Once I finished training for Teaching Fellows (parenthetical celebration!), I read the new Harry Potter. It took me an astonishingly long time–four days–but I’m happily here on the other side of enjoying its charms. That said, it wasn’t the absolute best children’s book I’ve read, not even the best Harry Potter book.
Incidentally, does it happen to any of the rest of you that almost the second you’ve finished a Harry Potter book or movie, you practically forget everything you’ve read? Or that the end of one book blurs seamlessly into the end of another so you can’t remember in which year who beat what disastrous evil through which ingenious, Dumbledore-arranged means?
I’m going to get a Harry Potter by way of Fight Club, here, so bear with me. Remember when Fight Club was all your male friends repeating endlessly, “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club”? And everyone admitted, some with a little more pressure than others, that the ending was completely whack. Ed Norton, “Jack’s medulla oblongata,” blows half his neck/face off and that kills Mr.-Hot-as-Hell-I’m-Brad-Pitt (still no Robert Redford) Tyler Durden–but he doesn’t die himself? What? I’m sorry, either they both die or neither does. It’s, like, biology or something.
Well, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows seems to have taken some lessons from whoever the screenwriter of Fight Club happens to be. (From what I can gather, the actual novel by Chuck Palahniuk has a far more acceptable and understandable ending. Perhaps I shall read it.) I’m not even sure what the heck happened there at the end of this book, even with Dumbledore explaining it to Harry from beyond the veil.
It went something like this: Harry can’t kill Voldemort because he is Voldemort–twice over is Voldemort–so they both kind of die and then they both come back from being dead in King’s Cross, which seems to be some sort of purgatory. Then Harry kills Voldemort for reals because he bested Malfoy a couple chapters ago and got some uberwand, but Harry doesn’t die because the first time he killed Voldemort just a few minutes ago–except neither of them actually died, they were in King’s Cross with Dumbledore–he killed the part of himself that was Voldemort, thus severing their connection forever.
See? Just like Ed Norton blowing Brad Pitt out of his brain by blowing off half his face.
Of course, the book did make me cry. But not at the end or any of the points where clearly I was meant to cry. I cried during the second chapter when I was reading it on the subway because I was tired and excited to be finally reading something about anything other than teaching. Anyway, I’m off to bathe, and then Jeff and I are going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Hooray for a rainy day off and the world of Harry Potter!
Thanks to tripu on flickr.com for his generous use of a Creative Commons license: that’s his picture of Platform 9 3/4 at the top of the post.
1 Comment
16 August 2007 at 2:49 pm
Okay, first Fight Club.
I too thought that Edward Norton– or Jack, as the scores of Fight Club fanatics most frequently refer to him– shot himself in the head. Well, he does and he doesn’t. It’s really not clear, but apparently he’s supposed to have shot himself in the jaw. (There’s a Special Feature on the ‘Making of…’ the special effects or something that demonstrates it in super slow motion.) Basically the thought was that a body was all Jack and Tyler had in common. Thus damage to one damages both. (Think back to when Jack is in the emergency room getting his head stitched up: “Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth.”) Tyler always had a leg up on Jack because he knew he was Jack, whereas Jack thought Tyler was just some other guy. The trouble is Tyler was always Jack. So all this time Jack’s been kicking his own ass but thinking Tyler is the one doing it.
Now go to the final scene, as Jack is the only real person, he’s the one holding the gun all along. That’s why when he realize he has the gun, Tyler says it “doesn’t change a thing.” It’s at this point that Jack realizes if he shoots at Tyler he’ll be shooting at thin air. So, if you are your own enemy, how do you destroy yourself? Well, for starters, instead of attacking something that’s not there you might try attacking yourself.
Admittedly this doesn’t completely explain why Tyler has a hole in the back of his head and Jack has a hole in his jaw. I think it has something to do with the fact that Jack really did mean to kill himself and the initial shock of the gunshot was enough for him to feel he’d succeeded. Thus his visualization of himself with a whole in the back of his head was enough to disassociate him from Tyler long enough for Tyler to be killed.
Admittedly, it’s a stretch. But take a step back from it and look at the movie as being self-referential and aware of its self as a movie. That’s the truly brilliant last laugh that almost no one gets: the characters themselves realize their in a film but the audience never seems to catch on.
Now Harry Potter which is far more convuluted. Here goes: according to what we are told about wandlore it is not possible to kill another wizard with their own wand. Voldemort wields the deathstick when facing Harry the first time. But the wand’s rightful owner is Harry, who has defeated Malfoy who was the possessor of both his own wand and the deathstick at the time. Some sort of interference happens here which is poorly explained but the failed spell has an effect on both Voldemort and Harry and are transported to King’s Cross. You kind of have to just accept this because Rowling doesn’t bother to offer any sort of substantive explanation as to why this happens. (Although Dumbledore does suggest some clue when he tells Harry that it’s his show.)
In King’s Cross, Harry is pretty much who he is but Voldemort some hideous deformed fetus. (Remember what we’re told about Harry essentially being one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes after Voldemort kills Lily.) Thus the Fetus on the floor is the small festering part of Harry that is partially Voldemort.
Now with the exception of Nagini, this little festering Fetus is all that’s left of Voldemort.
Both Harry and Voldemort return from King’s Cross, but something about the interference doesn’t so much destroy the Horcrux in Harry as it returns it to Voldemort.
Again, you are right that this is not clearly spelled out. But what’s interesting is that you say Harry kills Voldemort. This is, I’m sorry, a misreading. Voldemort casts a kill spell and Harry casts a shield spell. But it’s already been established that the wand cannot kill Harry. By casting the spell Voldemort kills himself. I am 100% convinced of this fact. Consider the fact that nowhere in the book is it depicted that the non-death eaters kill anyone. Yes, they are battling but it seems quite clear that the Hogwartians are trying to fill Azkaban NOT cemetaries.
The only villian that is killed outright is Bellatrix Lastrange by Mrs. Weasley. Which is very interesting indeed.
While I agree that it’s not the best in the series (clearly, that title remains The Goblet of Fire’s), The Deathly Hallows was a substantive if not overly heavy-handed improvement on the last two installments. At the very least, I feel Rowling has some intriguing things to say by implication about duty, honor, venegance and justice.