My Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Warning! Warning! The following post contains massive spoilers! Do not read if you haven't finished reading the novel!











Well, after an all-night reading marathon on Friday night/ Saturday morning fueled by about six cups of coffee and one corned beef sandwich (Ron would not approve), I finished the final chapter of the Harry Potter series. What started for me out of boredom during the Thanksgiving break of my senior year at UT has now concluded in graduate school at UW. While I am hardly qualified to offer a full review of the book, I do want to offer my thoughts on aspects of the book that I know are coming under fire from some disaffected fans. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the insanity at the Leaky Lounge:



http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?



1. Extended weeks and months of camping/ hiding with Ron, Hermione, and Harry. I actually found this aspect of the book very compelling. Finally, the Trio are out of the familiar setting of Hogwarts and are having to scrounge for food wherever they can find it. Personally, I love that the bulk of this book takes place outside of Hogwarts. Did we really need another year of annoying Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, Ron and Hermione arguing over breakfast in the Great Hall, and (God help us) Quidditch matches? No, the series and the characters had moved on. Plus, the camping situation gave us one of my favorite chapters in the book, "The Silver Doe," in which Harry must retrieve a sword from a pond (in a doff of the hat to Arthurian legend), and Ron finally decides to 'man-up' and return to the Horcrux hunt.



2. The Slytherin locket having a Ring of Power-esque psychological effect on the Trio (especially Ron). To this I say, a good idea is a good idea. Look, Tolkien is the undisputed master of fantasy literature. If this is the most Tolkienian thing she does in seven novels, she deserves credit.



3. OMG! She totally promised in an interview in 1999 that we would find out such and such about so and so! Many fans are up-in-arms about some things that were, in their view, never fully explained. For those people, I say, get a life:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvzN8mGEqSc



Would you rather have a tightly-edited novel, or a big sprawling mess in which she has to resolve every minor plot point? Wait, don't answer that.



4. The magical tunnel running from the Room of Requirement to Hogsmeade is ridiculous. What was the point of Draco struggling to repair the Vanishing Cabinet? He could have just told the Room to create a tunnel. Well, Rowling does establish that Neville is unusually skilled at manipulating the Room, so that is as much of an explanation as we are going to get. For me, this falls under the category of 'accept it, and move on.' After all, it's not nearly as bad as Barty Crouch Jr.'s needlessly-complicated kidnapping plot from Goblet of Fire. Dude, just turn his chair into a portkey and have him sit on it.



5. Harry chatting with Dumbledore while in some kind of spiritual limbo was as retarded as the end of the second Matrix film. First of all, nothing, NOTHING! is as retarded as the end of the second Matrix film. Secondly, while I was concerned at first, I think Rowling pulled it off quite well. She ultimately leaves it to the reader to decide if it really was completely in Harry's head, objectively real, or some combination of the two. Plus, she had to create closure between Harry and Dumbledore somehow.



6. The Deathly Hallows were a stupid and pointless concept to introduce so late in the series. Here, I can do no better in their defense than one of the editors of the book, Cheryl Klein:



http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/



On the whole, I enjoyed the book very much, and found it a satisfying conclusion to the series. We got the really big answers we were looking for. Snape was good, Harry was a Horcrux, Dumbledore was not a saint, Ron and Hermione got married, Harry and Ginny got married. All of which bring us to the Epilogue. Apparently, some fans absolutely hate it. While I agree that Harry naming his son 'Albus Severus' does guarantee that kid seven years' worth of magical wedgies, while his more fortunate brother, James, becomes the most popular kid in school, I thought it was fine. Rowling, to my knowledge, never promised a Lord of the Rings-style appendix, which is what some fans wanted.

Basically, A good conclusion to the series that will allow me to move on with my life and get more important work done.