Comments on: Deathly Hallows http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/ Random samplings from a universe of ideas. Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:17:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 By: BDF http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30492 BDF Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:24:47 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30492 I just finished reading the last Harry Potter book. Over the last five years, I’ve read all of them aloud to my wife and daughter (who is now ten years old). They’ve given us all a huge amount of pleasure—thank you very much, Ms Rowling. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the series: Essentially the saga breaks down into two parts: the first three are essentially children’s books; the last four are the Potter epic. I think Rowling’s great idea is the attempt to follow a central character year by year through the steps of his maturation from child to adult, and to write those books so that they accompany her readers—at least many of her original readers—through the same process. It’s a wonderful gift for a writer to have given a generation. Obviously, the last ten years have seen Rowling go from an obscure nobody to one of the most wealthy and successful women on the planet. I think she should be credited with having kept faith with her readers all the way through that process. The first three books are very entertaining and successful. Hogwarts is a great place to go, full of wonder and mystery and just the right amount of danger. Rowling has a really great gift for comic dialog that makes it a pleasure to participate in the Harry-Hermione-Ron relationship. As I detail below, I think that the last four books in the series are really flawed, but if there was an eighth, I’d read it happily, because Rowling has succeeded so well in making me care about those core characters—love them and think about them as real people. Obviously, that’s a great thing for a writer to have accomplished. I think that the transition between the children’s books and the epic books is poorly handled. Goblet of Fire is the transition book with its long account of the Tri-wizard Tournament being our last taste of simply escapist daily life at Hogwarts. That book is followed by Order of the Phoenix which seems to me the weakest book of the series. The "climax" of the book is the revelation of the prophecy that merely tells us something we all know anyway: that Voldemort and Harry are destined enemies only one of whom can survive. The attempt to complicate this non-revelation with some ambiguity centered on Neville Longbottom is pathetic, and Rowling seems to pretty much drop it in the final books. It seems to me that it would have been desirable to combine the main events of books four and five into a single book. The Potter epic half of the series has three great moments: Voldemort’s return, Dumbledore’s death, and Voldemort’s defeat. Combining books four and five would have tightened that story arc and created a nice three and three balance between children’s books and epic books. The series rebounds a bit with book six, but even so, I don’t think the Potter epic is nearly as good as the first part of the series. I would site two main reasons: First, as the series expands Rowling has to leave the clearly defined confines of Hogwarts School and paint an ever more ambitious portrait of the wizarding world as a society. She never really succeeds in making that portrait believable. We’re led to believe that this world is wracked by something like civil war, but all of the conflicts in the book remain purely man to man. It’s simply Dumbledore versus Voldemort or Harry versus Voldemort. In the final analysis, the Ministry of Magic, the Order of the Phoenix, and the Death Eaters as a group do nothing except provide background noise to the really significant and all deciding acts of individual combat. That seems to be Rowling’s sense of how the world works—she even hints, I believe, that the Second World War, properly understood, was just background noise to the confrontation between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Notice how the head of the Ministry of Magic is always afraid not of Voldemort but of Dumbledore—that he will simply decide to take it over. If we think in the books’ own terms, the Ministry seems right to be afraid. The wizarding world seems to work like a pack of dogs, run by the strongest animal. In human terms, they’ve barely emerged from Hobbes’ state of nature, and all forms of communal authority are tenuous. This situation itself might be interesting if the books reflected on it, but they don’t. Rather it seems that Rowling’s imagination, so wonderfully fertile on the level of detail, has simply failed on the higher level of social abstraction. Other symptoms of this failure include the annoying non sequiturs and ambiguities of wizard society. Does it make sense that Wizard political units seem to simply mirror their muggle counterparts? I mean, is there a Spanish Ministry of Magic, and do Basque wizards feel oppressed by it? Why does the Hogwart’s calendar include both Christmas and Easter holidays? Are Wizard’s Christian? And if they are, shouldn’t that be evident in some of Dumbledore’s endless talk about love and the soul? Judging from the books, these questions don’t seem to have even occurred to Rowling, and I think she must have a pretty limited conception of how something as complex as a society works. Like a lot of people, I imagine that she assumes that many social arrangements are simply natural, when a little thought shows that they are not natural at all. There’s a real contrast here between the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings. I’ll admit up front that I really love Tolkien, who of course provided me with my own Harry Potter like reading experience when I was much younger. In Tolkien, of course, everything is obsessively thought out. More importantly, in the Lord of the Rings, the actions of large communities do have important consequences. If the Ents don’t rise against Saruman, the Rohirrim will be defeated or delayed, and if the Rohirrim don’t come to Gondor’s aide, Frodo will either fail or be too late to do much good. To be sure, Tolkien presents us with noble characters who make a difference, but their destinies are believably dependent upon larger social forces that they cannot hope to completely control. Rowling seems to feel that individuals are completely free to forge their own destinies—a belief shared only by Americans and the other eternally immature people. The second important weakness of the Potter epic is Voldemort; he’s a bad villain. He’s too simply and obviously evil in a scenery chewing, mustache twirling manner. Why would anyone follow a leader who is so manifestly cruel to and uncaring about his subordinates? The answer is supposed to be that all the Death Eaters want immortality. But Voldemort’s only gesture toward immortality is the horcrux gimmick, and it doesn’t appear that any of his supposed followers have tried to emulate it. Furthermore, it’s not clear how Voldemort’s desire for immortality is furthered by his plans for conquest. Quite the opposite actually—the plans for conquest make a significant number of people intent on destroying him. The horcrux thing might actually work if he just kept a lower profile! And what are those plans for conquest anyway? Despite the fact that his people have supposedly taken over the central institutions (such as they are) of the wizarding world, Voldemort seems very little interested in consolidating or furthering his gains. All he’s interested in doing is finding Potter; it’s the man versus man thing again. Voldemort is simply too obviously a mere foil for the hero rather than a force in his own right. Finally, of course, Voldemort’s simply not very bright. Dumbledore is a really successful character—morally complex, suffering from pain and regret, always trying to balance the present moment’s need for human decency with the complex demands of future, general good. In some ways the Potter epic should be a chess match between Dumbledore and Voldemort, but the latter is not a worthy opponent. There are stunning gaps in Voldemort’s knowledge, and Dumbledore is always several steps ahead of him. As I’ve said above, in the final analysis Voldemort is bad in the same way that a big mean dog is bad, and the wizards are just lucky that there’s a bigger, nice dog to put him in his place. Once more, with regard to the villain issue, there’s an instructive comparison with Tolkien. An effective aspect of the Lord of the Rings is that the high level villainy is split between Sauron and Saruman. Sauron is the big, abstract principle of evil, and he doesn’t need to do much other than exist. Saruman, on the other hand, is the active principle of evil and is allowed to be a bit more complex. Indeed, Saruman, in his descent from one of the "great and wise" to being just a petty thug, is one of the best things in the book, showing how ambition, envy, and despair lead to human evil. Along with Dumbledore, Snape is one of Rowling’s best creations, and like most readers I was happy that the final book brought him in on the side of the righteous. I wonder, however, if it wouldn’t have been a better choice for Rowling to have made Snape her Sauraman. Bitch, bitch, bitch . . . that’s all I seem to be doing. The fact of the matter is that my voice broke as I read the final pages to my wife and daughter. Not because of what was happening in the book, but because we were reaching the end of such a long and enjoyable experience—a real life experience. Like I said, if there was an eighth book, I’d read it. But I know that the first three are the only one’s I’ll ever consider re-reading. I just finished reading the last Harry Potter book. Over the last five years, I’ve read all of them aloud to my wife and daughter (who is now ten years old). They’ve given us all a huge amount of pleasure—thank you very much, Ms Rowling. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the series:
Essentially the saga breaks down into two parts: the first three are essentially children’s books; the last four are the Potter epic. I think Rowling’s great idea is the attempt to follow a central character year by year through the steps of his maturation from child to adult, and to write those books so that they accompany her readers—at least many of her original readers—through the same process. It’s a wonderful gift for a writer to have given a generation. Obviously, the last ten years have seen Rowling go from an obscure nobody to one of the most wealthy and successful women on the planet. I think she should be credited with having kept faith with her readers all the way through that process.
The first three books are very entertaining and successful. Hogwarts is a great place to go, full of wonder and mystery and just the right amount of danger. Rowling has a really great gift for comic dialog that makes it a pleasure to participate in the Harry-Hermione-Ron relationship. As I detail below, I think that the last four books in the series are really flawed, but if there was an eighth, I’d read it happily, because Rowling has succeeded so well in making me care about those core characters—love them and think about them as real people. Obviously, that’s a great thing for a writer to have accomplished.
I think that the transition between the children’s books and the epic books is poorly handled. Goblet of Fire is the transition book with its long account of the Tri-wizard Tournament being our last taste of simply escapist daily life at Hogwarts. That book is followed by Order of the Phoenix which seems to me the weakest book of the series. The “climax” of the book is the revelation of the prophecy that merely tells us something we all know anyway: that Voldemort and Harry are destined enemies only one of whom can survive. The attempt to complicate this non-revelation with some ambiguity centered on Neville Longbottom is pathetic, and Rowling seems to pretty much drop it in the final books.
It seems to me that it would have been desirable to combine the main events of books four and five into a single book. The Potter epic half of the series has three great moments: Voldemort’s return, Dumbledore’s death, and Voldemort’s defeat. Combining books four and five would have tightened that story arc and created a nice three and three balance between children’s books and epic books.
The series rebounds a bit with book six, but even so, I don’t think the Potter epic is nearly as good as the first part of the series. I would site two main reasons:
First, as the series expands Rowling has to leave the clearly defined confines of Hogwarts School and paint an ever more ambitious portrait of the wizarding world as a society. She never really succeeds in making that portrait believable. We’re led to believe that this world is wracked by something like civil war, but all of the conflicts in the book remain purely man to man. It’s simply Dumbledore versus Voldemort or Harry versus Voldemort. In the final analysis, the Ministry of Magic, the Order of the Phoenix, and the Death Eaters as a group do nothing except provide background noise to the really significant and all deciding acts of individual combat. That seems to be Rowling’s sense of how the world works—she even hints, I believe, that the Second World War, properly understood, was just background noise to the confrontation between Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
Notice how the head of the Ministry of Magic is always afraid not of Voldemort but of Dumbledore—that he will simply decide to take it over. If we think in the books’ own terms, the Ministry seems right to be afraid. The wizarding world seems to work like a pack of dogs, run by the strongest animal. In human terms, they’ve barely emerged from Hobbes’ state of nature, and all forms of communal authority are tenuous. This situation itself might be interesting if the books reflected on it, but they don’t. Rather it seems that Rowling’s imagination, so wonderfully fertile on the level of detail, has simply failed on the higher level of social abstraction.
Other symptoms of this failure include the annoying non sequiturs and ambiguities of wizard society. Does it make sense that Wizard political units seem to simply mirror their muggle counterparts? I mean, is there a Spanish Ministry of Magic, and do Basque wizards feel oppressed by it? Why does the Hogwart’s calendar include both Christmas and Easter holidays? Are Wizard’s Christian? And if they are, shouldn’t that be evident in some of Dumbledore’s endless talk about love and the soul? Judging from the books, these questions don’t seem to have even occurred to Rowling, and I think she must have a pretty limited conception of how something as complex as a society works. Like a lot of people, I imagine that she assumes that many social arrangements are simply natural, when a little thought shows that they are not natural at all.
There’s a real contrast here between the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings. I’ll admit up front that I really love Tolkien, who of course provided me with my own Harry Potter like reading experience when I was much younger. In Tolkien, of course, everything is obsessively thought out. More importantly, in the Lord of the Rings, the actions of large communities do have important consequences. If the Ents don’t rise against Saruman, the Rohirrim will be defeated or delayed, and if the Rohirrim don’t come to Gondor’s aide, Frodo will either fail or be too late to do much good. To be sure, Tolkien presents us with noble characters who make a difference, but their destinies are believably dependent upon larger social forces that they cannot hope to completely control. Rowling seems to feel that individuals are completely free to forge their own destinies—a belief shared only by Americans and the other eternally immature people.
The second important weakness of the Potter epic is Voldemort; he’s a bad villain. He’s too simply and obviously evil in a scenery chewing, mustache twirling manner. Why would anyone follow a leader who is so manifestly cruel to and uncaring about his subordinates? The answer is supposed to be that all the Death Eaters want immortality. But Voldemort’s only gesture toward immortality is the horcrux gimmick, and it doesn’t appear that any of his supposed followers have tried to emulate it. Furthermore, it’s not clear how Voldemort’s desire for immortality is furthered by his plans for conquest. Quite the opposite actually—the plans for conquest make a significant number of people intent on destroying him. The horcrux thing might actually work if he just kept a lower profile! And what are those plans for conquest anyway? Despite the fact that his people have supposedly taken over the central institutions (such as they are) of the wizarding world, Voldemort seems very little interested in consolidating or furthering his gains. All he’s interested in doing is finding Potter; it’s the man versus man thing again. Voldemort is simply too obviously a mere foil for the hero rather than a force in his own right.
Finally, of course, Voldemort’s simply not very bright. Dumbledore is a really successful character—morally complex, suffering from pain and regret, always trying to balance the present moment’s need for human decency with the complex demands of future, general good. In some ways the Potter epic should be a chess match between Dumbledore and Voldemort, but the latter is not a worthy opponent. There are stunning gaps in Voldemort’s knowledge, and Dumbledore is always several steps ahead of him. As I’ve said above, in the final analysis Voldemort is bad in the same way that a big mean dog is bad, and the wizards are just lucky that there’s a bigger, nice dog to put him in his place.
Once more, with regard to the villain issue, there’s an instructive comparison with Tolkien. An effective aspect of the Lord of the Rings is that the high level villainy is split between Sauron and Saruman. Sauron is the big, abstract principle of evil, and he doesn’t need to do much other than exist. Saruman, on the other hand, is the active principle of evil and is allowed to be a bit more complex. Indeed, Saruman, in his descent from one of the “great and wise” to being just a petty thug, is one of the best things in the book, showing how ambition, envy, and despair lead to human evil. Along with Dumbledore, Snape is one of Rowling’s best creations, and like most readers I was happy that the final book brought him in on the side of the righteous. I wonder, however, if it wouldn’t have been a better choice for Rowling to have made Snape her Sauraman.
Bitch, bitch, bitch . . . that’s all I seem to be doing. The fact of the matter is that my voice broke as I read the final pages to my wife and daughter. Not because of what was happening in the book, but because we were reaching the end of such a long and enjoyable experience—a real life experience. Like I said, if there was an eighth book, I’d read it. But I know that the first three are the only one’s I’ll ever consider re-reading.

]]> By: Brian http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30485 Brian Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:43:00 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30485 John Nations - Re your point #7: Actually, none of the kids (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ginny, or Draco, for instance) ever kills anyone in any of the seven volumes). Voldemort killed himself. John Nations - Re your point #7: Actually, none of the kids (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ginny, or Draco, for instance) ever kills anyone in any of the seven volumes). Voldemort killed himself.

]]> By: John Nations http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30484 John Nations Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:00:48 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30484 Thanks all of you for your insightful commentary! I loved Harry Potter 7 but I had these problems (many touched on already): 1. On finding himself free of Voldemort, Harry didn't run to Ginny, sweep her up in his arms, and kiss and squeeze her. Didn't he love her? wasn't Voldemort the ONLY obstacle to their being together? I would have grabbed a broom and flown her up to the top tower for a makeout session. 2. When Voldemort died, there should have been some little introspective discourse, like, "this one evil man, the reason for all of it, the struggles, and death, and fear, lay dead, right here in the Great Hall. Harry looked down at the twisted, lifeless face, the reptilian skin stretched over that skeleton that hadn't been human for so long. He felt the smallest bit of pity, in spite of himself, for this man who couldn't feel love because he had never felt it, never seen its value. But most of all he felt more free than he ever had, because Lord Voldemort, You Know Who, the one who changed his whole life, was really dead, finally, and Harry would never have to chase, or fight, or run from Tom Riddle again." Instead, Harry just walks away, ho hum, another Main Antagonist Dispatched, what's for dinner? 3. None of the main characters deaths seemed appropriate in their contexts. Hedwig was just sitting there, caged. Moody, Tonks and Lupin die "off-camera" and Fred is just near a wall that explodes. Dobby is too magical to suffer a non-magical death by a casually thrown knife; his death plays like an afterthought that is only in the book to jerk tears gratuitously. 4. NOWHERE NEAR enough flying. Didn't Harry say, repeatedly, that he hates Apparition? Wasn't he the best flyer at Hogwarts? In a single page or two, Rowling has him lose his broom and his owl, and that seems more like cheap plot contrivance than any real contribution to the story's narrative or emotional flow. Afterward, no owls are used, and no brooms, either, except for the brief escape from the burning Room of Requirement. I think at least there would be flying warriors in the Battle of Hogwarts. Fred and George were good at Quidditch; surely they would be able to summon their brooms again, and Harry too, since it worked against the dragon in GOF? 5. Why wasn't Harry raising Teddy Tonks? He was made his godfather right at his birth, and when his parents died, that would make him the default dad, right? 6. The book didn't wrap up the rest of the story properly. What happened at the Ministry of Magic, namely, how did they get rid of Umbridge? And did she finally, FINALLY get her comeuppance for being so evil and delighting in others' suffering? 7. My biggest problem of all: Neville Longbottom didn't kill Bellatrix, or even punch her in the mouth. To me, as surely as Harry's destiny was to finish Voldy, so Neville's was to avenge Bellatrix's torturing his parents into madness. If he wasn't going to kill her, he should have at least been more instrumental in her undoing. Thanks for reading this and for all your amazing comments! Long live Harry, Hedwig, Hogwarts and Mad-Eye Moody! Thanks all of you for your insightful commentary!

I loved Harry Potter 7 but I had these problems (many touched on already):

1. On finding himself free of Voldemort, Harry didn’t run to Ginny, sweep her up in his arms, and kiss and squeeze her. Didn’t he love her? wasn’t Voldemort the ONLY obstacle to their being together? I would have grabbed a broom and flown her up to the top tower for a makeout session.

2. When Voldemort died, there should have been some little introspective discourse, like, “this one evil man, the reason for all of it, the struggles, and death, and fear, lay dead, right here in the Great Hall. Harry looked down at the twisted, lifeless face, the reptilian skin stretched over that skeleton that hadn’t been human for so long. He felt the smallest bit of pity, in spite of himself, for this man who couldn’t feel love because he had never felt it, never seen its value. But most of all he felt more free than he ever had, because Lord Voldemort, You Know Who, the one who changed his whole life, was really dead, finally, and Harry would never have to chase, or fight, or run from Tom Riddle again.” Instead, Harry just walks away, ho hum, another Main Antagonist Dispatched, what’s for dinner?

3. None of the main characters deaths seemed appropriate in their contexts. Hedwig was just sitting there, caged. Moody, Tonks and Lupin die “off-camera” and Fred is just near a wall that explodes. Dobby is too magical to suffer a non-magical death by a casually thrown knife; his death plays like an afterthought that is only in the book to jerk tears gratuitously.

4. NOWHERE NEAR enough flying. Didn’t Harry say, repeatedly, that he hates Apparition? Wasn’t he the best flyer at Hogwarts? In a single page or two, Rowling has him lose his broom and his owl, and that seems more like cheap plot contrivance than any real contribution to the story’s narrative or emotional flow. Afterward, no owls are used, and no brooms, either, except for the brief escape from the burning Room of Requirement. I think at least there would be flying warriors in the Battle of Hogwarts. Fred and George were good at Quidditch; surely they would be able to summon their brooms again, and Harry too, since it worked against the dragon in GOF?

5. Why wasn’t Harry raising Teddy Tonks? He was made his godfather right at his birth, and when his parents died, that would make him the default dad, right?

6. The book didn’t wrap up the rest of the story properly. What happened at the Ministry of Magic, namely, how did they get rid of Umbridge? And did she finally, FINALLY get her comeuppance for being so evil and delighting in others’ suffering?

7. My biggest problem of all: Neville Longbottom didn’t kill Bellatrix, or even punch her in the mouth. To me, as surely as Harry’s destiny was to finish Voldy, so Neville’s was to avenge Bellatrix’s torturing his parents into madness. If he wasn’t going to kill her, he should have at least been more instrumental in her undoing.

Thanks for reading this and for all your amazing comments! Long live Harry, Hedwig, Hogwarts and Mad-Eye Moody!

]]> By: tasha http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30397 tasha Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:43:10 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30397 what happends to luna in it what happends to luna in it

]]> By: emily http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30493 emily Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:03:32 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30493 What was your favourite part of the book? I think mine was either when Harry was talking to Dumbledore in the King's Cross place or when Harry told Voldermort why Snape's patronus was a doe. What was your favourite part of the book?

I think mine was either when Harry was talking to Dumbledore in the King’s Cross place or when Harry told Voldermort why Snape’s patronus was a doe.

]]> By: Chris Oakley http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30445 Chris Oakley Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:02:38 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30445 The next stage: http://media.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/ What a shame that it is not going to be in England or Scotland. The next stage:

http://media.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/

What a shame that it is not going to be in England or Scotland.

]]> By: Merdjanov http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30444 Merdjanov Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:55:58 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30444 *sigh* All was well... I love a happy ending. But I hate when good things have to end. At least the magic of Harry, the magical world, fierce love, friendship and all the many good qualities people need will be alive in our hearts and will never end. I'm so thankful to J.K. for the wonderful times spent reading the book. It has enriched my life and imagination, and has given me many thoughts on life and many aspects of it. Although at this moment the ending of the book and the atmosphere of it will leave me with an almost sad feeling that everything has ended ,later on I'll always look back with a shining smile to the books series and re-read them ( with my children, wife, grandchildren, or just friends ), to enter the grand world of Harry Potter, because it will keep amusing people for generations, just like any other book, that has become a must-read classic. The most important thing is that he book has made me think about life, appreciate my loved ones, fight for my friends, make people happy. Everything that has a beginning has and end... but not the circle. The circle of life, love. I believe that Harry Potter has sealed that circle of needed qualities for the humanity and will be used as a mean of hope and inspiration. Harry was my companion from the start of the book, when I was 11 (just like Harry). Now that I'm 18 I feel that a part of Harry will always live on with me, I'll try through Harry to inspire people to love, and to live their lives. For what it's worth... *sigh* All was well…
I love a happy ending. But I hate when good things have to end. At least the magic of Harry, the magical world, fierce love, friendship and all the many good qualities people need will be alive in our hearts and will never end. I’m so thankful to J.K. for the wonderful times spent reading the book. It has enriched my life and imagination, and has given me many thoughts on life and many aspects of it. Although at this moment the ending of the book and the atmosphere of it will leave me with an almost sad feeling that everything has ended ,later on I’ll always look back with a shining smile to the books series and re-read them ( with my children, wife, grandchildren, or just friends ), to enter the grand world of Harry Potter, because it will keep amusing people for generations, just like any other book, that has become a must-read classic. The most important thing is that he book has made me think about life, appreciate my loved ones, fight for my friends, make people happy.
Everything that has a beginning has and end… but not the circle. The circle of life, love. I believe that Harry Potter has sealed that circle of needed qualities for the humanity and will be used as a mean of hope and inspiration. Harry was my companion from the start of the book, when I was 11 (just like Harry). Now that I’m 18 I feel that a part of Harry will always live on with me, I’ll try through Harry to inspire people to love, and to live their lives. For what it’s worth…

]]> By: Jason Dick http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30460 Jason Dick Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:01:49 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30460 Katylou, my guess as to what the baby thing was is that it was the part of Voldemort's soul that resided in Harry, and was killed when Voldemort sent that killing curse at him. Katylou, my guess as to what the baby thing was is that it was the part of Voldemort’s soul that resided in Harry, and was killed when Voldemort sent that killing curse at him.

]]> By: katylou http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30457 katylou Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:15:19 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30457 This is the first book that has really honestly excited me in so, so long, in fact I'm not sure I can think of an equal. No matter how "rough" sometimes, or those few months/years that you got kind of sick of Harry Potter and shoved him on the back burner... There's something about actually having an "ending", rounding it all up, that never happens in life even though it's the one thing that should. Anyway, it touched me; saying goodbye to Harry Potter is a hell of a thing! Although, there's a couple of bits that I didn't get, which is annoying. What was the baby thing at the "death" King's Cross? That was the major one, could somebody please have a stab at explaining? The other bits I can't remember, will think of them in time. The thing is, it's all very well fighting over narnia and lord of the rings etc etc, but does it really matter? Can't it just be a book that some people loved and some people didn't? Some writers are better at some things than others, it just goes round and round. Let Rowling have her moment. This is the first book that has really honestly excited me in so, so long, in fact I’m not sure I can think of an equal. No matter how “rough” sometimes, or those few months/years that you got kind of sick of Harry Potter and shoved him on the back burner… There’s something about actually having an “ending”, rounding it all up, that never happens in life even though it’s the one thing that should. Anyway, it touched me; saying goodbye to Harry Potter is a hell of a thing!

Although, there’s a couple of bits that I didn’t get, which is annoying. What was the baby thing at the “death” King’s Cross? That was the major one, could somebody please have a stab at explaining? The other bits I can’t remember, will think of them in time.

The thing is, it’s all very well fighting over narnia and lord of the rings etc etc, but does it really matter? Can’t it just be a book that some people loved and some people didn’t? Some writers are better at some things than others, it just goes round and round. Let Rowling have her moment.

]]> By: Jason Dick http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30491 Jason Dick Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:24:07 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/22/deathly-hallows/#comment-30491 Well, Lila and Emily, consider for a moment that it is revealed in the last book that Dumbledore never took power because he was afraid of what he would do with it. So perhaps what he saw in the Mirror of Erised was not nearly so nice as either of those suggestions, but was instead his dream with Grindelwald: that he had united the three Deathly Hallows and become the ruler of wizard, witch, and muggle alike (though I'm sure he envisioned himself a benevolent ruler). Remember, after all, Dumbledore's astonishment that Harry's look into the mirror was so simple as having a whole family. It seems plausible, I think, that Dumbledore was always afraid of where his most deep-seated desires would lead him, were he to give them free reign. He recognized, I think, that his desire could never be realized as he conceived it, that it would lead to much suffering and death instead. And even if he wanted power, he didn't want that. Well, Lila and Emily, consider for a moment that it is revealed in the last book that Dumbledore never took power because he was afraid of what he would do with it. So perhaps what he saw in the Mirror of Erised was not nearly so nice as either of those suggestions, but was instead his dream with Grindelwald: that he had united the three Deathly Hallows and become the ruler of wizard, witch, and muggle alike (though I’m sure he envisioned himself a benevolent ruler).

Remember, after all, Dumbledore’s astonishment that Harry’s look into the mirror was so simple as having a whole family. It seems plausible, I think, that Dumbledore was always afraid of where his most deep-seated desires would lead him, were he to give them free reign. He recognized, I think, that his desire could never be realized as he conceived it, that it would lead to much suffering and death instead. And even if he wanted power, he didn’t want that.

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