End of Harry Potter Series

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 44823

At 08:08 01/10/02 -0700, Barb P replied to my earlier post:

>Firstly, and for me most importantly, boyhood fantasies revolve around 
>being a great hero. Harry in the books (at least to date) is very largely 
>an accidental hero, and he does not relish being thought of as anything 
>but ordinary. He has no special abilities; in fact, he is average or 
>below-average in just about every respect, and we are constantly reminded 
>of this fact (he's small, studying doesn't come easily to him, etc) and in 
>fact the only thing at which he has proven to be unnaturally adept is at 
>summoning a Patronus, i.e. his father. Psychologically speaking, the 
>Potterverse is quite simply much to complex to be the fantasy of a teenage boy.

>Barb:
>   There's really no way to prove this, one way or the other.  Harry was a 
> fantasy created by JKR, and you could also argue that it is 
> extraordinarily unlikely for a woman on welfare, writing in cafes while 
> she cares for her infant daughter, to create such a fantasy 
> world.  Stranger things have happened.

In a way, that's exactly my point. There are plenty of stories (of all 
kinds, some good, some bad), written by poor or destitute people. Some 
indicate more imagination than others, some show more literary skill than 
others. The thing is that the Potterverse is the fabrication of an educated 
adult mind, not that of a downtrodden teenage boy's.

>As for Harry being the "accidental" hero, that might in fact be exactly 
>the sort of hero a boy would imagine himself being.  Someone with nothing 
>extraordinary about him who triumphs anyway.  Other than the standard 
>finding-out-you-are-really-the-heir-to-the-throne fantasy, isn't that very 
>common?

Quite. But such heroes are always more ... errr... heroic. To take a couple 
of currently popular examples from children's books which have found some 
crossover interest in adult markets: Philip Pullman's Will or Eoian 
Colfer's Artemis Fowl are exactly the kind of heroes a modern teenage boy 
might invent for his fantasy alter-ego: willful, deliberately defiant of 
all authority, mentally and physically strong (though Fowl considers all 
physical activity, especially violence, beneath him; however, he has Butler 
to do these things for him). Also, they both consider "street smarts" far 
more important than any formal education. Both boys' stories start with a 
quest for their lost fathers; they both dearly love their mothers who 
suffer from the father's absence, and ensure that their mothers are safe 
before leaving on their respective quests. When not thinking about their 
fathers, they worry about their mothers.

Harry, on the other hand, has really only one characteristic in common with 
the other two: a quick mind and a resulting sarcastic turn of phrase. He is 
very much aware of being physically small and weak, and is aware of the 
limitations of his knowledge of the world and how it works. Apart from 
considering Hogwarts to be his home, he very much  considers it important 
to be diligent at his studies (even if he doesn't shine at most subjects, 
and considers some of them unimportant). Whilst his parents are important 
elements of his voyage of self-discovery (not to mention the plot!) :-) and 
he thinks about them a lot, he appears to be singularly uncurious about how 
they got to be in the situation in which he lost them. For me, this is the 
great weakness of JKR's characterisation, although I can understand her 
reasons for plotting the books this way.

Harry is usually respectful of authority; he never determines to defy it, 
but he gets into trouble for those occasions when his actions make this 
appear to be the case. He isn't on any kind of quest; on the contrary, all 
he wants is a quiet life to continue his studies and play Quidditch in 
peace. It is exterior events and the non-action of authority figures which 
force him to take action.

Interestingly, of the three heroes, Harry is the only team player. Will is 
very much  a loner, and resents Lyra's involvement in his quest at their 
first meeting, including most other . Artemis Fowl makes good use of 
Butler, his servant, but this is not a "team". On the other hand, apart 
from Harry's favourite activity being a team sport (in which, nevertheless, 
his role is to a large extent separate from the rest of the team), his 
friends are very important both to him personally and the outcome of his 
adventures.

The above comparison is not meant to imply that I consider Pullman's or 
Colfer's creations better or worse literary figures, or even more or less 
"realistic" ones. Nor am I saying that these men understand teenage boys 
better. All I'm saying is that they are more representative of the type of 
hero a teenage boy would create in a wish-fulfillment dream, which is where 
this discussion started.  (No, I'm not saying that Will's or Artemis's 
adventures are their dreams, either!) :-)

>GulPlum:
>Furthermore, not only do his adventures not start with him attempting to 
>save his friends, but he actively (though not deliberately) puts them in 
>danger; only *then* does he attempt to save them. And he is unable to save 
>them without help, be it from caring adults or those friends.
>
>Barb:
>That would seem to be part of the fantasy: having supportive adults and 
>good friends around him.  One would assume that in "real life" he does 
>not.  As for the friends being in danger, if he doesn't imagine that to 
>have happened he can't very well rescue them, can he?

Of course, but frequently he is the cause of his friends being in danger in 
the first place.

>Barb:
>    It's hardly a stretch to imagine that someone living under the stairs 
> would want books to read to occupy his time, which could include volumes 
> about mythology and folklore, and in many British schools, Latin is still 
> taught, although other modern languages are evidently more common these days.

Errr... please name a single comprehensive school in Britain which teaches 
Latin, In fact, I'd be curious to hear of one which has *ever* taught it... 
It's contrary to the whole spirit of what comprehensive schooling has been 
about since WWII. Grammar schools were already losing Latin by the sixties, 
Greek having gone by the wayside even earlier. Even Public Schools (UK 
meaning) have phased out Classics in favour of modern languages and/or IT 
(I know for a fact that Westminster and Harrow offer it only as an 
elective, taken up by VERY few pupils).  Smeltings certainly doesn't strike 
me as the type of place which would still teach Latin (despite its Latin 
motto).

>As for whether a well-off child would need to retreat into fantasy, I 
>think the answer is no.  And if this is what the whole series comes down 
>to, it's even entirely possible that, compared to Harry's "reality," the 
>Dursleys are downright cuddly.  In fact, the very undignified situations 
>and comeuppances that the Dursleys regularly experience sound exactly like 
>the sorts of things a boy would fantasize about if he were being oppressed 
>even a tenth of the amount Harry is.

I  agree entirely. Which returns to my issue about *why* the "real" Harry 
is being oppressed in order to escape to this land of fantasy. A few people 
have provided other examples of "dream" narratives so I won't repeat them, 
but in all the cases with which I'm acquainted, an explanation for why the 
person was in the dreamlike state and escaping to the particular "fantasy" 
is part of the "waking up" process.

>GulPlum wrote:
>    All in all, then, the series' outcome as nothing but a long dream 
> would be a major cop-out for me, and particularly hollow. The "moral" of 
> the story would also lose a considerable amount of its impact: "it's all 
> a dream, it
>doesn't matter"!
>
>Barb:
>    I don't need for the wizarding world to be "real" (to Harry).  I don't 
> think any story with a moral becomes of no worth if we find out it didn't 
> happen.  It DIDN'T happen, remember?  It was created by JKR.

Of course, but our relationship as readers to the characters becomes 
weakened by such revelations - we are willing to suspend our disbelief 
once, but to have it revealed to us that the energy we put into that 
suspension was ultimately pointless when we have it underlined to us 
*within* that fiction that all we read was nothing but illusion with no 
preparation whatsoever leaves us not only underwhelmed, but often 
frequently angry at the author for having conned us.

Much as I dislike the idea of the Potter books ending on "it was all a 
dream", I was quite intrigued by the notion someone put forward earlier 
today (sorry, I don't remember who it was) that the books could end with 
Harry waking up as a teenager, having been in a coma since a car crash when 
he was a baby. This would satisfy my requirements with a little explanation 
about how come he knows so much about the world, never (presumably) having 
learned how to read or write. I could posit a world in which his loving 
parents (who did NOT die in the crash) come to read to him every day and 
have told him stories over the years from Greek mythology, etc. This would 
have the added advantage of getting around the nitpick fandom has raised of 
just where kids in the magical community obtain their basic schooling. :-)

Finally, just a quick comment in reply to the person who asked why this 
topic has generated so much response this time, whereas it didn't a few 
weeks ago. It's quite straightforward - Darkthirty's original post was 
extremely long and full of interminable sentences which a lot of people 
probably never bothered to read. :-)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, UK