OOP: 9/11, CNN, LV, MoM, (and DA), the boy in the closet peeking

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 63631


I see OOP as a pretty fair satire of the response of the large media 
and certain governments around the world to George Bush and his so-
called war on terrorism. Perhaps this is why some are expressing 
consternation at the tone of the book. Of course, media manipulation 
happens all the time, but rarely so dramatically as in the last 
couple years. I mean, didn't a certain George Bush say that we quite 
possibly will never know all the things the US military is doing? 
Didn't he say we shouldn't know? Well, yes, he did, in fact. Didn't 
media around the world jump on the bandwagon, and face threats when 
they stepped across the line, including a couple MPs and a Minister 
in my own country, Canada? Well, yes, actually.

I projected, as many did, that, as it progressed, the series would 
have to deal much more
intimately with 1 the relationship between the magical and muggle 
worlds and 2 with the inherent class differences in the magical 
world. This has in fact happened - the series
cannot be taken as innocently as it could before. Jolly good, I say. 
Bloody right.

As an adult reader of Rowling, I find such protestations and whinings 
about the change in
tone, percieved or real, in OOP to be laughable. Also, the books are 
NOT puzzles, but it
seems some need them to be. I submit that the puzzly aspects, the 6-2-
4-4-2 on the telephone
spells magic thing, for example, to be chrome, not the story.

The whole series is bound up with the question of desire, fate and 
choice - how the
characters negotiate circumstances, their lives "weighted" 
differently, their choices
echoing, or falling silent. These are big themes. And they are now on 
the surface, but they
have always, I say, been operating in the books. What was secret - 
leaving HP on the
doorstep, e.g. - is now overt - the OOP at the station. Does this 
mean the boy in the
closet now realizes that getting out might be possible, the boy in 
the trap of ignorance?

Remember my theory that the imagined magical world operates for HP in 
the muggle world the
way the books operate for we in the so-called real world? Well, the 
big change in OOP occurs
precisely around that point. The poster who mentioned HP's honest 
response to Snape,
regarding HP thinking of what curse to cast on Draco, as the most 
important line in the
book, hints at the such a change. What prophecy has meant before now 
becomes less a passive,
ignorant, unseeing thing, becomes a more conscious thing. Does our 
consciousness not eke out
spaces, like the space, as it were, around the HP/LL encounter at the 
end of OOP, from the
momentum, from the weighted world moving forward in darkness and 
fear, where prophecies seem
more like sentences?

As for the book being too long - pshaw! I could have kept reading 
another 800 pages,
another 1600.

dan f