Prophecies and Chosen Ones
dumbledore11214
dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com
Sat May 30 14:51:25 UTC 2009
No: HPFGUIDX 186793
The reason why I was thinking about Prophecy in Harry Potter series again even though we discussed it gazillion times is because I recently read the final book in the Last Olympian series by Rick Riordan, where prophecy and the chosen one also feature rather prominently.
Now, we all have our disappointments and satisfactions in the series, I am sure I had said it in the past that as plot development the introduction of the Prophecy easily is among my top three disappointments. The biggest adjustments as a reader I had to make did not come after I read DH, oh no, that was after I read OOP. I had to decide whether I could still continue not even reading, I am sure I would have wanted to finish the series anyway, but whether I could love them as much as I did before when the huge element of surprise for the ending was gone for me. Of course when I am speaking about surprise, I am talking about it in the most general sense possible, obviously I did not take lessons with Professor Trelawney and could not predict Horcruxes, Hallows, etc. But I (as I am sure millions other readers) now knew that this Harry's Deeeeestiny and all that it will come down to eventually is how prophecy will play out.
While as I said I of course did not predict any of these things, I cannot say that I saw any twist in how Prophecy came to fruition. The one with the power to kill the Dark Lord approaches? Yep, here we have Harry. Neither can live while the other survives? Yes, indeedy - horcruxes came to play and here we have Harry alive and Voldie dead.
Was I disappointed at the end? No, not really, I was heavily invested in the characters, I really wanted Harry live, so I was happy. But I cannot help but think that Rick Riordan did way better job with the Prophecy by introducing excellent excellent twist at the end. Because seriously, I do know that Prophecy is a widespread device of the genre, but with all the talk of subverting it, transforming it, with the use of this plot device I quite honestly saw nothing of the sort.
Were you initially disappointed when prophecy was introduced? Were you happy how Prophecy played out?
Alla
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