Thursday, July 26, 2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Well, I finished the book late Sunday, after staying up late both Friday and Saturday to try and make progress. What do I think? And what do I think of those who have already commented?
First, a word about commentators - both on the book itself and the phenomena that is Harry. A large number of the voices that I have read and heard since last Friday have been either grudgingly positive or else dismissive. A number of non-Harry fans have commentated on the “losers”, the adults seen carrying around Harry to the beach, to the pub, and elsewhere, as if they were just present day Dungeons and Dragons nerds. Of course what these people fail to realise is that by about the third book, and certainly the fourth, the books moved from being books that kept child readers in mind and became instead true psychological and theological explorations of the human self. Sure, they were still fun for the readers who started with book 1 as kids and grew up alongside Harry. But that was no longer the audience. By the way, most of those who ridiculed the Harry phenomena among adults were a few weeks back talking non-stop about the Sopranos. Check the numbers folks - the Sopranos were not seen by near the number of people who have followed Harry through this long venture. I didn’t dismiss the Sopranos folks as silly nerds, even though it was largely a coastal elite group that thought it was the end all and be all. No, if people are genuinely touched, then great. That is the power of narratives - be it in television (we are dedicated House, MD fans), movies (think of the large numbers of early adult males who were touched by the relatively non-gore 300 earlier this year, or book as in Harry’s case. We can only hope that the power of the narrative brings about a change in the character of those drawn to that narrative - as I believe was true of the 300 group, and of some of those who read such books as Harry and Narnia.
I think that is why many of the commentators, especially on this last of the series, want so deeply to dismiss Harry. It is not kids lit per se. And despite what the Times and Telegraph of London tells us, it is neither a gay love story nor a Freudian story. It is a story of classic virtues - like the great works of literature going back to Beowulf and on to books like Brothers K and Les Miserables. And yes, I think it is a story that builds off of the one story - the story of Christ - to form its own narrative and its own conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, Harry is not Jesus in disguise, like Aslan. But Harry is following the story that Jesus himself laid out for all of us who choose to love and at the same time oppose evil. And that is why so many commentators, divorced from either classical virtues or the Gospel story, have not been able to truly understand either Harry or the phenomenon around him.
Right before I left England this past time the Sunday Telegraph of London ran a story on what Harrys’ life would be like 10 years on if he lived. They had him as a gay Tory, living with his domestic partner, and essentially, well, being a reporter for the Telegraph. Sorry, you clearly have not been reading the story.
Of course the whole postmodern literary theory - reader response - which gives all the power to the audience and non to the writer or her characters is behind this. But Harry and his friends are a narrative so far from that postmodern world that, as John Mark Reynolds who teaches at Biola said, this book could have been written in the 1940s or the Victorian age.
As for the story. Well, there are page turners and then there are page turners. The first chapter features the first of many deaths, and one is overcome in the following chapters about how deep the battle against injustice and evil will drain us. Each page left me exhausted, and this time there were no fluff chapters to allow me to catch my breath.
But there were still all the things that made Harry so great for 6 books - humour, not overt as it rarely is, but written into the actions and settings of the characters. There was love, there was sadness, there was disappointment. At the end the book left me both exhausted and totally satisfied. It did all that I could hope for, it had changes and surprises I did not see coming, and it ended not shabbily, but solidly and therefore the joy at the end was real and sturdy - supported by its total narrative and not plucked from the outside the story.
In the end I can give it no higher praise then to say it is now my favourite book, unseating the prior favourites of David Bosch’s Transforming Mission, Leslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength (the book that it most reminds me of). To J.K. Rowling I say, thank you for your labour, and thank you for writing books that in a very real way make me a better human being, and a better man.
