Feelings on OoP

[Mev532]

No: HPFGUIDX 80073

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "msbeadsley" <msbeadsley at y...> 
wrote:
> "mom31" <mom31 at r...> wrote: <<I've been wondering how everyone 
else 
> is feeling about OoP now that we've had time to re-read it and let 
it 
> sink in.  

A lot of people have criticized this work as 'a downer' or bleak or 
depressing but in a way these are the aspects that really impressed 
me about the book. I feel the tone and content of the stories 
has 'grown up'  as Harry has begun seeing more gray in his 
previously black and white world. 

One point that I was impressed with was Harry's emotional state. So 
many times on television, in movies, or in novels people go through 
what should be very traumatic experiences and by the next 
installment they are all better. Real life doesn't work like this! 
If anyone had gone through what Harry had at the end of GOF he/she 
would have had emotional problems too. 

Harry has become a character with more depth, I feel, than many in 
novels. I thought the moments of furious self justification in which 
he exclaimed (I'm paraphrasing) 'who defeated quirrel? Who killed 
the basilisk? Who met lord voldemort and lived to tell about it, 
me!' were realistic, along with his completely conflicting 
statements about how he had always gotten lucky or had help when 
Hermione tried to convince him to teach the DA. This kind of 'look 
at things one way one second, look at them completely differently in 
a different situation/mood' seemed to me such a wonderfully human 
(and perhaps teenagerish) trait. We all get angry and are often 
unfair to those that we really owe a lot to.

I also loved the events of the story, which somehow manages to 
remain 'realistic' in a completely unrealistic setting. Though taken 
a little bit too far, the ministry of magic's resistance to DD and 
the idea of LV's return is completely understandable. How often do 
people choose to believe one thing when the opposite would mean the 
complete destruction of the comfortable life they have worked to 
achieve?  I also felt that Sirius' death was excellently done. I 
hope the comparison is not inappropriate but I see it akin to one of 
the stories in Tim O'Brians "The Things They Carried" (I don't know 
how to underline). One of the squad members is shot in the head by a 
sniper while going to the bathroom. 'Boom, down, like a sack of 
concrete' One instant and then Boom, dead. Unexpected, sudden, no 
chance to say heart felt farewells.

While sometimes painful to read I feel the realistic gritty feel to 
the characters made up for the books faults.  I feel every book in 
the series is better than the last, OOP included. Anyone else think 
so?

Big Harry Potter fan Dave