Killing Harry

va32h va32h at comcast.net
Wed Aug 15 00:46:10 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 175418

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...> 
wrote:
> The real beauty of the book is that if you want Harry dead you can
> have him dead, just rip out the last 53 pages of the book so that 
the
> entire Potter saga ends on page 704 with the words "He saw the mouth
> move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone."
> 
> What sort of reception do you suppose the book would have received 
if
> JKR hadn't written those last 53 pages?

va32h: I wondered that too. It think it would have been a very gutsy, 
powerful move on JKR's part, but I knew she'd never do it, because 
most of fandom would be hysterical. 

Much of fandom already is hysterical because the epilogue isn't 5,000 
pages long, listing the house, blood status, occupation, spouse, 
boggart, patronus, Animagus form if they were an Animagus, and 
favorite Quidditch team of every character ever mentioned in the 
series. 

I never believed that Harry should die. Not because "it's a 
children's book" and not because "the fans would hate it" but because 
I really believed that Harry's story was one of hope, and progress. 
Dying at 17 isn't progress, no not even if you are dying for the 
whole wide wizarding world. 

Harry loved his parents, and Sirius, and Dumbledore, but spending 
eternity with them having died at 17 would be rather like crawling 
back into the womb. He doesn't know his parents, really. He knows and 
loves Ron and Hermione and Ginny and the other Weasleys and Hagrid 
and Luna - he belongs in the land of the living. He belongs to the 
future. 

va32h







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