Sometimes I find myself siding with Draco Malfoy as I can understand why he hates Harry so much. Draco seems to get in trouble when doing the right thing (even though he does it to his own benefit), while Harry seems to get praise even though he breaks the rules. I would say that in most of the things Harry turned out to be a hero with, Dumbledore was going to fix things anyway without Harry’s help (philosopher’s stone, the basilisk, etc.).
But then Draco says something racist and my sympathy for him goes away.
In fact, I think Neville Longbottom went through worse things than Harry yet everybody ignores him.
Rowling explained that at the end of book 5. When Dumbledore was giving his usual expository/setup for the next book speech, he stated that he’d made that decision for two reasons. 1) Voldy can’t make a direct strike against Harry if Harry’s with a blood relative. 2) If Harry had been brought up in a magical family, the ten formative years he would have spent knowing he was The Boy Who Lived would have rendered him a “pampered little prince”, incapable of being taught anything, and without the necessary angst to defeat V.
Also, I agree with dangermom that JKR was “trying and failing to emulate Roald Dahl”.
Agrippina: Word on poor unsung Neville. If he ends up dying, no matter how nobly, I will be extremely p!ssed.
Ah, I hadn’t read book 5. I would have thought however that the reasoning behind Harry’s situation would have been better explained four books ago. Even so, Dumbledore’s logic seems intensely dubious to me. I can’t really argue with Point 1 except to observe that it seems like a terribly contrived justification. Point 2 just illustrates the bizarre values that Rowling’s wizards seem to display; based on the information in the first four books, there really doesn’t seem to be any reason why Harry should recieve any credit whatsoever from surviving Voldemort’s attack. Wasn’t it his mom who really saved him and killed Voldemort by casting Habeus Corpus or whatever it was called? But yet again, in this Harry-centric universe the glory once again goes to the kid who didn’t actually do anything to earn it.
Unless something happened to Neville in book 5 that radically altered the character from what was seen in the other 4 books, I’m guessing he becomes evil. I mean, he’s already got the word ‘evil’ right there in his name, and in Rowling’s world what more evidence do you need?
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As several posters have suggested (and I can positively confirm, since I’ve got the book open to the passage in question right in front of me), Harry is speaking snake language, not English. This is made extremely clear in context. (And I could be wrong, but haven’t you already posted the same thing in several other threads, and been corrected?)
Hey, if you’ve read the books and don’t like 'em, fine, but it is not fair to judge an entire series of books on a single line taken out of context. (The movies don’t do them justice either, IMO.)
Voldemort was trying to kill Harry in the first place because of a prophecy that he (or possibly Neville, the only other wizard child who met the seeress’ description) was the only one who could permanently destroy Voldemort. The subsequent events proved to most peoples’ satisfaction that Harry was the subject of that prophecy. Three guesses who the seeress was, and eight million guesses why anybody believed her … but I digress. The upshot is, he is the Chosen Champion of good wizardkind, or something.
Wow. And I thought the topic was “Does anyone else NOT like Harry Potter?”
Look, I didn’t come here to argue about with a HP fanatic. I just came here to agree with the OP. If you love HP so much, then start your own thread. This is expressly for people to who DIDN’T like the books.
I didn’t. I’ve said why.
And I don’t appreciate my POV being lambasted by a yet-another die-hard HP fan. :mad:
You’re not arguing with an HP fanatic, so that’s all right then.
That’s not what the OP said. In fact, the second-to-last sentence in the OP seems to be directed at people who did like the books.
Your stated reason is ridiculous, and I’ve said why. There are plenty of sensible reasons to dislike the Harry Potter books, including “they just didn’t do it for me.” “They’re bad because they allude to mythology”, however, is just plain silly. You’re entitled to dislike things for silly reasons, and since you’re not prepared to make an argument I’m happy to let the matter drop, but whenever you post you have to expect that someone will question your position. That’s just the way this board is.
*Are you sure it’s not just my stolen-from-mythology username that’s setting you off?
So why didn’t she take the trouble to actually write some words in Snakish that he could actually hiss - she didn’t need to create a whole language a la Tolkien, a few words would do: ‘“Hiss!”, he hissed.’ The original is just lazy and reads appallingly.
And yes, you are wrong: I haven’t posted ANYTHING in ANY Harry Potter threads before this one, let alone been corrected on them. If you’re insinuating I’m trolling, which I strongly resent, you know which forum to take it to.
No, I’m not insinuating you’re trolling; it’s just that somebody else has posted something very similar in the past, and I assumed it was you. Apologies.
But it does seem silly to demand that she invent an entire new vocabulary and spend the time explaining what the words are and what they mean when the whole exchange can be dispatched in a few lines. (Trust me, there is no possibility that anybody who has read the entire book, or even the entire chapter, could be confused by this.)
I haven’t read them in a bit but doesn’t Harry himself point this out more than once? Harry wants a normal life and all his fame embarrasses him no end. But as Hagrid says in the first book, once old Voldy decided to kill someone, they died. All except Harry and no one knows how exactly that happened. That’s why everyone knows his name. Not because he did anything but because he’s The-Boy-Who-Lived.
Someone previously mentioned Neville as being another who could have fit the prophecy and he could in several points. But the Dark Lord didn’t mark Neville. Harry’s the one with the scar-assuming that’s what they mean by “mark him as an equal”. Also, not many people know the story of Neville’s parents as well as they do the story of Harry’s, although I would be surprised if the Longbottom’s weren’t the only people left in that state by proloned exposure to Crucio. As for me, once Neville gets his own wand and not his father’s (which has been broken now), I suspect he’ll get better at magic and I, for one, will be disappointed if he doesn’t get to kick that LaStrange bitch’s ass.
Why do I dislike Harry Potter? Because I’ve been reading fantasy literature for decades, and Harry Potter, I’m sorry to say, is Fantasy Lite; Weiss & Hickman without the epic sweep. People start acting like J.K Rowling is some kind of Second Coming, and I want to tell them to read some early Ursulla K. LeGuin and then get back to me to apologize. Plus, the bitch stole George R.R. Martin’s Hugo.
Having read four of the books, I think Rowling’s greatest weakness is in moving the plot along. She has a lot of interesting ideas that are incidental to the plot, but when it comes time to get things moving she always falls back on long-winded expositions. She often tries to disguise these as conversations, but they’re really monologues.
She isn’t too good at creating characters, either. The movies are far better than the books in this regard, since the actors are usually good enough to take the rather flat characters in the books and infuse them with personality. I couldn’t get interested in the characters at all until the first movie came out. After that, I could imagine Daniel Radcliffe, Emily Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, etc. in the roles, and it became much easier sledding.