OotP Chapter Thirty-Six
Jun. 27th, 2008 09:51 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock*ETA: This was an interesting re-read, because there turned out to be a lot in this chapter I'd gotten wrong before.
*Not too flattering a title, is it, Albus? We were gonna call it "Coolest Bad Ass Wizard Ever" but this sounded more dramatic.
*Voldemort: Seventy years old, the terror of Great Britain, immortal and still terrified of his old Transfigurations teacher.
*ETA: No, we never will get an explanation for why Dumbledore doesn't tell the world who Voldemort really is, and why the good side doesn't just take to calling him "Tom" themselves. It would have avoided that whole taboo thing and really gotten under his skin as well--far more than "U-No-Poo."
*Thanks for taking care of all those DEs so quickly, Dumbledore. Why does the fate of the WW rest on Harry’s shoulders again? Couldn’t you just mop this up yourself?
*Apparently Sirius is dead now. If you don’t believe it it’s because you just can’t handle the dark realism that is OotP and not because, you know, death doesn’t actually work that way.
*Lupin is speaking as if every word is causing him pain—though not as much pain as Harry is feeling, remember. Lupin only shared an actual history with Sirius based on mutual friendship and understanding. Harry has all that bonding he could have had with him.
*Harry chases Bellatrix. How dare she run away and try to keep Harry from counter-Crucioing her in self-defense! Yes, it is still self-defense, because Harry called it!
*Guess her craziness comes and goes.
*So you can just ask the doors to tell you which way to go now? Not much of a security system, is it? Too bad we didn’t know this before. Maybe the doors are just scared of Harry now because he really means business.
*Hatred rose in Harry such that he had never known before. Really? Because I’d think Harry would be pretty familiar with all kinds of hatred by now. He seems freshly intrigued by every single one, and is constantly surprising himself by how much he can hate people. Accept it, Harry. You just have the gift.
*And people think it’s silly when people write H/D or H/S. Doesn’t this universe sort of turn on the idea that hate and love are connected? In fact, that hate=love? True love is signaled by irritation with another person, and Harry, whose special power is how much he can love, spends most of his time hating. He mostly loves someone when he thinks he’s lost him/her, or when they're useful, or when he doesn't actually have to see them, talk to them, or deal with them in any way.
*ETA: It's scary that that was written before HBP, the book that proved that love makes everybody assholes. And also the book where Dumbledore tells Harry triumphantly that when he talks about Harry's great ability to love he actually is referring to a burning need for vengeance against Voldemort over the parents he doesn't remember.
*Oh, I’m sorry. Apparently what Harry was feeling wasn’t hatred (even though it was just stated it was) but a "righteous anger."
*According to Bellatrix, you have to really want to cause pain and enjoy it, you have to "mean it." How, exactly, did Harry not "mean it" when he cursed Bellatrix? Seems to me Harry actually has an innate talent for Unforgivables. And if there’s one thing I can tell you after 700 pages (this book alone) it’s that Harry knows how to enjoy the pain of others.
*ETA: As crazy as I thought Harry was here, even I never suspected that this exchange with Bellatrix actually was a *lesson* that Harry would triumphantly learn and ace as part of his "growth." Harry learns to control his anger enough to enjoy causing pain for the sake of causing pain. Um. Yay?
*ETA: Of course, at the same time this is undermined in the same book by Draco Malfoy being forced to Crucio against his will and clearly not enjoying it (too cowardly and weak).
*So are we really supposed to think that this little Crucio incident proves that Harry is fundamentally not like the DEs? Because this is another one of these moments where I think okay surely, the point is to show how similar they all are, and how Harry’s going down the wrong path. ETA: Well, what to say about this? Because I think the point is that Harry is still fundamentally not like the DEs *despite* having the same sadistic impulses. A path because the right path as soon as Harry sets foot on it.
*Really, I just always feel like as a modern hero Harry is just entitled to everything cool, good or bad. Like the way that any good qualities associated with cunning or ambition are demonstrated not by Slytherins but by the good guys. Similarly, sure we'll show the bad guys being evil in their use of torture, but there's also that bit of coolness in the ability to torture someone, so Harry gets that too. We don't want him to be one of those boring saint characters who thinks just because he's the good guy he can't be bad.
*ETA: When I first read this book I thought Tom Riddle came across like someone who hated because he loved too. Especially after all the drama of his speech in GoF about how nobody cared about him! And also the whole "my father left my mother when he found out she was a witch" sounded very different from what really happened. In HBP he is revealed as a sociopath. The weird thing about him being a sociopath, though, is the way he's then treated as if he's being a sociopath on purpose, culminating in Harry taunting him to "feel some remorse" to save himself as if he's giving him one of those famous "choices" even though there is no choice there. He can only show what he is.
*Why are these curses blowing things up and blowing things off statues? It’s like the CoS movie where every curse just knocked the other person into the air. If you throw a Crucio and it hits a statue, shouldn’t the statue just not be affected? Or crumble or groan inside or something?
*As usual Bellatrix must spend more time telling Harry how powerful and evil she is than hurting him. Show, don’t tell, Bella!
*She learned the Dark Arts from Voldemort. I remain confused as to exactly what these Dark Arts are and how they differ from the Non-dark violent hexing and cursing hobbies of the good guys, but it’s kind of interesting Voldemort himself teaches them. Did he teach the other DEs? Because it’s never seemed that the children of DEs know them. I wonder if you have to be a DE before you learn the Vampire!Bat Bogey hex.
*ETA: Somebody should make a list of all the conflicting message threads in the book. Like how Dark Arts are a sign of a bad wizard but of course good guys can also do them.
*NOW Bellatrix suddenly remembers to protect the prophecy.
*Why, again, could they not have accio’d the prophecy before? I think they suggested it might break or something, though that’s never seemed to be a danger with accio.
*Btw, the official spell of OotP is "Protego."
*Oh, hi Voldemort. Nice of you to join us. Err. What’s up?
*Tom’s button says he is at the Ministry: To be easily dispatched.
*"Months of preparation, months of effort...and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again." *snerk* Yeah, the plan was perfect if not for them. How do you expect to rule the world if you can’t take responsibility for your own stupid plans that in no way required all those months of preparation and effort--or any DEs, really?
*Does Bella think Voldemort has entered the MoM to hear her sniveling apologies Voldemort wants to know? No, but while we’re on the subject, why has he entered the MoM and how? And why didn’t he do it sooner and come get the damn prophecy? Why come now, after it’s destroyed? I would like to think Lucius is wondering that about now. There was obviously no need to go through all this subterfuge. All he had to do was wait until after 6pm and he could waltz in and take it.
*Harry would have been history if not for Dumbledore in this scene. Remember that when he’s bragging about fighting Voldemort later. He won't.
*It’s wrong for wizards to think that other races should serve them. This is illustrated by the way the fountain springs to life and helps Dumbledore, having been brought to life like puppets by his magic spell. Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Dumbledore's tomb should read: "Do what I say and not as I do."
*ETA: And by "wrong for wizards to think other races should serve them" I mean that House Elves are obviously made to serve them. That goes on the list too.
*Bellatrix’s spells now bounce off the statues’ chest. Guess that was part of Dumbledore’s spell.
*I’d just like to say that throughout this summary I keep accidentally typing "Voldemort" when I meant to say "Dumbledore." Hmm...
*The Aurors will be here soon. Any minute now. Yup, they’re on their way. Just a second. Hold your horses. Wizarding transportation is verrrry slow.
*Um, is it supposed to be wonderful that Dumbledore is above killing Tom because there are other ways of destroying a man? Because, uh, wouldn’t it just be easier to take Voldemort out?
*ETA: Ah, it's the Horcruxes thing. That explains why he can't kill him. But it doesn't explain why he shouldn't kill the soul bit standing in front of him. Surely that would make it easier to hunt around for the other Horcruxes, wouldn't it? While he was searching for another body or something? You don't have to do this one last.
*But since we're not yet going to be told about the Horcruxes and Dumbledore doesn't want Voldemort to know he knows, he'll give a reply that is apparently supposed to make sense, that he's not killing him becuase that wouldn't satisfy Dumbledore enough.
*Dumbledore now reminds me of Tim, the Enchanter, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, showing off with his foolish wand waving.
*Harry and Voldemort are locked together, experiencing the kind of pain usually only found in h/c fanfic, but then Harry realizes he’ll see Sirius again when he dies and the incredible power of love separates them. *ETA: This is, like, the fifth time in five books that Harry has realized that death is just a visit to happy fun land of people who love you. This is the problem with the whole WE'RE SAYING SOMETHING ABOUT DEATH! thing. If you've got happy ghosts and somebody that sure that people are waiting on the other side, it's not really death as experienced in the real world. And you can't make it freshly scary again every time you want Harry to be brave about it.
*Hello, here’s everyone else at last, arriving by floo, the very fast transportation which has still kept them from arriving until now.
*The elf and the goblin are applauding. Yeah, this is nothing like the statue’s original message at all. Now all we need is for the centaur to bend over and kiss Dumbledore’s arse. ETA: Seriously, the whole "relationships with other races" is such a weird confident 19th century hierarchy of peoples cake spread over with a thin layer of politically correct frosting.
*Dumbledore says Fudge has been chasing the wrong man for 12 months. Does he mean Sirius? Well, I guess now he’s dead it’s safe for Dumbledore to start proclaiming his innocence.
*Dumbledore orders Fudge to let Hagrid come back to Hogwarts. What a tragic ending.
Designated Hero
I think this applies here to the Crucio scene, simply because of the torturous attempt to turn Harry’s moment of sadistic hatred into a sign of his pure, compassionate soul. ETA: I stand corrected. It was not a sign of Harry's pure, compassionate soul (pure and compassionate as his soul nevertheless is). It was a sign that he hadn't reached his full level of hero-ness yet. You have to give him somewhere to grow.
Hero’s Death Battle Exemption
See: entire chapter
IITS
Voldemort would never come to the MoM! Except right now! Because it’s important he come now. To get the prophecy. Which he now knows is destroyed. So maybe he’ll just kill Harry now. Which he couldn’t do without the prophecy before. For some reason.
Idiot World
Dumbledore has already read and put this rule into action. He just doesn’t choose to assert his authority as lord of the universe until Harry gets tired of the fun of being TBWL.
Informed Attributes
You can not possibly compete with Bellatrix! She knows Dark Arts only Voldemort can teach! She knows how to throw the deadly...Protego!
James Bond Exposition Rule
With the added plus that Voldemort isn’t just telling us about his months of planning, but whining about how the DEs screwed it up.
Jason’s Rule of Explosive Endings
All spells cause explosions in a climax!
McGuffin
Although the prophecy has been pretty much revealed as useless, it’s still driving everything in the chapter!
Misdirected Answering
Err, well thanks for telling us why you’re NOT at the MoM, Voldemort, but why ARE you here? Or more to the point, why weren't you here BEFORE instead of all these other people?
Superfluous Racking
Bella does a little of this, probably as a tribute to the fallen Lucius.
Whooshing Powder
In case you were wondering, the floos do actually still work at the MoM.
Final score: 12
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 03:14 pm (UTC)Any lasting respect I had for him as a character vanished the minute I read this scene. It's like JKR decided "Uh oh, I'd better send Voldemort on a pointless trip to the MoM where Dumbledore will quickly and easily dispatch him with no lasting consequences to the plot, whatsoever, just so that people don't forget about him."
No one seems to have explained to Ms Rowling that villains are scarier when we don't see them, personally, but rather their sinister influence. As it is, we've got some melodramatic, noseless twerp who can never again be terrifying thanks to how often we've seen him bitchslapped at the hands of Dumbledore for plot purposes.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 04:27 pm (UTC)ITA. This was Harry trying a new spell for the first time, and he almost got it right. What has he ever got right on the first try before, except flying?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 04:33 pm (UTC)No one seems to have explained to Ms Rowling that villains are scarier when we don't see them, personally, but rather their sinister influence.
Which is why I think that the Ministry is the true villain of the series. JKR desperately tries to make Voldemort scary, but, true to form, she doesn't succeed. The Ministry, OTOH, has the power to affect the life of our heroes. Voldemort's brand of villainy is far-fetched, whereas the Ministry's self-serving bad guys are very recognizable from RL.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 05:08 pm (UTC)Especially since he can come right back after dying, himself.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 06:14 pm (UTC)Yeah, that one always annoyed me. It's not like Voldemort can't be killed - the only thing that makes him different from other wizards is that there is a (apparently very complicated and time-consuming) way of restoring him to life after he has died. Killing him would at the very least buy the heroes some time, and at best, they might even be able to stop the Death Eaters from restoring him again.
And come to think of it, isn't it a bit odd that Voldemort, who we are constantly told is obsessively self-sufficient, relies on a means of immortality which makes him depend on other people to stay loyal enough to him to him to bring him back every time he dies?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 06:23 pm (UTC)Also, Umbridge - and the Ministry in general - feels like they fit into the world, which is after all a rather silly world with wizards with funny names running around in strange outfits and being fussy and small-minded. The Ministry is the kind of villain that would exist in a world like that. Voldemort, on the other hand, is far too melodramatic for the setting - you keep getting the feeling that he took a wrong turn on the way to an epic fantasy story...
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 06:28 pm (UTC)ETA: No, we never will get an explanation for why Dumbledore doesn't tell the world who Voldemort really is, and why the good side doesn't just take to calling him "Tom" themselves. It would have avoided that whole taboo thing and really gotten under his skin as well--far more than "U-No-Poo."
Not only would it have avoided the whole taboo thing, it would probably have hurt Death Eater recruitment if the Pureblood nuts knew he wasn't, y'know, actually a Pureblood. He'd have still gotten a ton of people, but I bet the really obsessive families like the Blacks would've been less supportive of him had they known anything about his backstory.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 06:36 pm (UTC)Yeah, there's only one exception to this that I can think of, and he's very special case (and probably debatable).
But even keeping this in mind she could have done a better job with Voldemort. If he'd shown up all the time, but actually been a true match for Dumbledore, it wouldn't have been quite so bad. As it is, his incompetence makes everyone look bad, including the good guys.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 07:18 pm (UTC)Naively, I used to think that Voldy's use of Harry in his resurrection ritual would be somehow significant and give the latter an unlikely chance to defeat the former in a mano-y-mano duel that Rowling seemed so irrationally (for somebody whose hero is a bumbling child) fond of. Naturally, it turned out that DD didn't want to steal even a crumb of Teh Chosen One's glory.
And yes, Horcruxes seem to be a rather odd choice for somebody who wants to be invulnerable and wholly independent as well as immortal. Maybe LV thought that he'd be able to do more in his vapor form?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 07:41 pm (UTC)Also, if Harry then survived it--as a baby--then Voldemort would truly have been marking Harry as his equal. And it would give more support to the (barely mentioned) idea of Harry as a potential new Dark Lord.
Which might make Dumbledore's action in hiding Harry with the muggles more understandable. Well, that wasn't so strange an idea. What turned out to be strange was Dumbledore hiding Harry with the Dursleys and then completely ignoring him for ten years--allowing him to become so mistreated. Wouldn't you want to ensure that your Chosen Boy develops some affection for Muggles? It wasn't like Dumbledore didn't have a spy planted next door--who was aware that if Harry was so abused that if she even tried to make his visits enjoyable they'd be taken away.
...Are we sure that Voldemort is the stupid one?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 07:44 pm (UTC)Quite the talent for dark spells, this boy has.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 08:09 pm (UTC)It is only dark if other people do it. But when "Full of Pure Love" Harry does it then it is all sweetness, light, candy canes and goodness. Remember when Harry tortures it is his noble blood showing proof of his true goodness in the world.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 04:35 pm (UTC)That was always something that bugged me about the whole Horcrux setup. If you divide your soul in two, then surely destroying the your body is just as effective as destroying the Horcurx, with the added bonus that it stops you running around.
Maybe the act of creating Horcruxes makes your body invulnerable like they are, so it has to be killed with Magic Horcrux Destroying Juice.
Or maybe JKR was just making it up as she went along.
Then of course there's the question of why the hell everything had to be left up to Harry, why Dumbledore didn't do something about Voldemort while he was still freaking incorporeal and so on and so forth.
Gosh, anybody would think that this series was really badly thought out or something.
-- Dan Hemmens
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 07:37 pm (UTC)An e-mail exchange this last week just reminded me of the fact that orphanages didn't keep kids until they were *of age*. It only kept them until they were old enough to legally *work* for a living. By the time Tom was asking Dippett to let him stay for the summer, he had turned 16 and the orphanage probably wouldn't have had him back.
No idea as to whether Rowling is aware of this. Quite possibly not, for there is no hint of it anywhere in the series. But I knew about it and had completely missed it until it was pointed out to me.
Maybe the stupidity is catching.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 08:02 pm (UTC)I think it's this, the celebration of Harry's hate, that leads me to connect this series with the hate-filled propaganda of the Nazis. It's not that the series itself encourages children to hate a specific group, or that JKR herself would do that sort of thing either (I think she'd be horrified at the idea, honestly). But when hate is encouraged and nurtured and you're told that your hate is good and righteous and the object of your hatred totally deserves it... I think it can easily lead to Really Bad Things. (Like say, putting a permanent mark on the face of someone who wronged you.)
Which is why I was so sure this aspect of Harry was something he was going to need to learn a lesson about, and why I was so horrified when it wasn't.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 12:46 am (UTC)But, turns out Harry's got a built-in radar for these sorts of things. He thought Draco unworthy because Draco was unworthy. Which means Harry's hatred of Draco was righteous. Which is incredibly convenient.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 01:43 am (UTC)It's hard because I know it so easily sounds like you want the character you like to do something awesome. But it's not even like the story is saying anything about how people sometimes don't take the chances they're offered, because it's too clear that their inferior characters just make it impossible. It's like Harry's final taunts to Voldemort about feeling remorse. There's no real suspense that he could feel remorse because he's a psychopath. Which is great because Harry as written couldn't handle that anyway. As I said in the other place, this is a story where Harry winds up controlling everyone who ever stood against him--not literally, but you know, in a sort of meta sense--so he grants them forgiveness, he says how much respect they've earned. They all acknowledge in some way his greater control or power compared to them.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 10:34 am (UTC)-L
tl;dr warning
Date: 2008-06-29 11:12 am (UTC)Oh, it's easy to prove that Harry's exceptionally loving. When he agrees to die in order to defeat Voldemort, his sacrifice parallels his mother's, only better. Lily's willing death protected her son; Harry's death benefits a whole bunch of people. Therefore he must be even more loving than Lily. He loves humanity. Love for individuals would only get in the way, and besides, it might make him think twice about going to his death. So how come he's so good at hating people, you ask? Because, um...it's the flip side of his greater-than-average capacity for love that I just proved?
In HBP he is revealed as a sociopath. The weird thing about him being a sociopath, though, is the way he's then treated as if he's being a sociopath on purpose, culminating in Harry taunting him to "feel some remorse" to save himself as if he's giving him one of those famous "choices" even though there is no choice there. He can only show what he is.
I've been thinking about this. In genre fiction you get two kinds of sociopaths. The sort who came off the DSM-IV checklist are like evil robots pretending to be human: arrogant, sadistic, without feelings. Other people are like insects to them. The Dexter/Tom Ripley types are more sympathetic. They have a compulsion towards cruelty but aren't completely antisocial, in that they respond to care and prefer some people to others. Unlike the former kind, they can be made to internalize a sort of basic conscience.
Voldemort has traits of both types, but assuming DH is the final word he reads to me as a Dexter who never got his intervention. He feels something for Snape; one of the shocks of DH was that the Dark Lord was at least as attached to Snape as a normal person would be to their favorite comfy chair, which is more than you could say for Dumbledore. Maybe a smart, loving parent figure could have socialized the boy Tom eventually. But it would take a lot of physioterapy of the soul. Absent such a figure, he's not to blame for "choosing" not to develop a conscience (in the WW environment? it is to laugh), any more than a plant chooses to wilt if it's not watered.
-L
Re: tl;dr warning
Date: 2008-06-29 04:31 pm (UTC)Re: tl;dr warning
Date: 2008-06-30 03:10 am (UTC)This reminds me of a fanfic I read as a guilty pleasure because it was such a Dumbledore bash-fest. It was started before DH--and I think it was finished before it or shortly afterwards. I don't actually recommend it, because it was too hurt/comfort for me.
But one thing I found interesting was that Voldemort was quite caring about Snape. At one point, there is a danger that Snape's ability to reproduce has been compromised, so Voldemort goes to some length to secure an operation for Snape.
In the meantime, Dumbledore is trying to care about Snape and not having much success. And everyone, including Flitwick for goodness' sake, is raking Dumbledore over the coals for it.
politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-06-30 02:09 pm (UTC)That actually describes most of what's going on in the book. If there's one thing I've realised reading through all these comments and posted things it's that there is a massive massive gap between what Rowling is saying is going on and what actually is going on.
The most obvious one I can think of now is the Cho-Ginny one. What's being said to us is that Cho is weepy and therefore useless/pointless/girly/all the things the generation after the femenists were programmed not to be, whereas ginny is brave/strong/intelligent/everything every good girl should be.
Whereas of course if you actually read the books in a true unbiased way, Cho comes across as a sensible normal girl whereas Ginny is an emotionally souless, antagonistic flirt. (It still angers me how Harry is annoyed at Cho crying, when anyone with any degree of emotional abilities can see just how hard she's finding everything, she shows a huge amount of inner strength in my opinion by getting to the end of fifth year without having a breakdown).
It's the same with the 'other races' and the same with the 'dark arts' and death and pretty much everything. Rowlings outer message shows that she's consciously making an effort to give the 'right' message (girls should be strong, races should get along etc) but the whole underlying burden of the thing comes through so very heavily in her writing.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-06-30 05:08 pm (UTC)In light of Rowling's statement to Lev Grossman that she wanted to "subvert" the genre...
(Does she even understand what the genre is? She also tries to claim that she didn't realize she was writing fantasy until she popped in a unicorn. Inconsistency, much? Posing? Putting on airs to be interesting? Trying to impress Grossman, who obviously holds fantasy in contempt -- even though he doesn't seem to know what it is either?)
...and the fact that she made it clear to every reader by the end of PoA that Tom Riddle was *not* the worst problem the ww had -- and yet apart from getting rid if him, *nothing* appears to have been resolved. And then she nails the coffin shut with that utterly *smarmy* little epiloge: I find myself wondering if she really *was* trying to create something on the order of 'Animal Farm', seriously underestimated the amount of work it would take, burnt out, couldn't "get her groove back", flailed about, trying to find something that would get her engaged again, and failed at it, and finally cobbled something, anything, together just to get the plot to the end of her outline. The whole project completely misfired (not that she will ever admit to it) and what we ended up with was more like "Lunatics' Asylum'.
Re: tl;dr warning
Date: 2008-06-30 11:48 pm (UTC)-L
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-02 12:12 pm (UTC)Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-02 04:19 pm (UTC)I do think that now that we can *see* how little of what appeared to be promising developments in the previous two books actually developed into anything that advanced the story, that there is no balking at the fact that they are really very inferior pieces of work too, and disgracefully padded, but at the time it was not clear that they were intended to go nowhere and merely give us something to spin our wheels about until the next dish of inferior pablum was served up. When we were still able to convince ourselves that they might *go* somewhere, it was possible to detect all sorts of potential promies in them. (The medium is the message, indeed.)
By now it is reasonably apparent that Rowling had completely burnt out by the time she turned in the ms for GoF. And it really is very difficult to blame an author for that. I don't think she was ever able to really get back into the series, and a lot of the things that are padding out the last three books now look remarkably like random ideas that she was flailing about with to try to get her own interest up again. Without success, appparently, since they either went nowhere, or would have required more effort to develop than she was willing to expend.
And by that point the media had weighed in and she had signed the contracts, expecting that she would get over the burn-out, and there was no way out in which she could save face, and, frankly, I would not want to go up against a contract dispute with Warner Bros, either. It was easier to spin her wheels and just generate babble to fill out the contract.
But there were the bones of a good series there. Or at least there were at the beginning. But she doesn't appear to have had a proper exit strategy, and what we ended up with is a train wreck.
Mind you, I do think that there was a monumental amount of unwarranted hype applied to Rowling, and her series, from the beginning. And I really do think that she never would have been able to pull this off successfully, because she really doesn't understand the genre she was writing in. Regardless of the surface similarity in appearance, fantasy is NOT folklore, and fairy tales are NOT fantasy.
The world of fairly tales is a murky hole where everything tends to boil down into some kind of psychodrama and nothing is quite what it claims to be. i.e., The "evil step-parents" who are really a euphamism for your *own* parents, who are out to thwart you. The Giants who intend to eat you, the evil witches who will either eat or enslave you, wolves in the woods, and all the rest of it. In a proper fantasy, the conflict is supposed to be *about* something that can be identified and which actually reads as a rational threat. It may parallel something that one can recognize in the real world, but it isn't supposed to be psychodrama.
DHs is. It's a fairy tale, it *isn't* a fantasy -- except in the "escapist" sense which has been giving fairy tales a bad name off and on all through the 20th century. And it is spliced onto a series which came across as at least an attempt at a proper fantasy adventure.
As to when did *I* lose faith, I was pretty sure after HBP that she just wasn't going to be able to pull it off. TO completely drop and refuse to develop virtually *all* of the new information she gave us in OotP struck me as a piece of bad faith on her part. But I have to admit that I would never have expected *quite* the level of epic fail that we ended up with.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 03:03 pm (UTC)All those disparate but compelling ideas that were kicking around GOF and OOTP were the remnants of her original story arc. But as you say, she miscalculated the work that would be needed to finish those stories and became overwhelmed. I think if she stuck to her guns, she could have had the power to hold back Warner Bros for a few more years. But instead we got a slapdash ending in the form of DH.
That recent horror show story with James and Sirius was another show of rebellion from her. She seems determined to strangle the story even further.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 03:31 pm (UTC)We were given ample helpings of "product".
But by the time the media showed up, the burn-out was already a factor, so I suspect the real question is whether we are better off with what we have, or if it would have been better in the long run for the series to have petered out in the middle, and remained unfinished. Because Rowling does not appear to have ever got back into the swing of things to finish the story that she *appeared* to have started out with.
Plus, of course, the original master plan was structurally flawed to begin with. There simply isn't enough *story* left at the end of GoF to justify three more books. Whether this is just because Rowling had lost too much momentum to be able to *develop* enough story, or if there simply wasn't ever enough potential story *there* I cannot really say.
But we really got something like a descending scale of relevance in each of the last books. Nothing that GoF built up to turned out to be relevant in the long run. She blatantly *dropped* what she had given us to play with in OotP. And she flat-out turned around and *contradicted* what she had given us in HBP.
I still think of DHs as the 759-page "Fuck you" note.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 04:05 pm (UTC)I don't know about that. I distinctly remember feeling very excited about the end of GoF, because it seemed like.. well I had the image of when a space probe uses the energy of arcing around the edge of the moon or a planet to gain momentum and shoot out into the vastness of space. As Dumbledore was gathering his troops, I thought, "This story is going EPIC!"
Which is why it was so bizarre and unsettling when, instead, the story imploded (like a dying star) into the singularity that was Harry's summer at the Dursleys with no news, no contact, and that strange hot weather that dried even the flower beds to concrete.
So, okay, the story didn't go in the direction I thought it was going... but, the various alchemical theories out there seemed to explain why (in terms of a direction), and I assumed it was still... out there. The connections to foreign wizards. The reaching out to other magical species. Until we hit the disappointment that was Hagrid's Tale.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 04:28 pm (UTC)Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 04:57 pm (UTC)Kids get a mystery, kids investigate mystery and solve it. Along the way, they and we learn something about that world. No need for those overwrought story changes that she got bogged down with in the end. It could have been "The Little Rascals", and that wouldn't have been a bad thing.
Re: politically correct frosting...
Date: 2008-07-03 06:59 pm (UTC)Oh, IMHO there was tons of story waiting there - story of a civil war. Only, critics slapped Rowling down for spreading out and getting "darker" - i.e. slightly more realistic. _They_ wanted light-hearted boarding-school "whimsy", utterly focussed on the trio, Quidditch, etc. And that's what she delivered, for whatever reason, in HBP. What a bizarre turn that was!
Anyway, as to irrelevance, a ton of things was left by the wayside even in the early volumes. I.e. Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets - which turned out to contain no secrets except for a giant reptile whose initial raison d'etre remained unknown, time-turner, which changed the whole main storyline of the series into an idiot plot - Sirius or whoever had only to grab one to save Harry's parents, etc, etc. It always seemed to me that JKR just had those vivid ideas, which she liked - maybe even visually, and she tried to stuff them into her plots with intermittent success.
Sometimes I think that maybe the series, in her original concept, was never meant to "develop". I mean the kids were never meant to grow up. They would have existed in stasis like Nancy Drew.
IMHO, the books wouldn't have been nearly as popular in such a case. And also, the kids "grew up" in PoA. Granted, JKR has been attempting to stuff them back into their pre-PoA bottles ever since...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 04:20 pm (UTC)You know, I've just realized a truly weird contradiction in Voldemort here. He wants to expunge all memory of Tom Riddle and use the grand name that he's chosen for himself--and yet he doesn't want anyone to say that name either. If he's trying so hard to create a new identity, surely he'd want people to speak the new name? Speak it with fear and respect, okay, but definitely to speak it. It would make more sense if he'd put the taboo on the name "Tom Riddle."
Surely that would make it easier to hunt around for the other Horcruxes, wouldn't it? While he was searching for another body or something? You don't have to do this one last.
Maybe you did at the time she wrote this, but she changed her mind during DH? But then, we do know that LV can be disembodied. Maybe the disembodied bit of him would have to be killed again after the last horcrux was destroyed, but that should be easier than killing the un-disembodied version.
Re: tl;dr warning
Date: 2009-02-18 12:00 pm (UTC)In the words of Linus van Pelt: "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand." So very true in Harry's case.