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realexplodingcatI made an emergency reading of this book, because the movie adaptation was just released. Sometimes, when given the choice between literary and cinematic experiences for my first exposure to a story, I will prefer the literary, if indeed the book was written first. This has been the case with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. I hadn't intended to write a response to my reading of this book. I just wanted to have some fun, but my brain wasn't content with that.
The central plot of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is about a psychotic wizard, Sirius Black, who has escaped from prison to kill Harry Potter. This plot is actually not very exciting. Harry spends most of his time being a reactive protagonist, rather than a proactive one, either waiting around for attacks or reacting against the limitations placed on his mobility for his own safety by the Hogwarts administration. The central plot does pick up speed and demand focus in the last third of the book, but until then a lot of empty space is filled with numerous tiny subplots. As Rowling has demonstrated in the previous novels, she does a remarkable job of tying up absolutely every subplot by the end of the story in a way that makes them all integral to each other. No subplot could be removed from the book without the entire story collapsing. A lot of coincidental events are required to make the novel work, but she manages to set up the coincidences so that they do seem to unfold naturally in the narrative. The book is a lot of fun and a significant year for Potter, as many things are revealed about the circumstances surrounding the death of his parents.
As much as I enjoy Harry Potter books, I'm constantly struck by its moral inconsistencies. The Hogwarts administration expends a lot of energy keeping the children safe from psycho killers, basilisks, and other uncommon threats. Given their concern for the wellbeing of the students, I find it irresponsible of the administration to plant whomping willows eager to crush children, permit them to play quidditch, a game that ought to yield more deaths in a single school year than a serial killer on the loose in the castle, and let the sorting hat divide the children in such a way to cause violent rivalries. Not to mention, surrounding the castle with a forest full of deadly creatures and putting them in a consistently dangerous curriculum of classes.
One could argue the children would have divided themselves along those lines anyway. It is natural for cliques to form among large groups of people The energy put forth to fight evil in the walls of the castle, when more children are probably maimed through quidditch, classroom spells gone wrong, and the landscaping, has a real-world parallel in our own government's fight against terrorism, when an extraordinarily greater number of people in this country are killed by auto accidents each year. I may have opened a can of worms with that sentence. It's probably worth exploring why the government makes choices to fight one cause of death over another, regardless of statistics showing the attention should be reversed, but that's for another post.
Another defense: what would Hogwart's be without the absurd dangers? It's all part of the fun in reading the books. Adults usually possess a more developed sense of empathy. So, if we think about the absurd dangers too much, the fun starts to look more like cruelty and horror. I don't know if Rowling has received such criticism (other than my casual one above), but Roald Dahl (James and The Giant Peach, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) did receive such criticism. In Trust Your Children: Voices Against Censorship in Children's Literature, Dahl says most grown-ups "are not quite as aware as I am that children are different from adults. Children are much more vulgar than grownups. They have a coarser sense of humor. They are basically more cruel." Vicki Weissman, reviewing Dahl's Matilda wrote of the cruelty in his book, saying that "the truths of death and torture are as distant as when the magician saws the lady in half."
But is all this pandering to children's warped sense of fun a good thing? Madeline L'Engle (Wrinkle in Time), in a Newsweek interview, said of a Harry Potter book, "It’s a nice story but there’s nothing underneath it. I don’t want to be bothered with stuff where there’s nothing underneath." L'Engle seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. In my limited reading of her, I found her fiction to be full of responsible behavior and lacking in a wanton revelry of cruelty and danger. I believe her criticism is valid. L'Engle's handling of quantum theories and morality themes are superior to Rowling's. On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are so much more fun in a different way. Either way, at least kids are reading something that contains pages full of uninterrupted text, which is more than you can say for many adults.
I suspect my excessive analysis about this book is due to the children's novel that I have had brewing in my head for many years now. The story is ready for some some serious effort on my part to actually write it. I hope to strike a middle ground somewhere between the fun of Potter and the seriousness of L'Engle.
The central plot of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is about a psychotic wizard, Sirius Black, who has escaped from prison to kill Harry Potter. This plot is actually not very exciting. Harry spends most of his time being a reactive protagonist, rather than a proactive one, either waiting around for attacks or reacting against the limitations placed on his mobility for his own safety by the Hogwarts administration. The central plot does pick up speed and demand focus in the last third of the book, but until then a lot of empty space is filled with numerous tiny subplots. As Rowling has demonstrated in the previous novels, she does a remarkable job of tying up absolutely every subplot by the end of the story in a way that makes them all integral to each other. No subplot could be removed from the book without the entire story collapsing. A lot of coincidental events are required to make the novel work, but she manages to set up the coincidences so that they do seem to unfold naturally in the narrative. The book is a lot of fun and a significant year for Potter, as many things are revealed about the circumstances surrounding the death of his parents.
As much as I enjoy Harry Potter books, I'm constantly struck by its moral inconsistencies. The Hogwarts administration expends a lot of energy keeping the children safe from psycho killers, basilisks, and other uncommon threats. Given their concern for the wellbeing of the students, I find it irresponsible of the administration to plant whomping willows eager to crush children, permit them to play quidditch, a game that ought to yield more deaths in a single school year than a serial killer on the loose in the castle, and let the sorting hat divide the children in such a way to cause violent rivalries. Not to mention, surrounding the castle with a forest full of deadly creatures and putting them in a consistently dangerous curriculum of classes.
One could argue the children would have divided themselves along those lines anyway. It is natural for cliques to form among large groups of people The energy put forth to fight evil in the walls of the castle, when more children are probably maimed through quidditch, classroom spells gone wrong, and the landscaping, has a real-world parallel in our own government's fight against terrorism, when an extraordinarily greater number of people in this country are killed by auto accidents each year. I may have opened a can of worms with that sentence. It's probably worth exploring why the government makes choices to fight one cause of death over another, regardless of statistics showing the attention should be reversed, but that's for another post.
Another defense: what would Hogwart's be without the absurd dangers? It's all part of the fun in reading the books. Adults usually possess a more developed sense of empathy. So, if we think about the absurd dangers too much, the fun starts to look more like cruelty and horror. I don't know if Rowling has received such criticism (other than my casual one above), but Roald Dahl (James and The Giant Peach, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) did receive such criticism. In Trust Your Children: Voices Against Censorship in Children's Literature, Dahl says most grown-ups "are not quite as aware as I am that children are different from adults. Children are much more vulgar than grownups. They have a coarser sense of humor. They are basically more cruel." Vicki Weissman, reviewing Dahl's Matilda wrote of the cruelty in his book, saying that "the truths of death and torture are as distant as when the magician saws the lady in half."
But is all this pandering to children's warped sense of fun a good thing? Madeline L'Engle (Wrinkle in Time), in a Newsweek interview, said of a Harry Potter book, "It’s a nice story but there’s nothing underneath it. I don’t want to be bothered with stuff where there’s nothing underneath." L'Engle seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. In my limited reading of her, I found her fiction to be full of responsible behavior and lacking in a wanton revelry of cruelty and danger. I believe her criticism is valid. L'Engle's handling of quantum theories and morality themes are superior to Rowling's. On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are so much more fun in a different way. Either way, at least kids are reading something that contains pages full of uninterrupted text, which is more than you can say for many adults.
I suspect my excessive analysis about this book is due to the children's novel that I have had brewing in my head for many years now. The story is ready for some some serious effort on my part to actually write it. I hope to strike a middle ground somewhere between the fun of Potter and the seriousness of L'Engle.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 04:28 am (UTC)when i was in college, all the pre-med students had to take an almost impossible course in organic chemistry. many many of them failed and dropped out of pre-med. the thought was, of course that those who succeeded would be the ones who would best be able to deal with all the rest of what they would have to deal with as they learned to become doctors. i don't know if the school still does that and i don't know if the world lost some people who would have been fine doctors, but presumably they had a higher success rate than they had before they had the weeding process.
if you can't survive a whomping willow and a quidditch game, maybe you're not going to make a very good wizard, either?
no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 04:43 am (UTC)However, with great power, comes great responsibility. We certainly do want darwinism to weed out the most irresponsible magic users. Who knows what damage incompetent spellcasters may do to unsuspecting Muggles!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 06:23 am (UTC)Also adored micro, which I have the same teacher for in humanbio2 - woot.
But he did mention the university weeding process and thought that it was basically a big excuse for professors to be unhelpful to students [refuse to help individually] and have far too much of a workload [ie, instead of focusing on parts of chapter 5, just say "oh, yeah, and read all 85 pages of Chapter 5 by Tuesday, you'll be tested on it] and basically not be good teachers, and say it is all in the name of weeding out the kids who don't "really understand the work involved in being a doctor/engineer etc." Basically, if you really want to be a bio major you'd better be prepared to learn all the material yourself.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 05:12 pm (UTC)Re: On Harry Potter
Date: 2004-06-14 06:26 am (UTC)Hogwarts was founded ages ago by 4 people who may very well have all been nuts. At least one of them was not very nice. They did not found it out of altruism per se, and had radically different ideas on child reading than the current administration. The four schools grew up around them, and persist to this day. I'm not sure this is all that different than fraternities, etc. today. Furthermore, it serves an important purpose--it is the focus of punishment and rewards ("5 points to Griffydor (sp?)!"). This provides a straightforward way to encourage good behavior among the students. Take away the houses, and you end up with something like our high school. Yuck.
As for the various dangers around the castle, I think they are there because upper level students need to contend with them as part of their classes. Part of being a wizard is being a lion tamer. I'm not sure about the giant spiders, but still. Many of those things may simply have been there when they built Hogwarts and no one has wanted to remove them.
Furthermore, until very recently, most of the wizarding community was at war. Many parts still are (off fighting dragons, giants, etc.). A large part of your career as a wizard is spent dealing with hostile things. In order to have a chance at surviving they need to be exposed to danger and learn how to handle it. The teachers in general do a good job of managing that exposure to danger.
Harry is going to have to face and deal with the most powerful evil wizard probably ever. They are basically giving him far greater challenges (and he enjoys rather big rewards, incidentally) than the normal students, who we do a pretty good job of seeing. Dumbledore really does not like this, and it becomes a thing in later books. The whole relationship of the teachers to Harry, and how they treat him (child or adult) plays out. And I think that touches on what it is to be a child, particularly a BRIGHT child, very mcuh.
I for one would let my children watch the X-Files, read Harry Potter, etc. It's okay for children to see children in danger. It plays to their sense of fantasy. As long as they separate reality from fiction, it's good to have a chance to explore all of this.
One more thing on the dangers around Hogwarts:
The Whomping Willow: To avoid being injured by the Whomping Willow: STAY AWAY FROM IT. It is no more dangerous than the Rock Quarry behind the High School, or the chemicals in Chemistry class.
Quidditch: ... probably causes less injuries than high school football. Seriously. And they are easily healed with magic, unlike real injuries.
Classroom Spells: ... as above, Chemistry class. I think of Mr. Tiso and his X-rays right in front of my face. Or lasers. Or...
Violent Rivalries: Given the gangs in the inner cities... We were lucky to not have to deal with this in school. I suspect that many parts of the US would love to have the "violent" rivalries of Hogwarts. Better than being shot for wearing the wrong color in a particular part of town.
I think there is something under the books; there is something there. But it's in the greater story, not a particular book (and particularly not so much in the early books). Each one is better than the last.
Enough rambling. I might try to review the movie (which I have mixed feelings about) in my own lj.
Re: On Harry Potter
Date: 2004-06-14 02:07 pm (UTC)I would have to assess any my child's state of mind at any given age before exposing them to certain things. As a very young child, Harry Patter would have been fine for me...but certainly not X-Files. I wouldn't have wanted to watch X-Files at that age anyway...so I guess it doesn't matter. I was very sensitive to TV images and ardently avoided that which could damage me. I think there's an important difference in the danger presented in children's literature/tv vs. X-Files. The danger is meant to be fun in children's content, but the adult danger in X-Files is intended to be emotionally distressing
I still contend that given the wacky of idea of Quidditch in our real world, a game in which kids fly around at the speed of light (that's hyperbole! not fact, my physics friend) without any safety restraints on their piece of wood would be a lot more dangerous than any other team sport.
Regarding violent rivalries, I think the playful nature of it may grow out of the books' basis on jolly old english boarding schools for the well-to-do. But suppose there were enough magicians in the world to necessitate inner city schools in our real world America. You'd probably have a lot of kids going all evil Willow and blowing up the school when bullies hurt them.
I think you may be right about there being more important themes in the greater story. I think L'Engle does a disservice to herself by only reading one. And I can see how as the kids age, more heavy stuff will happen and need to be addressed. I'm also curious to see if the danger is handling differently as the kids age. I wonder if as the characters mature, a more mature sense of empathy toward the dangers will develop in the stories. That could ruin the fun, or it could make the series far more superior, depending on how Rowling handles it. I think Rowling is intending to mature the books as the children age, which is a very cool (and ambitious) thing to do.
I also think it's important to point out, as you did, that magic can heal injuries quite easily. So, in the context of the story, I think the dangers are actually significantly less dangerous than they would be outside the context of the story, because there is that assumption that healing magic can undo any damage done to the children.
Re: On Harry Potter
Date: 2004-06-14 03:43 pm (UTC)there are a whole lot of links with Tom Brown's School Days (which itself was based on a real school, mind you), and certainly reading that today, the likelihood of getting seriously injured at school was high. without magic to mend you, mind you. likewise, quidditch has NOTHING on the original roots of Rugby Football as described in that book.
i would, however, argue strongly that the "nastiness" element is actually far less in JKR than in Dahl, who i find almost unreadable for that very reason (and did as a child, too... i was probably as nasty as anyone in real life, but i didn't like reading about it. i read "nice" books...)
i could comment further on the house division, but i'll stick by advising you to read the following books, especially Order of the Phoenix.
i'd also argue that there is an extremely great moral element to the books, which again comes out of their roots in school stories: didacticism is a major part of such stories, and it is noticeable that the majority of school story writers were teachers for some of their careers (JKR included, incidentally). children are taught about what is acceptable behaviour and what isn't (you might not have the SAME moral values, but various are clear: bravery, sticking up for your friends, and the cover-all 'honour' are all central positives.)
i'll shut up now. i think i'm being boring. i've even bored myself.
Re: On Harry Potter
Date: 2004-06-14 05:57 pm (UTC)I totally forgot about Rugby. I have always been amazed by its brutality. With that in mind, I can see how the dangers of Quidditch would be considered a fine tradition for wizard boarding schools.
Question for you: I was interested in the fact that several of the professors seem live there at the boarding school with the children, rather than having homes and presumably family nearby that they return to at the end of the day or on holidays. I wasn't sure if this was based on fact or a device to keep certain teachers around for plot purposes. Is this common in British boarding schools? Or is it only something that shows up in the literature? Will some professors travel away from their families during the school year and board with the students, then return home for summer break when the students leave?
Thanks for the comment!
Re: On Harry Potter
Date: 2004-06-14 08:40 pm (UTC)um... rather quicker...
in boarding school tradition, the majority of teachers live on campus with the kids (though in all girls schools the male teachers DON'T).
in your actual boarding schools (my dad teaches at one), there have to be SOME teachers living on site, but they get paid extra. some have their own houses, where they have their family; others live right in with the students in little rooms along the corridors - they're mainly the unmarried ones. most teachers DON'T live on the campus.
as far as family goes, the ones who live in houses - they live there all year round with their families. i believe the ones who live in the rooms CAN stay there, but they tend not to.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 06:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-15 04:42 pm (UTC)I would not agree with this... entirely. I do believe children are more vulgar than grown ups. But, I would not agree that they are more cruel. I believe that as children, we are open and truly what we are. As we grow up, we hide our cruelty and learn proper ways to express it: backstabbing, talking about others behind their backs, sarcasm. These things are adult ways to do the same things children do blatantly. The reason children seem more cruel is that they are openly mean where as adults, we learn to hide it and temper it more subtly.
On the Harry Potter series: When I heard all the fuss about how the series is evil and that it encourages witchcraft among children, corrupts their minds, etc. I had to read them to see what it was all about. After reading the entire series (up to the books released at this time), I don't see any reason to fuss. I have read fantasy all of my life and have read many books about witchcraft, sorcery, magic, etc. And Harry Potter certainly does not stand out in my mind as being so influential. Although I do acknowledge that people are fussing about this series because it is so popular and mainstream and many are reading it, more than any other children's series about witchcraft and magic... so, I see why they are fussing but in the actual books themselves, I see nothing remarkable.
Also after readin them, I feel strongly that they are _children's literature_. I do not think they are written particularly well or that the concept is so revolutionary and interesting. I was somewhat bored with the books and certainly disappointed after all of the hype that Harry Potter has. I expected quality reading since I had heard of many adults who were reading the series and gave it acclaim. I personally don't think Rowling (sp) is a particularly skillful author and I have certainly read many books more imaginative than hers. I would offer the Wrinkle In Time series for example (although it has been some time since I read it). Ray Bradberry also is a highly skilled writer and I find his books to be much better.
My point: I don't think the Harry Potter series is particularly well conceived, written, or original.
Although I should note that while reading the series, I noticed a complete lack of morality. The wizards were ready to off Sirius just like that without hearing anything (Snape I think it was) and characters like Hermione (sp) who care about others (the House Elves) are mocked and belittled. Having already a system of morals, I am not concerned about my ethical well-being, but did find it disturbing the complete lack of morality in the books.
I will reread the series also and see if I have any further comments or a better review.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 03:18 am (UTC)As for the books, I certainly don't think there's anything to worry about. The alarm over the content was raised by the usual suspects, Christian fundamentalists, who generally have nothing intelligent to say, but are willing to pound their Bibles over any popular mainstream event that doesn't jive with their beliefs.
I do enjoy the books. I don't consider them masterpieces, but they're a fun quick read. I do find them quite imaginative, but in a different way than the imagination of L'Engle or Bradbury. The creativity in Harry Potter is very spontaneous, like an improvisational piece of music. It feels like Rowling writes whatever goofy thing that comes to mind. You hear her music as it happens, it's beautiful and interesting, but then that moment is gone. It's ephemeral. Where as the creativity of the other authors is more like a well composed, well thought out symphony. Enduring masterpieces. I enjoy both for different reasons.
But I'm glad someone else noticed the moral inconsistencies in the books.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 06:50 pm (UTC)I concur.
I would also agree with your comparison of Rowling's books to an improvisational piece of music.
And I alsos read some pulp fiction just for the quick foray into imagination and pleasure. But it's the well thought out pieces I end up keeping and not returning to the bookstore. ;oP
Well, those and manga... but that's another story. :oX It's my guily pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-18 02:20 am (UTC)