How will it all end?

[Paul]

No: HPFGUIDX 148742

This is my first posting. Fans spend much time in discussing the 
contents of the still-awaited conclusion of the Harry Potter story. 
I offer a few thoughts of my own. First of all, I believe, we must 
ask ourselves what kind of story J.K.Rowling is telling. We have had 
six parts out of seven already, so it is possible to summarise the 
story so far.

It is the story of Harry Potter. When he was only a year old, his 
parents were murdered by a cruel and powerful enemy, whose main aim 
was to kill Harry himself. At that time, Harry was saved, and the 
enemy for the time being disabled, by the love of his parents. He 
then had a miserable and neglected childhood in the home of his aunt 
and uncle for then years. Then he was given the opportunity to 
escape into a wider world, to develop his abilities, and to make new 
friends at school. However, by this time his old enemy was 
recovering, and for the next six years he made repeated attempts to 
destroy Harry, managing to kill two more people who stood in a quasi-
parental relationship to him.

How, then, will the story end? To take just one, important, point: 
either Harry will survive or he will die. Suppose he dies (even if 
he destroys his enemy as he does so)? The story-line then reduces to 
this: Voldemort spends seventeen years trying to kill Harry, and at 
last he succeeds. The lesson, however you dress it up, would seem to 
be that "if the bastards are out to get you, get you they will. If 
you are lucky, you may manage to take them with you." This is not a 
very hopeful message, nor particularly moral, and I do not think it 
represents Jo Rowling's own philosophy of life, and certainly not 
one she would wish to present to children.

If Harry survives, on the other hand, due to his own resourcefulness 
and through his love for his friends, and theirs for him, then the 
lesson will be what Dumbledore has constantly maintained: love is 
stronger than all Voldemort's type of magic (which is simply based 
on power). To be loved gives one an enduring protection, and the 
ability to love is itself the power that overcomes evil. This does 
seem to be the author's own belief, and I therefore expect the end 
of the story to reflect it. 

But it is possible to argue that self-sacrifice for love's sake is 
also central to her belief, and that therefore Harry may surrender 
his life to save others. This must be taken seriously, and the 
objections to it as an outcome are not so much moral as artistic. 
Given the story as it has so far unfolded, who might Harry love so 
much as to lay down his life for them? It will not do for him to 
pursue Voldemort, and even destroy him, simply from motives of anger 
and revenge. This would subvert the moral framework the author has 
constantly presupposed. The obvious candidate to motivate Harry to 
die for would seem to be Ginny Weasley- but he has already taken 
this risk, in The Chamber of Secrets. It would be a poor ending 
merely to re-run this scenario, with Harry dying second time round. 

The problem with any scenario that has Harry dying is that it is an 
anti-climax. Although death has been referred to as "the next great 
adventure", and definitely not the worst thing one can suffer, it is 
always presented as an unknown mystery, from which no-one returns. 
What lies beyond is an object of faith, not experience. The ghosts 
(if they are actually the souls of the dead) are "neither here nor 
there", having failed to go on as they should. They do not know the 
secrets of death. Hence in Rowling's world, if Harry dies he is 
gone, and all his surviving friends are bereft. From a purely 
literary point of view, to let Harry die will not give a clear 
assurance that he has triumphed, as he needs to do. This is not 
Narnia, where the children can visit Aslan's country and see the 
aged Caspian renewed. That implies an explicit theological 
perspective that Rowling has consistently refused to adopt.

Jo Rowling is not C.S.Lewis, or Philip Pullman. She is not Tolkien 
either, although she has this in common with him, that her personal 
religious convictions are not obviously exhibited in her "sub-
created" world. Nevertheless, although in its physical laws her 
world may differ from the real world- cars may fly, people travel by 
floo-powder, etc.- its moral structure is the same. As Tolkien puts 
it, we make by the laws by which we are made.

"Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one 
thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's 
part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own 
home." (The Two Towers, chapter 2)

It would be rash to predict what J.K.Rowling will do in the final 
book, but given her strong moral perspective, and given the 
painstaking way she has built up the story of her young protagonist 
and his friends (including the love between Ron and Hermione, and 
Harry and Ginny), it would seem artistically a flaw simply to 
curtail these story-lines. This is, after all, a "fairy-story" in 
Tolkien's sense, for children and grown-ups. It requires 
its "eucatastrophe", and that "they all live happily ever after" 
within the story itself. It will not do for the survivors, whoever 
they may be- including people like Fudge, Draco, Uncle Vernon, etc.- 
simply to remember Harry Potter as "the boy with the scar", the Boy 
Who Died. 

Paul