Book review: Harry Potter 6

My review of the fifth and earlier books is here.

In this sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince, the whole wizarding world knows that the Big Baddie Voldemort is back.  They are getting pretty nervous about it too, and the odd mysterious death is not helping things.  Security at Harry’s school is beefed up, but the school remains open and life goes on.

Harry and his classmates are now in their 17^th year.  In the wizarding world, the 17^th birthday is the important milestone when they gain the legal rights of adults.  For one thing, at 17, teenagers may sit the test for the wizarding equivalent of the car drivers’ licence, the licence to magically travel by disappearing and appearing at will.  Harry’s classmates are very excited by this, and the freedoms that it will give them.

Clearly, then, the main theme of this book is the transition from teenager to adult, and the consequent good and bad things that this brings.

We learn of freedom in another sense, too.  An important part of the ongoing story has been a prophecy made about Harry.  In one of the teaching moments, Harry learns from Dumbledore that, in the wizarding world, people have the freedom to turn their backs on prophecies.  Prophecies are not set in stone, and they don’t dictate what will happen.

Clearly, this is intended as a teaching moment from author to reader as well.  Rowling is telling her readers, too, that we don’t have to do anything, and what we do in life is always our choice.  We have our moral freedom.  This is even if, as Harry notes to himself, the choice is only between holding our head up high as we face death or meeting it while being dragged kicking and screaming.  But we are informed that this is not a trivial choice, and there is all the difference in the world between one and the other.

There is also a deeper message in this book.  This is that adulthood, and freedom, is not merely a liberation.  The other side of the coin is the loss of certainty.

Harry has learnt that as long as he keeps returning each summer holiday to his uncle and aunt’s house, and treating it as his home, he is protected.  But at 17, as an adult, he loses that protection.  He loses the certainty of his childhood home.

With adulthood, too, comes the loss of certainty that a parent, or mentor, will be there to have the final say.  This is a chilling freedom to have.  As an adult you have got equals—friends and advisors, but you no longer have the reassurance of an ultimate corrector to step in and take over if things go too horribly wrong.  There is a sense in which you are on your own.  Without giving the story away, the final hundred or so pages of the book hits this message home pretty hard.  As always, Rowling does an awesome job of telling a can’t-put-down story, while simultaneously teaching her message.

The answer to the mystery of who is the Half-Blood Prince hits quite hard, too.  It is a lesson about the perspectives we might have of other people.  Seeing someone in writing can be very different from seeing them in person.

I’m starting the seventh and final book now (review here).  If the other books are anything to go by, I imagine it will be about young adulthood.  About having to do things for yourself, and not having the certainties and protections of childhood.  I’m sure it will be a great read, too.