A Pilgrim’s Digression

[Spoilers ahead, for those who haven't read the latest Harry Potter novel]

At the moment I am on a “Harry Potter” marathon re-reading in preparation for the upcoming Goblet of Fire [hereafter known as GOF] movie. I finished reading GOF last night and will begin re-reading “Order of the Phoenix” [OP] tonight. I read the sixth book, “The Half-Blood Prince,” [HBP] in the weeks after it first appeared back in July.

On top of all that reading, I am also reading for the first time C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew because that book, too, will premiere in theaters this Christmas. Having never read the Narnia books, I don’t want my first impression of the story to be a movie, even though the movie looks to be quite good.

Fantasy is hot in Hollywood.

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone has noticed that the character Cedric Diggory in GOF may be named after the little boy named Digory in Lewis’s Narnia books? It seems likely. After reading Lewis, I may have more parallels between the works to point out.

Anyway, some thoughts on the “Harry Potter” books are in order. I like these books very much. I know there are some readers of this blog who disagree with me on the quality of the books, not to mention the movies, so I’ll offer a brief defense against the naysayers. Leaving the movies out of it for a moment, the books are as well-written as the best young adult fiction I’ve read. The stories are formulaic in the sense that each book occurs over the course of a school year, beginning during the summer holiday while Harry stays with his relatives the Dursley’s and ending with Harry leaving school for the next summer holiday. During the course of the school year, there is always some Voldemort-related mystery Harry must solve, each book’s mystery laying the groundwork for explaining the roots of Voldemort’s power and how he can be destroyed; presumably all this will be tied up nicely in the next and final book.

However, while the stories are formulaic, to me there is nothing predictable about the plot turns themselves. I haven’t yet been able to determine where Rowling is going before she gets there. My wife often asks me how I think things are going to turn out�is Harry really the Chosen One, or is it Neville? Is Dumbledore really dead? Is Snape really an evil man?�as if I have some special insight into what Rowling is doing, and I confess I really can’t even guess the answers to these questions. Or maybe I’m just dense�too far removed from my critical English-major past�to see through Rowling’s plot devices. I am perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of my own dullness.

However that may be, I believe a mark of the quality of these stories lies in Rowling’s masterful plotting as well as her writing style itself. I may no longer be an English major, or an English teacher, or even a student of literature, but I think I still have enough of a critical faculty to discern good prose from bad. Like the judge said about pornography, I know bad prose when I see it. Rowling’s is not bad prose.

The only times I’ve felt uncomfortable with Rowling’s writing is when, at the end of a book, she must necessarily wrap up all the book’s conflicts, mysteries, and questions in a single lengthy, usually monologic chapter. For example, in GOF, Dumbledore gives Barty Crouch a dose of veritas serum, and in the course of a monologue that stretches over the ensuing chapter, the young man tidies up Rowling’s plot for her. This is at once part of Rowling’s formula rather inherited from detective fiction, I’d say, and maybe a little bit clumsy, too. Other examples of her clumsiness can be forgiven, I think, because of her deft way of dispensing with them. In “Prisoner of Azkaban,” Hermione’s use of time travel is a bit too close to cheating, from an authorial standpoint. Similarly, Rowling seems to cheat a bit in “Goblet of Fire,” when the house elf Dobby shows up at a fortuitous moment to give Harry what he needs to solve the second challenge of the Tri-Wizard tournament. Rowling softens the latter ‘cheat’ at the end of the book when Barty reveals that he purposefully told Dobby how to beat the challenge because he knew Dobby would tell Harry, who was incapable of solving the riddle.

Other than these couple examples, I’ve found Rowling’s stories to be surprising and quite inventive at times. None more so than HBP. Though I still count GOF as my favorite of all the books, HBP comes in a close second. My favorite parts are Harry’s and Dumbledore’s journeys through the pensieve to gain insight into Tom Riddle, a.k.a. Voldemort’s past. While this use of ‘flashback’ might be viewed by some as an authorial trick, Rowling pulls it off quite smoothly I think.

I also appreciate how HBP interconnects the very first two books, “The Sorcerer’s Stone” and “The Chamber of Secrets,” to the later books. The first two books seem by far the weakest; it is only with “The Prisoner of Azkaban” that Rowling’s plot really begins to take shape. With HBP, we finally begin to see that even in the first two books, Voldemort’s plan to regain mortal shape interweaves with his overall strategy for obtaining immortality. Finally, Rowling explains that the Diary of Tom Riddle was in fact a Horcrux, a vessel for containing part of Voldemort’s soul. When he gave the diary to Jenny Weasley, Lucius Malfoy hadn’t realized its importance to Voldemort’s plan for immortality. What’s more there are at least six more of these Horcrux, one of which Dumbledore has already destroyed when HBP opens. Harry and Dumbledore’s disastrous attempt to destroy another Horcrux forms background for the climax of the novel, in which Dumbledore apparently dies at the hand of Snape.

Is Dumbledore really dead? My wife, whose favorite character is Severus Snape, insists that Dumbledore’s demise was pre-engineered by Dumbledore and Snape. Snape could not help Dumbledore without giving away his betrayal of the Dark Lord to the other Death Eaters who are there to witness Dumbledore’s execution. Thus Snape must cast the curse which will seemingly end Dumbledore’s life. Perhaps through occlumency, or perhaps by prearrangement with Dumbledore, Snape signals that he will have to cast the curse, but somehow Dumbledore blocks it, even though he is wandless, and fakes his own death.

It’s a plausible theory; but I’m not sure I buy it. Faking a character’s death as a way of generating a cliffhanger for the next book in a series is an old trick, and I think Rowling is a better writer than that. As much as I like Dumbledore as a character, I think he’s dead. For one thing, when Harry goes into the Headmasters office to meet Professor McGonagall, now Headmistress, Dumbledore’s portrait now hangs on the wall along with the portraits of all the other departed Headmasters and Headmistresses. Dumbledore is most likely dead. Dead as Jacob Marley, and I mean that literally. In the next book, I think it more likely he will return in some other form, perhaps spectral. But then I could be very wrong about that: except for the very brief assistance Harry receives from the ghosts of Voldemort’s victims in GOF, Rowling has always been careful not to suggest that humans can expect supernatural assistance from beyond the grave. The only other time Harry sees his dead parents is in the Mirror of Erised, in “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” and Dumbledore warns him not to become enchanted by them. They are merely a reflection. Thus, too, the dead Dumbledore’s portrait does not speak to Harry, offer advice, or even cough. Dumbledore is sleeping in his portrait, at the time Harry first sees him after his death.

Whether or not killing Dumbledore makes Snape an evil man is another question. If Dumbledore and Snape had already decided that Snape might have to take some such drastic action in order to maintain his cover, it might make Snape some kind of hero that he killed Dumbledore. There is a suggestion that Snape is still working for the Order of the Phoenix. As they flee Hogwarts at the end of HBP, Snape prevents any of the Death Eaters from harming Harry, and he does not kill Harry himself, though he has the opportunity. Also, as Harry futilely fights against him (did we ever realize what a powerful wizard Snape is before this book?) Snape gives him a final lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts, telling him he must learn to keep his mind closed and his mouth shut, meaning he must learn to cast spells from his mind without speaking them.

I think before the series ends, Snape will be proven to be not a good man, but no evil man, either. His hatred of Harry and Harry’s friends and family will always mark Snape as a bad guy, however.

Lots of questions remain. I am seeking clues to the answers by reading the previous two books in the series. What or where are the remaining Horcruxes? Will destroying them be as costly in human lives as destroying the others have been? Will Hogwarts reopen next year? Who took the Horcrux that Dumbledore and Harry sought in vain, costing Dumbledore his life? Is Harry really the Chosen One?

I do think Rowling has sprinkled enough clues around for people to decide that despite Harry’s centrality to the story, maybe he is not the one who will kill Voldemort after all. Snape says at one point that Hary has simply been lucky to have smarter friends around him when he needed them. Indeed it is pretty indisputable that cooperation with Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, and others have saved Harry’s neck more than once. But then, if Harry is able to bind these friends to him and combine their brains and powers for good, that makes him a good leader, not weak or merely ‘lucky’ as Snape suggests.

Furthermore, there is a scene that struck me in reading GOF again, and which may offer some as yet indefinable clue as to the outcome of the story. When Harry tells Dumbledore how in the cemetery, after regaining his mortal form using Harry’s blood, Voldemort claimed that he now possessed some of the power (love) that had protected Harry as an infant, Dumbledore seems to break out into an expression of gladness or hope. Somehow, what Voldemort sees as a newfound strength, Dumbledore sees as a weakness. What does it mean? I hope we don’t have to wait long to find out. I am already anxious for more “Harry” to read.