Potter’s Plight:
A Review of Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows
There are no plot spoilers within this review.
J.K. Rowling writes in a way that I wish I could—putting a deft, light touch upon unsettling events and treating her characters with empathy and understanding. She makes writing look effortless; an effervescent style, a knack for creating amusing characters, and the willingness to have fun with those characters—these traits and others help make her work valuable to me. Because of her talents, the media coverage, and the fact that I’d read her previous six books, I was anticipating this seventh, final edition to the Harry Potter series more than I’ve anticipated any commercial event in the last five or ten years. I was seriously looking forward to the book’s release, and I would have been very upset it someone had ruined the ending for me. So, I won’t play spoiler here.
Incredibly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lives up to its astronomical hype. It is certainly a more ‘adult’ book than the previous six. There are complex themes at work in The Deathly Hallows: race and religion, most prominently. The novel is more introspective than the previous six, and for good reason; Harry’s decisions are no longer are so provincial. Rowling incorporates a nasty twist into her final books, that is to say, Harry must now make choices in which his decisions directly affect the courses of other people’s lives. In the past, Harry’s world was more confined to Hogwarts and to the lives of himself and his friends. Albus Dumbledore lay as a comfortable safety net below him, and the occasion for humor rose more frequently, because the stakes were smaller. In the final book, Albus is not available as a safety net, and the maturing Harry must spend a greater amount time reflecting on the decisions he must make. The decisions he must make could scar an adult, and Harry’s only seventeen.
Often, I find that books which are more introspective are slower reads. Not so with The Deathly Hallows. I read straight through it in half a day. I couldn’t put the book down; my mother called me twice to discuss plot details—we tried to guess, early in the book, who an informant might be. The book reads so quickly, in part, because of all the miniature mysteries that Rowling incorporates. The Deathly Hallows is not a 700 page race to see whether Harry kills Voldemort or Voldemort kills Harry—which would be about as boring as buttered toast, wouldn’t it? Rather, there are a number of small mysterious that overlap within the text, and these smaller mysteries are framed and overshadowed by a larger mystery. Coupled with a relentless sense of urgency, the novel barely leaves time for a breather, even in its most introspective, thoughtful moments.
Lastly, because the book series has grown progressively darker, more brooding, and more adult from the first book to the last, I think a few words should be said in the series’ defense. The previous six books have, as many know, are in the top ten of the Banned Books List, and the seventh installment will only cement the series’ fixture on the List. However, The Deathly Hallows, like all its Potter predecessors, is only dark, violent, and bleak because that’s the nature of Harry’s circumstances. Ultimately, Harry is a protagonist who has consistently upheld values that many consider of the highest ethical standards: he is fair, just, and kind. Yet Rowling still portrays him as human; he is not flat, like the characters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or preachy/didactic like a self-help book or His Dark Materials. In this respect, the Harry Potter series should be upheld because it is an ethical series, and, better yet, one that is not overbearing or nauseating. But even if you’re a reader who’s not looking for any ethics in a book, just entertainment—The Deathly Hallows definitely pulls through on that score.
5 out of 5
Reviewed by David
©
2007-2011
The Naked Mic -
All Rights Reserved
