Post Script to the *Potter* Series
*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows*
A 10-year-old claiming to have read the entire series eight times, observes this book leans heavily on coincidence.
Writer Sam Anderson, in his New York Magazine (August 13, 2007) review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, calls J.K. Rowling’s final installment a cop-out. Read on, there will be no spoilers here. Early reviews and ten-year-old’s opinions aside, Anderson’s logic regarding how Rowling “cops-out” leaves little room for argument.
Anderson points out that, “One of the big reasons we all read Potter so devotedly was that, unlike most kids’ series, there was something serious at stake. And she practically promised us Harry’s death with Book Six’s (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) prophecy about him and Voldemort – ‘Neither can live while the other survives’.”
That said, and the “morte” on the end of Voldemort’s name, Rowling does indeed promise. However, does she deliver? Does fate take Harry’s life? Alternatively, can everything Hogswarts has to offer serve to bridge the evil gap – that between the world as we know it, Harry and Voldemort?
Rowling stated in a recent press conference that she cried when writing this last installment. Does Harry meet death and Voldemort? He cannot avoid it any longer, particularly when the author is wrapping up the series, now can he? Readers have known since the beginning that Harry’s parents met a violent and fiery death in a car crash. To wit, Harry, an infant, survives and carries a nasty and telling scar on his forehead. Therefore, Harry has cheated death many, many times. The question is: Does Rowling also cheat her way around making the author’s ultimate sacrifice? No spoiling, as promised.
No doubt, the Potter series is epic in nature. Often epics earn their titles because the writer takes into consideration all aspects of epic writing. “Not since 1841,” Anderson tells us, “when Americans swarmed the docks to ask incoming Brits whether Little Nell died in the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop . . . have readers been so simultaneously poised on the brink of collective climax.” Little Nell does indeed die. Authors do not kill off their beloved characters simply to see how it feels. One’s hero, particularly when the entire world is at stake, must make the ultimate sacrifice: his very life.
In so doing, the author likewise makes a sacrifice. Writers will tell us whom a character may be based upon, in reality we are our characters. We put words in their mouths, love in their hearts and vengeance in their souls. When they die, we “die.” It is called catharsis, and both author and character must experience it until the bitter end. For Rowling, the arch should be complete, the story finished and the world restored. What readers know is that to accomplish such a feat, sacrifice is not necessary, it is mandatory.
Whether Rowling likes it or not, as Anderson so succinctly states, “She owed this ritual sacrifice to the immortal gods of narrative: either the life of her hero or – infinitely harder to pull off – his convincing and improbable survival.”
After all, isn’t a pure and virtuous hero exactly what Evil wishes to destroy? The heroic character is the character that must experience a complete catharsis. Good triumphing over evil isn’t supposed to be convenient. If it where, we would not have any stories. If the circle is left open, evil will find its way back in and good does not triumph. Only when our hero closes that gap with his own life and all that he embodies, is the circle closed and evil smited. More importantly, the world is safe for us all once more. The story then is truly epic, and “All was well” is rarely, if ever, the outcome.
Sources
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS
By J.K. Rowling, Arthur A. Levine Books
New York/August 13 2007/Books
By Sam Anderson
www.Amazon.com
