Posted on 07/21/2007 5:18:11 PM PDT by JenB
So you finally know what happens to Harry. All our questions are answered. Or not. What are your reactions? Whose death hurt the most? Do you want more, and about whom?
SPOILERS are ok on this thread! You have been warned!
Wow. It's over.
I remember you saying that.... good call..
I knew Snape had to be in love with her but I never guessed it was from so young...
I’d sure love to know how Lily and James got together because she didn’t really think too highly of him and his attempts to get her to go out with him.
Next Book : “Lily and James - Life Before Harry”
I know what you mean... maybe the next book will be
“Harry Potter BC” (Before Children)
I think she started to like him when he saved Snape from Lupin. ANd Snape then began to really hate James because not only did he save his life but also because he knew Lily had changed toward James. That’s just my thought on that. :)
I also had another prediction that was way off though. :) I thought Neville’s toad was an animagus. That was way off. :)
I finally finished reviewing all the posts and I love the insight presented. I am a casual fan, I guess. I have seen the first four movies and just a month ago decided to read the books. I bought the paperback set and would read one, see the move, read the next, see the movie, etc. I got a copy of this last book on Monday and finished it Wednesday morning.
Here are a few of my impressions and fantasy epilogue scenes:
I would have loved to see Snape join the Marauders and Lilly as they escorted Harry through the forest. It would have spoken to redemption, forgiveness, and to the acceptance Snape so fervently craved and deserved.
I would have loved to see Dudley at the train station, proudly escorting one or more of his children onto the Hogwart Express.
I would have loved to see Draco reformed and married to a mudblood.
It would have been great to see the children of other magical peoples boarding the train, like little elves or goblins or centaurs.
I was impressed by the theme all the way through the series and emphasized at the end that Harry always felt he was just an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances. From the moment he discovers he is a wizard (But I’m just Harry, just Harry)to the comment to Ron in this book about how he has tried to convey that heroism isn’t that exciting, to the end when he, in his kids’ eyes is “just Harry”. Notice that his son Albus wondered why kids were staring at his dad (and even though Ron took credit, they all knew it was Harry who was famous), and that Albus Jr. had never heard the story of the Sorting Hat, I believed it meant that Harry and Ginny downplayed the whole event and tried to carry on as an ordinary family. I think it spoke to the value of common things in life, even in the shadow of extraordinary challenges that pop up from time to time.
I wasn’t bothered by the baby image at King’s Cross. I took it to be either LV’s soul as a whole or at least the portion now destroyed. Either way, it put me in mind of the scene in The Great Divorce where the narrator wonders why the woman isn’t sad that her husband has rejected the offer of heaven and is piteously moaning his condition and loneliness. The wife, explains the narrator’s guide, is no longer subject to the kind of pity that lets evil hold good hostage to its demands. Heaven would not be heaven if its happiness could be dampened by the wailing of those who made different choices in their lives.
Family seems to animate all the characters. Lack of it, surfeit of it, desire for it, comtempt of it. In the end it either saves or destroys every character. If this series can in any way keep families from breaking up, I would consider it a triumph of the highest nature, regardless of what some think of its literary merit.
There are a lot of unexplained things in the book, which is a reward to those who don’t care to have things laid out like a banquet. Perhaps some of it is oversight by Rowling but perhaps some if a nod to the intelligence of her fan case.
I have nothing but respect for anyone who can invent a plausible, coherent “other world” and live in it herself long enough to produce seven bestselling books. I haven’t followed the fan writings or interviews or such and I probably won’t but I enjoyed spending a few hours without having to fuss about mortgages, garbage days, running out of toilet paper or the latest gasoline hike. May she live long and prosper.
We never get the future we planned...
About the same as the difference between a street cop and a SWAT team. Same basic function, maintaining societal order, but different skill sets and 'clientele'...
No, she says in Fantastic Beasts that Crookshanks is part kneazle.
Kneazles? Don’t you mean measles? < /old joke>
Modern tragedies are basically existentialist writings by another name as I’ll say again and again.
“Any existential roots they might have are really just a demonstration of the problem of boxing stories not the bastardization of the form.”
If the author subscribes to the philosophy that death and life has no meaning, then it is existentialism.
“And in modern tragedies the death is ALWAYS the main character, main enough that they’re often even the title character. The structure exists, you just need to accept that it’s real and legitimate, you might not like it but that’s not the structure’s problem.”
The title character isn’t always the protagonist. In fact, in much of modern literature he/ she isn’t.
“But his pseudo-death didn’t actually beat Voldemort, only part of him. Voldy would still be plenty of a threat even with no horcruxes, so without actually accomplishing the defeat the death lacks meaning. It might not be completely meaningless but it’s still hollow.”
Harry’s death was necessary to defeat Voldemort.. He was a horcrux, thus as long as he lived, Voldy was going to live. As I pointed out at least ten times, the final confrontation could have been structured in a way that Voldemort was destroyed after he killed Harry. In fact, as I pointed out, it makes no dramatic sense that the snake was killed after Harry... It would seem to me that Harry should have been the last horcrux destroyed.
“She said she wrote the end years and years ago. Maybe the way she wanted to end it all along was just exactly how editors would request. At this particular juncture I don’t think editors and publishers have much power over JKR. She’s the goose that can choose to stop laying golden eggs whenever she wants, they need to keep her happy not the other way around.”
Perhaps you are right... But that speaks ill of her as an author. The ending, especially the Epilogue, was clearly pandering.
B. Some of the whining and calling of troll does suggest that hardcore Harry Potter fans are not really open to criticism of their favorite book. I happen to believe that unlike math or science there’s more than one answer regarding a book, and each answer should be open to interpretation. I have serious issues with the book.. the most serious of which was the ending. I also think that it happened to be deathly boring in the middle and didn’t spend enough time at Hogwarts, etc.
C. “bratty child.” Name-calling is the only thing that I hate more than grammar, spelling issues taking the place of real debate. Please keep it civil or I’ll have to report you to the moderators.
http://www.mugglenet.com/app/news/show/1129... Like OMIGOD!!!
Troll.
People fudge the truth all the time... Why would Rowlings be any different...
And of course, she’s pandering. HP became to commercial for its own good and the last book suffered because of it. It seems like Rowlings was more interested in making sure the teenybopper set goes to the next two movies than actually writing a good book.
Just because I disagree with you???
Because I disagree with you perhaps???
“There was a person on another Harry Potter thread who claimed her misuse of grammar and punctuation (and she had previous claimed an English Lit degree) were because she was talking to us stupid people. Not a good way to try to score points.”
I never claimed that anyone was stupid... I do make funny of the teenybopper set but I find them annoying on principle. There can be annoying people on both sides of the issue; however, that doesn’t make the point valid. I hate to tell you this, but people kinda don’t always agree with you. I learned this when I was about eight.
“Obviously you are one of the few who feels the epilogue was badly written. Sorry you feel that way but she can’t please all of the people out there, especially when some wanted Harry dead and many wanted him to live. Too bad you didn’t enjoy the book, but a lot of us did, including people older and more mature than yourself, so don’t act like we’re all stupid immature teenagers because we don’t see things like you do.”
I think that being unable to accept the fact that someone has a different opinion than you even more immature... I think that you’re entitled to your opinion.. I will however disagree with you and post my opinion point out why you are wrong. This is called a debate.
Very few are able to...
Ah, but the books are so well plotted that we expect them to be perfect, like Harry, Ron and Hermione keep saying Harry's cloak is throughout DH, forgetting that Moody's Eye, when worn by Barty Crouch Jr. in GOF, could see Harry through the cloak. I at first considered that a continuity flaw, but finally decided that it was in character for Harry to forget the exceptions that disprove his various obsessions throughout the series. I don't recall him ever mentioning this to Hermione or Ron, who might be more inclined to remember the shortcoming, although I'll have to check that when rereading 1-VII. The other two of the Deathly Hallows were well proven not to be as perfect as the children's story claimed, neither is the Cloak.
However, I believe I did find a continuity flaw on p. 194 within Kreacher's tale:
He [LV] made Kreacher drink all the potion.... He dropped a locket into the empty basin.... He filled it with more potion.Who or what refilled the basin after Regulus drank it and Kreacher swapped lockets? And who or what refilled it again after Dumbledore drunk what seems to have been the same potion. The basin was full when LV checked by turning the potion clear to see no locket. You could argue that the basin automatically refills itself and she could and perhaps should have written that, but she didn't and LV really didn't need such a feature. LV filled it himself. He certainly didn't personally refill it the next two times; he'd have discovered the theft. Kreacher didn't say he refilled it, nor did Harry and Dumbledore refill it in HBP. Hopefully she'll explain in her forthcoming Encyclopedia.
Harry Potter can be not just the savior (lower case for the Zealots!) of the Wizarding world. He also can be the savior of Muggles. Today too many validate LV's opinion of Muggles. They claim they are enthroning us, but their throne would be his. Muggles worthy of Harry, Hermione and the Weasleys' good opinions need to quibble with the big throne types and convert them to work for a world in which no wizard, goblin, elf or Muggle sits on a throne over the rest. Harry's story has the power to convert many. If they won't convert, stop mollycoddling them. Give them the full Molly!
"Sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you've got to think about the greater good! This is war!" — Harry Potter, DH, p. 568.
I thought that Ginny was actually used pretty effectively in Book 2. As well as being an integral part of the plot, I think that she was symbolic of all the little wizard girls out there who had a crush on Harry.. Just when I was eight all the little girls had crushes on the New Kids on the Block and when I was fifteen all the teenyboppers had crushes on Leo DiCaprio and went to see Titanic ten times. I think that the actually Harry and Ginny relationship was thrown into the end of the HBP because Harry must have a love interest... It made very little sense and unlike Ron/ Hermione (which was brewing for seven books), seemed very unbelievable.
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