A Sense of Betrayal

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 172309

Hi, folks.

Well, it's over. Really over. It was a good ride, but the final secrets 
have been told, the final page turned.

Personally, I felt that, in terms of character and plot development, 
while the series started out strong, it peaked in HP5; HP6 and 7 were 
marred by too many missed opportunities, and the whole series by a 
couple of nagging irritants, and one near deal-breaker.

I'll have to agree with another reviewer that JKR's strength lay in the 
characters she created and their relationships. If I had to pick a 
favorite character, my vote would have to go to the entire Weasley 
family; Harry and his willful stubborness managed to annoy me just once 
too often.

As to HP7 specifically, I didn't find the whole Deathly Hallows 
storyline worked particularly well. I understand what JKR was trying to 
do, but in the end, I just didn't feel it integrated well into the 
overall narrative.

As to Snape, I really was hoping he would turn out good, just to teach 
Harry a lesson about the complexities of adults; unfortunately, I think 
JKR shot herself in the proverbial foot in HP6 (more on that later), and 
failed to satisfactorily extract herself from her dilemma.

So first, those two nagging irritants:

Creaky Prose
------ -----

While JKR has an incontrovertible gift for story-telling, unfortunately, 
too often her creaky prose distracted. I won't say it was always 
distracting, by there were certainly times I found myself cringing at a 
bit of over-wordiness, or an awkwardly cast sentence. Perhaps my 
training as an English educator biases me, but I certainly enjoy clever 
wordplay and a well-turned phrase. Reading HP was like taking a long, 
exciting journey over occasionally bumpy roads; just when things start 
getting really hectic, a sudden jolt and a jar would distract my 
attention from the story. This was particularly apparent while reading 
the climatic battle in HP7; rather than being able to fully enjoy the 
story, a part of me was distracted by the unpolished prose.

No Magic for the Magical
-- ----- --- --- -------

Do you wish to look? For this is what your folk would call magic, I 
believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they 
seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.

The above words, from The Lord of the Rings, were spoken by Galadriel, 
queen of the immortal Elves, to Samwise in response to his desire to see 
elf-magic.

The thing that kept nagging me throughout the HP series was simply this: 
the magical do not believe in magic. That is, the magical would no more 
view their gifts as magic than a sighted person would call his ability 
to perceive objects at great distances, or communicate without words 
wizardry, whatever a blind man might believe. Magical, wizardry, 
witchcraft -- these may be labels applied to the magical by others, 
but not labels the magical would ever take to themselves. Like 
Galadriel, we would be puzzled at most, bemused at best, by a blind 
man's views of our extra sense. And just as, in the sighted world we do 
not send our children to schools of sight and seeing, so in the 
magical world there would be no schools of witchcraft and wizardry. 
Sight to the sighted may be fundamental to nearly everything we do, and 
fundamentally shape our perceptions of the universe; but we do not take 
classes to learn how to see.

What bothered me most about this was the missed opportunity. It's simply 
apparent to me that, just as our gift of sight presents us with a 
fundamentally different view, and understanding, of the world around us 
than those who lack sight (don't believe me? Try describing the night 
sky to someone who has no concept of light), so those with magical 
giftings would find the universe a fundamentally different kind of place 
than those of us without. I would have enjoyed some explorations of 
those differences, in terms both metaphysical and psychological. As CS 
Lewis in Out of the Silent Planet, or Zenna Henderson in her stories of 
The People, JKR had the opportunity here to show us something of 
ourselves, to explore our humanity by taking us outside ourselves to 
reveal how we might have been. Lewis' race of un-Fallen beings shines a 
light on our Fallenness; Henderson People, communities of magically 
endowed extra-terrerstrials attempting to exist in a society that fears 
and misunderstands them, show us a bit of the darker side of our humanity.

I found Henderson's explorations of the psychology and communities of 
The People fascinating. I would have loved to have seen some of that in 
HP, as well. And for those who might argue that this was, after all, a 
children's series, I would note that a) JKR herself denied she was 
writing children's books; and b) I first encountered, and fell in love 
with, Henderson's People when I was eleven or twelve years old. While I 
wasn't old enough at the time to understand what it was that made the 
People so compelling, they were, and remain decades after I last read 
the stories, unforgettable.
	
And, finally, the near deal-breaker:

Moral Inconsistency
----- -------------

But I thought they were bad?

My 11-year-old actually asked me this as we read HP7 together, and I had 
no answer except to say I thought JKR was wrong.

He was referring to the Unforgivable Curses. From Wikipedia:

"The Unforgivable Curses ... are so named because their use is ... 
forbidden and literally unforgivable in the Wizarding World. Use of any 
of these spells on any human being can carry a life-sentence in the 
magical wizard's prison of Azkaban."

The thing is, I had had more than one discussion with my son previously 
about what made the Unforgivables unforgivable, and why a good person 
could not use them. Then came the end of HP6, when Snape uses the Avadra 
Kedavra to kill Dumbledore, and Harry attempts to use the same on Snape. 
At the time, I explained to my son that Harry, caught up in his grief 
and his anger, made a mistake, as even good people sometimes do. But for 
Snape no redemption was possible. Cold, calculated, premeditated, his 
use of the Curse had put him beyond all possibility of salvation. That 
is, if unforgivable had any meaning at all.

Which, apparently, it does not. From Wikipedia again:

"However, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Unforgivable 
Curses are used liberally by good characters, ranging from Professor 
McGonagall with the Imperius Curse, to Harry effectively using the 
Cruciatus Curse. He also uses the Imperius curse on several goblins."

And, apparently, at least one good character uses the Avadra Kedavra, 
though JKR doesn't call it by name.

That the good guys started liberally throwing around the Unforgivables 
is bad enough. But JKR compounds the moral issue here in the way in 
which they do so  without reluctance or hesitation, without so much as 
a hint of moral compunction. When Harry Imperiuses the goblins  at 
Hermione's almost casual suggestion, no less -- he might have been 
casting a Hot Air Charm for all the reticence he exhibited.

For all intents and purposes, in HP7 JKR just seems to ignore the moral 
component of at least two of the Unforgivables, and, both in Mrs. 
Weasley's dispatching of Bellatrix, and the way she attempts to extract 
Snape from his moral predicament, apparently the Avadra Kedavra as well. 
As you can guess, I do NOT think the fact that Dumbledore arranged the 
whole thing excuses what remains, to my mind, an act of murder.

All of which, in light of the moral discussions I had had with my son, 
left me feeling a bit (well, more than a bit) betrayed.

CJE Culver, Taiwan