My review of the sixth and earlier books is here.
The seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows, is by far the most
complex of the books in the series. It
is about adults, and for adults, though of course teenagers will still love the
story.
Once again, I haven’t bothered to read anyone else’s reviews
of the book. What I write here is purely
from my own thoughts. And if anyone
wants to tell me I’m mistaken, then I would be very happy to be corrected.
Please feel free to comment.
As I read the book, I saw at least four different levels of
meaning.
The first level was the direct story itself. It’s a great story. As you can probably guess, it is
un-put-down-able. These final few books
in the series I have been zooming through in a couple of day each. (My excuse is that I have been feeling a bit
under the weather lately, and so wasn’t up to doing much real work anyway!)
While for the most part the story hung together well, there
were a few things that slightly bugged me.
I don’t know whether this was because I missed something in my reading
or whether there are genuine plot holes.
Please let me know if I have missed something.
One thing that bugged me slightly was the second to last
chapter (the one before “Nineteen Years Later”). As I read it, I couldn’t help feeling that it
was written with a movie in mind. It was
a movie-style ending, and not a book-style ending. I can only assume that by the time it was
written the movies were big successes, and there was more of a movie-mentality
to the book, too.
More specifically, I felt it a little strange how all the
“stars” had conveniently moved into the Hogwarts school Great Hall, for a final
battle. It was as if we could imagine a
movie camera panning around and zooming in to the fights. Why did they not spread out to other places
around the school? Why all squeeze in
together? Further, why did all the minor
“stars” stop fighting and stand back against the walls to watch the two big
battles (I won’t say who)?
And further, why did Voldemort get so angry when one of his
main underlings was killed? Up until
that point he was completely cold-hearted about everyone, often, in a Darth
Vader-ish sort of way simply killing his underlings when they made mistakes. This seemed out of character for him, though more
understandable for a two-dimensional movie baddie.
Also, I wondered why, at the end, some of the baddies who
had already been beaten earlier had returned to the fight (I won’t list them by
name, but anyone who had read the book will surely be aware of who I am
referring to). Surely when they were
beaten they would have been permanently incapacitated for the rest of the
battle (particularly given the one-hour pause in the battle). Again, this just gave the feel of needing a
movie-style ending rather than a more thought-through book-style ending.
I was a little puzzled, too, about how the sword of
Gryffindor had ended up in the goodies possession again at the end. Did I miss something? I thought the goblins had reclaimed it. When did they give it back?
One of my bigger puzzles, though, was the logic of how wands
choose their wizard masters. If it was
simply by the wizard being beaten at any time, and even being beaten when not
using that particular wand, then wands would be changing their masters all the
time. This would especially be true at
school, where Harry and his schoolmates were often duelling and beating each
other. It would be an everyday
occurrence that wands were fizzing and refusing to be used against other
people. So, surely everyone would know
the rules of wand ownership? It shouldn’t
be such a mystery to Voldemort. Since Voldemort’s
inability to understand was the whole issue at the end, I was left feeling a
little dissatisfied with the logic of the ending. Was I mistaken? Can anyone correct me on this?
But whatever the case about these sorts of story plot holes,
it is still an excellent story.
The second level of meaning was, as I expected after reading
the sixth book, the theme of coping with young adulthood.
This showed up particularly when Harry and his two friends
were together independently camping out for months using the magical tent. The inside of the tent seemed exactly like a
cheap student flat, and the disagreements between the three of them seemed just
like what goes on between young student flatmates fresh from leaving home. Naturally, Hermione, the only girl, had to
ask why she was the one who always had to do the food. And naturally, the boys replied that it was
because she was best at it (though in this case she was the one best at doing
magic). Naturally, too, after living
together for long enough there was a big argument between them and one walked
out.
The third level of meaning was a continuation of Rowling’s
commentary on social and political issues.
One key theme was expressed by Harry when he said that
parents shouldn’t ever leave their children, unless they have to. The story itself gave evidence of this, as we
began to understand the background history of some of the key characters. Repeatedly it was the characters who had had
bad childhoods who were the most flawed or challenged as adults. Ron’s family, the Weasleys, was clearly
intended as the model good family—lots of children, chaotic and messy, somewhat
poor, but full of love and fun and loyalty.
The Weasley’s messy, rundown home was contrasted with the spotlessly
perfect home of Harry’s horrible uncle and aunt.
It was interesting, too, that one of the first things that
the baddies did when they gained political power was to ban homeschooling, and
require all children to attend the centrally-controlled school. Previously, attending the school had been
optional, though still chosen by most families.
As I have already mentioned in earlier book reviews, there
is a strong egalitarian theme running through the entire book series. An important part is the equal acceptance of
all races and types of people. The story
emphasised that a lot of the current social problems were because of the ongoing
generational oppression of minorities by those in power.
The book also made clear that this conflict is made worse
because of a failure to properly understand cultural differences, and how these
cultural differences impact on everyday interactions. There was an interesting intercultural
miscommunication moment when it was explained that what one culture sees as a
permanent purchase another culture sees as a temporary loan.
A further political issue raised particularly in this book
was the idea of “the greater good”. That
is, should political rulers knowingly cause suffering to others if it is for
the greater good? The book treated this
in a very complex way, and it was not entirely clear what the right conclusion is
(which I think is the right approach to take).
The book was very clearly against three types of “greater
good” defenders.
Firstly, it was against those who are just mouthing the
words but not really applying them—rulers who are really doing it for
themselves.
Secondly, it was against young adults who, in their
idealistic fervour, wish to change the world.
We meet up with a couple of young, brilliant
university-undergraduate-aged men who think they have the answers to all the
world’s problems and want to take charge by force to correct things.
Thirdly, it appeared to be against an anything goes
(including torture) style of “greater good” (act utilitarianism?). The details of this were fuzzy, but it seemed
to be suggesting that there should still be a set of non-negotiables, which ought
never be violated.
But, the book most definitely wasn’t obviously against a
“greater good” mentality that is wiser, truly for a greater good, and properly
bounded. I won’t spoil the story for
anyone who hasn’t yet read it, but there is a definite grey issue about
grooming and manipulation towards a tragic and foreseeable ending.
This links in with the topic of power. The book asks the question of whether, if we
have the choice, having more power is a good thing. Without giving the story away, clearly the author’s
opinion is that stronger (military) power is rarely the answer.
The fourth level of meaning was theological.
It is obvious, in retrospect, that a book series that is
centrally about wizards and magic would have to touch on some theological
issues. But I was very surprised about
how strongly Christian this series turned at the end. I don’t see this turn as a bad thing, even
though I disagree with a few of the suggestions made in the book. This is because I think it was very well
done. At the end of the day, what is most
important is opening up a dialogue on these sorts of topics. This, very clearly, is what the book was
doing.
One theological issue raised was that of knowledge. Like many other well-known literary theological
works, we have an ongoing dialogue between two fundamentally different types of
characters, with other characters taking different views around them. That is, Hermione represents the reasoning
position, while Harry takes the faith position.
Clearly, given that the book series is called Harry Potter, we are meant
to see that faith is superior to reason alone.
Hermione is definitely the smarter of the two characters,
the harder worker, and the more observant of people. Thus, by the time they reach adulthood,
Hermione has a far better knowledge of the world around them, and is far better
at getting things done. But Hermione is not
merely a cold, rationalistic robot. It
is Hermione who is the most sensitive to the needs of others and understand
them better, and it is Hermione who initiates a lot of the equal rights for
minorities stuff. Clearly, the author is
saying that human rights, equality, and so on are completely within the realm
of reason.
Harry is a bit more of the everyday person. He is just so-so smart and so-so good
looking. He studies a bit, but not that
much. He likes his sport. He is decent and honourable (as most people
like to think they are!). Importantly,
he acts on his intuitions, which, even when he examines them, he is unable to
explain reasonably. But he mostly trusts
these intuitions. Even more importantly,
it is Harry who initially has faith but has a crisis of faith, before returning
to his faith in a stronger and more complex way (I won’t spoil the story by
explaining too much). Harry represents
the Christian pilgrim. Unsurprisingly, Harry
sees Hermione’s outlook as narrow and limited.
But Harry’s intuition/faith-based outlook is strongly
contrasted with what we might call a more crazy form of faith. This is most clearly represented by Luna
Lovegood’s father, who publishes a mostly-nonsense newspaper that in our world
would be filled with alien abductions, pyramids, moon-landing conspiracies and
tin-foil hats. Occasionally Lovegood
hits on a truth, but for the most part his crazy idea are, well, crazy. He also sees Hermione’s outlook as too
narrow.
I think the point of the contrast of these three types of
characters is that Harry represents faith supported by, and not in contrast to,
reason. Hermione is Harry’s best friend, and he says she is like a sister to
him. The author is telling us that
reason is essential, but we need to go that little bit further and accept
things that reason alone won’t get to.
And yet, what we get to through our faith is still reasonable. It is not against reason, as Lovegood’s
position is.
There is also the question of how to understand mythical
stories, that at first glance appear to be children’s fairytales.
What about theological metaphysics?
The school divination teacher, who teaches palm reading,
crystal ball gazing, astrology, tea-leaf interpretation, and so on, represents
another form of crazy. In the wizarding
world, wizards look down upon these types of activities. Importantly, they call them “unreliable”
magic. Furthermore, the divination teacher
is seen as a fraud, and most people (especially Hermione) have little respect
for her.
In other words, as I see it, the author is saying two
things.
Firstly, that most people who claim to have special
knowledge of the occult are frauds. Yet,
just like some of Harry’s fellow students believed the divination teacher,
there will always be some gullible people who believe these frauds.
But secondly, in the book the divination teacher had,
importantly, two moments of genuine prophesy.
Rowling is saying, I think, that even these frauds may occasionally,
accidently, have genuinely supernatural moments.
This final book also has a lot to say about the soul and
death. The book takes the standard
Christian position about the literal existence of souls, which continue to
exist after a person’s death. What
happens after death is a mystery, but the souls appear to pass over into
another world and continue to exist.
Moreover, without giving the story away too much, we learn that when a
person murders it literally damages their soul.
Too much of this and the damage will be permanent. Damaging a soul, or losing it, is worse than
death. This moral dimension of souls,
and the contrast between love and murder, is a central aspect of the series.
Finally, self-sacrifice, with love, is in there
(repeatedly), along with the protective force from evil that it gives to
others.
I’m sure I have missed some other, important themes in the
book, but I’ll stop for now.
Overall, then, what do I think of the Harry Potter series?
Martin Heidegger, in some of his later work, writes about
the nature of a work of art. We might
identify three necessary components of a Heideggerian work of art:
(A lot of what follows here is copied and pasted from stuff
I wrote over 15 years ago!)
1. The artwork brings “world”
out of background inconspicuousness into foreground salience.
2. The artwork allows “world” to
be transparent to “earth” in such a way as to allow the former to appear as
“holy.”
3. The artwork gathers together
an entire culture to witness this numinous salience of “world.”
What does this mean?
A “world”, for Heidegger, is a fundamental epochal horizon
of disclosure; it is a particular way of seeing things for a particular
culture. It is both ontological and
ethical. That is, when we understand our
“world” we understand both who we (and others) are and also how we ought to act
in relationship with others in our “world.”
Heidegger acknowledges that there are many possible ways of seeing an
object (many “worlds”), but we are only ever able to see it in one way at one
time (our “world”). He introduces the
term “earth” to signify all the other
possible ways of seeing objects. “Earth”
is the background set of all possible, mutually exclusive “worlds.” “Earth” is unsayable, ineffable, ungraspable,
and unmastered. To use an analogy,
“world” is the lighted disc of the moon and “earth” is the hidden spherical
depth that cannot be seen. When we look
at the moon all we see is the lighted disc, although in reality the moon has a
far greater depth to it.
Hence, an artwork, according to Heidegger, does three
things. Firstly, it shows us who we are
and how we ought to act, secondly it shows us that there is a deeper reality
than what we can superficially see, and thirdly it does this for its entire
culture. An object may be an artwork for
one culture, but not for another.
Heidegger’s favourite example is the Greek temple, which was a
Heideggerian artwork for the Greeks.
How does this fit with Harry Potter?
Firstly, as I have been showing in my book reviews, a big
part of the book series is that of teaching children important lessons about
how to live in the world. Harry Potter
shows us who we are and how we should act.
Secondly, Voldemort exemplifies the failings of modernity, for
Heidegger. The sort of magic Voldemort
chased after was of a single type, which was only based on power. Repeatedly, he failed to see other sorts of
magic, such as love and relationships and choice. In other words, he only saw the lighted disc
of the moon, and forgot that there was a greater depth behind it. Furthermore, Heidegger criticised people who
saw everything as mere “resource”, as a result of failing to see this greater
depth. Voldemort again exemplifies this
“resource”-based attitude to the world.
Reading the books enables us to get a sense of the deeper things, by
showing us how Voldemort could only see the surface.
Thirdly, Harry Potter has become a modern cultural
phenomenon. Everyone knows about the
series. Importantly, as I linked to in
an earlier review, academic research is now telling us that young people’s
political views have been directly influenced by the books.
It seems to me that all three requirements are satisfied, to
make Harry Potter a Heideggerian artwork for our time.
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