing a mystery as her next book and like you I wish her main character would be a girl or woman.
I don’t know which character is a better comparison for Cheney – Darth Vader or Voldemort. I do think that the development of Darth Vader as someone who made choices and went over to the “dark side” was more developed. But I also agree with you that Rowling does a better job in delving into the “dark side” once it has emerged. I lost touch with the Star Wars movies when they seemed like one battle scene after another. It eventually got boring to me.
Vader did find his way back from the dark side in the end, distinctly different from his “peers”.
I recently finished the Potter book, also well after the initial surge. I couldn’t help but think of current events while reading it.
Yeah, the current event parallels, especially in the last book, were amazing.
One thing I didn’t write about in the diary, because I thought it would get too long, was the whole thing about purebloods (witches and wizards who were born into wizarding families) and mudbloods (those who have at least one muggle parent – regular humans). For those of you who haven’t read the series, Voldermort and the Death Eaters hate mudbloods and think the wizards should rule over the muggles.
All of this sets up a situation that is a parallel to many issues of racism and discrimination. I don’t know how much Rowling is aware of the controversy in this country over immigration policy – but it especially mirrored that situation as the Death Eaters demanded “proof” of family heritage.
I was immensely disappointed when that whole story line was left out of the movie(the 3rd one?)especially as this was a big part of Hermine’s character. I could picture her growing up, becoming a lawyer and going to work for an organization like the ACLU perhaps.
Actually, according to an interview with JK Rowling, that’s about what she did…. well, the Ministry of Magic equivalent, at least.
The whole subplot in the books about Hermione and the house-elves also was very good (and didn’t make it into the movies). What was interesting was the way most of the house-elves responded to her very fervent good intentions about their welfare… which could also be a comment on well-intentioned people who think they already know what’s best for the people they are trying to help.
But her activism does have an effect — on the way Harry looks at his relationships with Dobby and Kreacher, and so is vital to Harry’s success with his own quest.
Oh, and wasn’t it when Ron finally embraced her concern for the house elves in the last book that he finally got his first kiss??
I had really hoped she would do more with the whole House Elves theme. It’s a very deep and powerful part of the books that I think is often overlooked.
And it echoes western Christian morality too: Do unto others…
She really is masterful. There’s so much in these books.
Yes, and did we know before the last book that Harry’s mother Lily was a muggle? Remember in Snape’s childhood memories, he is the one who helps Lily understand her magical powers? So wouldn’t that make Harry a mudblood too? That was a bit of a suprise to me. I don’t remember it coming up in previous books.
It’s implied, since Petunia is Lily’s sister, definitely a Muggle, and some of the things she says to Harry about his mother early on make it clear that Lily was special for going to Hogwarts, etc. It’s also clear that Petunia was resentful and jealous of the attention her sister got, though the full story doesn’t come out until the last book.
I love the Potter series as well. The humor combined with the understanding of the depth of the human condition is unparallelled.
People fear what they don’t understand. Hence the attacks on the books by the fundys and the dismissal of them as pop culture mind candy by certain types of intellectuals and cultural “elites”.
And JK Rowling’s understanding of the complexity of how kids grow and make choices on their way to becoming who they are is probably one of the best expositions of all times.
The chocolate cure for the dementors attack is probably my all time favorite.
I think Rowling was pretty brave and pushed the envelope in taking on so many dark and yet meaningful themes in a children’s book. But in the end, she shows tremendous respect for children – their feelings and their choices. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t part of why the kids love the series so much.
I always got impatient while reading the books, for the end when Dumbledore would have his “talk” with Harry and share his wisdom. In one of the earlier books, can’t remember which one, but the theme is Harry finding out how much he has in common with with Voldemort, Dumbledore says something like this:
Our lives are not determined by our capacities, but by the choices we make.
That is SO TRUE… You really do get to watch the main characters grow up and mature. They make mistakes–sometimes serious ones. I loved that Harry spent most of Order of the Phoenix being an angry adolescent, resentful of being left out of things by the adults who were trying to protect him, because what was going on felt so very personal to him and he needed to feel he was doing something about it. (And yet if he hadn’t put so much energy into being pissed off, he might have remembered the gift Sirius gave him — the magic mirror — which would have allowed him to communicate with his godfather at crucial times when he felt most in the dark, or when he feared Sirius was in great danger. Like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, he already had what he most needed — he just didn’t realize it. (a lot of the difficulties characters have to face in the series are basically a failure to communicate…SO very true to life!)
I loved the fact that all the “good” characters had blind spots and flaws that sometimes worked against them, and yet somehow they managed to do good (most of the time) anyway. I liked that the grown-ups made mistakes, and that Harry’s father was not perfect. I also liked that the “bad” characters had more than one side to their personalities — and that there were very good reasons why they made the choices they made. The care Rowling put into working out the life stories for the major characters — so you understand their motivations and reasoning.
I also really loved how intricate the chain and web of interrelated events and connections were. Harry is introduced from the first book as someone with a destiny to fulfill — and as the story continues and gets more complex, his destiny only looms larger. In the end, Harry and only Harry can face Voldemort and destroy him forever. But he didn’t get where he had to be in order to meet that fate by himself. He had a LOT of help from his friends along the way. All through the books, there are a lot of small actions taken by Harry or someone close to him that keep building up — one thing leading to another — relationships and connections made, secrets discovered, choices and consequences. All those small actions lead to other actions, which inspires others to take action, or make a small difference that ultimately moves Harry closer and closer to that last chapter.
The difference in a fictional story, of course, is that we get a much clearer vision of how all those choices and random acts of kindness actually connect and have an effect on Harry and his fate. In real life, we don’t get to see that, we only see our own story in full detail. We don’t know whether our choices and actions — the random acts of courage, of kindness and compassion, the hours of dedication to a single task, ultimately pay off. But if we do nothing… that’s what will happen. If we take action, we start a snowball rolling downhill, even if we never see it when it gets to the bottom.
(I’m not entirely sure I’m being coherent… it’s just what struck me after finishing the seventh book, that ALL the other characters had at various times, through their choices and actions, played a part in how the story ultimately ended — and without those other supporting characters and the things they do, and the connections Harry makes with them, Harry could never have succeeded. Every effort mattered, even if it wasn’t clear at the time.)
Anyway. Loved the series… so much packed into those books. And even kids (and adults) who normally don’t much care for reading took the time and effort to read these massively thick, complex but thoroughly engaging and magical books. Which is the coolest thing of all…
Thanks Janet.
One of the characters that really illustrates what you’re talking about is Neville Longbottom. He looked like a total looser in the first books, but became a powerful part of the solution in the end. I just LOVED how his grandmother showed up all fiesty in the final battle too!!