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malsperanzaYeah, some initial comments on OOTP.
It strikes me that this is very much a Middle book. I am not sure it would stand on its own, for example. (That may not matter, but it indicates something.)
I think what most frustrated me was Rowling's wilful refusal to let us into the interior world of Harry and Sirius. I felt that I was being continually held at arm's length, and if she is going to keep withholding Harry til the end, she needs to give us some sense of him through others--not just his friends, who are mostly fairly clueless about how he thinks and makes his choices, but the people who come from his real world: Sirius, Lupin, Dumbledore; the adults. The chill of that distance is beginning to be burdensome. While I am a great believer in starving the Reader nearly to death, one does need a bone to knaw on every now and then.
Well. Every great hero story involves a katabasis ("going down" in Greek), a Descent into the Underworld. The famous ones are Odysseus, who visits Achilleus in Hell (book 11 of the Odyssey), Aeneas (book 6, Aeneid), and the first volume of Dante. They all spring from the primal myth of creative death: that of Orpheus, who descends into Hades to rescue Persephone. (Told most famously in book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.)
Orpheus, the poet, enters the forbidden realm of death to bring back spring to the world; he defies death and returns successfully, because he is magical, half-divine, hero, creator, singer. This all sounds very tacky and sub-Joseph Campbell, but I think it's legitimate here, because I think Rowling is very aware of how the hero story has to work. The hero goes down into the Underworld to find some hidden, arcane knowledge, or an object symbolic of knowledge--acquire the secret fire, or learn the answer to the test riddle, or rescue the spring maiden--whatever, he has to bring that knowledge back to the surface of the earth. And he has to pay a price for obtaining the knowledge. (In this case a death that he can ill afford.)
In the Homer version, Odysseus descends into Hades to meet Achilles, greatest hero of them all. He is Seeking information about how to get home. But the more important piece of knowledge that he acquires is Achilles' statement that it is better to be alive and the meanest, lowest peasant on earth than to be dead and a hero. Or, as Tennessee Williams puts it, in one of my favorite passages (from Orpheus Descending):
So we'll see if the Boy Who Lived can take that advice.
In the Aeneid, Aeneas descends to visit his dead father, who shows him a vision of his purpose (to found Rome) and displays to him the mechanism by which souls wait to be reborn. (Which in turn is swiped from Plato's Myth of Ur in the Republic, but enough with the classical citations already.)
So Harry descends into the Department of Mysteries (which was brilliantly conceived and depicted--a wholly original, marvelous Underworld), and brings back the prophecy. He thinks he has failed to bring it back, because it broke, but in Seeking it, and returning from the depths, he has passed the test Dumbledore was waiting for, and earned the answer--the classic answer: Now I am going to tell you Everything. All will be revealed.
This is completely consonant with the whole ritual tradition of alchemy (remember Flamel, the alchemist?), which works in stages of transformation. The alchemical Magnum Opus (the great work in which base metal is transformed into gold) puts the metal through a series of operations, each with its color--white, yellow, black, red--and each with its symbolism for the journey of the soul from an impure (base metal) state to a pure (unalloyed gold) state.
OOTP--the book as a whole--is analogous to the Opus Nigredo, the Black Work, the darkest stage of alchemy. In the Black stage, the base metal is subjected to absolute disintegration, degradation, dissolution. The word the alchemists use is "putrefaction."
This book is Harry's Black book. And I am not unaware of the pun there, but will get to Sirius in a minute.
So although I agree largely with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
epicyclical's eloquent critique of the bleakness of the book, I think it probably is justified at this point in the story. This is, I think, the moment of radical dis-illusionment for both Harry and his constant companion, the Reader. The destruction of magic as a joyful, delightful, charming escape from the wretched (and yes, bleak) Muggle world is unavoidable. Muggle and magic have merged, and it's not pleasant.
But I have some confidence that Harry will recover it in the end; will reenchant the world, and himself with it. I don't sense in Rowling any dreary message that the Adult world is less enchanted, more bleak, than childhood. For one thing (as she has pointed out) Harry's childhood has always been a bit grim--has been, um, slightly less than charming and enchanted, despite the manifold wonders of Hogwarts and of discovering, step by step, his own powers.
Because Hogwarts isn't really his home, is it? It's a way-station, a safe-house, and it secrets and magic are nothing compared to the magic that dwells in the lowest cells of the Ministry of Magic (which is the most Adult place in HPWorld--the center of government, of deceit, lies, and answers). And then there's bleak, dreary Privet Drive, where his mother's sister turns out to have been his strongest, most effective bulwark all along. (And wasn't that elegantly done?) Will Harry have the strength and power to rescue the Dursleys from their own self-imposed misery?
So Harry is still seeking the enchanted realm. For him, the Boy Who Lived, the road to adulthood is the road to enchantment: a life as a wizard, happiness, and (above all) learning the truth about his parentage. I somehow do not think that the HP story will end with a Prospero-like drowning of book, breaking of staff, extinguishing of candle. I'm not inclined to predictions, but I suspect that for Harry the great test will be in confronting Voldemort and not killing him. And that the book will not end with a renunciation of magic, nor with a dragging down of the marvelous into the mundane.
At least, that's how I hope it will work, unless Rowling bungles it. And I do think she has bungled a couple of things in OOTP. Which brings me to Sirius Black.
Despite the many things I loved about OOTP, I was dismayed by how his death happened--above all, the timing and manner of it. Painful though it is, I can cope with the death of the single most compelling and romantic figure in the books--the man who is the Almost Harry, who is Harry's beautiful, magical, flawed, damaged half-father, half-brother (as Dumbledore, I think, calls him).
In fact, in retrospect, I think Sirius was bound to die; if Harry is The Boy Who Lived--ultimately tougher and harder and less flawed than Sirius--then Sirius is The Man Who Died. Ack, please forgive the creepy but unavoidable sub-Christian, sub-Matrix, sub-DH Lawrence reference. Consider that the dead father/brother predates the Christian hero-myth by several thousand years. Those who are squicked by it (well, like me): concentrate on the many pre-Christian heroes who made a Descent into Hell and did not survive it. (Of course, with that murmuring Veil, Rowling has given herself an out, but if she brings back Sirius that way, it will be an effing sleazy cheat, if you ask me.)
So OK, Sirius dies, and that's horrible in itself. But I object: it's a whole book too soon. The relationship between Sirius and Harry has scarcely developed; none of its interior substance has been allowed to unfold. The mistakes they both make are a little too dumb to be plausible--Harry forgetting the gift Sirius sent him, for example, until too late. Sirius neglecting to tell Harry a couple of salient things, such as his relationship to the Malfoy family. Harry rushing off to rescue Sirius in the best Blair Witch Project manner: No! Harry! Don't go through that door!
On a purely structural basis it is skimpy and thin, and I feel robbed of the power of Sirius's death. Not because it happens casually or quickly, without dramatic style or effect, but because what came before was insufficient. The relationship (father and son? two brothers? friends?) is too nascent.
Not to mention the underdeveloped relationship between Sirius and us. Because the primary ship is always--always--Book/Reader, and the rules of that ship have to be respected. As long as Harry is a child (which he still is), then Sirius, the adult, is the one who carries the Book. He may be only a substitute for Harry, but he is (apologies for overworked pun) a serious one. He should not be dismissed so early, as if our attachment to him did not merit more exploration; as if our investment in him could be so easily cashed in for credit on account. And meanwhile (pace the fans of the Bad Place), Harry is still too young to carry all that romantic weight alone.
So Sirius is the adult romantic lead. (Perhaps there will be another.) He is the almost-Hero, like Lancelot to Harry's Galahad. He will not go where Harry can go; we understand that. But through most of OOTP he is sulking, or making rash decisions, or not quite talking to Harry about anything. He's a bit of a pill, frankly. He is amazingly careless about Kreacher. And yet, the conversation Harry has with Dumbledore at the end is curiously unfulfilling, because what we really needed was for Harry to have that conversation with Sirius. I suppose it might have been hard to supply that conversation without effectively ending the story. But the sense of disjointedness was odd and distracting.
I can see why Harry has to lose all his fathers--he will probably lose Dumbledore at some point too. But we have also lost Sirius, and it wasn't done well. Losing Sirius so (relatively) soon after we/Harry have met him is a sort of coitus interruptus. I mean that quite directly: Sirius is the compelling, erotic object of desire for any adult reader (gay, straight, male, female, doesn't matter--some of us want to jump his bones, some of us want to be him, some want both; it's all the same thing). We are left with unfinished business with Sirius. Well, OK, admittedly, that was intentional. But I fear that now we will spend a great deal of energy distractedly half-fearing, half-hoping for his return. Undoubtedly Harry has another appointment in the Underworld; undoubtedly he is going to tear away the Veil.
OOTP comes alive most vividly in a couple of remarkable scenes: the strongest is the one where Harry invades Snape's memory and sees his father and Sirius as Snape remembers them. That this memory is very likely distorted by Snape's own sufferings and flaws has not yet occurred to Harry, but it is obvious enough to us. But the scene is extraordinarily potent, both because each character is so fully him- or herself, so clear, so well-marked and essential, and because it matters so much to Harry. And therefore to us. And again, I understand why Rowling gives us very few such moments, but they are too few. Harry's sufferings and deprivations are beginning to feel a little like a bad melodrama.
So in this book Harry invades and is invaded by the minds of two adults, Snape and Voldemort. That alone sets him far apart from his friends. (Though I am keeping an eye on Luna. Anyone named Lovegood is marked out to be Primary Love Interest, if you ask me; unless Harry, like Galahad, renounces romantic love entirely and leaves his friends to pair up with one another. But bleaah.) It forces him, literally, into an adult frame of mind. Once there, he can't really recover his innocence, such as it ever was.
Other complaints (because one might as well get them off one's chest):
Several marvelous inventions and images that were more or less wasted: the thestrals, the punishment of writing on one's own hand, the fairly pointless and slightly cliche business with the giant. (OK, I recognize that Hagrid and all his antics sort of bore me.) The Divination forest of Firenze. I like that character, despite the peculiar name, which in my mind conjures up a long-ago year abroad spent studying art history and Italian boys... but I digress. Perhaps these images and creatures and scenes will be filled out more in vol 6.
I loved the idea that Sirius, the bad boy, had a mother--a really awful mum. That was hilarious. But she was kind of tediously repetitious.
Umbridge (what a brilliant name, BTW) was also a bit OTT: Dickens/Central Casting Wicked Schoolteacher. I did love the not-so-subtle critique of the new British educational assessment system--forget what it's called--outcomes-based assessment, blah blah. The evil Thatcherite thing involving standardized testing, all the crap that we are now emulating here. I laughed bitterly and long every time she said the words "Ministry-approved." Nice one, JKR.
But how is it that Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius, Lupin, and lord knows who else all knew that it was essential for Harry to learn to protect his mind from Voldemort, and yet no one noticed that he had stopped taking lessons? Meh.
But two things struck me as wholly, surprisingly amateur:
1) there was far too much exposition. So many scenes in which characters sit Harry and Me, Reader, down, and say to us, "Now I am going to explain things to you in straight narrative direct discourse." Chiefly the conversation in the kitchen at Sirius's house and of course Dumbledore's Ozlike "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain" speech at the end. After 5 solid books of withheld explanations, for Dumbledore to simply sit down and say, "Gee, I should really have gotten around to discussing this with you before Voldemort actually took over your mind, acquired an army of Dementors and Death Eaters, and half-wrecked the Ministry of Magic." Because if sitting down was all it took, why on earth didn't he do it sooner?
The obvious answer is that Harry had to pass the test of the Underworld. And that is how it's set up: Harry finds the prophecy; it breaks accidentally, Harry loses Sirius but saves all his friends; Harry returns to Hogwarts sufficiently initiated to receive the gift of knowledge. But this was not the gift of Knowledge so much as a simple explanation. Will try to come to terms with that.
2) It is a common flaw of lousy TV writing for bad guys to stop in the middle of a battle to explain why they have been doing all the evil things they have been doing, thus giving the hero a nifty opportunity to kick the 9mm automatic out of their hand, bonk them upside the head with a classic karate roundhouse kick, and slap the cuffs on. Of all forms of awkward exposition, this is the least persuasive. Grumble grumble.
Well, a Middle book is one in which reversals occur, mirror images. The Road Down, as Heraclitus says, and the Road Back are one and the same. Within the Looking-glass world of HP, OOTP is another looking-glass. Evil is abroad, and gaining power. The world is darkening, and Harry with it. The closer he draws to Voldemort, the deeper is their connection. Child and adult, they are bound together by more than a prophecy.
It strikes me that this is very much a Middle book. I am not sure it would stand on its own, for example. (That may not matter, but it indicates something.)
I think what most frustrated me was Rowling's wilful refusal to let us into the interior world of Harry and Sirius. I felt that I was being continually held at arm's length, and if she is going to keep withholding Harry til the end, she needs to give us some sense of him through others--not just his friends, who are mostly fairly clueless about how he thinks and makes his choices, but the people who come from his real world: Sirius, Lupin, Dumbledore; the adults. The chill of that distance is beginning to be burdensome. While I am a great believer in starving the Reader nearly to death, one does need a bone to knaw on every now and then.
Well. Every great hero story involves a katabasis ("going down" in Greek), a Descent into the Underworld. The famous ones are Odysseus, who visits Achilleus in Hell (book 11 of the Odyssey), Aeneas (book 6, Aeneid), and the first volume of Dante. They all spring from the primal myth of creative death: that of Orpheus, who descends into Hades to rescue Persephone. (Told most famously in book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.)
Orpheus, the poet, enters the forbidden realm of death to bring back spring to the world; he defies death and returns successfully, because he is magical, half-divine, hero, creator, singer. This all sounds very tacky and sub-Joseph Campbell, but I think it's legitimate here, because I think Rowling is very aware of how the hero story has to work. The hero goes down into the Underworld to find some hidden, arcane knowledge, or an object symbolic of knowledge--acquire the secret fire, or learn the answer to the test riddle, or rescue the spring maiden--whatever, he has to bring that knowledge back to the surface of the earth. And he has to pay a price for obtaining the knowledge. (In this case a death that he can ill afford.)
In the Homer version, Odysseus descends into Hades to meet Achilles, greatest hero of them all. He is Seeking information about how to get home. But the more important piece of knowledge that he acquires is Achilles' statement that it is better to be alive and the meanest, lowest peasant on earth than to be dead and a hero. Or, as Tennessee Williams puts it, in one of my favorite passages (from Orpheus Descending):
"Take me up to Cypress Hill in your car. And we'll listen to the dead people talk. They do talk there. They chatter together like birds in Cypress Hill, but all they say is one word and that one word is 'live.' They say, 'live, live, live, live, live!' It's all they've learned, it's the only advice they can give--Just live ... Simple! A very simple instruction."
So we'll see if the Boy Who Lived can take that advice.
In the Aeneid, Aeneas descends to visit his dead father, who shows him a vision of his purpose (to found Rome) and displays to him the mechanism by which souls wait to be reborn. (Which in turn is swiped from Plato's Myth of Ur in the Republic, but enough with the classical citations already.)
So Harry descends into the Department of Mysteries (which was brilliantly conceived and depicted--a wholly original, marvelous Underworld), and brings back the prophecy. He thinks he has failed to bring it back, because it broke, but in Seeking it, and returning from the depths, he has passed the test Dumbledore was waiting for, and earned the answer--the classic answer: Now I am going to tell you Everything. All will be revealed.
This is completely consonant with the whole ritual tradition of alchemy (remember Flamel, the alchemist?), which works in stages of transformation. The alchemical Magnum Opus (the great work in which base metal is transformed into gold) puts the metal through a series of operations, each with its color--white, yellow, black, red--and each with its symbolism for the journey of the soul from an impure (base metal) state to a pure (unalloyed gold) state.
OOTP--the book as a whole--is analogous to the Opus Nigredo, the Black Work, the darkest stage of alchemy. In the Black stage, the base metal is subjected to absolute disintegration, degradation, dissolution. The word the alchemists use is "putrefaction."
This book is Harry's Black book. And I am not unaware of the pun there, but will get to Sirius in a minute.
So although I agree largely with
epicyclical's eloquent critique of the bleakness of the book, I think it probably is justified at this point in the story. This is, I think, the moment of radical dis-illusionment for both Harry and his constant companion, the Reader. The destruction of magic as a joyful, delightful, charming escape from the wretched (and yes, bleak) Muggle world is unavoidable. Muggle and magic have merged, and it's not pleasant. But I have some confidence that Harry will recover it in the end; will reenchant the world, and himself with it. I don't sense in Rowling any dreary message that the Adult world is less enchanted, more bleak, than childhood. For one thing (as she has pointed out) Harry's childhood has always been a bit grim--has been, um, slightly less than charming and enchanted, despite the manifold wonders of Hogwarts and of discovering, step by step, his own powers.
Because Hogwarts isn't really his home, is it? It's a way-station, a safe-house, and it secrets and magic are nothing compared to the magic that dwells in the lowest cells of the Ministry of Magic (which is the most Adult place in HPWorld--the center of government, of deceit, lies, and answers). And then there's bleak, dreary Privet Drive, where his mother's sister turns out to have been his strongest, most effective bulwark all along. (And wasn't that elegantly done?) Will Harry have the strength and power to rescue the Dursleys from their own self-imposed misery?
So Harry is still seeking the enchanted realm. For him, the Boy Who Lived, the road to adulthood is the road to enchantment: a life as a wizard, happiness, and (above all) learning the truth about his parentage. I somehow do not think that the HP story will end with a Prospero-like drowning of book, breaking of staff, extinguishing of candle. I'm not inclined to predictions, but I suspect that for Harry the great test will be in confronting Voldemort and not killing him. And that the book will not end with a renunciation of magic, nor with a dragging down of the marvelous into the mundane.
At least, that's how I hope it will work, unless Rowling bungles it. And I do think she has bungled a couple of things in OOTP. Which brings me to Sirius Black.
Despite the many things I loved about OOTP, I was dismayed by how his death happened--above all, the timing and manner of it. Painful though it is, I can cope with the death of the single most compelling and romantic figure in the books--the man who is the Almost Harry, who is Harry's beautiful, magical, flawed, damaged half-father, half-brother (as Dumbledore, I think, calls him).
In fact, in retrospect, I think Sirius was bound to die; if Harry is The Boy Who Lived--ultimately tougher and harder and less flawed than Sirius--then Sirius is The Man Who Died. Ack, please forgive the creepy but unavoidable sub-Christian, sub-Matrix, sub-DH Lawrence reference. Consider that the dead father/brother predates the Christian hero-myth by several thousand years. Those who are squicked by it (well, like me): concentrate on the many pre-Christian heroes who made a Descent into Hell and did not survive it. (Of course, with that murmuring Veil, Rowling has given herself an out, but if she brings back Sirius that way, it will be an effing sleazy cheat, if you ask me.)
So OK, Sirius dies, and that's horrible in itself. But I object: it's a whole book too soon. The relationship between Sirius and Harry has scarcely developed; none of its interior substance has been allowed to unfold. The mistakes they both make are a little too dumb to be plausible--Harry forgetting the gift Sirius sent him, for example, until too late. Sirius neglecting to tell Harry a couple of salient things, such as his relationship to the Malfoy family. Harry rushing off to rescue Sirius in the best Blair Witch Project manner: No! Harry! Don't go through that door!
On a purely structural basis it is skimpy and thin, and I feel robbed of the power of Sirius's death. Not because it happens casually or quickly, without dramatic style or effect, but because what came before was insufficient. The relationship (father and son? two brothers? friends?) is too nascent.
Not to mention the underdeveloped relationship between Sirius and us. Because the primary ship is always--always--Book/Reader, and the rules of that ship have to be respected. As long as Harry is a child (which he still is), then Sirius, the adult, is the one who carries the Book. He may be only a substitute for Harry, but he is (apologies for overworked pun) a serious one. He should not be dismissed so early, as if our attachment to him did not merit more exploration; as if our investment in him could be so easily cashed in for credit on account. And meanwhile (pace the fans of the Bad Place), Harry is still too young to carry all that romantic weight alone.
So Sirius is the adult romantic lead. (Perhaps there will be another.) He is the almost-Hero, like Lancelot to Harry's Galahad. He will not go where Harry can go; we understand that. But through most of OOTP he is sulking, or making rash decisions, or not quite talking to Harry about anything. He's a bit of a pill, frankly. He is amazingly careless about Kreacher. And yet, the conversation Harry has with Dumbledore at the end is curiously unfulfilling, because what we really needed was for Harry to have that conversation with Sirius. I suppose it might have been hard to supply that conversation without effectively ending the story. But the sense of disjointedness was odd and distracting.
I can see why Harry has to lose all his fathers--he will probably lose Dumbledore at some point too. But we have also lost Sirius, and it wasn't done well. Losing Sirius so (relatively) soon after we/Harry have met him is a sort of coitus interruptus. I mean that quite directly: Sirius is the compelling, erotic object of desire for any adult reader (gay, straight, male, female, doesn't matter--some of us want to jump his bones, some of us want to be him, some want both; it's all the same thing). We are left with unfinished business with Sirius. Well, OK, admittedly, that was intentional. But I fear that now we will spend a great deal of energy distractedly half-fearing, half-hoping for his return. Undoubtedly Harry has another appointment in the Underworld; undoubtedly he is going to tear away the Veil.
OOTP comes alive most vividly in a couple of remarkable scenes: the strongest is the one where Harry invades Snape's memory and sees his father and Sirius as Snape remembers them. That this memory is very likely distorted by Snape's own sufferings and flaws has not yet occurred to Harry, but it is obvious enough to us. But the scene is extraordinarily potent, both because each character is so fully him- or herself, so clear, so well-marked and essential, and because it matters so much to Harry. And therefore to us. And again, I understand why Rowling gives us very few such moments, but they are too few. Harry's sufferings and deprivations are beginning to feel a little like a bad melodrama.
So in this book Harry invades and is invaded by the minds of two adults, Snape and Voldemort. That alone sets him far apart from his friends. (Though I am keeping an eye on Luna. Anyone named Lovegood is marked out to be Primary Love Interest, if you ask me; unless Harry, like Galahad, renounces romantic love entirely and leaves his friends to pair up with one another. But bleaah.) It forces him, literally, into an adult frame of mind. Once there, he can't really recover his innocence, such as it ever was.
Other complaints (because one might as well get them off one's chest):
Several marvelous inventions and images that were more or less wasted: the thestrals, the punishment of writing on one's own hand, the fairly pointless and slightly cliche business with the giant. (OK, I recognize that Hagrid and all his antics sort of bore me.) The Divination forest of Firenze. I like that character, despite the peculiar name, which in my mind conjures up a long-ago year abroad spent studying art history and Italian boys... but I digress. Perhaps these images and creatures and scenes will be filled out more in vol 6.
I loved the idea that Sirius, the bad boy, had a mother--a really awful mum. That was hilarious. But she was kind of tediously repetitious.
Umbridge (what a brilliant name, BTW) was also a bit OTT: Dickens/Central Casting Wicked Schoolteacher. I did love the not-so-subtle critique of the new British educational assessment system--forget what it's called--outcomes-based assessment, blah blah. The evil Thatcherite thing involving standardized testing, all the crap that we are now emulating here. I laughed bitterly and long every time she said the words "Ministry-approved." Nice one, JKR.
But how is it that Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius, Lupin, and lord knows who else all knew that it was essential for Harry to learn to protect his mind from Voldemort, and yet no one noticed that he had stopped taking lessons? Meh.
But two things struck me as wholly, surprisingly amateur:
1) there was far too much exposition. So many scenes in which characters sit Harry and Me, Reader, down, and say to us, "Now I am going to explain things to you in straight narrative direct discourse." Chiefly the conversation in the kitchen at Sirius's house and of course Dumbledore's Ozlike "Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain" speech at the end. After 5 solid books of withheld explanations, for Dumbledore to simply sit down and say, "Gee, I should really have gotten around to discussing this with you before Voldemort actually took over your mind, acquired an army of Dementors and Death Eaters, and half-wrecked the Ministry of Magic." Because if sitting down was all it took, why on earth didn't he do it sooner?
The obvious answer is that Harry had to pass the test of the Underworld. And that is how it's set up: Harry finds the prophecy; it breaks accidentally, Harry loses Sirius but saves all his friends; Harry returns to Hogwarts sufficiently initiated to receive the gift of knowledge. But this was not the gift of Knowledge so much as a simple explanation. Will try to come to terms with that.
2) It is a common flaw of lousy TV writing for bad guys to stop in the middle of a battle to explain why they have been doing all the evil things they have been doing, thus giving the hero a nifty opportunity to kick the 9mm automatic out of their hand, bonk them upside the head with a classic karate roundhouse kick, and slap the cuffs on. Of all forms of awkward exposition, this is the least persuasive. Grumble grumble.
Well, a Middle book is one in which reversals occur, mirror images. The Road Down, as Heraclitus says, and the Road Back are one and the same. Within the Looking-glass world of HP, OOTP is another looking-glass. Evil is abroad, and gaining power. The world is darkening, and Harry with it. The closer he draws to Voldemort, the deeper is their connection. Child and adult, they are bound together by more than a prophecy.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-30 01:02 pm (UTC)Much agreed on the sirius points. All points, actually.
The_Flaming_O@Blurty.com