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

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

I actually thought that Harry's character in the book was a remarkably accurate portrayal of an angsty teenager. I didn't like him any more than you did, but I thought it was more realistic than having him remain the optimistic child he was in the first books. Did he learn a lesson? Maybe not, teenagers often don't.

I suspect that the powerlessness of the characters to improve their fate will resonate for teenagers who feel powerless in their own lives. The final triumph will feel cathartic for them. As a "powerful" adult it did frustrate me a little, but mostly because I could see that the "good" adults in the book were causing most of the grief by not giving the teens vital information.

I felt that mostly the book suffered from a lack of good editing. There were passages that were WAY too long. For example there was a whole 2 pages describing an elevator ride with flying memos. That could have been done in much less space. Cutting 200-250 pages would have forced Ms. Rowling to decide what was really essential and would have greatly strengthened the book.

[rowyn]

It's really a combination of "too long" and "too painful". There's a lot of extraneous detail in all of the Potter books (more so in the last two), but in the first three, especially, it's what makes the books fun.

Had the continual torturing of the characters been shorter, then the whole book would've been more enjoyable. But as it is, it's too much slog for the catharsis.

I'll agree that angry-cocky Harry is perfectly realistic. However, there's a difference between "realistic" and "readable". Again, you're right that if the book were shorter, then the failings of the protagonist would be less annoying. Now, maybe teens are going to relate so well to angry-cocky Harry that they'll just love it, in which case they can buy book 6 & 7 and I'll stay out of it. I recall my angsty teenage years revolving a lot more around depression than yelling at my friends, but hey, that's just me.

And I will admit that I didn't mind Harry's outbursts the first couple of times; they seemed reasonable at the outset. It's only after mutliple iterations of it that I started to think "Get a grip on yourself, or at least recognize that you could USE a grip on yourself even if you're not competent to actually do it." So maybe just being shorter so that it wasn't so repeatedly in-my-face would've solved that entirely.

Still, my main point is that Rowling could get away with writing 600-900 page doorstoppers if they were fun. A torturous slog with characters I don't much like who aren't going to learn form their mistakes is not cutting it for me.

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

All good points. The books are definitely not about fun adventures any more.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

That was my problem with Star Wars Episode 2, actually, and I've gone around in circles with most of my friends on this. If a movie character is sufficiently obnoxious, the fact that people his age are often that way doesn't matter. I'll still feel schadenfreude instead of sympathy.

What Order of the Phoenix reminded me the most of was seasons 5-6 of Buffy. Lots and lots of problems, not very many solutions, characters who we've learned to love experiencing great suffering with no end in sight, and angst as a replacement for character development.

I'm hoping it's a fluke. Harry was kinda obnoxious in Goblet of Fire, too, but not so much that I lost interest in him. Maybe Order was his wake-up call.

[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.

No Catharsis

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I agree with a great deal of what you have to say, except that I felt no "utter delight" at the getting-back at the wretched headmistress. Sure, she deserved it, she so deserved it ... but the problem I have with the Rowlings books is that there are so many wild-eyed, seething, preposterously evil characters who seem to be inflated up to be punching bags at the end of the book for the characters to work out their (and our) frustrations upon, when finally they "get what's coming".

Malfoy has gotten tiresome as a plot device. The only interesting "turn" that ever came from him was at the very beginning, when it briefly seemed he was a friendly sort, and then it was revealed that he was actually this sneering sort who looked down upon "Mudbloods". Ever since then, House Slytherin has been this ridiculous parody that seems like it belongs in a '70s Saturday Morning Cartoon - You know, the school club or the sports team or whatever, that is EVIL, so that a competition that is normally between rivals is now a battle of "good versus evil" because we just can't have it any other way.

(I remember being amazed at my first encounters with Japanese anime when they would tackle situations like this, where often times, it would turn out that the "bad guy" wasn't so bad after all: He was, after all, just a rival, and there were ways of resolving it without "good guy vs. bad guy" finality.)

I get no particular joy at seeing Malfoy or the villain-of-the-day to get turned into a slug or whatever punishment he gets settled with, because it just feels like the whole book becomes this exercise in building up anger and frustration in the reader, and then suddenly it's supposed to be all better because something horrible happens to a dislikeable character - and the "heroes" have an excuse to do something nasty.

I want to think well of the Harry Potter series. And I do plan on reading the next book - and unless it's particularly brutal - to try to make my way through the rest of the series. I guess I'm just that way about unfinished stories.

But I can't help but think that, with all the detractors I've heard of Rowlings's books - that there's witchcraft and monsters in it, horrors! - there are things more worthy of being concerned about. I just hope that Rowlings doesn't end this series the way she typically deals with her villains - by sticking her strawman bad guys into her own Dante's Inferno of ridiculous torments, to make it "all better" at the end.

I don't find it to be a particularly inspiring message in a book, that, "The bad guys get it in the end." Yeah, after they make sure that so many more good guys meet miserable ends, so that's supposed to be pay-back? Big whoop. I'm much more a sucker for the occasional bit of redemption. I would have found it far more compelling if, say, Draco Malfoy (or, for that matter, ANY member of Slytherin) were a bit less annoying, and perhaps circumstances could have compelled Harry and his "enemy" to have to put aside their differences to work toward a common goal. But there seems to be very little of that in these stories. Bad guys stay bad - or, at least, if there's a good guy that used to be bad, that all got resolved in the past, off-camera.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Has it really been two years since it came out?

At this point, I'm a little uncertain exactly why I'm not recalling much from the book. It's probably either A) that it was two years ago, or B) that I was sufficiently disappointed in it that I pushed much of it out of my mind.

But, both of your comments on the book resonate with my impressions of it: Too much angst, too much torture, too many pages, and not enough fun to justify it.

While I realize that the characters are aging, and yes, teenagers do tend to act a bit angsty and cock sure, that is not what made the character appeal to me in the first place. I like to see characters grow, not regress. It may be an accurate portrayal of average teenage behavior, but, on the other hand, I can't say I was an average teenager. Or at least I wasn't an average teenager who was the star athlete, and the star pupil and the star witness in various forms of governmental intrigue...

But, then there's the torture sequences. In two years, I *have* pushed most of those out of my head, because they were unpleasant. I don't find torture to be entertaining. When it comes up in various forms of fiction, I find it quite unpleasant and tend to either start skipping pages, or hitting the fast forward button.

This actually reminded me of another incident where I tried to get into something my friends were raving about at the time: A science fiction show called "Farscape". Now, the premise sounded interesting to me: Space ships, aliens, travelling far from home, and blue alien women in tight costumes. Sounds like fun!

I was warned that, as a serial, it would be difficult to get into the middle of the storyline. So, when I saw that a marathon of episodes was going to be on, I plopped a tape in and nabbed it.

The trouble came when I sat down to try to watch it.

I can only conclude that they selected episodes for the marathon based on a single theme. That theme was torture.

I sat through 2 or 3 episodes that all had a similar plot:
The main characters are captured by some alien organization or aliens and are tortured for information, or for no reason that they can discern for no apparent reason.

Rightly or wrongly, I got the impression that the show was the characters escaping from one torture chamber to the next, only to be caught by yet more mysterious aliens with no apparent motive next week. No one seemed to know what was going on, and no one seemed to have the slightest idea how to go about finding out what was going on, and the main character just came off as being cocky, even though he didn't have any idea what was going on either.

I'm sorry to say that it left such a bad taste in my mouth, I've no interest in going back to find out what really went on in the show.

I felt much the same about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I'm afraid the next book will have to get some pretty good reviews from people who's taste I trust before I'll read it.

Must... control... rant reflex... oops, there it went.

[krud42.livejournal.com]

>"there's a difference between "realistic" and "readable".

Exactly! (<-- which makes it sound as though you were confirming something I said, which technically isn't true.)

I've read on numerous occasions that if you write a character who accurately depicts your average person, warts and all, they're not very readable. (Except in short bursts a la blog, but that's not what this is.)

>Rowling could get away with writing 600-900 page doorstoppers if they were fun.

They don't even have to be "Fun"... I'd settle for well developed.

To me, there wasn't a significant enough plot progression between pages 1 and 650 (or whatever the last page was).

Actually, I was surprised at how few spoilers you actually had in here. I for one was sorely disappointed in the actual "secret" that everyone was trying to keep from Harry (or Voldemort, or whoever). I mean, where was the revelation there? Was it really anything we didn't already know, or at the very least suspect? How did it change anything?I don't think I'm that good at predicting things, so I don't think it's me.

Okay, I've got it under control now. I'll leave you in piece. But yeah, I'm in no hurry for book six.

(Tangent: I actually recently enjoyed the movie version of book three, even though it was still nowhere nearly as good as the book. I almost feel guilty saying that I like their new Dumbledore better. Okay, there's no "almost". I do feel guilty. ':P)