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Overall, I enjoyed it. Of course, the powerful compulsion to finish the series would have made me read a pile of dog turds just to find out what happened. Was I the only one sitting in the theater to watch "Order of the Pheonix" with his new copy in his hands on Saturday morning?
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I'll probably sound like a broken record by now, but... as far as evils go, hypocrisy is HUGELY overrated. It's a logical flaw, so it can be much more compelling argumentatively to shout "Hypocrite!" than "Jerk!", but hypocrisy itself rarely if ever compares to the moral flaw under the hypocrite's mask. It can even, relatively speaking, be a good thing. To paraphrase Gandhi - or was it Gore? - it's better to be a hypocrite than to be consistently wrong. Back on topic: I really enjoyed Neville's triumph, I was really hoping he'd have a shining moment and Rowling delivered. I liked the glimmer of humanity still strongly showing itself in Narcissa Malfoy. I liked that Snape's story was exactly as I - and probably the majority - had suspected it would be. Sometimes the expected is just too good to trade in for the unexpected. And finallly, I liked the revealed Dumbledore who wasn't Godlike or saintlike, who made both tactical and moral mistakes. He seemed more interesting and convincing that way. |
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i agree fta: i didn't see dumbledore's actions in a way that made him less at all. in the first books, i think we're given to see him as a child would - and you don't always explain your actions to a child. as the series goes on, we see more and more behind the curtains as to the real machinations behind the events in the book. in this one, i think we're given the final pieces to the puzzle. after the splitting of voldemort's soul that occurred when harry was given the scar, there really wasn't any choice but for harry to die. that, or let voldemort live and continue to kill people. how could dumbledore have prepared harry for that when he was 15? particularly if dumbldore couldn't know who to completely trust. i liked the fact that he 'used' harry in the way he did. as far as his childhood relationship with grindlewald, i don't see that sullying him at all. he was a kid. i read the passage about his sister, in the confession to harry at the end, to indicate that he wasn't the one who killed her directly - but perhaps he felt his preoccupation with the hallows had blinded him to the nature of his friend. i enjoyed the change in rowling's writing style in this book. i felt like i could sense her competing desires to justice to the story, and to be done with it. for a while, i thought she might end up just killing them all off, which would have been kind of interesting. adding in the cursing - i thought it was all a bit funny. i didn't really feel that the book dragged through the middle...then again, i read it in a straight marathon session. of course i thought the end was a little cheesy, but there you go. it's still a children's book. and when the snape bit came up, i was happy for shani and snowy. i've always thought snape had kind of a pathetic character...all mopey and like a little goth bitch - but i'm glad that he was shown to have pulled out the iron balls when it counted. you never know what will happen in the next several years, but i have to say i'd be a little bit surprised if another book came out that wasn't primarily involved with the children, or that wasn't a prequel dealing with james, lily, sirius and the rise of voldemort and so forth. sure, there's going to be stuff that happened in the 19 years between the book and the epilogue, but after defeating voldemort and scattering the death eaters, it would be pretty anticlimatic. sort of like tacking on a silmarillion book...after frodo leaves middle earth. the story of samwise and how aragorn ruled in gondor. maybe not a bad story, but i think it would pale next to the events we've already been given. i was kind of expecting a plot twist that more directly dealt with the three hallows - some of sort of necessary combining of the three of them to defeat voldemort in a more direct fashion. they all factored into the final battle, but it wasn't really quite what i was expecting. regardless, it was worth the read in my opinion. |
Lasereth, I 100% agree with your middle statement....I dont get others opinions about that either!!!
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Pig, you made me very happy! Finally someone who gets it! I swear if I would have heard one more negative thing about the person in question, spoiler tag or not ida had to defend him. People need to read more carefully and understand why things were done.
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I agree with everyone on this page.
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In regards to your spoiler, I have never read anything about Rowling closing the door to more books about the HP universe, just that she herself feels that she is done with the characters for now. |
Photos of Harry Potter Place at the Publisher's main office in SoHo NY.
http://gothamist.com/2007/07/20/new_yorks_own_h.php |
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Oh, and Molly Weasley is amazing...though I wish Rowling had killed off Percy instead of Fred. |
I forgot to post, that if you are a subscriber to this thread via email, the spoiler tags don't work in emails, only in the forum. I'm not done yet and almost got screwed!
WATCH OUT!!!! |
Spoiler: Dumbledore the Sorrocide should be dug up, beheaded, and buried at a cross roads. What right had he to cast aside Snape the way he did? What right to decide that Snape should die? To constantly expose his students to risk for the sake of his power games. Harry UNDERSTOOD that the good shepherd will leave 99 sheep to search for the one lost sheet... Dumbledore worked with acceptable loss ranges (as long as he wasnt the one at risk)
He used and manipulated Harry to do a job he hadnt the stomach or the heart for... Dumbledore's one saving grace in this book was his insight, his knowledge that Harry was vastly superior to him. |
SF, all I can say is you got a TOTALLY dif meaning out of the book than I did
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Spoiler: His sisters blood was upon him. And he accepted this as an acceptable loss in his progress to be a great wizard. Did he plan to kill her - certainly not; but he was the one who pulled the trigger, who cast the curse. Dumbledore states that he is not certain that he was not the one who killed her, so it is certain that he did. He would have looked at his wand after the duel and known the spells it cast, if he was innocent he would have been sure and said so... are we supposed to believe he never tried to find if it was he who killed her? Are we supposed to believe if the German wizard had been the killer he would not have sought vengence - but instead hid from him in shame until the last moment (causing many more deaths because again he would not do his duty)?
No. Her blood was on his hands... and he was sorry and everything, and he didnt mean it... but why should her murder stop his great career? What is one little idiot girl compared to the Great Dumbledore and all that he can do? So she was cast aside... he would not admit it to Harry because he was a liar all his life and so a liar in spirit he remained. For the sake of her honour he should have admitted the crime, and accepted punishment... but no - he was a great wizard, and the poor girl under the stairs was already gone... so cast her aside, feed her to the wolves. Being serious, no - he wasnt as cruel as Voldemort, and he did not seek to actively kill for power or sadism... but he was more than happy to throw a few innocents to the lions if it fitted into his bigger picture. He was more than happy to send Harry to fight Voldemort because he didnt have the heart to fight him (or course he knew his supposed "skill" was really only down to the Elder wand). Snape's blood is upon him, and so are many of the children in the school... but nothing stands out like the sororicide. Any good, whatever he achieved in his career, is nothing to this crime. The murder of his sister and his refusal to face his sin consumes anything else he did, any good. Dumbledore was not as bad as Voldemort certainly - but they shared a bond, the father killer and the sister killer. Maybe they should lie together at the same cross roads. |
remind me again.....
Spoiler: just how was dumby supposed to kill voldemort without killing harry? I must be confused as I thought Harry had to be the one to kill him since he was a horcrux |
Spoiler: I was talking about his sister first of all, not Harry... but if Harry was not an "acceptable loss" maybe Dumbledore should not have decided that Voldemort had to be killed. He could simply have been put in prison (Harry nearly always used stun and disarm spells, not killing spells)
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ahahahahaha
Spoiler: you SERIOUSLY think voldy could have been imprisoned? |
Spoiler: So uhh.. does Harry die?
I've not read a word out of the books. |
Spoiler: he died, and he lived
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Strange Famous I think you've been reading too much Rita Skeeter
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Spoiler: What made Rita succesful was that she took truths and stretched them out... but the basic truth inside is still true. Dumbledore killed his sister and did not face his crime, and so he is condemned
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strange,
Spoiler: as for the question of why harry had to be the one to kill voldemort, aside from anything else, i think you have to think about consistency of the book, and the structure of fairy tales. we've known that a final showdown between harry and voldemort was coming from the first book on. there is no way that rowling could have written the ending without a duel in which harry and voldemort dueled, with harry coming out on top. the structure of this story is hardly unique; it follows the classic hero/protagonist vs. evil/antogonist theme, where the hero has to overcome obstacles and sometimes face his inner demons before challenging the bad guy and defeating him. frequently he has to accept that he will have to die in order to defeat the bad guy, but persevere through this fear, and usually he somehow survives in a way no one could have predicted. i still don't see the evil dumbledoor angle you're reading from the story. i see a dumbledore who has a young wizard, who happens to be the only person to face voldemort and live, much less win in a fight with him, who is already targeted straight at voldemort because his parents and friends have been killed by voldemort, and who accepted (when joining the order of the phoenix, if nothing else, and pursuing him to the ministry of magic to try and save his godfather) the fact that he might be killed by voldemort. sure, he could have taken the days or months or years, after he had the curse from the stone horcrux, and attempted to hunt down the othe horcruxes with harry and the gang...but don't forget the he also had to consider what would happen to draco malfoy if he had. voldemort intended to use draco in an assassination attempt, which would have almost definitely killed him; and if it hadn't, voldemort would have killed draco to get the elder wand from him. so he and snape both acted to prevent draco from being killed during the assassination attempt, and using the possibility that snape might be able to destroy the elder wand. there was also the consideration that voldemort had to actually take some of harry's blood into himself during the duel, so that in some way the protection of his mother's love would transfer and destroy voldemort from within. all in all, it looks like harry had to be the one to face voldemort, and he had to die during the duel, and dumbledore hoped that he would survive after the horcrux within harry was destroyed. if harry had just straight up died, that would have been the price they had to pay to defeat voldemort. however, even with all that - this is a fairy tale and a children's story, written like the disney animation movies so that it is palateable to adults as well. i think if you try to find all the plot holes or would have could have should haves in it...you can definitely find a way to kill it. in the end, the good guys won, the bad guys lost, everyone got to fall in love, one of the twins was saved, the werewolves the lady with the crazy hair all died, harry got reunited with his parents again briefly, and we all were reassured that death is nothing to be afraid of. we even got a matrix-like scene in a train station, complete with out of body experience. for a cheap read over a weekend, i thought it went pretty well and had some interesting plot twists. |
I blew through it in about 9 hours yesterday. I don\'t know. I don\'t think it was as good as previous books but I REALLY want to see the movie for some of the action sequences. Give it a LOTR size budget and go to town.
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Yes, it was a horrible situation to put Snape in making him end Dumbledore's life, but who else could do it? If nobody else killed him, the wand would go to Voldemort since it was Voldemort's curse that was gonna kill him in 1 year anyway. Would anyone else at Hogwarts kill Dumbledore and not be screwed over for life? Snape was already spying on the Death Eaters. Him killing Dumbledore was the <I>perfect</I> solution to the entire situation. |
Spoiler: EVERYWHERE it says he killed his sister
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Moving past the current discussion for a moment
Spoiler: Its no secret that I am and always have been a HUGE Severus fan, and I declared quite loudly before the book that if he died I was going to be really pissed, and if he DID die I wanted it to be in some grand way as to show Harry he wasnt the bad guy. Well....having read it now I can honestly say I see that would have been an awful way to do it, the way she did it was SO much better. For Voldy to kill him because of the wand, to me stayed true to the way Voldy had been portrayed. Harry would never have listened to Snape if he'd tried to explain to him what all had gone on, so using the memories was a fantastic way to handle this AND it showed us that Lily and Severus did indeed have a bond long before "school". It made me so so sad to learn that Snape's worst memory in actuality was calling Lily Mudblood and the image of him camping out in her hall to be able to talk to her just broke my heart. When he lay dying in the Shrieking Shack and says to Harry "Look...at...me" do you think he was wanting to look at Harry's eyes because they were the same as Lily's or do you think that he, for once, wanted Harry to look at him and see HIM So what do you think about the way they handled Snape's death? Spoiler: Another thing, is it just me or is Voldy just beyond stupid? I would think that someone that everyone feared so much, who was supposed to have so much power would have brains too. Or are we supposed to realize that he was so one track minded all his smarts went out the floo network!! |
StrangeFamous... I'm sorry, but I just think you are wrong. Sure it may have been a possibility, but nowhere does it say that it's definite. And even if it was him, there's nothing to indicate that it wasn't an accident if that were the case.
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Spoiler: I'm with you, Shani. I just *knew* Snape had killed Dumbledore on D's orders. I was surprised to see how harsh he'd been with Snape, tho, back in the day. And it was satisfying to see the way Snape let Harry know the truth. I damn near forgot the Pensieve! Now that you mention it... yeah, I think Snape wanted to see Lily's eyes. They mentioned her eyes again in his kids later.
I also got a smite teary at the kid's name - Albus Severus. Man, is that kid going to have his ass kicked. :p As for your second point: Spoiler: He isn't brilliant anymore. His soul's been shredded into 7 pieces, and it's been a long time since anyone really fought him. He's scary because he's ruthless and without conscience - he'll just kill because you're there. It's hard for normal people to understand that idea, so he seems invincible. |
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Duel to the death! *runs after the death eaters*
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sf, what book did you read?
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Spoiler: The tragedy with his sister taught him about himself. He knew he couldn't have power so he repeatedly turned down the position of absolute power: Minister of Magic. Quote:
Spoiler: Looking at the wand would tell what the spell was, not the result. All three of them were casting spells at each other. Quote:
Spoiler: The only way he could have fought Voldermort on his own would have been for him to kill Harry first. Did you miss the part about Harry ending up as an unintentional horcrux? Anyways, what a great book and what an ending. One thing I just LOVED was Harry emasculating Voldermort at the end by calling him Tom Riddle. |
Spoiler: I really dont get why so many people want to defend Dumbledore the Sororicide. Harry was the Good Shepherd, and Dumbledore was the bad shepherd... and Voldemoret is the wolf: isnt that the message? That Dumbledore was not man enough for the job because the ends DONT justify the means? Dumbledore could not protect his people, it took a boy to do the job - because despite the massive advantage he had in terms of the Elder wand, he did not have a pure heart. And there was a way to kill Voldemort and not Harry - the deathly hallows... a secret which Dumbledore at best left vague and unspecific clues to so as to satisfy his own twisted morality without actually helping. How hard would it have been to arrange for the Elder wand to come to Harry? How hard to actually pass on the knowledge he had rather than simply leave Harry in Voldemort's grasp?
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Spoiler: sf, are you sure you understand the whole horcrux thing?
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Spoiler: Voldemort is a wolf straight out, Dumbledore is a wolf in sheep's clothing... that is all - of course there are matters of degree - Voldemort was sadistic and killed for pleasure, Dumbledore used more subtle means to manipulate people and gain power, but they are both villians. It doesnt even matter what the sister killer did in his later life, whatever good he might have done does not absolve the sin, because he would not face justice for it.
... Kutulu, Spoiler: are you sure you understand what it means to murder an innocent child, your own sister, and then to hide the crime? Dumbledore's youthfull dalliance with the idea's of domination of the world by magic are nothing - childish fantasies of a weak willed and intelligent child.... the murder of his sister, this sin hangs around his neck despite everything. |
Wow, all this blanking out of things makes this thread look like a DoD release on UFOs.
:lol: :lol: |
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i left my copy of the book elsewhere...i'm curious, from the text can it be determined whether there was or was not an investigation by the ministry of magic into dumbledore's sister's death? |
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Spoiler: Anyone more clearly remember the part when Harry realized that Voldemort would discover the snapping of Harry's wand? Iirc, Harry or Hermione explains that Voldemort would examine her wand and discover that the last spell missed its intended target and hit Harry's wand. If I'm not mis-remembering this, then, the wand does show the result of the spell. But SF, Spoiler: the way I read it, it was a pure accident - not even manslaughter - if Dumbledore was responsible, and Dumbledore didn't examine the wand because he just didn't want to know. Either way, his responsibility was for an accident, not an intentional killing. |
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