I enjoyed some of the memories a lot. They were basically little stories within the story. As I've said before, JKR tends to be much better with backstory than she is with the present story. Whenever things play out in front of us they risk not being done as well--though she can still come up with good scenes, which these basically are.
Still, when you look at it in the end, none of this was essentially to the plot at all. I hear people talking about the movie and saying how that was the "whole plot" of the book but it really isn't. It's an interesting way to hang around, but it never goes anywhere since none of this stuff is at all essential to destroying the horcruxes. Dumbledore could literally have just told Harry that he thinks Voldemort has these things that are artefacts etc. This stuff seemed interesting because, at least for me, it seemed like the psychology was going to be important. We had to see what Voldemort did because that would show his weakness, what he was really after. Instead it didn't even give Harry the slightest idea of where to look for the damn things, and he mostly relied on the mind link.
But then, I honestly thought this book was setting up so many things. I totally thought in the end it was going to be about a reversal. Not the kids learning that they were really the bad guys or whatever, but seeing how their own behavior was often just as cruel or thoughtless blah blah blah...well, you probably know what I expected and totally didn't get. So you wound up with the obvious question of why they built their school with a bigoted house that they kept around just to regularly beat down again.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Part Two
Date: 2008-10-03 09:04 pm (UTC)Still, when you look at it in the end, none of this was essentially to the plot at all. I hear people talking about the movie and saying how that was the "whole plot" of the book but it really isn't. It's an interesting way to hang around, but it never goes anywhere since none of this stuff is at all essential to destroying the horcruxes. Dumbledore could literally have just told Harry that he thinks Voldemort has these things that are artefacts etc. This stuff seemed interesting because, at least for me, it seemed like the psychology was going to be important. We had to see what Voldemort did because that would show his weakness, what he was really after. Instead it didn't even give Harry the slightest idea of where to look for the damn things, and he mostly relied on the mind link.
But then, I honestly thought this book was setting up so many things. I totally thought in the end it was going to be about a reversal. Not the kids learning that they were really the bad guys or whatever, but seeing how their own behavior was often just as cruel or thoughtless blah blah blah...well, you probably know what I expected and totally didn't get. So you wound up with the obvious question of why they built their school with a bigoted house that they kept around just to regularly beat down again.