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persephone_koreNote: The following does not specifically refer to any spoilers, though I have read some. I have been having pretty much all of these reactions for months at least, though I refer to speculations (by unspoiled people) that I read after having been spoiled myself.
I find myself intrigued by how many different things people expect, want, hope against hope for, and interpret in the HP series. So many complete opposites.
This is pretty much inevitable, I think -- there's something to be said for being open to enjoying whatever happens next in a story, but if you tell a story over the course of several years and people talk about it a lot, there will be predictions and hopes and disappointments. I think some of the predictions are silly and don't want to read the kind of story some people are hoping for, but I've got my own ideas. Not that I'm a big predictor... I can charge through a story all in one shot sometimes without developing any particular expectation or hope about where it'll go -- at least, nothing conscious or articulated -- but that might require that I be either swept up completely (in which case I probably desire something, even if I don't think it out) or largely apathetic.
I should also note that it's entirely possible to be simultaneously disappointed about something that did or didn't happen, and pleased about however the story did go.
But anyway. It's impressive.
I read a post about how the twins are at-best-amoral and the hope that Harry will become disillusioned with them (with discussion about how the series talks of good and evil but lacks a moral compass), and I was reminded of a post by someone else about how bold and clever Rowling had been to include trickster figures in what would otherwise be a simplistic black-and-white morality tale. (I paraphrase both and don't really subscribe to either.)
Snape... merciful heavens. He's evil and with Voldemort! He's an opportunist and spiteful and nothing deeper! He's on Dumbledore's side, but all you need to see that he's evil is his classroom behavior! He's a tormented saint and Harry is a nitwit who wrongs and provokes him daily! (I'm still sticking with "antagonistic ally" -- he's bitter, unpleasant, has done horrible things in the past, may do worse if he is in fact spying, and is horrid to his students now, and could seriously stand to learn that doing right in a larger sense does not mean doing wrong in smaller things is trivial, but is in fact... well... an ally. And not ultimately a villain.)
There's shipping. Do I really need to say anything about shipping? Nah. Don't feel like it.
In a more general sense, some people expect and want a story that is ultimately dark and will regard too happy an ending as a disappointment, or even evidence of incompetence. (What qualifies varies. Inadequate deaths and betrayals? A victory for Harry?) Others feel that too dark an ending -- say, where Harry dies and/or is defeated -- would mean the books hadn't been worth getting emotionally invested in all along. (I'd say death could work, but if Voldemort or his side wins... well, it might be going too far to say that there was no point to the story; that would certainly make a point. But it would probably put me off the books quite effectively.)
Me? I'm still hoping and expecting to enjoy the last two books, because I enjoyed the first five and... well, I think JKR is telling a story I like. There are things she could do that would disappoint me; I don't think they're very likely, but they are possible. It would be possible for developments in the last two books to shake up and force a reevaluation of what I've thought was going on (sometimes subtly) in the first five, and as mentioned, I like the first five as they currently seem to me.
I also think that the first book tells us more than some people believe. Sure, the tone is darkening and things are becoming more complicated in many ways. Still... maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that while turning every previous assumption and appearance upside-down and inside-out at the end of a single book can work, doing it at the end of a seven-book series might not work quite so well. Basically, at some point, you get to where somebody who liked the first parts is likely to lead to feeling betrayed by the ending, and where somebody who would like the ending would have to be expecting it in order to bother with the first parts. Some authors might do this; it's not impossible that JKR would. It might even be possible not to produce the effect I described. Still, this is an author who thinks her readers want to be "tricked, not conned" and who may (if I'm not imagining quotes or something) regard her series as "growing up" along with her protagonist and possibly along with its readers -- and therefore is at least considering the effect of reading them in stages, over a long period of time. (I'm sure some readers will devour them all at once when they're all out, but I also recall a long delay in my reading of the sequels to Anne of Green Gables because I started when quite young and wasn't interested at first in seeing Anne turn into a grownup -- so I can see others still reading in stages.) So I strongly suspect that a lot of the major concepts and themes will turn out to have been introduced early on.
And yes, that includes a more complicated view of Slytherin than "EVIL EVIL EVIL!" ;) Heck, we even learn in the first book that you can hide weird deadly monsters in the school without plotting to murder students.... *flees*
I find myself intrigued by how many different things people expect, want, hope against hope for, and interpret in the HP series. So many complete opposites.
This is pretty much inevitable, I think -- there's something to be said for being open to enjoying whatever happens next in a story, but if you tell a story over the course of several years and people talk about it a lot, there will be predictions and hopes and disappointments. I think some of the predictions are silly and don't want to read the kind of story some people are hoping for, but I've got my own ideas. Not that I'm a big predictor... I can charge through a story all in one shot sometimes without developing any particular expectation or hope about where it'll go -- at least, nothing conscious or articulated -- but that might require that I be either swept up completely (in which case I probably desire something, even if I don't think it out) or largely apathetic.
I should also note that it's entirely possible to be simultaneously disappointed about something that did or didn't happen, and pleased about however the story did go.
But anyway. It's impressive.
I read a post about how the twins are at-best-amoral and the hope that Harry will become disillusioned with them (with discussion about how the series talks of good and evil but lacks a moral compass), and I was reminded of a post by someone else about how bold and clever Rowling had been to include trickster figures in what would otherwise be a simplistic black-and-white morality tale. (I paraphrase both and don't really subscribe to either.)
Snape... merciful heavens. He's evil and with Voldemort! He's an opportunist and spiteful and nothing deeper! He's on Dumbledore's side, but all you need to see that he's evil is his classroom behavior! He's a tormented saint and Harry is a nitwit who wrongs and provokes him daily! (I'm still sticking with "antagonistic ally" -- he's bitter, unpleasant, has done horrible things in the past, may do worse if he is in fact spying, and is horrid to his students now, and could seriously stand to learn that doing right in a larger sense does not mean doing wrong in smaller things is trivial, but is in fact... well... an ally. And not ultimately a villain.)
There's shipping. Do I really need to say anything about shipping? Nah. Don't feel like it.
In a more general sense, some people expect and want a story that is ultimately dark and will regard too happy an ending as a disappointment, or even evidence of incompetence. (What qualifies varies. Inadequate deaths and betrayals? A victory for Harry?) Others feel that too dark an ending -- say, where Harry dies and/or is defeated -- would mean the books hadn't been worth getting emotionally invested in all along. (I'd say death could work, but if Voldemort or his side wins... well, it might be going too far to say that there was no point to the story; that would certainly make a point. But it would probably put me off the books quite effectively.)
Me? I'm still hoping and expecting to enjoy the last two books, because I enjoyed the first five and... well, I think JKR is telling a story I like. There are things she could do that would disappoint me; I don't think they're very likely, but they are possible. It would be possible for developments in the last two books to shake up and force a reevaluation of what I've thought was going on (sometimes subtly) in the first five, and as mentioned, I like the first five as they currently seem to me.
I also think that the first book tells us more than some people believe. Sure, the tone is darkening and things are becoming more complicated in many ways. Still... maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that while turning every previous assumption and appearance upside-down and inside-out at the end of a single book can work, doing it at the end of a seven-book series might not work quite so well. Basically, at some point, you get to where somebody who liked the first parts is likely to lead to feeling betrayed by the ending, and where somebody who would like the ending would have to be expecting it in order to bother with the first parts. Some authors might do this; it's not impossible that JKR would. It might even be possible not to produce the effect I described. Still, this is an author who thinks her readers want to be "tricked, not conned" and who may (if I'm not imagining quotes or something) regard her series as "growing up" along with her protagonist and possibly along with its readers -- and therefore is at least considering the effect of reading them in stages, over a long period of time. (I'm sure some readers will devour them all at once when they're all out, but I also recall a long delay in my reading of the sequels to Anne of Green Gables because I started when quite young and wasn't interested at first in seeing Anne turn into a grownup -- so I can see others still reading in stages.) So I strongly suspect that a lot of the major concepts and themes will turn out to have been introduced early on.
And yes, that includes a more complicated view of Slytherin than "EVIL EVIL EVIL!" ;) Heck, we even learn in the first book that you can hide weird deadly monsters in the school without plotting to murder students.... *flees*
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-16 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-16 01:51 am (UTC)I don't really want to go hang out there for all that long -- I'm not sure I'm that sociable -- and I'm impatient to read it but I'm not sure I want it to be over so soon....
no subject
Date: 2005-07-16 03:13 am (UTC)