HP as escapist children's literature (was Harry's DADA skill)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182726

Julie wrote:
> >I think you hit the nail on the head, Carol. The story JKR wanted
to tell was the story of Harry the boy hero and his two friends who
save the world pretty much all by themselves.
> <SNIP>
> >I think it was our expectations that betrayed us, in part probably
because most of us are mature adults (er, chronologically-speaking at
least ;-) and we found many of the secondary characters as interesting
(myself) or in some cases *more* interesting than the main protagonist
and his two young friends.
<SNIP> I think also that JKR really WAS writing a children's story.
<SNIP>
> >I don't call the Harry Potter series "escapist children's
>literature" as an insult (and I'm not debating its merits in
comparison to other escapist children's literature). I just think that
is what it turned out to be, despite some impressions midstream that
led me to see more potential psychological and emotional depth than
was actually delivered. And I would rather view the series as what it
is than keep trying to invest all manner of deep meaning (and/or
intent) where it doesn't (IMO) exist.

Carol responds: 
> My question (to Julie or to anyone who can help) is how do you get
yourself to do this?  Ever since DH, when I found my expectations of
the HP series as a whole were destroyed, I have been trying to regain
my delight in the HP series as the children's story which I have
decided it actually was.  I have been struggling with this.  I miss my
delight and enthusiasm.
<snip>
> It seems to me that JKR had some areas in which she did think things
through, plan things, intend to have deep meanings, etc.  But lots of
other areas she just did what seemed like a good idea at the time. 
And I can't get the two areas sorted out in my mind.
> 
> Jerri, struggling to remain a HP fan, or did I waste several years
of my life?

Carol responds:
As always, I can only speak for myself. On a first reading (and it was
a sleepless, marathon read after waiting till about 1 a.m. to pick up
the book and take it home--I was in no fit state to see or speak to
anyone!), I was pulled in two directions--the emotional rollercoaster
of the events themselves (sorry for the cliche, but I can't think of
any other way to express the abrupt changes from excitement to ennui,
suspense and horror to humor, etc.) and the conflict between my own
hopes and expectations and some of the scenes. 

I knew when I began the book that JKR could not possibly meet all of
my expectations or anyone else's. I expected certain questions to
remain unanswered and certain plot resolutions to be different, very
different, from what I anticipated. I knew that there would be
inconsistencies and coincidences and improbabilities and errors in
math and chronology because those are the kinds of things that JKR
tends to be careless about and that her editors, who are undoubtedly
instructed to do a "light edit," tend not to catch. So I didn't let
things like Sirius's letter to Lily bother me; I just read, as I would
read a mystery, to find out what happened and to feel the emotions and
to find out as much as I could about Snape and his motivation.
Unfortunately, I occasionally felt emotions that JKR didn't intend,
such as fury at McGonagall for her conduct throughout "The Sacking of
Severus Snape," and (bear in mind my sleeplessness and obsession and
overall, er, fragile emotional state), fury at JKR for "betraying" me
and making me believe that Snape was good. (Obviously, my mind was
playing tricks on me and I misinterpreted his actions in that
chapter.) "The Prince's Tale," though I didn't like the depiction of
Dumbledore and though it was too Lily-focused, was a healing
experience, as were Harry's public vindication of Snape and the
references to Snape in the epilogue. JKR's view of death was also
comforting; I was sure that Snape, like DD (whose hand is healed) and
Lupin (who looks younger and surely is no longer a werewolf) is
happier in the afterlife than he ever was on earth.

At any rate, for me, the first step was to accept what I always knew
would be the case, that the book, though it has its beauties and some
pleasant surprises (such as "The Doe Patronus") was not and could not
be what I (or any other reader) expected it to be. The second was to
reconcile myself to developments that I didn't like (DH!Dumbledore was
harder to accept than DH!Snape--thank goodness for "King's Cross,"
where he becomes the familiar flawed but essentially wise and good DD
that we've always known as opposed to the puppetmaster that he appears
to be (LV actually refers to Harry as "Dumbledore's puppet," but LV's
view of things is less than accurate). I'm not recommending denial,
just a rereading to put things in perspective. The truth about
Dumbledore, part of which we have to figure out to our own
satisfaction because JKR has not provided all the answers, is
somewhere between Elphias Doge's version and Rita Skeeter's, not to
mention Aberforth's, and, of course, the adult Dumbledore is very
different from the boy who idolized Gellert Grindelwald and planned to
rule the world.

The next step, for me, is again, to see what's really there, starting
with a rereading of the series and a re-examination of the earlier
books in light of the events and revelations in DH (as Alla is doing
in her OoP thread). It's fun to look at the clues and foreshadowing,
and to examine, for example, DD's remarks about forgetting what it's
like to be young in light of what we now know about his youth.

I don't think the answer is to reclassify HP as "young adult
literature" (I hate that term, as Magpie knows. Teenagers are not
young adults. They're adolescents in the throes of puberty and peer
pressure, and despite adultlike bodies, they're in many respects
immature). The HP books have very little in common with, say, "A
Series of Unfortunate Events," where the children are unrealistically
brilliant and the villain is obviously and unambiguously and
irredeemably evil. There are no gray characters; everything is what it
appears to be, no interpretation required. HRH, in contrast, are
flawed. they make mistakes; they misinterpret events and people; they
occasionally do things that, from a moral and ethical perspective,
they probably shouldn't do, such as invading other people's privacy
(Snape's Pensieve memories) or spying (interesting how Harry's
following Draco around parallels Severus's following the Marauders) or
cheating on their homework or taking revenge (Hermione's blackmailing
of Rita Skeeter, for example) or casting Unforgiveable Curses (Harry's
assorted Crucios, successful and otherwise). They experience realistic
emotions, ranging from euphoria to fury, including adolescent crushes
and petty jealousy. They even fight among themselves. (Ron's departure
and return make for one of the most poignant moments in the whole
series, IMO--though, of course, he also performs some heroic feats in
that chapter--all with, as Deb says, the subtext of Snape in the
background.)

So, if you're disillusioned with the books, the next step might be to
think about what JKR does well. That will be different for each
reader, of course. Speaking only for myself, I think she handles
horror brilliantly. The GoF chapter in which Wormtail resurrects
Voldemort is probably the first example. Others that I recall offhand
are the cave scene in HBP and Bathilda!Nagini and the death of Snape
in DH. (Nagini is, I think, much more horrifying than the Basilisk in
CoS, but possibly the Basilisk has been spoiled for me by too many
rereadings or by the film version.) Voldemort may be a disappointing
villain in many respects, chiefly because we're told rather than
shown, what he can do, but Snape, love him or hate him, is a
beautifully delineated character and the misdirection balanced by
hints at his true loyalties is, I think, sustained quite well even
into DH.

You might think about your favorite chapters or chapters that had a
profound emotional effect on you (other than rage at JKR for
"betraying" you, which I first felt and had to deal with through a
reexamination of the evidence in "The Lightning-Struck Tower" in HBP.
Or you can look at the books to see how they blend different
genres--mystery, Bildungsroman/school story, heroic quest--and violate
or don't violate the expectations of those novels. You can look at her
use of mythology and folklore or her wordplay or her humor or her
narrative technique or her symbolism and imagery. (Were all those
references to snape's movements as batlike merely foreshadowing his
ability to fly in DH or was there more to them?) And irony. It's
everywhere, as is flawed perception.

Just because DH isn't what we expected (and doesn't fit with the
preconceptions that we formed from her interviews, which she might
have been better off not giving, or, at least, her readers might be
better off without) doesn't mean that we should reject it. We expected
an apple and got a hybrid apricot/lemon/persimmon. Should we reject it
out of hand? Or should we figure out what it really is, what's really
there? As you've undoubtedly noticed, the books are still open to
interpretation, not only DH but the series as a whole. And the more
JKR attempts to answer our questions, the more I think that we're
better off examining the books and finding those answers for ourselves. 

For all their faults, for all the failures of DH to meet the
expectations that we ourselves formed, partly based on our discussion
here, partly based on her interviews, partly based on our own reading
and interpretation of various characters, there's still a lot to be
discussed and discovered in these books, and the answer is not, IMO
only, to dismiss them as "escapist children's literature" (though
there are elements of that genre, such as the relative absence of
adult help for the young protagonists in DH) or to consider the years
we've spent reading and analyzing the HP books as wasted.

Authors deliberately create a plot and characters, but much of the
writing of a book is subconscious. An author's values and reading and
experience shape what she writes, turning it into something new, a
synthesis and imaginative recreation of what is already in her mind. I
thought, on reading the first few chapters on Hogwarts in SS/PS, that
she had simply taken Halloween witches and Merlin-style wizards and
stuck them in a school. And then I encountered Severus Snape and
realized that JKR's genius lay, not in creating a new world that in
many respects resembled our own with a Gothic facade and an overlay of
magic, but in the creation of memorable characters and occasionally
brilliant dialogue. Since then, I've discoveed other aspects of her
writing, such as her narrative technique and the layers of irony and
ambiguity that pervade certain events, and the chains of unintended
consequences that flow from the actions of multiple characters,
starting with the Prophecy and eavesdropping but also Harry's mercy
toward Wormtail abd DD's secrecy and much else.

Let's say that you gave your mother a CD for Christmas or her birthday
and she opened it eagerly, expecting it to be Beethoven. It turns out
to be your favorite rock band. Should she reject it out of hand
because it isn't the work of a great classical composer or should she
listen to it and appreciate it on its own terms?

JK Rowling isn't JRR Tolkien. She isn't anyone but herself. And just
as her characters are flawed (often deliberately), her books are also
flawed. But LOTR and "Moby Dick" and the plays of Shakespeare and many
other great literary and dramatic works are also flawed, but we don't
stop reading them because we don't like the handling of certain themes
and characters. In JKR's case, I think we are setting ourselves up for
disappointment if we expect her books to be great literary classics.
But they *are* literature, and we owe it to ourselves, given the time
and emotional investment we've put into them, to see what's really
there, examine it as objectively as possible, and interpret it
rationally, not based on our hopes and expectations (or what JKR says
in interviews) but on the words as they appear on the printed page,
not taken at face value but with an awareness of the limitations of
her chosen point of view and of Harry's tendency toward misperception
or partial awareness and understanding (presumably corrected at the
end of the series, Ron's persistence in old attitudes notwithstanding).

Carol, merely suggesting a cure for disillusionment that worked for
her, not suggesting that her view is the correct one