Why to Like and Not Like OoP (minus words that must not be used)

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 70624


>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.

Apparently not, from the posts so far. However, I daresay you aren't 
asking for agreement, only critical responses, right? Please post it.

>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

Harry chose to confront Dudley for his bullying of other people, 
vigilante style. He knows his "parents" aren't going to do anything 
about it. He knows "the world" does nothing about it. The situation 
gives him an opportunity to both exercise empathy (with the Evans
boy) and personal responsibility - neither the Witch Wizard world nor 
the muggle world has any mechanism, in the books, for protecting the 
innocent. So, I honestly don't understand your response.

>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.

But, in fact, "learning all those rules" is rather like learning the 
letter of the law alone - learning to be a good citizen, learning to 
follow orders etc. etc. This is not, in itself, a reasonable ethical 
imperative to follow. It is neutral, on one hand, in not addressing 
the underlying grammar of those rules or reasons learned, but to call 
it the exclusive "thing to learn" is dangerous. I support the idea of 
education based on both nomenclature - the naming of things, and 
their description - and creativity, the making of things. Naming 
rules, identifying them, is the end of knowledge only in games, in 
chess, as it were, not in society.

When I was in school, I was the only native american in the whole 
place - it wasn't an issue ever... until one time I presented an 
essay on the history of the RCMP. Suddenly, the class was 
aghast. "You're telling us that the history of the RCMP began with 
the organized murder and emprisonment, in concentration camps, of 
native americans? Pshaw!"

>> 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 .... 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.
>
>(3) Harry does have deep emotional resources, but he has been 
through 
>terrible experiences. As a result, he is not on the verge of 
collapse, 
>but he is rage-filled, plagued by nightmares, prone to outbursts of 
>temper that are usually uncharacteristic for him, untrusting, and 
>sullen.
>
>Doesn't that seem realistic?
>
>Amy Z

It seems reasonable for someone who lives in a place, or places, 
where "truth" is a scarce commodity, where the lies of so-called 
newspapers hold sway, and where so-called moral courage is seen as 
dilletantism or hero-complexing or suchlike. Not at all unlike the RW 
today. Also, in the books, Harry is left on his own, pretty much, 
without being given incredibly long and detailed explanations of his 
position within the society. What resources he has, he focusses on 
quidditch, say. The world will not save either him or innocent 
people. He's a young anarchist. Tough, I say, if certain readers 
don't like the fact. Rowling, as I have stated in another recent 
post, goes out of her way to defend the radical, the outsider. My 
suspicion is that some of the criticism of OOP stems from the fact 
that that perspective is now quite "in your face," or explicit, where 
it was largely implicit before.

>To this end, why couldn't someone else in the Order tell him all
this 
>stuff?

Because their lives have just changed dramatically, they don't know 
what to say that isn't dross, and Harry is, like any teenager of his 
bent, not going to want niceties or explanations. He wants Voldemort 
stopped. Like the great youth today who REFUSE to accept that there 
is some justifiable, logical reason why people are starving around 
the world. "Get off with that claptrap. Let's just feed them. And 
stop killing."

>when I finished reading it I had a sense of
>anticlimax. And not just because I had built it up so much in my
mind. It
>felt like more of an "easy-read" than any of the others.

I submit that OOP only seems an easy read if the radical element of 
the book, and indeed of the series, is ignored. Indeed, OOP is the 
opposite of an easy read when it is approached with the knowledge of 
this radical undercurrent in the book. And make no mistake, 
anarchism, or anarcho- syndicalism, as it were, is not a one-
dimensional thing, but incorp- orates what, for instance, Luna (yay 
Luna!) brings to the series - an appreciation of the "world beneath 
the world, where what we don't don't merely choose, but what chooses 
us, as it were, is" etc etc.

>And I'm getting
>a little sick of this fifteen year old kid being able to vanquish
Voldemort
>all the time too, somehow. I don't mean that in the way it probably
sounds,
>I know it's the premise for the books. But it seemed like this time
Harry
>was *way* more out on his own and I just didn't like it.

Harry has been set alone, in an abusive space, in a closet. A few 
months ago I started a thread that set up the reading that HP is an 
abused boy in a 
closet, and the fantasy muggle world operates for him the way the 
books operate for us. Recently, I've noticed some points where these 
worlds, both those in the books and the RW and Rowling's world, 
threaten to meet, to join. In those cases, there is an abrupt sense 
of collapse, of disillusionment, as it were. THAT is the challenge in 
the books, I think, not to shy from it, but to examine it, for what 
Rowling is saying. It is not that the books 
aren't adult enough, but rather that the books aren't childish 
enough, that seems to be the problem. And whereas, I might add, in 
previous books, Harry managed to vanquish without direct help, or 
help from non-peers, that was not so in OOP. Albus' appearance 
signalled the big outing, as it were.

>I don't think
>it's going to make me enjoy the other books more, just maybe
understand them
>more.

This is the most telling statement. From book one, I have read 
Rowling as if she were writing parallel worlds, parallel levels, 
parallels, and that diagon alley was just that, a diagonal between 
the worlds, a jarring, a 
folding closet door, whatever. If I never "understood them more" 
there would be no reason to read book 6 and 7. In short, this group 
is huge and has a gazillion posts because the books do present a 
challenge. For some, that might be finding acronyms or clues. For 
others, like myself, that challange is set by the ethical imperatives 
Rowling sets up. As for characterisation, I submit that the 
characters in the books exist on the diagonal between characature and 
realism, on a scale, as it were, on that diagonal. The test for any 
book is never 'do psychologists think this character reflects what a 
RW person would think or do' but 'what is this character thinking and 
doing...."

dan