Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling

I like Harry Potter. This series quickly established itself as one of the most popular franchises of the century, spawning films, merchandise and, a true sign of success, Lego sets I was never lucky enough to own - but I refuse to bow to cynicism on this one; Harry Potter deserves every ounce of its success. The books are solid and entertaining, even quite dark at times, and while J.K. Rowling may not be one of the most skilled writers around, she is more than able to competently construct a story and put flesh on a bunch of characters. She has proven to be a capable, sincere author who can get the best out of her own ideas, and anyone who denies this can go an eat smug gruel in a cave somewhere - or else stay a while and hear me out, before responding with an essay all of their own.

          A brief run-down of the story is this: Harry Potter begins as a mistreated eleven-year old living under a regime of child abuse from his aunt, uncle and cousin, who are supposedly ‘looking after him’ since his parents died during his infancy. Despite all of his uncle’s efforts to prevent it, Harry discovers that he is a wizard – and that his parents too were wizards and that they had been murdered by a generic bad-guy: ‘Mister Sinister Dark Lord’ Voldemort. Now that Harry is the right age, he is able to leave the cruel hand of his adoptive family and go to Hogwarts: School of Witchcraft and Wizardry^TM, to begin his magical education amongst his own kind. Over the course of seven books Harry Potter matures, learns more about his hidden world, as well as a bunch of snazzy magical abilities, makes numerous friends and enemies, and comes face to face with Voldemort himself.

          Yet this overarching storyline is only of secondary importance. What sells Harry Potter is not just the protagonist’s involvement with his dark adversary, but the almost meaningless frippery that pads out the wider story. It’s the day to day lives of the characters themselves that keeps us reading; whether it is the bizarre lessons in magic that Harry and his friends are taught, or the malevolence of the cruel Professor Snape as he picks on Harry for no good reason, or the latest bloodthirsty monster that Hagrid the Gamekeeper has taken as a pet, that’s the stuff that always sticks in our memory as much as the actual plots themselves. There is one very good reason why this is the case...

It is because the characters are brilliant. Each and every one of them is a distinct entity, from Professor Dumbledore and the various teachers, all the way down through Harry’s classmates (of which there generally seem to be about ten), through to each member of Ron Weasley’s extensive red-haired family, and even touching on the strange incidental characters who populate Rowling’s marvellous mad micro world of wizardry. Part of this is due to the names; they’ve all got wonderful and memorable names, like Ludo Bagman, Rita Skeeter, and Cornelius Fudge, which help cement the identities of the characters in our memories as well as to give some small glimpse into their personalities, but this is just one minor aspect to take into account. The characters are good on their own merits; they have their own traits and quirks, their own place in the wider world, and tend to be three-dimensional creatures who successfully complement (and compliment) the story.

          Harry Potter himself is central to this end. He is always at the core of the story (being its eponymous hero), and undergoes significant character development over the course of his seven books, starting from a shy, modest child in the first book, gaining confidence to become a bit cheeky on occasion, getting quite teenagery and agsty for the bulk of the middle whilst he shouts at people in capital letters, and then having to grow up fast by the end; but it is his introduction that will always make him stand out from the crowd. Book 1, the Philosopher’s Stone (or the Sorcerer’s Stone as it was mistakenly dubbed in America) begins with the rather unpleasant Dursley family and their treatment of Harry as an unwelcome outsider. If there is anything to engage a reader’s sympathies for a character straight away, it is seeing that character’s unhappy childhood as an orphan living in the cupboard under the stairs of their Daily Mail frontline relatives who treat him as part punching-bag, part slave, and part wood-rot-in-the-window-sill; it’s more or less the same story as the first part of Jane Eyre. But whereas Jane Eyre’s escape from home to go to boarding school was tempered by that school being a disease-infested prison camp, Harry Potter’s boarding school turns out to be an education centre for the use of magic, overseen by a wise and benevolent headmaster. 
          At Hogwarts he is allowed to grow and mature in a way that would never have been possible if he had remained with the Dursleys, and the close watch the narrative pays to his every action, thought and feeling gives the reader an almost empathic connection to him. Much of what he does is bumbling through his problems, aware of what needs to be done with no real idea of how to do it, and his various character flaws are on show 24/7; his uncertainty, his lack of experience, and the way his emotions get the better of him. This is so much more interesting than seeing a hero who knows everything, is strikingly good-looking, has shed-loads of confidence, and whose only personal flaw is to have a dramatically brooding persona – (e.g. Alex Rider, the snarky little git of a teenage spy, from Antony Horowitz’s Stormbreaker series, which once pretended to be a competitor to Potter. Oh how I laughed when I heard about him). But no matter what Harry Potter goes through, or what he becomes, it is always remembered how he began his life and in what circumstances he was in before he received his place at Hogwarts, and hence we can’t help but root for him when the going gets tough.  

          Because the going gets really tough. When Harry Potter discovers that his parents were murdered by the evil wizard Voldemort, he is thrown into the troubles of the wider wizarding world; a plot that hinges on the fact that the self-styled ‘Dark Lord’ had tried to kill the infant Harry himself, only to wind up nearly dead while Harry was left with nothing worse than a lightning-shaped scar (although it always looked more ‘N’-shaped to me, like Doctor Neo Cortex from the Crash Bandicoot video game). But Voldemort thereafter lurked in the shadows, looking for a way to revenge himself on Harry and restore himself to power – which on several occasions leaves Harry isolated and under suspicion from his fellow students. The stories in Harry Potter tend to be most interesting when Harry himself is under dreadful pressure, and it is at times like these that the spirit of the series really shows itself, a tale of isolation, misery and terror, which is combated by friendship and integrity – just the sort of things that appeal to readers of young adult* fiction. Yet Rowling is able to put more into her characters than these mere circumstances would dictate – they remain very much human and identifiable at all times, Harry Potter somehow managing to be genuine tragic hero rather than a clichéd knock-off, or some whiney spoilt brat – although book 5 does test our tolerance to the limit. Oh well... teenagers, and all that.

          The lions’ share of the series’ charm, however, remains with the supporting characters, and nowhere is this more evident than with Harry’s two best friends in the whole wide world, Ron and Hermione. Each bring their own unique talents to the table, and help to humanise Harry; Ron Weasley is the stalwart best mate, Harry’s main tie to the wizarding world, and he brings with him the entire Weasley family and their entertaining personalities, while Hermione is the logical, rule-abiding and better side to Ron and Harry’s more rambunctious, devil-may-care friendship. Harry would simply not be able to overcome the various problems he faces without them, a theme that is stressed time and again, and is clearly brought into the open during such times when one or both of them is absent. Both of them are good, well-rounded characters, and help make Harry Potter what it is.

          The overarching story of the series seems to progress quite naturally, despite the number of times that critics have pointed out to me the vast disparity in length between books 1-3 and books 4-7. I will accept that the longer books do feature more needlessly complicated plots and a significantly greater amount of waffle, and book 5, the Order of the Phoenix, is a fairly hard slog to get through no matter how much of a fan you are; but the gradual evolution of Rowling’s world, built up in the first three books, is able to sustain the longer stories of the later volumes, which in turn need to be longer in order to adequately explore such rich material and present a more interesting tale than could be achieved in the length of, say, the Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling’s books can be waffly; they can be clunky; they can be a bit cumbersome and a little tiring to get through, but the overall tale is usually solid, the characters are always engaging, and the prose never fails in being simple and delightful enough to make the whole package accessible to everybody. Let’s put it this way: I would rather spend a whole day reading the Order of the Phoenix all over again than face Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights a second time – or Twilight even once, for that matter.

          So let’s have a look at each of the books briefly in turn. Book 1, the Philosopher’s Stone, sees the young orphan Harry Potter rescued from an abusive foster family and shown Hogwarts, where he learns how to use a wand, meets and befriends a few people, makes enemies with Professor Snape the Potions Master, and encounters the evil wizard who murdered his parents. It is a simple, relatively effective book, showing all the weaknesses and all the strengths of Rowling’s writing skills, whilst providing the bedrock upon which all subsequent books will expand to great effect. The Chamber of Secrets introduces the deep rifts within wizard society, the nasty Slytherin philosophy of pure-blooded wizard over muggle-born wizard, while the Prisoner of Azkaban explores Harry’s lost family connections and brings the dreaded Dementors into the story; the gliding embodiments of all misery and suffering whose very presence is enough to cause people to fall into crippling fits of nightmare depression - most notably our protagonist.

It is with the later books that things get a tad more complicated, and the stories longer and much more intertwined. The Goblet of Fire directs the story onto the course of its inevitable conclusion, starting off really quite slowly, and poorly, but picking up when Harry is forced through a set of serious trials, and letting Voldemort make his big entrance at the end – after all, it was always hinted he would return to full power, and with the events of book 3 having happened there’s no sense in this not happening in book 4. No longer will the Harry Potters be stand-alone stories in which – every school year – some fresh problem emerges which gets sorted out conveniently before Harry has to go back home, like the Chamber of Secrets, but a much larger canvas on which a wider tale will be played out. This is one of the many criticisms I have heard of the series, and I admit that the first part of book 4 being actually quite vague and ponderous, and the overall plot instigated by the villain is way too contrived (I mean, why do they make Harry run through the whole Tri-Wizard Tournament if all they really needed to do was kidnap him, which they could have done with a Portkey anywhere at any time – they could have just zapped him off whenever it was convenient, rather than go through the whole weird and risky plan that Harry could have brought down at any moment by the simple facts of his own inexperience and ignorance). However, in defence of the series at large, the Harry Potter books always had it in them to support the greater framework established by the Goblet of Fire. The wider plot was based on facts established in the previous, leaner novels, and the maturing of the subject matter goes hand in hand with the maturing of the characters who are, after all, going through their teenage years.

The Order of the Phoenix is the mid-point of the story, taking a lot of time to delay the advancement of the plot. The Ministry of Magic is actually unhappy that Harry Potter claims Voldemort has returned and, in order to try and maintain power by blindly ignoring the facts and quashing all dissent, much like a Church, they throw their collective might against Harry, Professor Dumbledore, and Hogwarts itself. The finale of book 5, once actually reached, is hurried and a little anticlimactic, though the book is still strong in regards to Harry’s persecution from the most effective villain of the series - Professor Delores Umbridge. This Primary School Teacher cum right-wing extremist proves to be a much nastier character than Voldemort could ever hope to be – which is a big claim to make, considering that Voldey himself is a psychopathic mass-murderer with a God-complex – and the systematic and brutal tightening of unwanted control at Hogwarts provokes the entire student body into acts of greater and greater rebellion, a theme that gradually unfolds in a rather pleasing manner. If it did not take its sweet time in doing just about everything, then book 5 might have been the strongest of the series. It’s just that eight-hundred pages of anything would wear out even the most avid reader, and the climax at the end really doesn’t live up to hundreds of pages of postponement. Also, I am saddened that Rowling had to resort to ‘overused unrealistic cliché fantasy trope No. 1: Prophecy about a “Chosen One”’, as a plot device. While the less-generic ‘misinterpreted self-fulfilling prophecy’ shtick almost saves that idea, the addition of "destiny" as a character motive only ever weakens a story, and I’m sad that the Harry Potter series had to give into this temptation so late in the game. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot at the penultimate corner.

Book 6, as penultimate as a book can get, exists mainly to set the stage for the final volume by fleshing out what little character Voldemort has, and starting off a tedious fetch-quest before Harry and friends can face the Dark Lord himself. There’s more to the story of course, such as the usual sub-plots and miscellaneous stuff that pad out much of the series, but aside from cramming as much character as possible into what is little more than a cackling, melodramatic power-mad evil wizard who calls himself the ‘Dark Lord’, this all matters very little in the grand scheme of the series. I actually quite liked the Half-Blood Prince, as it felt like it had an overall different angle to the other books, and tried out some relatively new and interesting things to do with the characters. The final book, the Deathly Hallows, brings everything full circle, packs character development arcs alongside quick-paced action scenes, beautifully drawn-out sequences of Harry, Ron and Hermione bumbling clueless around the countryside, and generally wraps everything up in a satisfactory manner.

All in all, I would say the first three books are a good introduction to the series, books 4 and 5 present a slow and cumbersome mid-point, while the last two manage to pull all the various irons-in-the-fire together into a nicely rounded show-stopper. There are some genuine moments of brilliance to be found throughout the series, particularly in the Deathly Hallows, were I permitted my say in this matter. I might almost be inclined to say that this seventh book was my favourite of all of them - while the revisiting of many old locations did get a bit trying, I liked many of the themes explored throughout, I liked the forced growing-up of the characters as they went through some original new trials - ones that couldn't be solved with a simple bit of magic - and I liked the way that these wizards are shown how useless they are without their magic twigs. It is a dark little book, something like a jarring nightmare end to the series, and is by far the most radical a departure from all of the Harry Potters.

So what else is there to say? Well, I would like to be allowed one or two personal insights on ‘Quidditch’ – the so-called ‘wizarding sport’, being the only sport that wizards seem to want to play, and only because it involves broomsticks and magic balls**. While I can admit it seems an interesting entertainment prospect due to the really quite brutal nature of it, and the fact that both genders can play side by side, I have always had a problem with the catching of the Golden Snitch – which not only ends the game but also slaps an instant 150 point bonus on the team who catches it. This in effect negates the work of the majority of the rest of the team, whose efforts to score goals against the opposing team at a measly 10 points apiece pale in comparison to the almost entirely separate game played by the Seeker and their aim to capture the Snitch, who will almost certainly win by doing so unless the opposing team manage to claw a 160 point lead beforehand. It only appears to be at tournament level that the goal-scoring really seems to mean anything, where consistently good playing will give a team a better footing over a series of games – but all in all, Quidditch seems to be nothing else but a combination of two separate sports; the goal-scoring which comprises a majority of the action as well as a disproportionately small part of the overall game, points-wise, while Harry Potter, as the Seeker, plays the virtually independent ‘hunt-the-Snitch’ competition, whose effects are only arbitrarily tagged onto the game played by the rest of the team, but whose results dictate the whole outcome of the match. Harry ought to be completely disinterested in what else is happening in the game, as he just floats around above it, a spectator, until he sees and goes after the Snitch. It almost seems, and I’ll be blunt here, that the ‘catch-the-Snitch’ game, which is only exciting INSIDE HARRY’S HEAD when he actually sees the Snitch, would not make very good viewing to the people in the stands, and so the whole goal-scoring efforts of the rest of the team are just intended to entertain the spectators until the Snitch shows up, and that in effect means the entire game is decided by a few seconds of game-play. What can I say? Panem et circenses... But, much like this whole paragraph I’ve just written, the Quidditch sequences are merely humorous diversions from the main bulk of the writing, and feel like something that J.K. Rowling invented on a whim and then felt obliged to include it in each book thereafter, at least as far as she could think up ways of getting out of writing too many of them.

So yeah, Harry Potter is good. For a series of children’s/YA novels they do have some considerable strengths – excellent characters, a detailed and fascinating setting, an overarching plot that makes sense and, fundamentally important, a clear and accessible writing style. Whatever criticisms you may care to direct at J.K. Rowling’s writing abilities, being difficult or unclear are not amongst them. There are many books out there, and particularly book series’, which due to the writer’s lack of actual writing ability and/or overused unoriginal settings and subjects, are far less deserving of their fame and success – but the Harry Potter books are a cut above the herd. I am honoured to have grown up with them.

         

*Young Adult, often abbreviated to YA: A term sometimes used to describe Teenagers or the genres of entertainment marketed at them. The reason being that marketeers realised they could appeal to Teenagers by calling them Adults without actually calling them Adults, hence the word ‘Young’ being quite noticeably plugged on the front. I myself have no problem with the use of the word Teenager; it quite conveniently sums up the age-range between childhood and adulthood as being distinct, and while some commentators may say that there is negative baggage associated with the term, I am glad that it at least isn’t deliberately patronising to those it labels.

** Let’s face it; you’d have to have magic balls to be able to sit on a shaft of wood in the air for any length of time.

H.P. and the Bibliopher’s Stone

Rowling, J.K.  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (1997)

-      Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (1998)

-      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (1999)

-      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (2000)

-      Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (2003)

-      Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (2005)

-      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury: St. Ives. (2007)