A challenging essay, with which I heartily disagree. Like my Snape essay, it does have a point - almost! I’ve followed the discussions with travisprinzi above with interest. For me, travisprinzi’s comments are spot on - and I admire the intelligence, clarity and patience with which they’ve been expressed.
The view of HP put forward in your essay requires a high level of incompetence and naivete on the part of the author. The story does come trailing the clouds of glory of two hundred plus years of English literature, and centuries more of myth, (not to mention alchemy!) and this surely tells us we’re dealing with something that, far from being naïve, is very knowing. You make the point that ‘Rowling is a postmodern, 21st century author‘. In that case we need to read HP with a post-modern sensibility, which boils down to: don‘t read it expecting answers! It’s not incoherent, it’s coherence lies in its contradictions, and it doesn’t present a dubious morality, it questions morality. The two go hand in hand, really. Think of Harry and Snape, whose stories - as I know you are aware - parallel and oppose each other. Dumbledore says ‘Its our choices ... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities’, and Tom, Snape, Harry and Draco - and the house elves! - show just what we have to overcome to be able freely to make choices. Harry rescues Griphook but wrestles with the difficulty of accepting a being so unfamiliar and who seems so ‘other’. Far from being incompetent, Rowling has quite efficiently drawn us into a bewildering labyrinth and blocked our escape at every turn! What’s the purpose of ensnaring us in this way? To force us to stop chasing morality and face up to humanity.
While not presenting us with a neat morality HP does suggest something to help us negotiate the labyrinth - choose love not power.
I think it also helps in coming to terms with HP if we recognise that Harry’s goal is emphatically not to save the wizarding world and open up the Kingdom of Heaven for it. It’s a lot less grand than that, it’s to understand (ie.vanquish Voldemort) and live.
no subject
The view of HP put forward in your essay requires a high level of incompetence and naivete on the part of the author. The story does come trailing the clouds of glory of two hundred plus years of English literature, and centuries more of myth, (not to mention alchemy!) and this surely tells us we’re dealing with something that, far from being naïve, is very knowing. You make the point that ‘Rowling is a postmodern, 21st century author‘. In that case we need to read HP with a post-modern sensibility, which boils down to: don‘t read it expecting answers! It’s not incoherent, it’s coherence lies in its contradictions, and it doesn’t present a dubious morality, it questions morality. The two go hand in hand, really. Think of Harry and Snape, whose stories - as I know you are aware - parallel and oppose each other. Dumbledore says ‘Its our choices ... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities’, and Tom, Snape, Harry and Draco - and the house elves! - show just what we have to overcome to be able freely to make choices. Harry rescues Griphook but wrestles with the difficulty of accepting a being so unfamiliar and who seems so ‘other’. Far from being incompetent, Rowling has quite efficiently drawn us into a bewildering labyrinth and blocked our escape at every turn! What’s the purpose of ensnaring us in this way? To force us to stop chasing morality and face up to humanity.
While not presenting us with a neat morality HP does suggest something to help us negotiate the labyrinth - choose love not power.
I think it also helps in coming to terms with HP if we recognise that Harry’s goal is emphatically not to save the wizarding world and open up the Kingdom of Heaven for it. It’s a lot less grand than that, it’s to understand (ie.vanquish Voldemort) and live.