{"id":1167,"date":"2007-07-25T13:23:37","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T13:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/one-more-potter-post.html"},"modified":"2007-07-25T13:23:37","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T13:23:37","slug":"one-more-potter-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/one-more-potter-post.html","title":{"rendered":"One more Potter post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Douthat’s take:<\/a><\/p>\n

(After the cut, for those who are unspoiled. Sorry.)<\/p>\n

\n
<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

From here, the difficulties multiply. While old favorites like Hagrid and Snape languish offstage, Rowling layers on the magical objects: The three \u201challows\u201d of the title join the seven \u201chorcruxes\u201d in a baffling panoply of talismans (Tolkien, it turns out, was wise to stick to a single ring) that\u2019s further complicated by the extra horcrux that turns out to be lodged in Harry\u2019s scalp, the piece of Voldemort that\u2019s lodged in his wand, the Potter blood that runs magically through the Dark Lord\u2019s veins, and the \u201cwho\u2019s on first?\u201d debate over which master Voldemort\u2019s wand will recognize during the final showdown. As the magic become increasingly incomprehensible, Rowling repeatedly finds herself slamming on the narrative brakes at crucial moments to explain exactly why Voldemort can\u2019t die unless Harry does, or maybe why Harry<\/em> can\u2019t die as long as Voldemort<\/em>\u2019s alive, or \u2026 oh, never mind. (It\u2019s as if Sam, Frodo and Gollum had taken a timeout during the showdown on Mount Doom to get a lecture from Gandalf on the finer points of ring lore.)<\/p>\n

Worse than the confusing metaphysics, though, is the predictable plotting. There was a feverish predictions game among the Potterphiles of the blogosphere before the final volume hit the shelves, and it\u2019s a bad sign for Rowling that an awful lot of their guesses and theories seem, in hindsight, more interesting than the finished product. Yes, some predictabilities were built in to the saga: We knew going that good would triumph over evil, that Voldemort would perish and that most of our much-loved cast would live happily ever after. But within that framework, The Deathly Hallows<\/em> includes a host of roads not taken, complications not considered, tragedies, temptations, and redemptions left unexplored. Rowling repeatedly gestures at complexity: In the horcrux that gives voice to Ron’s hidden resentment of Harry; in the hints that Draco Malfoy might actually turn heroic in the end; in the gestures at temptation for Harry himself. But she raises these possibilities only to let them drop again: Ron’s Harry-envy is never mentioned after the horcrux is destroyed; the Malfoys never display any trait more morally impressive than loyalty to their kith and kin; and Harry himself never seriously considers doing evil so that good may triumph, and we are treated instead to endless encomiums to his moral purity. (Though as Eve Tushnet points out<\/a>, for such a Christ-like guy he\u2019s awfully free with the Unforgivable Curses). None of the primary good guys turn out to be bad, or even baddish; and the only murky character who finds redemption is Snape, in a twist that most readers saw coming a long distance off. <\/p>\n

The sense of tragedy, too, is carefully contained: A slew of second-tier characters perish, but none of their deaths are half so wrenching as Dumbledore\u2019s in The Half-Blood Prince<\/em>. (I’m pretty sure that Rowling planned to kill of Hagrid and chickened out.) Harry\u2019s death-that-isn\u2019t, meanwhile, feels like something of a cop-out, an attempt to jerk some tears without dealing in anything so dark as the semi-tragedy of Frodo\u2019s fate in Lord of the Rings<\/em>, or anything to explicitly theological as Aslan\u2019s magical resurrection in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ross Douthat’s take: (After the cut, for those who are unspoiled. Sorry.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOne more Potter post - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/one-more-potter-post.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One more Potter post - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ross Douthat’s take: (After the cut, for those who are unspoiled. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}