The End of Harry Potter? Harry Potter7

Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146143 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-20
• Released on: 2007-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Onetime nuclear physicist David Langford has been writing about science fiction and fantasy for several decades. He has won the science fiction world's Hugo Award 27 times.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Guns on the Wall
 
There's a famous saying by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, which goes: 'If you hang a gun on the wall in Act I, you must use it in Act III.' Sometimes it's differently translated as: 'If you introduce a gun at the beginning of the play, you must use it by the end of the play.'
 
J.K. Rowling hangs plenty of gun-equivalents on the walls of Hogwarts and elsewhere, but Chekhov's rule needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt when we're talking about novels. What he had in mind was the script of a play, where anything that's important enough to be mentioned in the stage directions should have its part in the action. Suppose, though, that in such-and-such a scene set in a stately home, that gun on the wall of the stage-set wasn't in the play script but is just a touch of high-class decoration added by the set designer…?
 
Harry's Uncle Vernon actually does buy a gun in Chapter Three of Philosopher's Stone--but it's not there to be used, only to underline how desperate he's getting (and also, when Hagrid so easily takes it away from him, to remind us again of what a wimp Vernon really is). It's an extra touch of make-up or stage decor, rather than an important piece of plot machinery.
 
Part of the fun of reading detective stories is the challenge of trying to sort out these ornamental extras from the real 'guns on the wall', the clues which are part of Agatha Christie's or Dorothy Sayers' or J.K. Rowling's secret script. As her readers have discovered, Rowling is rather good at inventing smokescreens of comic diversion to help conceal important clues, even when they're right under our noses. Now you see it, now you don't.
 
Chocolate Frog
 
In Philosopher's Stone, our author wants to plant the name of Nicolas Flamel--the wizard who created the Stone itself--in such a way that we barely notice its appearance, and will later kick ourselves for not remembering it. So the brief mention of Flamel is deftly slipped into a mini-biography of Albus Dumbledore, printed on the back of the collectable picture card which Harry finds in his very fi rst Chocolate Frog wrapper.
 
Meanwhile, during this scene on the Hogwarts Express, there's a flood of distraction as Harry boggles at new wonders of the wizarding world. It's the first time he's met photographs whose subjects wander in and out of the visible picture-frame, and it's also his first encounter with half a dozen other brands of magical sweeties like the very weird Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. A subtler distraction for the reader is the nagging thought that perhaps Chocolate Frogs are a little homage to the Crunchy Frog sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus--whose Cockroach Clusters will indeed turn up much later, in the third Harry Potter adventure...
 All this inventive stuff is great fun, and it is also a conjuror's display of dazzling lights and coloured ribbons, designed to lure your eye away from the key reference to Nicolas Flamel. Rowling has a real gift for this kind of misdirection, as perfected by stage magicians who subtly guide you to look in just the wrong place.
 
Pyrotechnics
 
Onwards! A bit closer to a literal gun, since they contain real explosive, are the Filibuster Fireworks which appear early in Chamber of Secrets. At first sight these don't appear to be at all important--just something to provide entertainment for young wizards and witches, like all those weird sweets. But by writing these fireworks into the story, Rowling is secretly preparing a stage-effect for a much later chapter. When Harry needs to cause a diversion in the Potions class, tossing a Filibuster Firework into a Slytherin student's cauldron is a perfect way to create total chaos.
 
Why are they called Filibuster Fireworks, anyway? The most common meaning of 'filibuster' is to make long, long speeches in Parliament or Congress, not to convince anyone of anything, but to waste time and prevent unwanted laws from being passed. It's a tactic of diversion and delay--which, of course, is exactly how Harry uses his firework.
 
Magical Misfires
 
The most obvious 'gun on the wall' in Chamber of Secrets is Ron Weasley's wand, which gets broken early in the book when the flying car crashes into the Whomping Willow. As a result, the Spellotape-repaired* wand becomes a totally unreliable weapon. Ron tries to curse Malfoy, and the wand backfires, leaving Ron himself burping up great masses of slimy slugs for the rest of the day.
 
As well as being good entertainment in itself, this magic-gone-wrong comedy lays the groundwork for a much more serious miscarriage of magic. Near the end, Gilderoy Lockhart himself tries to wipe out Harry's and Ron's knowledge that he's a posturing fraud. But it's the broken wand that he grabs, and his Memory Charm bounces straight back at him. The 'gun on the wall' has gone off at last, and--as neatly foreshadowed by those slugs--it backfired.
 
An interesting side-question: could Lockhart really have got away with it if he'd succeeded in wiping out the boys' memories? This isn't some remote village in Transylvania or Tibet, but Hogwarts School, where Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore would work their hardest to cure a couple of dazed and blank-minded pupils. As Voldemort himself knows, and mentions when talking to Wormtail early in Goblet of Fire, the effect of a Memory Charm can be broken by an expert wizard. The most likely explanation is that Lockhart was too ignorant of the higher branches of magic to know this important fact.
 
Putting Back the Clock
 
The little mystery of Hermione's classes, and how on Earth she manages to attend more than one at the same time, runs through the action of Prisoner of Azkaban. Is she using some special charm that allows her to split into two or even three Hermiones, all of whom can go to lessons or take exams simultaneously?
 
Eventually all this bafflement is explained by the Time-Turner which Professor McGonagall has persuaded the Ministry of Magic to loan to Hermione. Now, with special permission from Dumbledore himself, Harry and his closest friends can save the day by going back in time to do all the things they didn't achieve in the three hours that had just gone by. If such an amazing gadget had simply appeared when needed, this would have been a totally unconvincing way to save the book's plot. What makes it satisfying is that the Time-Turner's effect on Hermione's timetable has been a running joke, and a source of mild bewilderment, ever since we first found her planning to take three classes at once in Chapter Six.
 
The Time-Turner is such a powerful plot device, capable of solving so many problems, that Rowling later takes some care to rule out its further use, as we'll see in the chapter 'Awkward Consequences'.
 
Key to Transport
 
The introduction of the Portkey in Goblet of Fire is much more straightforward. It's not a mystery, but just a useful part of the vast magical crowd-control apparatus that's needed to organise the Quidditch World Cup in a country full of Muggles. As the 'port' in the name suggests, this device instantly transports or teleports anyone who's touching the key (the tip of a finger is enough) when its spell is triggered.
 
So the Portkey doesn't seem to be an unused 'gun on the wall'--it goes into action almost as soon as it appears. We're left with the knowledge that just about any object of any shape can be enchanted as a Portkey: a manky old boot, a newspaper, a drinks can, a rubber tyre... Much later, at the very end of the Triwizard Tournament, the Goblet of Fire itself turns out to have become a Portkey that opens the way into a terrible trap.
 
One of the most puzzling questions in the series is why the Dark Lord's agent within Hogwarts should go to the trouble of preparing such an incredibly elaborate booby-trap. Wouldn't it have been so much easier to place the Portkey enchantment on Harry's toothbrush, or some piece of his broomstick maintenance kit, or one of his school textbooks? If Portkeys are more difficult to make work inside the walls of Hogwarts, why didn't the villain enchant a piece of Quidditch equipment or some other ordinary object out in the school grounds? Since this Dark impostor gains Harry's trust almost as soon as he begins to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts, he could have given our hero a wrapped-up Portkey at any time--'Secret instructions, my lad!'--and told him to open it in private, out in the woods, or in Hogsmeade village...
 
Perhaps the best answer to all this is that Voldemort--like the villain of many a James Bond movie--prefers his foes to be defeated in the most spectacular way possible, just as murders committed by himself and his followers were signalled by the emerald-green glare of the Dark Mark in the sky. By the same logic, Harry must be captured exactly at his greatest moment of triumph, so that he can be thrown from this height into the deepest possible despair, and then gloated over at length before his final end. To a Dark Lord, this probably makes sense.
 
The Sulks
 
Rowling introduces a different and much subtler kind of unexploded plot device in Order of the Phoenix. This is Harry's chronic teenage anger, and we don't even recognise it as anything special. After all, the boy is now fifteen--of course he's going to have random fits of sulks, and shout embarrassingly IN CAPITAL LETTERS at even his best friends! Especially when Dumbledore, who could tell Harry all sorts of things, has gone mysteriously reclusive and refuses to talk to him for most of this book. Dumbledore's reasons for this silence are not entirely convincing, but that's a different issue.
 
By giving a big showing to Harry's adolescent moodiness and tantrums--when he arrives at 12 Grimmauld...

Customer Reviews

The End of Harry Potter?
I enjoyed the book as a refresher and discussion during the run up to the release of book 7. Now that I've read book 7, this will be very dated, unless you want to see what some speculations were for the end of the series.

Cliff Notes for Harry Potter?
While I was in high school, I used Cliff Notes and Monarch Notes as a substitute for reading unsavory literature (i.e. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in particular). I never understood the purpose of these literary products until I enrolled in college literature classes. The coerced reader can understand symbols and see aspects of literature that would be missed. In fact, Cliff and Monarch Notes enable the coerced reader to be transformed into an engaged reader. THE END OF HARRY POTTER? accomplishes the identical tasks as Cliff and Monarch Notes. One BIG difference; no one is coerced to read Harry Potter. After reading Langford's work, I see important aspects of the series that I missed or didn't get. After I read DEATHLY HOLLOWS, I probably will reread the series. Langford will be responsible for that.

One aspect of THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX I missed was the linkage of Rowling's life and the symbolism of Umbridge's actions. As a single parent living in poverty, Rowling was confronted with well-meaning but overly bureaucratic social workers. Umbridge's character emerged from Rowling's experience with social workers. An extremely important and eye-opening article that Langford cites is Benjamin Barton's article entitled 'Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy' in THE MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW volume 104, May 2006. I teach a course in community organization and will require my students read Barton's work. The contents will help social work students understand the impact of their actions on clients' capacity to succeed.

I can make two points that will help a person decide whether to read THE END OF HARRY POTTER?. First, if you read this review after the publication of THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS, you're too late. The central theme within Langford's book is connections within the first six novels that lead to the last. Thus, THE END OF HARRY POTTER? will not be enjoyable if THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS is read first. Second, the Rowling's purpose is reminiscent of Roddenberry's. The original STAR TREK was intended to be a morality play made palpable to the general public. The Harry Potter series achieves the identical objective. The easier route in life is succumbing to evil. Harry (or Rowling) shows that the long term consequences of taking the moral path is a self actualizing experience that is more satisfying than any short term pleasure.

Langford is a master of the written word and THE END OF HARRY POTTER? is worthy to read.

Nothing new or exciting
I got this book because I am so bored waiting for the last book to come. I had hoped for some new idea, but basically it is the same ole same old. There are several questions listed on the back, which by page 100 the author still hadn't gotten to. It was written before the name of the 7th book was announced, and you can already see that he is wrong about his guesses. Which is basically what this book is ... a lot of suggestions of what will be "cool" to see in book 7. I hope JK didn't read it. LOL.