Why to Like and Not Like OoP

[Doriane]

No: HPFGUIDX 70546


Wow ! Now, THIS is a daring post :-) I like that :-) !!!

First of all, I must admit I was quite disappointed with OoP too. I 
had waited so long, I waited behind the door on Monday morning for 
the postman to ring, I jumped up when he did, and... I got bored 
after a few pages !!! Honestly, it took me some *300* pages to really 
get into the story ! And still I COULD actually let the book down (I 
have a baby to take care of) and NOT burn with the desire to take it 
back ! 

So let me comment on what "m.steinberger" wrote :

> As a result, I've given up, for now, the 15-page thesis I'm in the 
> middle of writing, detailing all the plusses and minuses of OoP. 
> There doesn't seem to be anyplace to post it and get further 
> exploration, only comments by people intent on shooting the minuses 
> down. All the careful, logical analysis, the even-handed 
> presentations, the comparative studies, and such like are sitting 
> half-done in a computer file, waiting for the Messiah (as we say 
> where I come from).

Too bad :-( ! Maybe you could send it to me privately, I'd love to 
read it and comment on it !

> To be realistic, Harry ought to be suffering from Post-Traumatic 
> Stress Disorder, after the graveyard scene combined with the severe 
> lack of emotional support afterwards. His behavior should not be 
> that of a "normal," "hormonal" teenager, but that of a 
> frighteningly disturbed, almost psychotic kid. Kids can repress the 
> kind of thing Harry went through, but then they look artificially 
> put-together, not like "normal," anger-venting teens.

Yep. And we know Harry is repressing his feelings because he tells 
himself once not to think about the graveyard scene. So something's 
wrong : either he is repressing his feelings and then he should act 
very nice and agreeable, or else he's not and he should be addressing 
the things that really bother him. But instead he seems to be 
exercising some kind of selective control : he doesn't mind blowing 
up about his friends not telling him much in the letters, or being 
short-tempered about pretty much everything, but he keeps his major 
questions for himself : why DD doesn't want to talk to him, how to 
cope with what happened in the graveyard (in fact, it seems he's 
pretty much forgotten it ! Come on !!), the recurrent dream about the 
door at the end of the corridor, etc... He's snapping at his friends 
for minor things, but he doesn't turn to them for the major stuff. 
Doesn't seem logical to me. I mean, how can he be so secure in their 
friendship that he thinks he can snap at them at will, and at the 
same time trust them so little that he'd rather bottle up and play 
martyr when he thinks he's being possessed by Voldemort ?

In fact, I must admit that this sudden change in Harry's behaviour 
was one of the things that prevented me from getting into the book. I 
never liked Harry that much, but at least in HP1-4 he was quite 
consistent. He was secretive, yes, but not abusive. In OoP, he's 
clearly abusing his friendships. Just because he's poor Harry who 
went through so much, he can lie to his friends, AND suffer from 
loneliness because he lied to his friends, AND expect them to endure 
it all nicely. I don't like this Harry. In fact, if I were Hermione, 
I would tell him to get lost and to come back when he's decided to 
play fair with them.

> Ron's whole issue, in OoP, is becoming recognized as a person with 
> merits of his own. Before he gets recognition, he's got plenty of 
> normal self-doubt, but afterwards, he accepts his new status as a 
> natural thing, with none of the intensified self-doubt, testing the 
> bounds of the new reputation, and strained relationships that 
> normally accompany teenage (and adult) changes in status. No 
> realism here.

I'd go even further than that : it seems to me like JKR is describing 
a Ron that is UNFIT to be a Prefect ! We never see him exercising his 
authority on his own. He usually follows Hermione's lead, but does he 
ever take any initiative on his own ? Not that I can remember. I HATE 
THAT ! I hope, I HOPE, that it's only because the Twins were around 
and he didn't feel any assurance around them. But somehow I doubt 
that.

> Hermione is Miss Perfect, as Rita Skeeter teases. Realism?

Irk ! I positively LOVE Hermione, but she's turning unnatural. She's 
way too level-headed to be real. And I'll be even more irked if she 
turns out to make a big mistake in the next books, because that would 
be too unfair.

> Dumbledore is human, with human failings, we discover. One of those 
> failings is being completely insensitive to the feelings of a 
> person he never stops thinking about – Harry. And he continues to 
> be insensitive for months on end, supposedly for Harry's 
> protection, supposedly because he loves Harry. Yet with all that 
> repressed love, he never slips into any inadvertent signs of 
> affection. And he never tries to find any back-door route to 
> alleviate Harry's suffering.

I just don't understand why he never simply wrote a letter to Harry ! 
He was afraid that an eye-to-eye conversation would awaken V's 
conscience inside Harry, but a letter wouldn't have done that, while 
still explaining to Harry while they couldn't talk anymore.
Another question : once they've fought V, suddenly it's okay to talk 
together ? How come ??? I mean, V is still alive, he's still in 
Harry's head as far as we know (he can't possess Harry, all right, 
but why should the link between them suddenly be severed ?), and he 
hates DD more than ever. So ?
Oh, and the lame excuse that DD was afraid V would realize that there 
was more between Harry and DD than between student and teacher simply 
doesn't hold water : if V indeed had access to Harry's head and 
heart, then he was bound to know that DD meant much more than just 
Headmaster to Harry and vice versa.

> Poor Sirius. He shows one face from page whatever until the day he 
> dies. Angry, frustrated, resentful, jealous of those who can act, 
> and fond of Harry in as self-focused way as the rest of his 
> behavior. Granted, poor Sirius is put-upon, so it is not his fault, 
> perhaps, that he is psychologically unhealthy, but his unhealth is 
> a fact, nonetheless. However, unhealthy characters of Sirius's 
> stripe don't cooperate with authority the way Sirius cooperates 
> with Dumbledore's insistence on Sirius's hated imprisonment. Yes, 
> Sirius sneaks out once. But just once! A real personality like 
> Sirius's wouldn't stay at Grimmauld place for one minute.

Yes, yes, yes !!! I agree whole-heartedly ! Sirius' behaviour just 
doesn't make sense ! From the previous books, I got the feeling that 
Sirius was a strong-willed, fiercely independant and highly capable 
wizard. I just can't picture him staying at home like a good little 
boy just because DD said it would be dangerous to go outside. I mean, 
he wasn't shut inside during GoF, so why should he be in OoP ? 
Neither V nor the Ministry have learned more about him and his 
whereabouts between the 2 books.
I'm also disgusted at DD for not getting help for Sirius. He's a 
highly disturbed man (rightly so), who needs tremendous psychological 
help. But instead of getting him help, DD shuts Sirius in, in a house 
he fled from as a youth, with sole permanent company a hateful house-
elf and a screaming portrait. Excuse me ??? This is nothing short of 
torture !!! Not much better, in fact, than being shut in Azkaban with 
Dementors as guardians...

> 2. The book is a wonderful study in adolescence. Ok – forget what 
> Harry and all have been through. Let's pretend that they've only 
> had normal childhoods with normal challenges, and now comes 
> adolescence and they have to deal with their own hormones, with the 
> failures of adult society and with their own disillusionment. 
> Doesn't the book do a good job?
> 
> Not particularly. It certainly deals with these things, but the 
> results are not particularly nuanced or insightful. Harry fumes and 
> sulks, has no insights to share with us, and eventually throws 
> things in Dumbledore's office and grieves on the lakeshore. Oh, and 
> he doesn't know how to talk to girls, yet. Wow.

I think you're being a bit simplistic on that one, but I get the idea.

> Ron seems to have no hormones at all, and is a relatively affable 
> sidekick, regardless of the failure of adult society and the 
> breakdown of his school.

Seems to me like Ron is really the one that got dealt the worse hand. 
As you say, he's really NOTHING MORE than a sidekick. He's not a real 
character at all. He's convenient, he's funny, he's making Harry look 
good, but he doesn't have a real life. So he gets to be a Prefect ? 
Oh but that's only so Harry can act the hero again, even if only to 
himself, by deciding that he's going to be a good friend and not be 
jealous, even though HE, Harry, was the one that was OBVIOUSLY 
supposed to be Prefect. I positively HATED it when DD mentioned at 
the end of the book that he didn't make Harry a Prefect because he 
didn't want to put too much on his back !! WHAT ABOUT RON'S 
ABILITIES ??? So Harry was right, huh ? He should have been Prefect, 
but Ron got the badge because Harry needed a break ? I hate it, I 
HATE IT !!! And it's like that all along the book. Yes, Ron does make 
it in the team, but he's nowhere as good as Harry, and even his 
little sister is better than he is !! Ron can't have a romantic life 
of his own, can he, but Harry can, and Ron must only listen to him 
longingly. And what about his only real moment of glory, when he 
helps Gryffyndor win the Quidditch cup ? We don't even get to see 
it !!! Oh no, it's much more important to tell us about Grawp ! Oh 
boy, I hate the way JKR treated Ron in this book. She was never too 
nice with him, but she's been downright awful this time.

> Hermione is perfect.

Irritatingly so, so we can better appreciate Harry's faults, huh ? 
Another sidekick that's here only to be convenient or to make the 
hero look good... Grr...

> Neville rallies to the cause with nary a blip of failure or self-
> doubt.

Well, I must admit I love the way Neville suddenly developped in that 
book, but it's true it doesn't seem logical. The ONLY reason JKR 
gives us for his sudden change is that he got furious when he learned 
the Lestranges had escaped from Azkaban. Seems a bit thin to me...

> Ginny gets more assertive with no hormonal or other adolescent 
> qualms to slow her down; she even tosses boyfriends with equanimity.

Yep, Ginny, like Neville, changes suddenly without us really being 
told why. So she got over her crush on Harry and that's why she's 
talking more ? Again, very thin explanation. And if I may ask, why is 
she hanging around with the trio anyway ? I'm sure she's got friends 
of her own. After all, Ron never hung out with the Twins, except when 
he was mad at Harry.

> Umbridge is a pretty heavy-handed statement of the evils of 
> government control. No subtlety there.

So little subtlety that it got me wondering. So suddenly the 
Government can pass decrees that give it the high hand on Hogwarts ? 
That's news ! In the previous books, I got a strong feeling that the 
goverment didn't have much to do with the school. And what about the 
board of governors that were usually mentioned in the previous books 
as soon as authority at Hogwarts was questioned ? What happened to 
them ???

> Harry's Evil Within is a real possession by an evil Other, not an 
> exploration of personal evil. The only evil he discovers within 
> himself is an unfriendly feeling of superiority to Ron,

which, as I mentioned before, he turns into heroism anyway, by being 
humble even though he IS superior to Ron, isn't he ?

> 4. The book has a great plot. Personally, I highly doubt this one, 

Couldn't agree more. As I said, the story didn't grip me before an 
amazing number of pages, and even then I wasn't panting to read more.

> 1. It tells you more about Harry, in whom you are already 
> emotionally invested.

Yes, but what it does tell me I don't like. When I saw Harry bullying 
his cousin in the first chapter, I was appalled and disgusted, it 
didn't make me want to read more about him. And it only went on and 
on. I did feel sorry sometimes, but most of the time I was just 
mightily annoyed. And I cheered when Phineas told Harry down for 
being so incredibly egocentric. I remember being a teenager : I did 
feel like the world revolved around me and like the adults were wrong 
to act the way they did, but I was also strongly aware that the world 
was obeying rules I didn't know, that people usually had good reasons 
to do what they did and that they didn't have to tell me those 
reasons, and that I'd better learn all those rules and reasons before 
I started shouting at everyone how to run the world. But Harry is 
just unsufferably arrogant and doesn't seem to have realized that yet.

> 2. It tells you some of Snape's and James et al's backstory, so you 
> can enjoy the other books more deeply.

Yep. I'd been feeling before OoP that it might be interesting to 
rewrite HP1-4 from Snape's POV. But now there isn't even any need for 
it anymore : it's clear to me why Snape hates Harry so much. He looks 
like his dad, and he almost acts like his dad (not as evil, but sure 
as arrogant sometimes).

> Which HP fans can't stand OoP, then?
> 
> 1. Those who are so irked by the *lack* of realism in Harry's 
> character that they can't emotionally invest in his new persona.

Like me.

> 
> 2. Those who don't want to read hundreds of pages just to get a 
> backstory.

Depends how it's done. Didn't find it fascinating here, especially 
since JKR kept to her highly annoying habit of not telling things 
straight and clear. I just can't get over the fact that by book 5, we 
still don't know such basic things as which House each of the 
Marauders belonged to, how James and Lily got together, who and what 
their families were, what job they had, etc... It doesn't make sense 
that Harry wouldn't have discovered those things by now, so I'm 
feeling like I'm being lied to, which I hate.

> Yes, I'm a grouch, and I'm proud of it.

I'm turning into a grouch too, unfortunately. I hate being taken for 
more stupid than I am, and I feel that's precisely what JKR is doing. 
Moreover, I hate to see characters' personalities being modified or 
trampled just so the hero can look better. I disliked that hero-
worship JKR's displaying towards Harry right from the first book, but 
now I feel it has taken dangerous proportions : she's sacrificing the 
plausibility of the other characters, of the plot, of the whole 
story, just to make us pity and love Harry. Urgh.

> P.S. I have a pet theory of why JKR wrote OoP in so mediocre a 
> fashion which would exonerate her of almost everything but wishful 
> thinking about human nature. But that is for another time.

I'd love to hear it.

Del