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grinninfooleAfter some thought, I believe I know why I found the epilogue to Harry Potter 7 disappointing. (Many others have told me that they hated it, too, but no one who's explained their dislike to me feels as I do.) Nineteen years after defeating Voldemort, Harry (when he would be only a year younger than I am now) and his friends is seeing his two sons off on the Hogwarts Express. The scene is rather mundane. His kids are nervous about going to school, or jealous that they aren't, and Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione are gossiping about their kids and their friends kids. We hear about a few of the other characters (Neville is now a respected professor at Hogwarts), but nothing about Harry and his friends, except that they are parents. His scar hasn't bothered him for nearly 20 years. All is well.
Which is great, but feels quite unsatisfying. Grappling with the happily ever after problem challenges even the best writers. One of the reasons the Lord of the Rings is so good is that Tolkien devotes the last tenth of it to what happens after evil is vanquished, and in so doing integrates the extraordinary experiences of the book into the ordinary lives of the hobbits, explores what it means to live happily and explore the limits of human accomplishment, and tells us what happens to our heroes right up to the end of their days in Middle Earth.
Rowling's epilogue is less ambitious, but disappoints because it leaves unanswered so many questions. What else do Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny do, besides spawn? Harry is rich anyway, and I imagine that the public might well have awarded them a pension for saving the world, so they probably none of them need to work, but does that mean that they don't? Does Hermione really stay home and make more Weasleys?
The seventh book highlights the simmering tensions between human wizards/witches and the intelligent magical creatures of the world: centaurs, goblins, giants, and elves. The humans treat all of them as second-class and restrict the activities of other species in a manner not unlike apartheid. Harry and his friends are keenly aware of this injustice, and one of the reasons they triumph in the end is that they are able to enlist the aid of these unter creatures, and one of the reasons Voldemort was so evil was that he wanted to enslave or exterminate the lesser species. Has nothing changed in these volatile politics over the intervening 19 years? Has the death of Dobby meant so little to Harry that he has been content to sit at home and not advocate for elf rights? If selfless compassion is what made him so heroic, has he really just packed up and retired after defeating Voldemort? Was defeating Evil enough for him? Did he really not go on to fight for justice, too? Rowling clearly wasn't overly interested in world building, and her setting has always had some unanswered questions, but she's actually good at establishing characters and cultures. As rollick pointed out in her liveblogging piece on the Onion AV club site, the brief discussion of goblin ownership customs really is alien and does a lot to establish them as a culture different from Harry's or ours. So, Rowling can do it, and do it succinctly, so ignoring these issues at the end looms even larger for me.
I wonder if she'll return to this fictional world with new characters, and perhaps take up these gauntlets she has left for herself. If she does, I'll be interested to read it. If not, it's a real blemish on what was otherwise a really strong ending to the series, though I don't think she needs to die in a fire because of it.
Which is great, but feels quite unsatisfying. Grappling with the happily ever after problem challenges even the best writers. One of the reasons the Lord of the Rings is so good is that Tolkien devotes the last tenth of it to what happens after evil is vanquished, and in so doing integrates the extraordinary experiences of the book into the ordinary lives of the hobbits, explores what it means to live happily and explore the limits of human accomplishment, and tells us what happens to our heroes right up to the end of their days in Middle Earth.
Rowling's epilogue is less ambitious, but disappoints because it leaves unanswered so many questions. What else do Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny do, besides spawn? Harry is rich anyway, and I imagine that the public might well have awarded them a pension for saving the world, so they probably none of them need to work, but does that mean that they don't? Does Hermione really stay home and make more Weasleys?
The seventh book highlights the simmering tensions between human wizards/witches and the intelligent magical creatures of the world: centaurs, goblins, giants, and elves. The humans treat all of them as second-class and restrict the activities of other species in a manner not unlike apartheid. Harry and his friends are keenly aware of this injustice, and one of the reasons they triumph in the end is that they are able to enlist the aid of these unter creatures, and one of the reasons Voldemort was so evil was that he wanted to enslave or exterminate the lesser species. Has nothing changed in these volatile politics over the intervening 19 years? Has the death of Dobby meant so little to Harry that he has been content to sit at home and not advocate for elf rights? If selfless compassion is what made him so heroic, has he really just packed up and retired after defeating Voldemort? Was defeating Evil enough for him? Did he really not go on to fight for justice, too? Rowling clearly wasn't overly interested in world building, and her setting has always had some unanswered questions, but she's actually good at establishing characters and cultures. As rollick pointed out in her liveblogging piece on the Onion AV club site, the brief discussion of goblin ownership customs really is alien and does a lot to establish them as a culture different from Harry's or ours. So, Rowling can do it, and do it succinctly, so ignoring these issues at the end looms even larger for me.
I wonder if she'll return to this fictional world with new characters, and perhaps take up these gauntlets she has left for herself. If she does, I'll be interested to read it. If not, it's a real blemish on what was otherwise a really strong ending to the series, though I don't think she needs to die in a fire because of it.
