Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[rowyn]

So, just about two years after everyone else, I finally finished reading book five in the Harry Potter series. I was talking to tuftears about it, and I've decided, what the heck, I'll post my rant about it.

And some additional spoiler-warning space for anyone surfing by clicking the forward button in my journal.














All right, that should be good.

Like just about everyone else I know who read this book, I was disappointed by it. Two main reasons:

1) 800 pages of torturing the main characters. In previous Harry Potter books, you got 50-100 pages of Dursley-torture that ended when Harry got to Hogwarts. In this thing, it's like the spirit of the Dursleys never leaves. It's not just that bad things happen, or even that bad things happen for wholly unjust reasons. It's that plus the total inability of the main characters to fight back effectively. They cannot rebel, and virtually every act of resistance they do make serves to worsen their situation.

This is partially alleviated by the occassional effective acts of rebellion. After all that's happened, it's utterly delightful to read the sections where Fred and George's fury has been unleashed upon the headmistress.

Still, this goal could've been accomplished in way fewer pages. I don't mind reading 880 page of delight and wonder interspersed with spots of great struggle and danger. Heck, even 880 page of struggle and danger would've been fine. Fore example, the sequence where Harry and his friends are fighting Death Eaters was not torturous: they were tense and interesting. But most of this novel wasn't struggle, it was torture, and it definitely exceeded my levels of masochism.

2) No sign the Harry learned anything from all of this. OK, Harry ignores a string of warnings, makes several serious mistakes, and winds up needing to be rescued and inadvertantly causing Sirius's death. Well, that stinks, but at least he'll realize the importance of keeping his head and listening to the advice of those around him, right?

Right?

Well, I can hope that's the case, but I don't have a lot to prove it by in the text. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that Dumbledore did his confession thing and admitted his mistakes. (Which, let's face it, were pretty egregious. At any point he or Snape could've said plainly, "Look, we think Voldemort is trying to manipulate you RIGHT NOW so don't trust those visions! That last one was only right because he's trying to leave you with a false sense of confidence in them." And maybe if they'd been clearer, Harry would've been less cocky.)

But Dumbledore's "It was all my fault" seems to have absolved Harry from any reason to consider "Gee, perhaps I should control my temper better" or "Hmm, maybe I'm not always right about everything and can run roughshod over any hints that I might be mistaken".

So I'm left with the feeling that book six is going to be more of hot-headed, cocky Harry, and frankly whether he's right or wrong I don't expect to enjoy that much.

According to Amazon, book six is due out July 16 and will be 672 pages. I'm not going to be in any rush to pre-order it. I figure I'll wait and see what my friends have to say: if this gets another lukewarm "meh" reception, I'll pass. There are plenty of good books to read out there; I don't need to slog through the mediocre ones.

Comments

[garyamort.livejournal.com]

I think 800 pages of torturing the main charectors was very effective at driving home the point that sometimes being "good" isn't enough. While most adults know that by now, to most kids their used to books where if the charector does the right thing, everything works out magically. So it was a good lesson, just one you already knew. :-)

Harry's lack of charector developement: I got the impression that this book wasn't ABOUT Harry, truely. It was about the other charectors developing their charector. For Harry, I think it was setting the stage for the next book. Sort of like "Back to the Future II", where the main charector had to repeatedly demonstrate his unwillingness to backdown from a challenge, so that in movie III it was an established part of his charector he had to overcome. Harry repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn't go to other people for help, I suspect the next book will truely set him up for a major problem due to this charector flaw, so that he can conclude the series by actually asking for help in book 7.

However, other charectors had a great deal of developement.

Ron Weasley actually went off and did things WITHOUT Harry.

Neville Longbottom developed his skills and established his drive for revenge.

Dumbledore explained much that had remained a mystery, such as why he kept sending Harry back to live witht he Dursleys.

Petunia developed her charector, in that we know she took Harry in to save him DESPITE hating everything about magic.

Ginny came out of her shell.

Harry's father, James, stopped being this perfect saint and demonstrated that as a kid he was a real jerk(which made sense, considering his friends had demonstrated themselves to be a traitor, a world class jerk, and the kind of person who while he didn't STOP bullies, stood by and said nothing)

And what seems obvious to me, but I see few people mention it, Percy established his charector as Dumbledore's spy in the ministry. He can't communicate directly to Dumbledore, but he tried to get lots of messages to him via Ron. Unfortunately both Ron and Harry weren't talking to Dumbledore, so those messages did not get there(unless the letters went to Dumbledore first, and than Dumbledore was redirecting them to Ron?) There just is no reason for Percy to be sending those letters unless he is trying to communicate what is going on without being caught.

I looked at Book 5 as a book where Harry was incidental to the story. The story was about all the other charectors. Whats more, the death of Sirius seemed very well put together to remove a useless charector that was more of an impediment than a help in the fight against Voldemort.