HPPS: the Tally

[chantaldormand]

So let’s start with fun stuff.

Times Seamus asked questions: 3

Times Hagrid screwed up and kids saved his ass: 5

Times Ron was seriously injured: 2

Harry’s superb gymnastic score: 3

Anti-intellectual score: 5

References to Tuesday: 2

Wizarding Etiquette lessons: 3

Times our Protagonist should have died: 30

Times good guys broke rules/law: 57

Times this commentator’s brain went to gutter: 10

Olympic score in Leaps of Logic: 44

Times secret society/plot should have been uncovered: 13

Spell Count: Albus: 2 Draco: 1 Hagrid: 1 Harry: 0 Hermione: 7 Minerva: 1 Neville: 1 Quirrellmort: 2 Ron:1

And for more visually minded people:

And now it’s time for my homework: pointing out more technical problems with this book.

Pacing

If I have learned something from being reader and writer it’s this: pacing can make or break your book.

Pacing in this book is all over the place. There were chapters where there was pointless drama or author artificially prolonged plot to reach over 200 pages. Then there were chapters where Jo remembered that she was writing book and not self indulgent fanfiction and rapidly pushed plot. There were chapters that ended abruptly not because of cliff hanger or some kind of plot hook, but simply because author ended current line of thought and couldn’t be bothered to set up things for the next chapter.

IMHO the book suffers greatly from book=school year format. There is not enough meat to the plot to last more than a few months

Thematic and Genre Confusion:

The first few chapters could lead a reader to conclusion that this is one of those stories where poor orphan through luck and hard work manages to improve his life situation and gains friends. A speed run through this book could make someone think that this is fantasy version of boarding school story. The problem is that this book is neither.

What it is then?

On basic level this is elite boarding school story with elements of fantasy setting and calling it fantasy book is doing a big disservice to both this book and the genre. Why I’m saying this book has only elements of fantasy and is not straight up fantasy book? Rowling never explores implications of magic existing in this universe and if Harry was say, barbarian warrior who believes that wizards are servants of Satan this would be perfectly alright. Yet Harry is a freshly minted wizard, who lives in wizard’s society and not only he isn’t curious about society he just have joined, but we only ever learn what Harry does in classroom when either it’s foreshadowing for future plot points or when Rowling tries to ridicule people/subjects/opinions. 

Underneath the basic reading lays something much more rotten.

In the beginning of this commentary I assumed that majority of religious overtones were Rowling using standard literary tropes or subconsciously falling back on what was familiar to her. Things start to get really strange in chapter 13 where presence of headmaster, whom he only met when he was reprimanded for taking mirror-drugs, makes our protagonist think he is ‘safe’. I could have ignored it if it weren’t for heavy-handed chapter 17. In this chapter Rowling not only pushes religious themes at reader, but uses language that fits in street preacher vocabulary. Even plot becomes religious metaphor.

In the end the plot is reduced to Satan (Voldemort), who always finds people “willing to let him into their hearts and minds”, is beaten by our hero’s ‘love’ and ‘purity’. The said hero manages to resist temptation and survive attack of evil forces thanks to presence of all knowing god. The resilience of hero is rewarded by the god. Everything hero does before the final chapter is reverted by god, so what is point in doing anything until the right moment? Especially if you are not one of chosen people?

Oh and apparently lying to others or ignoring facts is ok, because truth can be dangerous.

If I’ve to compare chapter 17 to anything then it would be Chick Tracks. The only thing this book lacks is the questionnaire at the end.

Normally I’m ok with authors using religious themes; be it consciously or subconsciously, but Rowling paints very ugly image of morality in children’s book and I’m not ok with that. If it weren’t for this ugliness hiding under mediocre plot, I wouldn’t waste my time dissecting this book and just put it back on shelf along with thousands of other mediocre children’s books.

The Protagonist

In normal books protagonist can be described by character traits. In this book protagonist has to be described by modes.

Harry has 2 modes: Plot Active and Plot Inactive. PA Harry makes leaps of logic worth of Sherlock Holmes and has maxed out gymnastic skill. PI Harry is mystified by 2+2=4 and constantly fumes over injustices inflicted onto him/his hate toward any active character.

If I had to describe Harry without book on hand I would have hard time doing so because his characterisation is all over the place.

Another thing I wanted to discuss here is the trio’s friendship.

They don’t work as a group of friends. 

The kids have absolutely nothing in common with each other. This is easier to see in Hermione-Boys connection, since she only spends time with them when she nags them or adventures with them, but Harry-Ron connection also is tenuous. Harry doesn’t enjoy playing chess and plays quidditch only for ego boost so I have no idea what those 2 talk about when there is no nefarious plots for Harry’s life. This could be easily fixed if Harry actually started living; exploring his new world, finding new hobbies, meeting new people. Anything but this situation where he is stuck in the same developmental stage.

Putting that aside, I think that Harry isn’t Hr&R friend, but they are his friends; that is Harry doesn’t treat them like friends. He doesn’t try to learn their birthdays, doesn’t get them anything for Christmas, often has dismissive attitude towards their justified concerns and he doesn’t try to do anything for them. Considering how he treats and describes Hermione pre-Troll Incident, I believe that if Hr&R weren’t useful to him, they would get Neville Treatment.

Tunnel Vision

Rowling’s characters suffer from tunnel vision and while this is quite normal for bunch of eleven year olds whose brains aren’t developed enough for serious critical thinking or Hagrid who is mentally 6 year old, when we see grownups with academic back ground (for example Albus and Minerva in the ch1) acting in such manner, it’s bewildering. The way Jo weaves her plots and how all her characters act leads me to believe that she herself suffers from this problem. There were many instances where I could see alternative ways to solve problems or lead plots that could either enrich existing story or outright lead it to much more interesting places, only to be disappointed by author’s choices. This tells me 2 things: Rowling lacked a person who would point out these things to her and I think I finally figured out why there is so many HP ffs: people enjoy exploring what ifs and adding original concepts onto HP world's lacklustre foundations.

Plot Holes

Once you peel off religious symbolism of the story, plot starts to fall apart. How Quirrellmort knew where the Stone is going to be? How Dumbledore knew that he must move the Stone? Why Harry needed to know how the Mirror works? Why hide Philosopher’s Stone in friggin school? I suspect that the answer is quite simple: Rowling started writing or at very least planning the story from the last chapter. Everything that doesn’t make sense or is unanswered steams from her need to create situations that would lead to the last chapter.

This is novice mistake that many first time writers make after reading all those self help manuals. Knowing how the story is going to end is very helpful, but rigidly holding onto planned end creates a lot of problems.

The Magic System

I’m not sure how Rowling managed to do that, but magic system in her world is both boring and incomprehensible. Normally author who screws up their magic system either over-explains it or makes it too mystical. Here magic is everyday thing that works however author needs it to work at the moment.

Conclusions

This books reads like polished first draft of first time author. It obviously needs an editor that would sit down with Jo and explain to her why and how she should rewrite her book.

Concepts in this books are good, but the author simply lacks skill and finesse to make them work for her.

I'm not surprised that so many publishers rejected HPPS, if this is how the book looked in the script form, but I wonder what exactly they said to it.

TL;DR: Chantal rambles about mediocre book, because she cannot make up her mind. Don't mind her.

Comments

[chantaldormand]

/Personally I think she should look elsewhere./

So do I! Especially after she did some growing up.
Unless Hermione changes her attitude toward muggles and grows up emotionally/mentally, I don't think she should be involved with a muggle. Even if Hermione lied in DH about her parents, it shows that Hermione thought about it enough to consider it to be a believable lie thus any relationship with non-magical person is bound to be very unbalanced in department of power dynamics.