As mentioned previously, I decided this winter to read the Harry Potter series. Despite having been the right age at the time, I never was into the series in my youth and have neither read any books before or watched any of the movies. Of course I knew the rudimentary things about it through sheer osmosis, but none of the details other than “Snape kills Dumbledore” which was all over the internet when the sixth book came out. In any case, after having seen the larger cultural impact it has and still does on my generation, I thought I should finally get around to it. I read the first book earlier last year and wanted to read them with some time in between, but then thought I should just push through. Yesterday I finished the last book.
Overall I had fun with it and can see the appeal. The escapism is nice and there is some nice and interesting lore interwoven into the series that can be explored. There is of course the aspect of escapism that permeates the series, of going somewhere to explore new things and be largely different from the mundane. Another aspect I like about the series is that it shows the unfortunate or bullied to grow and change and take charge, sometimes with help.
Where the series however suffers overall is I think the characters. While it has a large roster of likeable and interesting characters, particularly for the villains it also dives deep into cliches and stereotypes. However, the biggest issue I have is with the title character himself. While of course you can’t expect a teenage boy to be a fully fledged emotionally stable and permanently aware, he also routinely fails in really dumb and unnecessary ways where it seems he doesn’t learn or improve. In fact, it rarely seems like Harry as a character uses most of the opportunity he is given or even shows much talent for being a wizard to begin with. Particularly egregious are certain plot points that could have easily been avoided or improved with just a little trust and communication. I guess failing there could be chalked up to a history of being bullied, undue expectations being placed on him, and potentially suffering from PTSD, but that is also not exactly made clear either. What’s worse is that particularly in the 7th book these plot points then have to be resolved with tedious deus ex machina.
Similar things could be said about other characters, particularly Ron. While I liked the dichotomy between Harry’s friends with Hermione being the book-smart but also passive voice of reason, while Ron being the active but also reckless man of action, later in the series Ron just seems like a really unlikeable asshole at times. Again, you don’t expect a teenage boy to be fully emotionally mature, but over the course of the series Ron seems to get worse instead of ebb and flow in that regard. You could also see that in the light of being the youngest of six brothers and having had to endure particularly Fred and George’s teasing for years, but that doesn’t exactly excuse it either.
There are also things to be said about some very troublesome uses of folklore, particularly the goblins, and the outright callousness in the last book of killing of characters for little value other than upping the drama, but I don’t want to make this post too long.
Or maybe I’m had just placed too many expections into a series that is after all children’s books.