I think that reaction is natural any time a story features a race that is money-grubbing and deceitful, and it’s a reaction that you wouldn’t get if you said, say, centaurs are always drunk and fistfighting. The fire alarm goes off, even if it was just blown smoke.
Re the discussion about magical objects … yes, it does upon those points, seem that objects can be used without setting off the trace.
As to the Nazi/Jewish stuff. Nah. My alarm didn’t go off with goblins (any more than Ferengi did). But I did think that “Nuremgard” was pushing the Holocaust allusion (1945 refernce, purebloods, registering those of mixed ancestery, etc) a bit too far. Not enough to cause offense, but enough to feel a bit uncomfortable with it.
That was a wonderful post RickJay. I agree with everything you said.
I had forgotten that James and Lily were so young when they died, possibly because the actors who play them in the movies, in the Mirror in SS and at Harry’s side in GOF, look like they’re in their 30’s or 40’s.
If centaurs were always drunk and fighting people would be giving her shit for misspelling dwarf.
Coming in late, but reading all 12 pages (yikes!), I have to disagree with most of you about one bit:
Wandering around in the forest aimlessly worked perfectly for me. It felt very realistic, given everything we knew about how all the possible friendly places the Trio could go to were being watched and would lead to 20 Death Eaters Apparating in at a moment’s notice. It also made sense, given the Trio’s unwillingness to put their loved ones in harm’s way. And most importantly, it really, truly underscored the hopelessness of their situation. They had absolutely no idea where to even begin. They had to piece everything together from books, random little clues, and their memories, and it was not obvious at all (not even to the reader) where they should go next. Constantly moving from one random non-significant location to the next was the only way they could survive, and is exactly what I would have done in their place. If they wanted more information, they would have to put themselves in great danger, even with all the precautions (polyjuice, cloak, etc.) they took. It was mostly by sheer luck (the most egregious example being the Dean Thomas-Ted Tonks run-in) that they figured things out, but I guess catching a lucky break every few months is not too unrealistic.
The one thing I disliked about the forest is that I wish they had done a bit more significant character development during that time. The arguments and running around in circles guessing and second-guessing were retreads on previous books. It would have been really nice to see them come to grips with the situation and come up with more mature or creative ways to deal with things. Little things like Harry somehow getting a message to Ginny Weasley that he was all right and still fighting would have shown us that Harry was indeed maturing, thinking about the emotional well-being of someone else, and providing a lift to the beleaguered Good Guys.
Other than that, I agree with the general concensus here; a few clunky bits, but overall a wonderfully riveting book. I’m a sucker for the disparate peoples coming together story, which made the ending a real HOOOOOO-AH! moment. I like how it finally showed non-Trio&Friends people to actually have some sense and backbone, to realize that Harry Potter coming back to Hogwarts is nothing less than a last stand, and if that you actually want to contribute to the fight, there’s no better time and place to do it. It makes perfect sense, since it’s extraordinarily rare to stand up by yourself, but when it starts to snowball, the ones with relatively more courage jump in to get it going, and the ones with relatively less jump in a bit later.
I find it a bit anti-climactic that even if Harry is beaten in the final battle with Voldy, Voldy still loses. I mean, his Horcruxes are gone, and there are a few hundred seriously pissed off witches and warlock surrounding Him, all waiting with wands ready to curse You-Know-Who into oblivion. It might have been an interesting (albeit dark) touch to have Harry die a second time for real, which then allows someone like Ginny Weasley to come raging in from the crowd with Avada Kadavra and really mean it.
You caught the reference to Oradour-sur-Glane, right?
Nope. Missed it. Where was it?
And I’m not sure why the explicit reference to real concentration camps bothers me. Maybe its because I like to keep my fantasies grounded in the fantasy world and not be forced to read real world references into it. Maybe it just gave me the sense that she was trying to be “meaningful” in something that is ultimately just a light read. I’m not sure. Did anybody else react the same way?
I think I posted about that earlier; I thought it was a really strong part of the book, and made Voldemort a particularly chilling, evil character rather than the unreal supervillian type he had been before. But those sections really creeped me out. I wouldn’t omit them at all, but they were really horrific, and showed perfectly why the entire community was as terrified of Voldemort as they were.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t just have let Hedwig out of her cage! Why does she have to be lugged everywhere in her cage? If the owls are smart enough to deliver messages, etc., why couldn’t she just fly to Hogwarts on her own, thus making her that much safer.
Good question. For my money, when even the owl had caught the chronic petulant irritability endemic to the Potterverse, I wasn’t sad to see her go. (I know, I know, it’s just so real for an owl to feel that way…)
Well, I wasn’t happy to see her die or anything! But I still feel she needs to have it one way or the other - either she’s an owl, with only basic emotions, and thus can’t be allowed out of her cage because she’ll fly off/what-not, or she’s a magic owl, with emotions, which means, let her out of the cage!
As for the petulant irritability, I kept thinking who wants to be a teen again?
NBC broadcast the first part of their interview with JK Rowling this morning. An article about it is here. But the big news, I thought, is
that both Harry and Ron work as aurors, with Harry as department head, and Hermione is “pretty high up” in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
They’ll broadcast more of the interview tomorrow.
OK, so when I read the book, I was moved and all that, but I never cried. This interview made me cry, real tears streaming down my cheeks. What the hell is wrong with me? 
Hmm…the info in your spoiler seems a bit of a bummer to me. After bearing a burden of extreme responsibility so young, and discharging it, I would have wished him to be enjoying some degree of freedom and recreation in his adulthood - as Seeker for a pro Quidditch team.
But the character is Rowling’s, and I guess she’s defined him mainly by his sense of self-sacrifice and responsibility to the greater good, hasn’t she.
I guess if it were just thrown in there haphazardly, it count as cheap emotional manipulation. But what Voldemort & friends were doing just seemed a natural extension of their own philosophy; in fact the only ideological factor binding all of the Death Eaters was purity of blood. It makes sense that they would rally around their only true ideal and push it hard, as nothing unites people better than a common enemy, which in this case are Mudbloods and Blood Traitors. Atrocities against a created “enemy” class are common throughout real human history, and it seems naturally human for it to exist in a wizarding-based world, as well.
Also, another huge benefit (for Voldy) is that a campaign to do nasty things against the enemy class (putting in camps, torture, killing, etc.) would generally make people too frightened to stand up against these actions for fear of being put in this enemy class themselves. It would even make some turn in others out of fear or ambition (to rise socially), as evidenced by the Snatchers.
All of this fits with Voldemort’s no-holds-barred approach to achieving his goals, which I see are 1) Power and immortality and 2) Elimination of the inferior and unworthy, which probably stems from some sort of half-blood self-hatred (he wants to be superior, the best, and he must actively loathe the Muggle half of his being with all his might, since it’s an awful taint on his greatness)
I figure after getting the girl he loved and her husband killed, and as good as getting her son killed, Snape would feel a need to try and make it up to her. Is 17 years of difficult and deeply dangerous work enough to set things right with her? Is protecting her son to the best of his ability equal enough to balance out what she lost due to his actions? It seems to me that Slytherins in particular have a strong sense of debt and repayment, and Snape would feel strongly the need to replace what he destroyed in her life as best he can.
Got it. And I found that I had misread Guin’s post–my reply doesn’t make much sense. I meant that I do not think that Sampiro is showing prejudice or anthing like that–I didn’t understand his reference to this book and JKR’s characterizations making Mel Gibson happy. ( and I don’t get his reply to me)
Anyway–RickJay–that was very well said and I agree. I disliked James ever since that Pensieve memory. I lost respect for Sirius when he showed that he’d rather play hardass with Snape than deal with the real threat. I really felt for Snape, though–because he seems so broken. He’d be the last to admit it and would argue forcefully against being any such thing, but his loneliness, bitterness, and isolation are writ large.
Okay, I confess I didn’t read all 12 pages of the thread – Sorry! So I’m sure I won’t be saying anything that hasn’t been said before but here’s my two cents anyway:
I cried like a baby when Dobby died: HERE LIES DOBBY: A FREE ELF I found that scene more affecting than any other scene in the book.
Vordemort would never had sent Narcissa over to check if Harry was dead and then just trusted her word. He would have made sure Harry was good and dead.
Loved Harry shooting the Cruciatus at the guy who spat at McGonagall: “Bellatrix is right; you really have to mean it.”
Loved the details of the Hogwarts’ battle: The summoning of the ghosts, the deploying of the suits of armor.
Loved the escape from Gringotts on a dragon.
Didn’t really believe the whole “I will give you ONE HOUR and then . . . I will give you ANOTHER HOUR.” That didn’t feel true to Voldi’s character to me.
I didn’t like that we learn so much of Dumbledore from Rita Skeeter’s poison-pen biography (Kitty Kelly, anyone?). Harry knows that Rita is a liar and a sensationalist who makes things up to sell papers or books – look at what she said about him. So why would he believe the things he was reading in her book?
I did feel there was a little too much wandering in the woods.
I didn’t think Rowling really did Snape justice, having him sacrificed by Voldimort and dying suddenly and helplessly. I was confident Snape was Good (and, like many others, assumed his motivation was love of Lily), but I would have liked to have her give him more of a chance to redeem himself by dying in battle or while protecting Harry.
LOVED Neville as the Action Hero, but thought the use of the Sorting Hat, and ever-so-timely appearance of the Gryffindor sword, was contrived. Liked that his parents didn’t miraculously recover though; Rowling is good at reminding us that some bad things are permanent and dead means dead. Unless you’re Harry Potter.
I know I’m not the only one, but the fact that movies are being made of all the books, and that we all know the cast, really colored my reading of the book, a nd not in a bad way. Alan Rickman is Snape to me, and Maggie Smith is McGonnigall, and it was them (and the other actors) who walked through my head as I read. In this regard, I think it was really fortunate that all those actors are so talented and have done (are doing) such amazing work with their roles. I didn’t have to forget someone’s crappy acting job in order to enjoy the characters in the book. I think bad characterizations in the movies would have really diminished the book for me. I do think that the young actors (Harry, Ron, Hermione) will have their work cut out for them in the movie of this one (and the sixth one for that matter), which will call for an emotional range they haven’t yet had to display.
Conclusion: I liked it but didn’t love it. I’m very sorry the series ended. I’m now going to sit down and read it again.
" An Owl. It must be taking a message to someone. Shoot it down " Blam Blam blam. She was probably safer being carried.
Okay, my opinions about the book.
Too long, with a lot of padding. Better if it had been cut by at least a third. Not exactly the most gripping thing I’ve ever read. Took me several days to read it, I kept getting tired after a couple of chapters. But still interesting enough that I kept going back to it.
Maybe I missed something, what was the point of the Deathly Hallows quest at all? Seems it’s just there to add an extra 150 pages or so to the book. So Voldie thinks he needs a special wand. Turns out he’s wrong. Waste of everyone’s time.
Why did Dumbledore send such cryptic messages to Harry et al, instead of directly helpful information?
Why did Harry decide that he had to find the horcruxes on his own, without the help of more experienced aurors. I really hated the way he told Lupin where to go.
The exposition at the end was badly done, I thought, both in terms of plot and prose. So, in the middle of a battle, with friends dying, Harry takes time out to look through Sbnape’s memories. The exposition should have come a lot earlier, and been done a different way. How about a brief flashback between each chapers?. Oh, and the plan was to get Harry to face his death voluntarily. When was Snape planning to tell him this? And I really hated Dumbledore being made into a manipulative bastard.
As has been commented before, the protection over Harry was badly explained. It’s your mother’s love protecting you until you’re 17 but not a day beyond that. Oh, turns out you’re still protected because he took your blood, which still holds your mother’s love. That doesn’t make sense even in fantasy terms. What’s really annoying is that there’s an obvious answer that Rowling could have used but didn’t: There’s a bit of Voldie inside you, whatever he does to you backfires on him That makes more sense than the mother love crap, right?
And what a cop out ending. It’s been said that Harry has to kill voldie. He doesn’t like it. Ginny is horrified at the thought. He’s warned not to keep using the disarm spell, but to kill when nececcary. And in the end voldie is killed by his own spell backfiring.
I suspect that Rowling originally intended the last duel between them with all horcruxes destroyed, neither of them protected, and Harry blasts him with aveda kedavra. But then she wimped out at the last moment.
One last thing, how come Victor Krum recognized whatsisname’s mark when nobody else knew what it was? If he’s a famous bad guy known for using that mark, it should be something that others know about. If it isn’t well known, then why is he so offended?
I got the feeling that it was famous in Eastern Europe, being painted all over Durmstrang and all, but unknown and unassociated with Grindelwald in Britain. Grindelwald never terrorized Britain, so the deathly hallows mark wasn’t so famous there.