End of Harry Potter Series

[qaztroc]

No: HPFGUIDX 44753

>  bohcoo" <sydenmill at m...> wrote:
> > > It struck me as I reread the books that Rowling has been 
> > > foreshadowing the ending of the Harry Potter series all the way 
> > > through the books:  Unfortunately, I think she is going to have 
> > Harry 
> > > awake from a dream, at the age of 17 or 18, living with the 
> > Dursleys -
> > > - with a thought that he had just had some incredible, 
> > fantastic 
> > > dream.

> Then Katey replied:
I'm not much of a writer, but my english teacher last year told us  
that ending a story with the character waking up and everything   
having been a dream is the ultimate cop-out.  I don't think she'll do
that.  She's too good a writer and has read enough stories to know
what makes a good one, and the ending having the character waking up
is not one of them.  and remember, Rowling said the last chapter will
basically be an epilogue, saying what happens to the survivers.


Now Me:
I totally agree with Katey. And speaking of epilogue, one must not
forget that Book 1 starts with a prologue of sorts, and this prologue
is not consistent with the it-was-all-a-dream narrative structure. If
you want to work a consistent it-was-all-a-dream story, you need to
have a prologue and epilogue that fit together like the front and back
covers of a book. To be really consistent, it has to work out like
this: [reality]-[dream]-[back to reality]. But the first chapter in
Book 1 ("The boy who lived") starts with wizards and witches right
away and, besides, is not even told from Harry's point of view. By
ending book 7 with Harry awakening, this first chapter would make
little sense. If book 1 were to start with "The vanishing glass"
instead, then yes, it would indeed be very tempting to suspect that
the whole series may possibly be a "dream" story. But IMHO, the way
Book 1 starts rules out this hypothesis completely. The grand
structure of the series would be too awkward, and we all know how
JKR's stories are amazingly well structured.

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