Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS!)

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RobNY said:
So yeah, what was Harry’s job, after all that? You know, after the business of slaying Dark Lords dried up. 🙂

-Rob

P.S. I loved that Neville became a professor. He became one of the genuinely most likable characters in the series.
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I love the Neville Story line. I love the book and can’t wait to read it again. Upset about Fred and Tonks but i totally got the Malfory part right! Hey but there is hope that this is not the last book since she included the kids! Hogwarts lives forever!
 
The seventh book was rediculous and I want six hours of my life back!

The book was 500 pages too long. It was 400 pages until they destroyed the first horcrux (out of a total of four left). *400! *And on top of that, its wasn’t 400 pages of guided, purposeful searching. It was rambling on about how they had no idea where they were going and a hopeful “promise” of an answer being built up then let down several times. (Hey, I think its where my parent’s died! Wait…no. Hey, let’s go to Luna’s father’s house! Wait…no.)

By the time they actually did figure out what the heck they were doing (3/4 through the book), I didn’t care about any of their fates.

And to make matters worse, it could have all been for nothing in the end. After all this time spent on destroying horcruxes and piecing together the three Deathly Hallows, the only reason Harry defeated Voldemort in the end *was because he had Malfoy’s wand! *Which he only got by accident!!! I finished the book thinking Voldemort might have been on to something in his complaint with Harry always being lucky.

Then, I read one page of the Epilogue and just quit. It begins with roughly *15 *characters interacting, 10 of which are children we’ve never met before. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, all the children have the names of old characters. All cheesiness aside, it was very poorly written.

I could not be any more disappointed with this book. I usually dread how the movies cut out so much of the books, but I’m actually *looking forward to it this time *for the seventh movie. It might actually redeem the series for me.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[/rant]
 
adstrinity said:
Alright, how about this: Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him, but, Snape always had the right to say no. Free will and choice is more than a predominant theme throughout the series. …And besides, how do we know that Snape kills Dumbledore BECAUSE Dumbledore says so?

😦 I so want to make sense of all this…
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But did Snape have the free will to say no to DD? He tells DD that he’ll do “anything” sorta “sold his soul” to DD and DD takes him up on it. Can we see Snape as a soldier taking orders from DD?

Sadly, Snape killing DD for the elder wand didn’t go as planned and led to Snape’s death. That just shows us we can’t determine who lives and who dies because we are too flawed.
 
adstrinity said:
Alright, how about this: Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him, but, Snape always had the right to say no. Free will and choice is more than a predominant theme throughout the series. …And besides, how do we know that Snape kills Dumbledore BECAUSE Dumbledore says so?

😦 I so want to make sense of all this…
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A doctor has free will when a patient requests suicide. That doesn’t make it OK. As for the question about Snape’s will, I think the book makes it pretty clear that Snape didn’t want to kill Dumbledore.
 
In addition to the Snape/Dumbledore problem, was anybody else bothered by the foul lanuage used in this book?
 
Nick said:
In addition to the potential euthanasia problem, was anybody else bothered by the foul lanuage used in this book?
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The only reason I was concerned about the language is that these are being marketed as kids’ books. IMO these are not appropriate for kids younger than at least middle school; language aside, the subject matter is, well, mature at times and quite scary.
 
Semper_Fi said:
I don’t understand the whole Harry Potter thing myself. Our store wasn’t allowed to sell any copies of the book before 12:01 am this morning and if we did we would’ve been fined $15,000 per copy sold. So… they stayed with our armed security guard in his office till midnight. What’s the big deal?
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thats not security… thats merchandise marketing.

that tidbit of news made it into every paper… brought another watercooler story to talk about…

that was the invention of the advertising company…
 
mike182d said:
The seventh book was ridiculous and I want six hours of my life back!

The book was 500 pages too long. It was 400 pages until they destroyed the first horcrux (out of a total of four left). *400! *And on top of that, its wasn’t 400 pages of guided, purposeful searching. It was rambling on about how they had no idea where they were going and a hopeful “promise” of an answer being built up then let down several times. (Hey, I think its where my parent’s died! Wait…no. Hey, let’s go to Luna’s father’s house! Wait…no.)
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Well, the forces of evil apparently are apparently equally incompetent.
I mean Harry, Ron & Hermione spend a total of months doing nothing at all. The Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry. One might think that they would eliminate every possible threat, but apparently they are just bumbling around as well.
If I were You-Know-Who people like Neville Longbottom & his Granny, Prof. McGonogle would be at the top of my death list.
In fact, if Neville had been “the boy who lived” instead of Harry, Voldemort would have been finished by volume two.
And to make matters worse, it could have all been for nothing in the end. After all this time spent on destroying horcruxes and piecing together the three Deathly Hallows, the only reason Harry defeated Voldemort in the end *was because he had Malfoy’s wand! *Which he only got by accident!!! I finished the book thinking Voldemort might have been on to something in his complaint with Harry always being lucky.
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There’s a line from the musical Pippin:

“There’s a very simple rule that every great man knows by heart,
It’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.”

This seems to be Rowling’s whole guide for Harry’s life. She relies on the dumb luck and deus ex machina way too much. It would be nice to see Harry figure something out for himself once in awhile without Hermione there to help.
 
I agree that it was a little disappointing and very predictable. Most of my points have been covered.
I’ve seen a lot of people (not a lot on this forum) advocating Harry adopting Lupin’s son Teddy, but they seem to forget that Harry was only 17 at the time and Ginny was only 16, he and Ginny wouldn’t be able to marry for at least another couple of years (judging by the age of their children, the oldest is at least 12 as he’s been at Hogwarts for at least one year they must have married in their early 20s) and Tonks’ Mother was perfectly capable of taking care of her grandson, not to mention that she had just lost her husband and daughter and this baby was the only family left to her.
I actually thought that Voldemort came out with one good idea and that was abolishing the houses or at least encouraging less segregation of the houses, and Dumbledore echoed it in Snape’s memory with the statement that ‘Sometimes I think we sort too soon’ and I really agree that you can’t judge an 11 year old child and determine what sort of adult they will become. In the case of the houses it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy you stick a bunch of kids together with a tendancy to certain abilites or preferences, repeatedly tell them that they should emphasise these tendencies and they are bound to turn out the way that you predicted.
I mean really in 6 years at the school Harry didn’t become friends with anybody outside Griffindor and I think that the whole segregating all those with dark tendencies into one house, all the brave strong types into another etc. doesn’t encourage people to learn something new, they only mix with people who are the same as them (classes don’t count, you can’t really get meaningful contact with people who you only see in classes) and they get locked into a narrow point of view rather than seeing a lot of different points of view. That was what saved Snape from being entirely evil, as a child he had contact with somebody who was different from the the Slytherins he spent all his time with and his love for her was ultimately what made him reject his former evil and attempt to redeem himself. Dark Wizards are sure to crop up in the future but meaningful contact with those who they would be inclined to see as inferior or disposable might just change their mind before it became so hardened that they couldn’t see past their own prejudices.
I really disliked Ron’s attempt in the last scene to continue his feud with Malfoy into the next generation and make his children hate Malfoy’s son, yes it was a joke, but a 11 year old is not necessarily equipped to understand that and there was some seriousness behind it.
and for harry potter fans who want some light relief youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4 a friend just sent me this.
 
mike182d said:
The book was 500 pages too long. It was 400 pages until they destroyed the first horcrux (out of a total of four left). *400! *And on top of that, its wasn’t 400 pages of guided, purposeful searching. It was rambling on about how they had no idea where they were going and a hopeful “promise” of an answer being built up then let down several times. (Hey, I think its where my parent’s died! Wait…no. Hey, let’s go to Luna’s father’s house! Wait…no.)
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Those 400 pages are necessary, because the main theme of the whole series is the journey of the characters, not primarily the external struggle. Harry is not ready to defeat Voldemort at the beginning of the book. He has some growing up to do still. That’s why Dumbledore didn’t tell him everything–figuring out what to do is part of the process of becoming the person who can sacrifice himself to defeat Voldemort (I guess we can say his name now!).
And to make matters worse, it could have all been for nothing in the end. After all this time spent on destroying horcruxes and piecing together the three Deathly Hallows, the only reason Harry defeated Voldemort in the end *was because he had Malfoy’s wand! *Which he only got by accident!!! I finished the book thinking Voldemort might have been on to something in his complaint with Harry always being lucky.
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The whole point of destroying the horcruxes was to make sure that when Voldemort was defeated this time, it would be final. Otherwise, when his curse rebounded and killed him it would just have been a repeat of his original encounter with Harry at Godric’s Hollow–he would have eventually come back and killed more people.

And as for luck–I’m too much of a Tolkien fan (and a believer in Divine Providence) to find this as trivial and irrelevant as you do.
Then, I read one page of the Epilogue and just quit. It begins with roughly *15 *characters interacting, 10 of which are children we’ve never met before. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, all the children have the names of old characters. All cheesiness aside, it was very poorly written.
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I was OK with the Epilogue but agree that it seems a bit out of place (though in my case, it’s because I find the rest of the book so compelling). The problem is that Rowling wrote it years ago, and the series has grown up since then, making the Epilogue sound like a throwback. But I suppose that’s the point–it takes us back to the lighthearted, school-story tone of the earlier books.

Edwin
 
I personally didn’t find any of it uninteresting or unnecessary. While in many ways it had some of the final ending elements I kind of figured it would, I thought she did a good job of introducing unexpected twists that kept it interesting.

Finding out that Snape really was a good guy, as I had expected, was not a surprise, but seeing how that unfolded was interesting. I had speculated that Dumbledore’s death was “staged” and that he would come back at the critical moment to have a major influence. It did turn out to be staged, though not as I had expected. And he did have a major influence, but without actually “coming back”.

I also thought that the epilogue was a little cheesy in the way it was done, though I think that tying up the loose ends was needed to end the series. A few extra pages to fill in the gaps on the major and semi-major characters would have been nice though.

Overall, I would give it an A-. I’m now trying to figure out how they’ll do the movie. The final battle will have to occupy a large chunk, as it did in LOTR. There is a lot of background information to develop though, and doing that without sacrificing major portions will be a challenge. Hopefully they’ll do a little better job than Order of the Phoenix, which left out some crucial things, IMO, to really understanding what was going on in a few places.
 
I havent finished yet.I’m just at the part where Harry, Ron and Hermione go into hiding at Grimmauld Place.I liked the part where George got his ear cut off.
 
Nick said:
In addition to the Snape/Dumbledore problem, was anybody else bothered by the foul lanuage used in this book?
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Yes, but, Ron has always been a big swearer throughout the books…and now we know he gets it from his mother.

I wasn’t big on Mrs. Weasely swearing until a friend pointed out that 1) It was very uncharacteristic & 2) It was a muggle word she used.

I would like to direct everybody’s attention to www.hogwartsprofessor.com to see the 20 points discussed, especially 20. Dissapointed? – One person (name removed by moderator)articular is upset with Snape’s conclusion and I must agree with her 100% at this point.
***Moderator Note:**the level of discussion at the referenced linked page contains adult concepts. Because it is a comment board language content may not be appropriate for youngsters.
— Angela Tate, CAF Moderator
 
Contarini said:
Those 400 pages are necessary, because the main theme of the whole series is the journey of the characters, not primarily the external struggle. Harry is not ready to defeat Voldemort at the beginning of the book. He has some growing up to do still. That’s why Dumbledore didn’t tell him everything–figuring out what to do is part of the process of becoming the person who can sacrifice himself to defeat Voldemort (I guess we can say his name now!).
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I do understand there was a “point” to it, but that doesn’t mean it was a very good point. The whole series is about Harry growing up and maturing until he’s able to defeat Vol…I mean, Tom Riddle - that’s nothing new. I just think most of the book was gratuitous and it felt like Rowling was desparately trying to make it “epic” for the sake of making it epic.

A description of the 40 year journey of the Jews doesn’t even take 400 pages. There’s no way the journey of a couple months should have taken that long to describe.
The whole point of destroying the horcruxes was to make sure that when Voldemort was defeated this time, it would be final. Otherwise, when his curse rebounded and killed him it would just have been a repeat of his original encounter with Harry at Godric’s Hollow–he would have eventually come back and killed more people.
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I know. I was simply saying that Harry could have destroyed all the horcruxes, but not defeated Riddle. It ultimately came down to him having Malfoy’s wand, which was pure luck. I was expecting Harry’s resurrection to have some relevance to defeating Riddle. Throwing in Malfoy’s wand rendered all of that as cursory which is frustrating when the *whole book *is about those other things.
And as for luck–I’m too much of a Tolkien fan (and a believer in Divine Providence) to find this as trivial and irrelevant as you do.
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Perhaps.
 
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