new Harry Potter book (spoilers) (split from reading thread)

Started by Ghostboy, July 16, 2005, 11:37:22 PM

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

grand theft sparrow

Concerning A: Good point.  I hadn't thought of that.

Concerning B: That's also true but I have a feeling that if Snape really did the Avada Kedavra on Dumbledore, then whatever remnant of him will have to explain to Harry in book 7 that Dumbledore told Snape that if he had to kill him in order to protect his cover, then he had to do it.  For the greater good and all that.

And was C something to do with the bit in Order of the Phoenix where (I think it was) Bellatrix Lestrange told Harry that you have to REALLY mean harm to the person if you're going to use an illegal curse on them when his Cruciatus curse attempt on her failed?  If Snape's loyalties lie with Dumbledore and the Order, then he couldn't have meant to kill him and therefore he's not really dead.




I don't think I've made more nerdy statements, in this thread and in everyday life, than I have this week, and that includes the week that Revenge of the Sith came out.




And then there's this.

grand theft sparrow

Out of respect, make sure that no one who hasn't read the book is within eye or earshot of your computer.

http://pottercrash.ytmnd.com

http://hankspotter.ytmnd.com

RegularKarate

So, if anyone's still living in geektown with me, I have more theories.

Horcruxes:

1.  Almost all of them are inside Sirius' (now Harry's) house.  In Order, they actually find a lockette that they can't open and one of the items being stolen from the house in Halfblood Prince is a silver cup.

2.  Harry is the last Horcrux.

Ravi

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050801&s=zimmerman080405



Harry Situation
by Sacha Zimmerman
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 08.04.05

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
By J.K. Rowling
(Arthur A. Levine Books, 672 pp., $29.99)
Click here to buy this book

As a child, I read the Terry Brooks fantasy novels faster than you can say "Sword of Shannara." I also read The Hobbit, was obsessed with King Arthur's court (I named my two male kittens Sir Gwayne and Lady Gwenivere), dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons, and built the Lego castle (and brought it to school for show-and-tell). I even once sat rapt in front of the movie Mazes and Monsters with the firm belief that role-playing magic games were all the rage at college. I would have loved Harry Potter as a kid.

But life moved on. I went through a note-passing, giggly junior high phase decked head to toe in Espirit; a keg-parties and old-school-rap phase; an obsessed-with-Jim-Morrison's-poetry phase; a Brit-punk Sid Vicious anger phase; an Edible Woman radical vegetarian feminist phase; and a deep Eugene Ionesco phase that I still don't fully understand. Then one uneventful night, while volunteering abroad after college (my save-the-world phase), I was invited to a D&D game. Thinking it might be fun to bask in the fantasy years of my youth, I heartily accepted--only to find myself gaping in horror as grown adults "cast spells" and "explored secret caves" looking for "magic stones." "I think I'm just gonna go hang out with the cool kids in the pub instead," I murmured and slunk out.

It was around this time that I also picked up The Hobbit again. I started zoning out during a particularly detailed passage about Shire life that blended a little too well with my understanding of Smurf life--sexless midgets living in bliss but for fear of tall men in castles. I tried to read Brooks once more, too, but flung the book out of a bus window after realizing that Allanon is a druid and not a twelve-step program. So when Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone burst onto the scene--during my Mary-Tyler-Moore-career-gal phase--I was a tad skeptical. But I loved it. Sure, it was a children's book, but I was less cynical by that point and more willing to romanticize my childhood fascination with castles and witchcraft. I loved the second Harry Potter book, too. I thought the third was just OK. It wasn't that it was worse than the first two--indeed, many would argue that it's better--but by that point I understood Harry Potter well enough to know what to expect.

The Harry Potter series is so formulaic that any hint of suspense had already been eradicated by book three. And so by the sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I am ready to just yadda-yadda my way through the obligatory tease-the-muggles chapter. Every Potter book finds Harry living on Privet Drive just long enough to freak out the Dursleys before heading back to Hogwarts. After a trip to Diagon Alley, then it's off to Platform 9-3/4 with the Weasley clan before the typically illuminating and mischievous journey to school. Of course, then there's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to contend with, a plot to unravel with the aid of some new possession (a book, a map, an invisibility cloak, a mirror), verbal duels with Draco Malfoy, paranoia about Severus Snape, comic relief with the ghosts and paintings, life-and-death Quidditch matches, new spells that sound like first-year Latin and yet are mysteriously difficult to learn (Studium Magicum in Totem!), a final challenge that often involves three obstacles (Hermione and Ron get to help more that way), and of course the continued hegemony of Gryffindor to maintain.

All of which is perfectly thrilling--for an eight-year-old. But J.K. Rowling is not C.S. Lewis nor Madeline L'Engle, and her novels do not carry into adulthood--unless your idea of excitement is meeting Hagrid's beast du jour. Maybe that's an unfair criticism, since these are children's books after all, right? But those weren't just children at the Harry Potter release parties last month, and I'm pretty sure eight-year-olds aren't reading The New York Times Book Review (much less the op-ed page) for analysis of the latest roman à Hogwarts.

As long as adults are taking whimsy seriously, it's fair to take Rowling the writer seriously. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is teeming with overt social commentary that uses the state of the wizard world as a metaphor for the state of our world. The terrorized wizarding community buys inane safety gadgets, like Decoy Detonators, to bolster their sense of security. The Ministry of Magic buys 500 Shield Hats from a joke shop. Innocent people are arrested in order for the Ministry to appear as though it is doing something meaningful. It feels familiar, yet the decentralized threat from fundamentalist ideology facing the real world doesn't translate to Harry Potter at all. The good wizards and witches of Rowling's series still call evil by one name: Voldemort. The Dark Lord is a fixed, specific threat that ultimately Harry must vanquish. We muggles, however, face a threat that will take generations to repair.

But maybe that's exactly why even adults love Rowling's tedious predictability. Rowling's world, like George W. Bush's world, is one of good versus evil. The threat is identifiable: It can be attacked, and it can be stopped. And so, as you may have heard, this latest Harry Potter novel is "dark," just like our post-9/11 world. But, unlike our world, there is a savior. After all, Harry has a power "that Voldemort has never had"; Harry "can love!" Now Harry is ready for a one-on-one battle with Voldemort, love versus hate. Yawn. I bet that battle begins with Harry leaving the Dursleys (for the last time!) and heading to Hogwarts. I bet he learns some new tricks. I bet he unravels a plot. And I bet Harry wins. (Maleficus Exodus!)

Sacha Zimmerman , former assistant managing editor at TNR, is an associate editor at Reader's Digest.

Brazoliange

Quote from: RegularKarateSo, if anyone's still living in geektown with me, I have more theories.

Horcruxes:

1.  Almost all of them are inside Sirius' (now Harry's) house.  In Order, they actually find a lockette that they can't open and one of the items being stolen from the house in Halfblood Prince is a silver cup.

2.  Harry is the last Horcrux.

#2 is brilliant, and probably right.
Long live the New Flesh

Tictacbk

If Harry was  a horcrux, wouldn't that mean part of voldemort's soul is in Harry, thereby making him possessed by voldemort?

Reinhold

Quote from: RegularKarateSo, if anyone's still living in geektown with me, I have more theories.

Horcruxes:

1.  Almost all of them are inside Sirius' (now Harry's) house.  In Order, they actually find a lockette that they can't open and one of the items being stolen from the house in Halfblood Prince is a silver cup.

2.  Harry is the last Horcrux.

niiiiiiiice!

harry can't be the last horcrux, though. because the horcrux magic would have to have taken place after he killed harry.
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.

deathnotronic

No, before.

The horcrux bullshit had been building up since Voldemort left Hogwarts.

It's highly unlikely as Harry's dreams that described his attempted murder described avada kedavra pretty well, unless it happened before.

I think that the last Horcrux may be someone close to Harry, but not Harry himself. Ginny, anyone?

Tictacbk


grand theft sparrow

Quote from: TictacbkHow can a horcrux be a person?

There wasn't anything that said it couldn't be, as far as I can remember.

Quote from: deathnotronicI think that the last Horcrux may be someone close to Harry, but not Harry himself. Ginny, anyone?

That would be terrible.  He makes himself a new horcrux while he's barely alive and still trying to regain strength?  That doesn't make sense.

And after thinking about it, it would be an interesting twist if Harry was the last horcrux.  But Rowling's gonna have to think really hard to explain it.  It's possible that he is a horcrux but that would really change the story of how his parents died.  

Maybe Voldemort's intent wasn't to kill Harry but to make him a horcrux, he killed James to split his soul, killed Lily who was protecting Harry, made Harry a horcrux, but Voldemort split his soul one too many times and it almost killed him?  

I don't know that I'd like this to be the case but it's an answer.

And I still think that there's something up with Neville.

Pubrick

dude, harry is the evil one. he has to jump into lava to save everyone.
under the paving stones.

Reinhold

what're your thoughts on the new minister of magic?
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.

RegularKarate

Quote from: hacksparrow
And I still think that there's something up with Neville.

Definitely.

How effed up would it be if the prophecy WAS referring to him instead of Harry and he's like got a scar on his ass or something?

Does anyone else get the feeling that Snape was in love with Lilly?

Brazoliange

Quote from: Reinhold Messnerwhat're your thoughts on the new minister of magic?

I think he's an ass and he'll probably be the Umbridge (standing in Harry's way of finding the Horcruxes) in the last book
Long live the New Flesh

Reinhold

Quote from: RegularKarate
Quote from: hacksparrow
And I still think that there's something up with Neville.

Definitely.

How effed up would it be if the prophecy WAS referring to him instead of Harry and he's like got a scar on his ass or something?

Does anyone else get the feeling that Snape was in love with Lilly?

maybe it's the emotional scarring from his parents torture or something.
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.