Book Discussion : Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Book Discussion : Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Scholastic: 2003)
Like so many other kids, my son learned how to read by reading Harry Potter. He was five years old, and would sit next to me as I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to him.
He began picking out words as his eyes followed my hand moving down the page as I read. Then phrases, then parts of sentences, and by the end of the book, entire sentences. That was in 1997. When Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came out the next year, Jackson and I read it together, trading off reading a page or chapter section. The following year, Jackson, now seven, read most of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to me.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire arrived via Fedex from Amazon on July 8, 2000. Jackson was consumed by it, announcing on July 12 that he had finished all 768 pages. This was hard to believe — I mean, the kid had just turned eight — so I read the thing myself to be able to quiz him. “What was the password Harry used to get into Dumbledore’s office?” — questions like that. He knew them cold, like he had committed the entire tome to memory.
Thus my confession. When the Fedex truck pulled up in our driveway last Saturday, I bagged Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for myself. Jackson had a weekend swim party going, so while he and his buddies splashed around in the pool, I sunk in an easy chair with a pot of coffee. Sometimes, you have to give all that stuff you’re supposed to do a rest, just park it for a while, and do something for the sheer hell of it. So I read the whole darn thing, 871 pages, in 24 hours.
I can report that in the intervening three years since “HP4”, J.K. Rowling has not lost her story-telling touch. She creates this entire world for you in which you live while reading. By now it’s a familiar and comfortable world, absorbing and engrossing, a saga of epic heroism struggling and defeating evil. However…
At this point, if you intend to read HP5 and don’t want the ending spoiled before you do — please don’t read any farther. Come back when you’ve finished it.
So here we go — and again, I’m about to reveal what happens near the end. You’ve been forewarned.
I think J.K. blew it. I think she screwed up the climax. HP5 is a wonderful exposition of tyranny and how it can take over a society. Dolores Umbridge starts out as a teacher and progressively establishes fascist control over Hogwart’s. Her takeover is aided by the establishment media, the wizard equivalent of The New York Times. Only a paper disdained by the wizard elite (a wizard New York Post) dares to tell Harry’s true story.
Umbridge is the apotheosis of fascism, a wizard Saddam Hussein, who recruits Hogwart’s thugs and bullies (led of course by Draco Malfoy) to be her personal storm trooper enforcement squad. The decent kids band together to form a resistance movement called Dumbledore’s Army. Harry begins secretly training the D.A. kids in jinxes and counterjinxes using their magic wands. Acts of sabotage start appearing all over Hogwart’s.
Rowling has set everything up for for a climactic revolutionary battle between Umbridge and her thug enforcers, and Harry’s D.A. rebels — the classic fight throughout the medieval castle between the usurper-tyrant and the good guys. And it never happens.
When the attack comes, the D.A. scatters. Instead of them regrouping to the rescue (as Harry and Hermione have been caught), Hermione suckers Umbridge out to the forest for this wimpy let-down substituting for an emotionally-satisfying climax. The whole HP theme is good triumphing over evil by the ordinary rising to greatness. Rowling constructed a modern morality tale of freedom vs. fascism decisively leading to a dramatic crescendo, then wanders off into literary cacophony.
Trust me, the movie version of HP5 will have Harry’s D.A. fighting Umbridge’s goons from the parapets.
Now Jackson is buried in the book. He’ll be finished in a few days. I can hardly wait to see if he notices that, for all her fantastic writing talent, J.K. wimped out at the end.
(PS: No matter what I think — read the book anyway. You’ll have a great time. Believe me, reality will still be here when you’re done.)