What if Harry dies?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 85206

> I wrote:
> <snip> Hardly anyone would buy the books once the word got out, so I 
> don't think her publisher would allow her to do it. And she cried 
> when she killed off Sirius, who barely qualifies as a major 
> character, and she's made it fairly clear that she won't kill off 
> Hagrid or Ron, so she probably feels even more strongly about killing 
> Harry. 
> 
> Erin responded:
> There are so many things wrong with these statements I hardly even 
> know where to start :-)  

Carol:
I believe you mean that you disagree with me. That's rather different
from saying that my statements are "wrong." Let me try to put my
opinions in perspective here despite being rather unhappy with the
general tone of your responses.

Erin wrote: 
> First off, I highly doubt that at this point her publisher has any 
> control over how the books will turn out.  As you noted earlier, in a 
> part I snipped, she writes these books for herself.  Period.  If 
> Bloomsbury or Scholastic didn't like a certain plotline, she could 
> sell it to a different publisher in a hot second.  Any of them would 
> leap to take it.

Carol:
I work in publishing and the publishers I know of are interested in
making money. If they think that killing off a highly popular
character will interfere with sales, they will reject the book as
written. Yes, she can go to another publisher, but money counts with
all of them--or at least with all the ones I work with. Rowling may be
a special case, but I'm willing to bet that her current publishers
have been given her word that she won't do anything that will cause a
dropoff in readership. Publishers want books that sell. Period.

Erin wrote:
> And "hardly anyone would buy the books once the word got out" of 
> Harry dying?  Can you truly believe that?  I mean, a tragic ending 
> never stopped Romeo and Juliet from being popular.  And there's a 
> certain new movie out that's selling pretty well despite the hero's 
> death at the end.  Star Wars is still going strong although we all 
> realize the main guy is about to become Darth Vader.  I think Harry 
> Potter would sell even if she had all the characters bite it and 
> Voldemort win at last. If you don't, perhaps you don't realize just 
> how big this thing really is.

Carol:
Yes, I truly believe that. The millions of children you mentioned in
the snipped portion of this message are not going to want Harry to
die, and if they find out that he does, they won't want to read the
books. I'll read it because I want to find out what happens to Snape
and certain other characters, but I think the children who idolize her
now will feel betrayed and many will reject both her and her books.
You are, of course, entitled to the opposite opinion. "Romeo and
Juliet" is not a valid comparison because it's a play intended for an
adult audience, not the last in a series of children's books with a
secondary audience of adults. Theater goers didn't wait ten years (or
whatever) to find out what happened to Romeo and Juliet. They knew at
the outset that R and J was a romantic tragedy. And believe me, I do
know how big this thing is. It's caught me, hasn't it?

Erin wrote: 
> Next- Sirius not a major character??  The guy had a whole *book* 
> named after him.  Harry regarded him as a mixture of father and 
> brother.  Probably only Ron or Hermione's death could have hurt him 
> more.  How much more major do you want?


Carol:
Sirius, though he's the title character in PoA, was deliberately
misrepresented throughout that book and appeared in his proper person
only very near the end. He was a distant face and voice in GoF and was
present in OoP only in the Grimmauld Place chapters and in the DoM
battle in which he was killed. He is not a major character to the same
degree as Ron or Hermione or for that matter Snape, who has grown and
developed through all the books as is as much a part of Hogwarts as
Dumbledore. I do agree with your statement that only Ron's or
Hermione's deaths would have hurt Harry more than Sirirus's. That does
not make him a major character, however, and he is clearly expendable
regardless of his popularity on this list and elsewhere.

> 
> I wrote:
> <snip> Only an author who can't think of a way to weave all the loose 
> ends into the fabric of the story kills off the protagonist and 
> considers it a denouement.
> 
> Erin responded:
> Actually, having the hero die is a classic... oh, I can't really 
> explain it properly, but you should definitely read Joseph 
> Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" to get a better 
> understanding of why so many heros end up biting it.  It has to do 
> with the whole heroic journey thing.  I will limit myself to asking 
> if you consider Shakespeare to be a substandard author, since several 
> of his plays end as tragedies?


Carol:
I have a PhD in English, so I know a bit about tragedy, and of course
I don't consider Shakespeare to be a substandard author. The Harry
Potter series is not a tragedy in either its structure or its subject
matter. If we're looking at genres, I would classify it as part
fantasy novel, part epic, and part bildungsroman.

It's late and I'm tired so I hope I have answered this post
articulately and politely, if not to Erin's complete satisfaction. I
almost left it unanswered.

P.S. I accidentally snipped the part about Hagrid. I read in an
interview, which I naturally can't find at the moment, that JKR had no
intention of killing him off. I didn't invent the idea, you can be sure.

Carol