taraljc: The Book

ljc (

taraljc) wrote,
@ 2007-07-22 17:06:00

Entry tags:

potter

The Book - Spoilers
So I've been poking around my flist for reactions in-between bouts of cleaning, and here's my problems with two aspects of the book. Namely, the final death toll, and the coda:

The part where so many of the casualties seemed to have happened just to increase Harry's angst niggled at me. You ought not to kill characters off just for the sake of a body count, in my mind. It's just a cheap device to generate emotion in your reader. You have to earn it, for it to have any kind of real impact and not feel like a cheap cheat. Mad Eye and Fred and Hedwig and Dobby resonated because their deaths meant something. And Snape was marked for death long before, so we knew it was coming.

But Tonks and Remus felt like such an afterthought, and there almost to pad the numbers--to say "I know that the readers cares about these people, which means their deaths will hurt the readers. And I know Harry cares about these people, so their deaths will hurt Harry." But there is no reason to kill them except to get that momentary payoff. It just felt like it didn't happen because it was meant to happen. It happened because the author made a list.

I suppose I'm also annoyed because I always loved the idea of Tonks, as finally someone who wasn't Harry's generation, but wasn't from Lily and James' circle either--because she broadened our view of that whole world, knowing there were 20somethings out there to bridge the gap. Oddly, Remus I can understand. Because we got to know him so much better, albeit movie!Remus I remember more clearly than book!Remus, he was exactly the type to die in the final battle and fight not just for Harry and his world, but specifically for his wife and child. So I understand sacrificing Remus. But I can't understand the actually purpose in killing Tonks off as well. But why kill her and have her son orphaned except to create a mirror to Harry's situation? And if so, then why is it important to draw that parallel, if it's so late in the game you're never going to ever develop that so that it would mean something to the characters and the readers?

But to be fair, this series wasn't written for my generation (which at the time I started reading--Book 3 in 1999ish I think--was 20something). The focus was (and should always have been) on Harry's generation.

As for the coda...

I admit, I was really hoping that Harry would become the permanent Defence Against Dark Arts teacher. I really was. For one, it had been such a great running gag over all 6 books that no-one lasts more than a year. And I was tickled by the idea that the DA would actually have turned into a permanent teaching post for Harry at Hogwarts, because I can't imaging him ever wanting to do anything else. Hogwarts is his home--he never really lived in the rest of the wizarding world, and I can hardly picture him wanting to be anywhere else. Which is not to say he and Hermione both didn't teach for years before they had the kids. Still.

I was mainly weirded that the coda wasn't about what they'd done with their lives and who'd they'd become after defeating Voldemort--and just about Who Ended Up With Whom (which had also been telegraphed consistently across all 7 books, so no shocks there) and how They Had Kids who would be the Next Generation.

It's a bit like how I feel about the Marauders. We never really get to know them as people, just as devices. And it doesn't seem fair, or smart, or good writing. It felt very amateurishly fanfic-y in that way--like the girls who write Mary Sue stories about the next generation and just pair all the original characters off (which happens a LOT in Jem fandom, which might be why I'm annoyed with it as a device because I've been exposed to it a LOT recently) as baby-generators to give them a whole new cast of OCs to play with. And given how Rowling feels about the fanfic community, hell, maybe that was exactly her plan. She's done, no-one else is allowed to write continuing books officially, but the fans can now write whatever they like because she's given them a blank slate to work from other than the outcome we already knew to expect from almost the beginning, re: Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione.

(tho I admit, seeing the movie this last week, I had a small spark of love for movieverse Harry/Luna)

What I did like is how this book broke with the structure of the first 6, which revolved around the structure of the Hogwarts academic year. Also, it's the first book where Harry is in charge of his own life, rather than continually being manoeuvred by the adults around him. And it needed to be exactly that. He really comes into his own as a character--I just felt like the plot let him down a bit by being needlessly complicated and having very odd pacing at times...

Don't get me wrong, the stuff I enjoyed in the book I really did enjoy. And I need to re-read it a lot more carefully sometime later when I've had a chance to sit down with all seven and read them in order, something I've never actually done as I read each book after the first three as they came out.

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	mireille719 2007-07-22 10:11 pm UTC (link)
	My feeling about the epilogue is that I would have found it immensely emotionally satisfying at the age of about twelve. And, well, perhaps that's how it should be? (Reply to this)(Thread)

partly_bouncy
2007-07-22 10:50 pm UTC (link)

At twelve, I think I might have been disappointed because DUDE! Hermione married Ron and Ginny married Harry and that's it? No adventures for them? I loved my girl heroes and Ginny and Hermione had such potential and fell flat. They kind of ultimately became breeders. :/ No identity outside that. What a gyp. That was my first reaction reading the ending. (It probably wasn't helped by having been told all about the sexism regarding Hermione about a week before I read that...)

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	dvandom 2007-07-22 10:54 pm UTC (link)
	We also find that Teddy takes after dad in liking younger women. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	terrie01 2007-07-22 11:06 pm UTC (link)
	In my head, Hermione did go into Magical Law. In her 60's, she becomes Minister of Magic. Ron is a stay at home dad. But, yeah, the whole parent = fulfilled and happy life fell a bit flat for me. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	muffintop_pride 2007-07-22 11:25 pm UTC (link)
	Now I can't get the idea of Ron knitting jumpers as his children's Christmas presents out of my mind. OMG, I get it now, they have two children named Rose and Hugo, just like Ron and Hermione! Haha, did JK Rowling just write the epilogue for a laugh or what! XD (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	taraljc 2007-07-22 11:34 pm UTC (link)
	Oh Granny Weasley will be knitting a thousand jumpers. Forever. And the kids will all despise them, as is good and proper. (Reply to this)(Parent)

denisia
2007-07-22 11:29 pm UTC (link)

I agree. It was really disappointing. I could see Harry wanting a very simple domestic life because he'd missed out on that, but to have that be the end for all four was really a let-down. It would have been nice to have a few sentences there saying Ginny was a professional Seeker or Hermione was a doctor or they'd all backpacked around the world together or something, anything outside of being a parent.

On the other hand, they all lived and I wasn't sure they would, so that was a plus.

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taraljc
2007-07-22 11:38 pm UTC (link)

I can see why she wanted to give the fans a blank slate to imagine whatever they wanted for the characters they've grown up with and adored. I really can. But I don't always think writing something specifically for the fans makes sense. The story comes first, and it felt just a tiny bit like the story suffered, to give the fannish audience what they wanted. Like shining a light the puppeteer and calling attention to the strings and the wooden stage, when you're wanting to believe what you're seeing is reality.

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denisia
2007-07-22 11:50 pm UTC (link)

I agree completely. The epilogue sounded so hollow next to the rest of the book (which was brilliant), and perhaps that was because it wasn't true to the rest of the text. Now that you mention it, it really did seem like a direct reply to the fans; an answer to the questions they would have undoubtedly asked if the story had ended then and there.

Selfishly, I'd like to think that she left those years blank so she can return to the characters one day and fill in those missing years...

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taraljc
2007-07-22 11:57 pm UTC (link)

kind of ultimately became breeders. :/ No identity outside that. What a gyp.

erm... I completely and totally disagree. I don't think that the characters had no identity outside of being parents--and the diea that women having children reduces them to nothing but breeders is seriously insulting to women who have kids or want to have kids, cos it's a helluva job, being a parent. Hardly "just" anything.

I just question the decision of showing us the kids, but never showing us who the parents ultimately grew up to become beyond becoming parents.

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partly_bouncy
2007-07-23 01:28 am UTC (link)

My feelings regarding this are just off. :/ And yeah. :( Awful choice of wording on my part. (My sister raked me over the coals for that after I made that comment.) I think being parents is great for some people. I seriously do. And some people delight in that and make fantastic parents and make that choice in having their identities that way.

That said, I think showing us with their kids and basically only their kids defines them, to me, almost exclusively as parents with no other real identity other than having saved people and being famous for it. In earlier books, Harry, Hermione and Ron and maybe a few others had discussed what they wanted to do when they grew up. They talked about various careers. They talked about working for the ministry. The twins had talked about their joke shop. There was a future being talked about. It was one of the things that was sort of optimistic and angsty at the same time. Will Harry live to have that option and what will he do when he leaves Hogwarts? What will the others do?

What do we get in the end? That particular thread is left hanging and the identity we get has almost no connection with what the characters had talked about in the beginning. Ron, Hermione, Harry never expressed a desire to be parents, never talked about that as defining their futures. And that's all we see of it. We get no conclusion to those child hood dreams. We don't know if Hermione ever lived up to her potential. We do see that whatever Hermione did, she's still with the guy who was frequently depicted as second fiddle and inferior to others and who surprised her when he was nice to her. And we see them with kids. Hermione was supposed to be a decent wizard, who wanted to do good. She elevated people around her, encouraged them to do the same. Do we see her continuing that path? Not really. There was no reference to her doing that. There was no real indication that Ron had grown beyond that sort of immature loyal boy.

They end up with their future being defined by the fact that they procreated. It just is... well... for me, it is incredibly annoying, especially given the earlier parts of the series which talked about the future, the focus on that. That they are able to do that, to have kids and be normal, it has its positive implications... Harry got what he wanted all along: To be normal. But overall, I still find that wanting and that message kind of troublesome.

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cybertardis
2007-07-23 01:52 am UTC (link)

Yes. I have no issue with being shown that they are parents, but I really would have liked something more, a little more meat to it, particularly what careers they chose after these horrific events. The coda made me feel kind of cheated that we were getting a spinoff for the next generation (which I have nothing invested in whatsoever) without giving us a few important tidbits of the characters we do know (who I have quite a bit invested in).

It's not that I minded what was in the coda; it's more that I seriously minded what was missing.

--sah

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djonn
2007-07-23 05:12 am UTC (link)

They end up with their future being defined by the fact that they procreated.

I don't know that I agree with this, largely because it doesn't square with the timing of the Epilogue.

Presuming that James is a second-year (on the basis of his parents' thrice-weekly letters the prior year), he is therefore about 12 years old. He's also the oldest of the five Potter/Weasley kids. Now, what this means is that our four principals waited seven years after the end of their adventures to start having children.

This is a pretty darned long interval, considering. Now, some delay is logical. Ginny's younger than the others, so obviously she and Harry won't be marrying at once. Harry, Ron & Hermione probably have to complete their real 7th year at Hogwarts. And they might well spend a year or two after that settling into careers of whatever sort. But the two couples are sufficiently in love that I'd have expected marriages pretty quickly after their delayed graduations, and kids no more than a year or two after that (thus somewhere around four years after the main events of the book occur, five at the outside).

But this isn't what happens; instead, James does not arrive until seven years after the Battle of Hogwarts, and Ron & Hermione (who most likely got married first) do not have Rose until a year after that. Thus, whatever Our Heroes are doing with their lives in the first few years after graduation, it's something other than having babies -- and that being the case, it seems difficult to argue that their futures are defined by their having procreated.

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kerravonsen
2007-07-23 02:09 pm UTC (link)

That said, I think showing us with their kids and basically only their kids defines them, to me, almost exclusively as parents with no other real identity other than having saved people and being famous for it.

I didn't see it like that at all. I think the main purpose of the Epilogue was to show that things had come full circle -- with kids going off to Hogwarts. Because Hogwarts is the thing that ties everything together.

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fava_bean
2007-07-24 07:16 am UTC (link)

I agree. What is really boils down to is that she did not tell us anything about what the four of them are doing as adults. She didn't just gloss over Ginny and Hermione's jobs, but the guys as well. She never says that are stay at home moms. That is completely left to the readers imagination. Yes, I wish she had shown more of what the adults had come to, other than Neville (that me me grin). But perhaps that was a very deliberate choice. She is leaving the outcome of their livelihoods open to limitless possibilities, confined only by the imaginations of the readers.

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reveilles
2007-07-31 12:50 am UTC (link)

FYI: JKR says a bit about what they grew up to be and do, independent of having kids.

I think there might be *one more story* running around in the HP universe with our favorite characters, but just one more, and it won't ever be as big as the Voldemort plot. It might be compelling in a different, more adult way, with a major theme being the push to become more integrated with the Muggle world. Perhaps Harry et al. push for more integration to forestall another pureblood/half-blood/mudblood movement. And perhaps there are a few remaining Dark wizards and witches who decide that the safest place to hide is in the Muggle world, which requires their Auror pursuers to learn how to navigate the Muggle world well enough to root them out and stop them, learning Muggle culture and technology, because use of magic on either side makes both the pursuers and pursued easier to find. Perhaps these Dark wizards start experimenting with what a combination of science and magic allows them to do... can you see it? A whole new crop of characters, a different perspective, a no less pressing problem, but it's a whole lot hairier and more integrated with the Muggle world, less of the insulated cuteness, with the added tension of not being able to reveal themselves as magic-users in their everyday life. Perhaps some scientists with no moral leanings, who'd like to dissect a wizard or two to find out what makes them tick...it could get a whole lot darker.

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xwingace
2007-07-22 10:32 pm UTC (link)

Re the purpose of killing Tonks: Avoidance of duplication. We already have a woman grieving over lost loved ones (Mrs Weasley). Tonks would just have been another one. Instead, she joins her beloved (I assume) husband in death, at peace. That's also why I think Fred died instead of Percy. Snape already got the 'redemption equals death' trope, so to let Percy die as well would have been overkill in that respect.

But that's an out of story reason, and I don't really like it either. :-(

XWA

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taraljc
2007-07-22 11:42 pm UTC (link)

Tonks would just have been another one.

I can't really see that, tho. The Weasleys are this huge clan, and as much as it hurts to lose Fred, they will grieve together as a family and survive because they're a family.

But creating Teddy for the sole purpose of making him and orphan just felt like it didn't come logically and organicly out of the story. It felt contrived, and it made Tonks into a device, instead of a fully fleshed out character. And how she raised Ted, and what kind of man he turned out to be, could have done that. And all without sacrificing the idea that Harry still was a major force in his life as his godfather, the way Sirius never could be for him due to Voldemort.

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	dvandom 2007-07-22 10:44 pm UTC (link)
	I'm bummed that we never got to see a Nargle. (Reply to this)

tanz_fanatika
2007-07-22 11:38 pm UTC (link)

Is someone's death any less significant if it's "off screen?" No. It's not. Kudos to Rowling for giving us some realism and not fifty exaggeratedly heroic and ultimately repetitive deaths. If she'd made them all that way, I can guarantee the complaints would be "And then Remus died to save so and so who died to save so and so and doesn't anyone ever just die in this book?"

Also, you can't expect good writing from an amateur. Because that's all Rowling is. She tells a good story, but her methods are clumsy. That's been clear throughout all seven books. It's asking a lot of an amateur to produce "good writing."

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taraljc
2007-07-22 11:47 pm UTC (link)

My issue isn't that they'e off-page. Mainly because Rowling has consistantly limited the entire series to Harry and Voldemort's POV, and thsoe are her narrative constraints. As I don't have a problem with them in Chandler's Marlowe novels, I can't really make any grousing about Rowling's choices. And I don't believe that being killed off-page diminishes the impact.

What bothered me was the way it didn't feel like their deaths contributed to the whole, outside of being one more blow to Harry. And like I said above, Remus would have worked for me, becasue of how well we know his character and what his place is in the overall story. It's Tonks I'm still unsatisfied with, because it felt like she was never a fully fleshed out character so much as she was a device to produce Teddy, to give Harry a dramatic foil. Which didn't make sense either, since we never see that story--it's just alluded to.

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tanz_fanatika
2007-07-22 11:56 pm UTC (link)

I think that's just something you have to deal with in novels with so many damn characters. Not everyone's going to have their moment and some of them are going to be gone without a big to do. It's more realistic that way, as I said. They fought. They died. The end. When you get right down to it, these are minor characters in Harry's tale. The books do all start with his name, after all. Sure, we'd have liked to know more about some of our favorite minors, but if it doesn't work into the story, then we don't. I think it helped to capture the feel of a giant battle. Because Rowling is locked into Harry, she can't be everywhere at once because he can't. So some people he cared about are just going to turn up dead like that and it's not going to be all poignant and significant.

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taraljc
2007-07-23 12:01 am UTC (link)

But my question is about how Tonks died, it's more why kill her? Why not let her live, and raise her son? That's what I don't understand. Because it was a conscious choice by the author, deciding who would die and who would live, and I don't understand how killing Tonks makes the story better than letting Tonks live, when as a reader, her death made much less sense than her living would have.

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tanz_fanatika
2007-07-23 12:31 am UTC (link)

In reality, death isn't about whose death makes the story better and it definitely doesn't always make sense. Maybe Rowling wanted to have some characters whose death wouldn't seem as predictable as others to show us how arbitrary death is. Maybe she even drew names from a hat. That's why I like what she did. Because it is realistic and not everything is meant to have some great significance. Sometimes things just happen.

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neadods
2007-07-23 01:00 am UTC (link)

I admit, I was really hoping that Harry would become the permanent Defence Against Dark Arts teacher

I wanted to see him Headmaster of Hogwarts. Failing that, I don't mind seeing that the ones who lived lived more or less Happily Ever After, but I want an epilogue in between the end of the battle and where we got it. Like you, I want to know what they grew up to become, not just who they grew up to marry.

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	jennifer3dtd 2007-07-23 05:36 am UTC (link)
	but I want an epilogue in between the end of the battle and where we got it. Like you, I want to know what they grew up to become, not just who they grew up to marry. Perhaps this gap was left there on purpose: for JK to fill in with another book. (Yeah, yeah, she claims this is the last one. We've all heard that before.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	neadods 2007-07-23 10:59 am UTC (link)
	I hope she does. In the meantime, I hope someone can point me to a good fic on the subject, as I fear going to look for myself will only drown me in ship fix-its, and I have my hands full with that in another fandom. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	infiniteviking 2007-07-23 07:10 am UTC (link)
	Re the death toll, I feel a bit sorry for Rowling -- here she was writing the BIG FINAL BATTLE OF ALL TIME and the death toll simply could not be small, so the only question was who would get it besides Snape. I was actually surprised Hagrid and McGonagall survived. Tonks, though.... mourns with you I have no real thoughts about the epilogue. Except. Albus Severus. cries (Reply to this)

	cedara 2007-07-23 08:04 am UTC (link)
	I had to go back a few pages to see when Tonks and Lupin died. (Reply to this)

aryas_zehral
2007-07-23 10:36 am UTC (link)

I totally agree with your thoughts on the epilogue. For me it was so disappointing and so reminiscent of bad babyfic that it made me go from "really liking" the book to "well that was ok I suppose" all in one fell swoop. Although I'm amused by the AS/S stuff that's suddenly popped up on lj. As for Tonks, that's just bothering me. The fact that she ran off to follow her husband into battle despite the fact that she'd just had a baby so wasn't at tip-top level physically AND she had a bloody baby. I just think it's incredibly selfish to land her mother with this child and then bugger off and get herself killed. I might be a horrible person though. :D

I really need to reread at some point and work out if I'm being horribly unfair.

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profshallowness
2007-07-25 07:04 am UTC (link)

Interesting point about Tonks and her being part of another generation. Although I really liked having her in OotP, I don't think I identified with her, though she would be the female character closest in age, but then, my problems with the execution of Remus/Tonks began in book 6 and so the denouement is for them is, well, just another thing.

I can see why the coda is problematic for a lot of people - but I am enjoying the space for my brain to go 'Auror', 'Seeker' and 'Luna travelled the world writing and illustrating her own stories for the Quibbler.' Perhaps it's because i haven't really read HP fic, so the comparison to fanfic doesn't jump out at me.

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wombatlord
2007-07-29 11:12 pm UTC (link)

Well, we know from an interview with Rowling that she did think out other aspects of the character's futures, stating that:

* Harry and Ron become Aurors
* Hermione is a high ranking member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement
* Ginny apparently simply settles for baby making (or at least Rowling didn't say what beyond 3 kids she's doing)
* Neville is the Herbology professor at Hogwarts (as seen in the epilogue)
* Luna travels the world, finding obscure magical creatures and plants
* She said more or less that we could decide for ourselves in Luna and Neville got together.
* Harry, Ron, and Hermione helped reform the Ministry of Magic to be less of a mess

And I expect we'll learn more when the Potterverse encyclopedia comes out.

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/

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