the boy who lived dies, but then lives again. · Aug 3, 07:53 AM by j.
A brief history of my relationship with Harry Potter:
I was late in climbing on this train, skeptical to say the least. But after enough trusted opinions insisted on my reading of “the boy who lived,” I finally gave in. Truthfully, I myself could’ve lived without the first two books, though that’s not to say I didn’t fly through them, reading each one in only a day. They were great, but definitely written for kids. The good news is that as Harry grows up, so does the writing and subject matter; things get darker, scarier, and also, more romantic, meaning Harry starts to notice girls. And so I read three and four next, one right after the other, and eventually five and six, and if you haven’t read all these little Potter stories yet, here’s the way I’d suggest: Buy all seven, lock yourself in a room, and read. It’ll be just like that time you ordered a season of Lost from Netflix and hid in your living room for a week, only better. The details, the subtleties, the threads, will never get lost. The momentum will never stop moving.
And so to book seven, the big ending.
I have to say that as I closed the cover on that whopping 759-paged book, the first thing I felt was relief, then accomplishment, but then, disappointment. But why? Let’s cover the possibilities. Was I disappointed because it was finally over? Because there would be no more books (supposedly), no more adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione? Maybe, it is sort of sad. Truthfully, I miss them already.
Or was it because I just wasn’t happy with the ending? Because I must admit, when it became clear to me that Harry would have to die in order for everything to come together in the end, I was impressed with Rowling’s guts. Wow, she’s really going to do it, I thought to myself. She’s really going to kill Harry. I was sad, but as a writer, I understood it had to happen that way for the story to work. I imagined Rowling at her desk late one night, the moment she realized she would have to kill Harry in the end. What must’ve that moment been like?
But anyway, so then some things happen, Voldemort kills Harry, and then…wait a second, Harry’s not dead! He’s in some sort of train station/purgatory place having a nice little conversation with Dumbledore and then next thing you know he goes back to life to kill Voldemort, save the world, get married, put his little kids named after the deceased main characters onto the Hogwarts Express and assumably live happily ever after! Yay!
Except where are the details about Harry’s life as an adult? I mean, I don’t want to know the inner workings of he and Ginny’s sex life, but I’d like to know what the man who lived does for a living, wouldn’t you? Is he an auror? Are aurors even around anymore? Does he hope to be headmaster of Hogwarts? Or does he feel deeply depressed because he fulfilled his purpose in life at age seventeen and now the only place to go is down? Oh my God, is Harry one of those awful people whose golden years were high school?
Okay, okay, okay. It’s a kids’ book. I have to keep reminding myself of this. And maybe that’s simply why I was disappointed – because in order to be fair to the millions of children reading this book, Harry couldn’t die. What would the message be? Work hard even if no one likes you, be true to yourself, triumph over evil, then die. I mean, that might not be far from the truth but we don’t have to go around printing it out for kids everywhere.
Or maybe I was just disappointed because anything that is this built up has an irrevocable tendency to disappoint. One word: Sopranos. Sometimes an ending can just do no right.
But through all this, I am still impressed (read: jealous, envious) with J.K. Rowling. I am endlessly amazed with authors who can create entirely new worlds that pulse with such character and detail. For a long time my single complaint of the series was with the language – because it was written for children, I felt there was something lacking. Don’t get me wrong, the scenes are vivid, the descriptions spot-on, but clearly there are none of those heartbreakingly good sentences that you’ll find in the best of adult fiction. Never was there a sentence where I said, “Ouch.” But then I realized that these books are ripe with language, just not in the way I’m used to. Essentially, Rowling has created a brand new dictionary of words, amazing words: horcrux, hogwarts, auror, deluminator, polyjuice, slytherin, cruciatus, quidditch. It’s as if Rowling uncovered a brand new alphabet.
All things considered, the story of Harry Potter from beginning to end is inventive, original, and well worth the read, even if for the mere reason of not letting the countless private jokes understood only to Potter fans fly over your head like a runaway Snitch. Should you read it? Yes, all seven.
