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.
The earlier books I could see being okay for seven year olds... The later books (no way).
If you wish to judge the books, you will have to read one, your drive-by post is insulting. OR, have you read one?
I've been thinking about that...
Harry is 17 throughout most of Book 7. Nineteen years later would make him 36. But wait! The Epilogue takes place in the fall, with students leaving for Hogwarts, which means Harry would have had another birthday, making him 37. Ginny would be a year younger, at 36.
Albus Severus is leaving for his first year at Hogwarts, at age 11. Ginny of course was also 11 years old for her first year, which means that Albus is departing for Hogwarts on the 25th anniversary of his mother's first trip to school.
It's sort of implied in the conversation on the train platform that young James is a year older than Albus, which means his first year at Hogwarts was 25 years after Harry's first year.
If you subtract twelve (James' age) from nineteen you get seven, the number of years between Voldemort's defeat and James' birth. Wondering what Harry & Ginny might have been up to, I did some figuring... allowing one year (roughly) from the wedding to James' birth, we can guess that Harry & Ginny were married no later than six years after Voldy's defeat.
If they both returned to Hogwart's to complete their studies, that's at least one more year, and possibly two if Ginny had to repeat her sixth year. If Harry took Auror training after that, that would have been another three years at least. That leaves a gap of two years between Harry becoming an auror and their wedding.
Here's some intriguing speculation: if Ginny also became an auror, and was still trailing Harry by a year, then we're only left with one year between the end of her training and the wedding.
Given Harry's fame, and the size of the Weasely family, I could imagine an engagement of at least one year for them to plan the wedding. Heck, a two year engagement wouldn't be hard to imagine... well, maybe it would be hard to imagine that either one of them would want to wait that long! But that pretty much accounts for the time between Voldy's end and Harry & Ginny's wedding.
BUT wasn’t the cup Goblin made.......making it a treasure of the Goblin’s, and thus they would not wish to see it destroyed?
One of my favorite scenes is when Tony Shaloub says, “Of course they’re minors. They’re like 3 years old.” The look Rickman gives him is so perfect, so condesending. “MinERS, not minORS!”
My husband loves him because he was the bad guy in the original Die Hard.
LMAO! Message received. ;-)
They shoulda eloped...
Yeah. The french are very grateful for us pulling their butts out of the fire in TWO world wars, aren't they?
Personally, I think the fact that the rest of the magical world was not mentioned while a common enemy to all (Voldemort) staged a coup d'etat in Britain was a huge plot hole.
I disagree. Several times in the book Harry receives indications that while the Death Eaters are consolidating their power in Britain, Voldemort is busy running around the Continent trying to track down the Elder Wand. The European magical communities probably mis-intepreted Voldemort's actions, and thought he was getting ready to make a move against *them*. They were probably too busy seeing to their own defenses to worry about what was happening in Britain.
So basically, the entire magical world left their comrades in Britain to suffer under a Communist style dictatorship.
I think it was a plot hole, rendering the whole premise of the Tri-Wizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire pointless.
But I still liked the book.
- Most “drama”/ serious books that work really follow three forms: Classic Drama, Classic Hero’s Tale, and Existentialism... I think that modern audiences because tragedy as defined by the news media and pop culture define tragedy as meaningless death... i.e. a little child murdered by a sexual predator would be considered a tragedy by the media. I think that the general public (and some commentators) confuse existentialist writings with classic tragedy.
I do agree with you that Existentialist writings aren’t popular with non- Upper East Side crowd... (I still think the Existentialists are interesting though... I’m a big fan of Hemingway). However, I don’t believe that Harry’s death (if Rowlings had chosen the proper ending)would have been meaningless. Harry’s death was meaningful because it was necessary to destroy Voldemort. What a wonderful and brave thing to willingly sacrifice oneself for one’s friends as Harry did! As a Christian, I know that there’s life after death, so I don’t see how Harry’s death would have been sad. I think that it would have been triumphant. Everyone dies, but very few of us are able to choose our death and die for our friends as Harry did.
They didn't take any part against Voldy's first run at power, either. For that matter, Dumbledore let Grindelwald run roughshod on the Continent for several years before finally raising a hand against him. It seems to me that there was precedent for the Continent to do nothing, especially when Voldemort himself, even after the fall of the Ministry, still controlled things from behind the scenes.
There were wizards in Britain who didn't want to take action against Voldemort, and they were directly threatened; for those on the Continent, what was happening in Britain must have seemed quite far away and none of their business.
rendering the whole premise of the Tri-Wizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire pointless.
It was the *hope* of the Tri-Wizard Tournament to build understanding and better relations among the different parts of the magical world... there was no real indication that it worked, though. After all, what real good do the Olympic Games do in that regard?
The fact that Rowlings gives Harry an opt out clause is a disappointing commentary on the book’s commercialism. I think that Rowlings meant to make Harry a martyr but her publishers made her go with the commercially correct ending that appealed to the teenyboopers instead...
I think Rowling ended the book in exactly the way she intended. It was a series intended for children after all, and a happy ending was completely appropriate for that audience.
This is the exact argument that fans have had for decades about Heinlein’s “Podkayne of Mars” where he wanted to kill her off at the end but the publishers wouldn’t let him. They were right, and you know why? Halfway through that story, Podkayne needs comforting and talks to her uncle, and he retells her favorite story from childhood, about little Podkayne and how the world was new and she swam in the canals and stared at the sky. And the real Podkayne told him to stop, he wasn’t making her feel better, but he continued with the part of the story she had always fallen asleep for:
“And then Podkayne grew up and had another little Podkayne. And the world was new again”.
That’s the kind of book Heinlein wrote without realizing it. That’s the kind of book Rowling wrote too. Sometimes it takes death to make the world new again. But sometimes it takes life, and she knows that.
However, I do think that by making people aware of this weakness; it will hopefully lead more people to be aware if anything were to happen.
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