aneeshm
Deity
I got sick of trying to read the other thread where everyone had to post with spoiler tags on, so I'm creating this thread where discussion is free.
To begin with, my impressions of the book:
After reading it, specially the epilogue, I realised that nothing was really fixed at a fundamental level - the entire larger system was exactly the same.
The system which allowed Voldemort to become the threat he was, which allowed the sorts of ritual abuses we have come to expect students to undergo at Hogwarts, which left the Ministry open to attacks from many fronts, and vulnerable to the oldest trick of them all - the sowing of internal dissension, and in which non-human magical species were treated as inferior, was still unchanged. The systemic flaws were not fixed at all. The old instabilities still remained, and it is a foregone conclusion that given enough time, another Voldemort will arise. And this time, there will be no lucky concatenation of circumstances to stop him.
I'd have considered it a much bigger literary and intellectual feat if Rowling had managed to create a book where Harry's victory consists not only of his triumph over evil as embodied in one deranged man, but in fixing the system which made the regular emergence of such men inevitable.
This is what I find so incomprehensible - in the book itself, Dumbledore mentions that his weakness was power, and that that is the reason he has always refused the Ministership (a bit like Gandalf refusing the Ring, and control over its power). Had Dumbledore been a bit weaker, however, he would have taken the post, and would have been completely unstoppable (even Voldemort feared him).
This effectively means that Rowling actually acknowledges, and is aware of, the inherent internal instability of the system as it exists, and the contradictions it constantly faces - and yet nothing is done to resolve this larger issue at the end of the books.
Now I'll move on to a more general criticism. I had expected that the previous six books were intended to create and flesh out a world, and the characters in it, and the seventh would involve working within the universe, and by the constraints, created by the previous six. I thought that we would not gain any further insight into the nature of magic than was absolutely necessary. In this, I was sorely disappointed, as in when, for instance, the destruction of the diadem took place due to the Cursed Fire created by Crabbe (or Goyle, I forget which). Had that fire not been created, what would have happened? They'd have effectively had to sit on their arses, waiting for something to turn up.
Far, far too much was dependent on chance. I thought that the liberal use of deus ex machinae in the previous six books was excusable, given that the epic showdown was yet to come, and that Harry was growing into the person capable of actually duelling Voldemort. But when, even in the last battle, you come across very "convenient" twists, it lowers your opinion of the writing as a whole, because then, what was the point of building Harry up as a character at all?
To begin with, my impressions of the book:
After reading it, specially the epilogue, I realised that nothing was really fixed at a fundamental level - the entire larger system was exactly the same.
The system which allowed Voldemort to become the threat he was, which allowed the sorts of ritual abuses we have come to expect students to undergo at Hogwarts, which left the Ministry open to attacks from many fronts, and vulnerable to the oldest trick of them all - the sowing of internal dissension, and in which non-human magical species were treated as inferior, was still unchanged. The systemic flaws were not fixed at all. The old instabilities still remained, and it is a foregone conclusion that given enough time, another Voldemort will arise. And this time, there will be no lucky concatenation of circumstances to stop him.
I'd have considered it a much bigger literary and intellectual feat if Rowling had managed to create a book where Harry's victory consists not only of his triumph over evil as embodied in one deranged man, but in fixing the system which made the regular emergence of such men inevitable.
This is what I find so incomprehensible - in the book itself, Dumbledore mentions that his weakness was power, and that that is the reason he has always refused the Ministership (a bit like Gandalf refusing the Ring, and control over its power). Had Dumbledore been a bit weaker, however, he would have taken the post, and would have been completely unstoppable (even Voldemort feared him).
This effectively means that Rowling actually acknowledges, and is aware of, the inherent internal instability of the system as it exists, and the contradictions it constantly faces - and yet nothing is done to resolve this larger issue at the end of the books.
Now I'll move on to a more general criticism. I had expected that the previous six books were intended to create and flesh out a world, and the characters in it, and the seventh would involve working within the universe, and by the constraints, created by the previous six. I thought that we would not gain any further insight into the nature of magic than was absolutely necessary. In this, I was sorely disappointed, as in when, for instance, the destruction of the diadem took place due to the Cursed Fire created by Crabbe (or Goyle, I forget which). Had that fire not been created, what would have happened? They'd have effectively had to sit on their arses, waiting for something to turn up.
Far, far too much was dependent on chance. I thought that the liberal use of deus ex machinae in the previous six books was excusable, given that the epic showdown was yet to come, and that Harry was growing into the person capable of actually duelling Voldemort. But when, even in the last battle, you come across very "convenient" twists, it lowers your opinion of the writing as a whole, because then, what was the point of building Harry up as a character at all?
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