The best chapter by chapter breakdown of DH I've seen yet

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

"Dan Hemmens says a lot of hilarious (and very true) things about DH."


Thanks to valis2 for this!

Comments

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

I love this article! :D

I hate Potter now. Genuinely, vehemently hate it. I hate it precisely because I used to love it, and it angers me no end that the books I enjoyed, about a boy wizard and his boarding-school adventures, have been swallowed by this "phenomenon."

The Harry Potter books aren't "books" any more. They're events.

Yes! Yes, my opinion exactly, and stated better than I could have! That's really what it all boils down to for me. The first three books were, well, stories. You could see JKR sitting down and saying to herself, "I'm going to write the story about how Voldemort tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone." Or "I'm going to write the story about how Voldemort's diary possessed a girl and made her unleash a basilisk." Or "I'm going to write the story about how a murderer broke out of jail and terrorised Hogwarts."

After that it became "I'm going to write Harry's fourth year at Hogwards," "I'm going to write Harry's fifth year at Hogwards," "I'm going to write Harry's sixth year at Hogwards" and "I'm going to wrap up the non-plot from the last three books," respectively. She stopped sitting down to write a new story and started sitting down to write more Harry. And by then she had hordes of fans who didn't care about stories, because it was more Harry they wanted.

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

Exactly--it started there and went on and on sounding like this guy was in my head while I was reading DH. The only bright spot since POA for me was HBP where at least for a brief, shining moment we were able to get out of Harry's head.

I particularly loved his comments about Harry being the Only One Who Matters and his secret virtue is Doing Nothing. It always has been, really. The first time he "defeated" Voldy was by sitting in his crib drooling and it just gets worse from there.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

I particularly loved his comments about Harry being the Only One Who Matters and his secret virtue is Doing Nothing.

There's something very ironic about that. The idea that "doing something" is good is very much a modern Western idea. So is the idea that desire is an important part of leading a good life, that it's important to desire what is good and right--that, in fact, desiring good and right things is an essential part of being truly good, and without that desire, you're only doing good things by accident.

If this were written from, say, a Buddhist standpoint, where the goal is to vanquish desire and not become deceived by the world's illusions, then Harry-and-the-Hallows vs Dumbledore-and-the-Hallows would make a lot more sense. Or if its philosophy were at base Taoist, that would explain why "going with the flow" was valued.

But unfortunately, Rowling isn't writing from a Buddhist or Taoist standpoint. (Did you read Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists (http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-161.html), also by Dan Hemmens?) What she writes goes against the cultural context she's writing in.