"History According to Harry"
"Appeasement fails with warlocks too."
BY JONATHAN V. LAST
Friday, July 15, 2005
"Tonight, when "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" descends upon
bookstores, millions of children will flutter in delight. But the sixth
entry in the franchise may well please discerning adults, too.
The series began as a collection of detective stories cloaked in
sorcery. The first introduced us to the young Mr. Potter, who was
packed off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after being
orphaned when the evil Lord Voldemort -- a warlock who had started a
great war -- killed his parents. But the early Potter tales were
essentially Hardy Boys stories -- each book confronted Harry and his
friends with a series of small puzzles, the solving of which led to the
resolution of a big case.
In the fifth book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,"
something interesting happened. The author, J.K. Rowling, abandoned the
mystery genre and gave her readers something more challenging: a
historical allegory. Through sleight-of-hand, Ms. Rowling took a
children's book and transformed it into a parable about 1930s England.
We've heard a lot recently about London and the Blitz. Ms. Rowling's
unfolding saga may illuminate that dark historical moment, not only the
ordeals that led up to it but also -- who knows? -- the triumphs that
followed.
The parallels between this volume and Britain's prewar dithering are so
great that the book is perhaps best read as a light companion to
"Alone," the second volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston
Churchill.
"Britain's prewar dithering..." Aye. -- DSH
"Order of the Phoenix" tells how, after nearly 14 years of peace, Lord
Voldemort re-emerges to pursue his plans for dominion. As a Hogwarts
divination professor explains: "The indications have been that
Wizard-kind is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two
wars."
Harry is the only witness to Voldemort's reappearance; but he tells
Albus Dumbledore, the school's headmaster, who tries to raise the alarm.
Dumbledore is an old and respected figure, the Supreme Mugwump of the
International Confederation of Wizards. But when he attempts to set
England's wizards against the coming storm, the government -- under the
administration of Cornelius Fudge, the minister of magic -- denies that
Voldemort is alive and launches a campaign to discredit Dumbledore.
Let's start with Voldemort, who makes for a fair Hitler: He is an
aspiring dictator who wants to cleanse the world of "mud-bloods" --
wizards who have normal, or "muggle," parentage.
Dumbledore is clearly Ms. Rowling's Churchill. Like the British lion,
Dumbledore is a part of the establishment, but when he tries to awaken
people to the threat that Voldemort poses, he becomes unpopular. Ms.
Rowling's wizards, like the British of the 1930s, are exhausted from
their last war and unwilling to believe that it's time to take up arms
again.
Exhausted, Slaggard & Corrupted. -- DSH
Like Neville Chamberlain, Minister Fudge is eager to help his
constituents look the other way.
Throughout the '30s, Chamberlain, fearing that Churchill was out for his
job, conducted a campaign against his fellow Tory.
Chamberlain denied the existence of the German menace and ridiculed
Churchill as a "warmonger."
Hmmmmmmm. Now doesn't that sound familiar. -- DSH
He used the London Times -- the government's house organ -- to attack
Churchill and suppress dispatches from abroad about the Nazis that would
have vindicated him.
As war approached and it became obvious that Churchill's skills were
needed, Chamberlain denied his appointment to the cabinet again and
again, while Chamberlain's underlings, such as the foreign secretary,
Lord Halifax, licked his boots, kowtowed to Hitler and savaged
Churchill.
Fudge is nearly as craven.
Spurred by Harry's encounter with the resurgent Voldemort, Dumbledore
makes a stirring speech urging resistance. For his trouble, Minister
Fudge goes the full-Chamberlain, traducing his opponent and his motives.
"Dumbledore's name's mud with the Ministry these days," explains one of
Harry's friends. "They all think he's just making trouble" because
Fudge "thinks Dumbledore wants to become Minister of Magic....[Fudge]
loves being Minister of Magic, and he's managed to convince himself that
he's the clever one and Dumbledore's simply stirring up trouble for the
sake of it."
Ms. Rowling must have studied Chamberlain's private letters.
In one note, the prime minister dismisses Churchill's plan of a Grand
Alliance to confront Germany by saying -- mendaciously -- that "the plan
of the 'Grand Alliance,' as Winston calls it, had occurred to me long
before he mentioned it."
In another, he crows about the reception that he received in Britain
following his appeasement of Hitler at Munich. "Even the descriptions
of the papers give no idea" of the celebrations, he boasted. Cornelius
Fudge could be his grandson.
In retaliation for sounding the alarm about Voldemort, Fudge strips
Dumbledore of his many honors and has him driven from Hogwarts.
He also uses the Daily Prophet -- the wizarding version of the London
Times -- to print nasty stories about Harry and Dumbledore and to
suppress reports about the Dark Lord.
Fudge even has a toadying adviser -- Dolores Umbridge -- who, like Lord
Halifax, exists to give the cut to Dumbledore and peddle the notion that
Voldemort poses no danger.
Umbridge -- an appeaser if there ever was one -- replaces the curriculum
of Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts class with lessons such as
"Non-Retaliation and Negotiation."
Such as negotiating away the Territorial Integrity of Israel, rather
than that of Czechoslovakia? -- DSH
Neither Churchill nor Dumbledore take their abuse lying down. Churchill
spent the 1930s cultivating an ad hoc network composed of well-connected
civilians, informants from Whitehall and foreign officers. Churchill's
information -- including constant updates on Germany's troop strength,
economic output and diplomatic maneuverings, as well as on the status of
British arms -- was thought to be better than the government's.
Dumbledore's private intelligence net is similarly impressive. His
Order of the Phoenix -- sympathetic ministry officials, civilians and
Hogwarts professors -- keeps him briefed on affairs while enchanted
portraits of former ministers and headmasters spy and give him counsel.
Of course, both Churchill and Dumbledore are vindicated by events.
Churchill was finally brought to the fore by Germany's invasion of
Poland, after which Chamberlain was forced to bring him into the
government to avoid political mutiny.
The last Harry Potter book ended with Voldemort and his followers
storming the Ministry of Magic. Like Chamberlain, Fudge has no choice
but to reinstate Dumbledore once the wizarding community realizes that
it has returned to war. When it comes to confronting evil, Dumbledore,
like Churchill, is the indispensable man.
So what's next for Harry Potter? Will Dumbledore replace Fudge as
Churchill did Chamberlain? My own theory is that young Harry will come
to represent FDR's America: a powerful, immature force that eventually
tips the balance of power.
Deeeeeelightful! -- DSH
But whatever the case, Ms. Rowling deserves special marks for bringing a
bit of history to an already delightful enterprise and teaching us a
lesson, ever more relevant to the moment, without seeming to do so.
It's almost magical."
Mr. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
---------------------------------------
DSH
Harry Potter Hates Appeasement Too
Moderator: MOD_nyhetsgrupper
-
JBernigaud
Re: Harry Potter Hates Appeasement Too
Could you explain us what is the matter with medieval genealogy ? If you
want to speak about something else, try to find someone in the "real life"
(or maybe on the Harry Potter website...but your intellect may be not
developped enough) unless your pityful social life does not allow you
to...
want to speak about something else, try to find someone in the "real life"
(or maybe on the Harry Potter website...but your intellect may be not
developped enough) unless your pityful social life does not allow you
to...
-
D. Spencer Hines
Re: Harry Potter Hates Appeasement Too
"'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' Harry Potter Works His Magic
Again in a Far Darker Tale"
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: July 16, 2005
The New York Times
"In an earlier Harry Potter novel, Sibyll Trelawney, divination teacher,
looks at Harry and declares that her inner eye sees past his "brave face
to the troubled soul within."
"I regret to say that your worries are not baseless," she adds. "I see
difficult times ahead for you, alas ... most difficult ... I fear the
thing you dread will indeed come to pass ... and perhaps sooner than you
think."
In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," that frightening prophecy
does in fact come true - in a thoroughly harrowing denouement that sees
the death of yet another important person in Harry's life, and that
renders this, the sixth volume of the series, the darkest and most
unsettling installment yet.
It is a novel that pulls together dozens of plot strands from previous
volumes, underscoring how cleverly and carefully J. K. Rowling has
assembled this giant jigsaw puzzle of an epic. It is also a novel that
depicts Harry Potter, now 16, as more alone than ever - all too well
aware of loss and death, and increasingly isolated by his growing
reputation as "the Chosen One," picked from among all others to do
battle with the Dark Lord, Voldemort.
As the novel opens, the wizarding world is at war: Lord Voldemort and
his Death Eaters have grown so powerful that their evil deeds have
spilled over into the Muggle world of nonmagic folks. The Muggles' prime
minister has been alerted by the Ministry of Magic about the rise of
Voldemort. And the terrible things that Ms. Rowling describes as being
abroad in the green and pleasant land of England read like a grim echo
of events in our own post-9/11, post-7/7 world and an uncanny reminder
that the Hogwarts Express, which Harry and his friends all take to
school, leaves from King's Cross station - the very station where the
suspected London bombers gathered minutes before the explosions that
rocked the city nine days ago.
Harry, who as an infant miraculously survived a Voldemort attack that
killed his mother and father, is regarded as "a symbol of hope" by many
in the wizarding world, and as he learns more about the Dark Lord's
obsession with his family, he realizes that he has a destiny he cannot
escape. Like Luke Skywalker, he is eager to play the role of hero. But
like Spider-Man, he is also aware of the burden that that role imposes:
although he has developed romantic yearnings for a certain girl, he is
wary of involvement, given his recognition of the dangers he will have
to face.
"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life, these
last few weeks with you," he tells her. "But I can't ... we can't ...
I've got things to do alone now."
Indeed, the perilous task Professor Dumbledore sets Harry in this volume
will leave him with less and less time for Quidditch and hanging out
with his pals Ron and Hermione: he is to help his beloved teacher find
four missing Horcruxes - super-secret, magical objects in which
Voldemort has secreted parts of his soul as a means of ensuring his
immortality. Only when all of these items have been found and destroyed,
Harry is told, can the Dark Lord finally be vanquished.
There are a host of other unsettling developments in this novel, too:
the Dementors, those fearsome creatures in charge of guarding Azkaban
Prison, have joined forces with Voldemort; Draco Malfoy, Harry's
sneering classmate who boasts of moving on to "bigger and better
things," appears to vanish regularly from the school grounds; the
sinister Severus Snape has been named the new teacher of defense against
the dark arts; two Hogwarts students are nearly killed in mysterious
attacks; and Dumbledore suddenly turns up with a badly injured hand,
which he declines to explain. One of the few bright spots in Harry's
school life appears to be an old textbook annotated by its enigmatic
former owner, who goes by the name the Half-Blood Prince - a book that
initially supplies Harry with some helpful tips for making potions.
The early and middle sections of this novel meld the ordinary and the
fantastic in the playful fashion Ms. Rowling has patented in her
previous books, capturing adolescent angst about boy-girl and
student-teacher relations with perfect pitch. Ron and Hermione, as well
as Harry, all become involved in romantic flirtations with other
students, even as they begin to realize that their O.W.L. (Ordinary
Wizarding Level) grades may well determine the course of their
post-Hogwarts future. As the story proceeds, however, it grows
progressively more somber, eventually becoming positively Miltonian in
its darkness. In fact, two of the novel's final scenes - like the
violent showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the last
"Star Wars" movie, "Revenge of the Sith" - may well be too alarming for
the youngest readers.
Harry still has his wry sense of humor and a plucky boyish heart, but as
in the last volume ("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), he is
more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than the young Wart. He
has emerged, at school and on the Quidditch field, as an unquestioned
leader: someone who must learn to make unpopular decisions and control
his impetuous temper, someone who must keep certain secrets from his
schoolmates and teachers.
He has become more aware than ever of what he and Voldemort have in
common - from orphaned childhoods to an ability to talk Parseltongue
(i.e., snake speech) to the possession of matching wands - and in one
chilling scene, he is forced to choose between duty to his mission and
his most heartfelt emotions. In discovering the true identity of the
Half-Blood Prince, Harry will learn to re-evaluate the value of first
impressions and the possibility that his elders' convictions can blind
them to parlous truths. And in embracing his own identity, he will
discover his place in history.
As in earlier volumes, Ms. Rowling moves Harry's story forward by
chronicling his adventures at Hogwarts, while simultaneously moving
backward in time through the use of flashbacks (via Dumbledore's
remarkable Pensieve, a receptacle for people's memories). As a result,
this is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the hero's evolution not
only by showing his maturation through a series of grueling tests, but
also by detailing the growing emotional wisdom he gains from
understanding more and more about the past.
In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books
are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding
school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her
tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at
the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such
disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and
more recent works like "Star Wars") and making them her own.
Perhaps because of its position as the penultimate installment of a
seven-book series, "The Half-Blood Prince" suffers, at moments, from an
excess of exposition. Some of Dumbledore's speeches to Harry have a
forced, summing-up quality, and the reader can occasionally feel Ms.
Rowling methodically setting the stage for developments to come or
fleshing out scenarios put in play by earlier volumes (most notably,
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," with its revelations about
the young Voldemort, a k a Tom Riddle).
Such passages, however, are easily forgotten, as the plot hurtles along,
gaining a terrible momentum in this volume's closing pages. At the same
time, the suspense generated by these books does not stem solely from
the tension of wondering who will die next or how one or another mystery
will be solved. It stems, as well, from Ms. Rowling's dexterity in
creating a character-driven tale, a story in which a person's choices
determine the map of his or her life - a story that creates a hunger to
know more about these people who have become so palpably real.
We want to know more about Harry's parents - how they met and married
and died - because that may tell us more about Harry's own yearnings and
decisions. We want to know more about Dumbledore's desire to believe the
best of everyone because that may shed light on whom he chooses to
trust. We want to know more about the circumstances of Tom Riddle's
birth because that may shed light on his decision to reinvent himself as
Lord Voldemort.
Indeed, the achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the
great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to "The Lord
of the Rings": the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular
world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own."
-------------------------------
DSH
Again in a Far Darker Tale"
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: July 16, 2005
The New York Times
"In an earlier Harry Potter novel, Sibyll Trelawney, divination teacher,
looks at Harry and declares that her inner eye sees past his "brave face
to the troubled soul within."
"I regret to say that your worries are not baseless," she adds. "I see
difficult times ahead for you, alas ... most difficult ... I fear the
thing you dread will indeed come to pass ... and perhaps sooner than you
think."
In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," that frightening prophecy
does in fact come true - in a thoroughly harrowing denouement that sees
the death of yet another important person in Harry's life, and that
renders this, the sixth volume of the series, the darkest and most
unsettling installment yet.
It is a novel that pulls together dozens of plot strands from previous
volumes, underscoring how cleverly and carefully J. K. Rowling has
assembled this giant jigsaw puzzle of an epic. It is also a novel that
depicts Harry Potter, now 16, as more alone than ever - all too well
aware of loss and death, and increasingly isolated by his growing
reputation as "the Chosen One," picked from among all others to do
battle with the Dark Lord, Voldemort.
As the novel opens, the wizarding world is at war: Lord Voldemort and
his Death Eaters have grown so powerful that their evil deeds have
spilled over into the Muggle world of nonmagic folks. The Muggles' prime
minister has been alerted by the Ministry of Magic about the rise of
Voldemort. And the terrible things that Ms. Rowling describes as being
abroad in the green and pleasant land of England read like a grim echo
of events in our own post-9/11, post-7/7 world and an uncanny reminder
that the Hogwarts Express, which Harry and his friends all take to
school, leaves from King's Cross station - the very station where the
suspected London bombers gathered minutes before the explosions that
rocked the city nine days ago.
Harry, who as an infant miraculously survived a Voldemort attack that
killed his mother and father, is regarded as "a symbol of hope" by many
in the wizarding world, and as he learns more about the Dark Lord's
obsession with his family, he realizes that he has a destiny he cannot
escape. Like Luke Skywalker, he is eager to play the role of hero. But
like Spider-Man, he is also aware of the burden that that role imposes:
although he has developed romantic yearnings for a certain girl, he is
wary of involvement, given his recognition of the dangers he will have
to face.
"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life, these
last few weeks with you," he tells her. "But I can't ... we can't ...
I've got things to do alone now."
Indeed, the perilous task Professor Dumbledore sets Harry in this volume
will leave him with less and less time for Quidditch and hanging out
with his pals Ron and Hermione: he is to help his beloved teacher find
four missing Horcruxes - super-secret, magical objects in which
Voldemort has secreted parts of his soul as a means of ensuring his
immortality. Only when all of these items have been found and destroyed,
Harry is told, can the Dark Lord finally be vanquished.
There are a host of other unsettling developments in this novel, too:
the Dementors, those fearsome creatures in charge of guarding Azkaban
Prison, have joined forces with Voldemort; Draco Malfoy, Harry's
sneering classmate who boasts of moving on to "bigger and better
things," appears to vanish regularly from the school grounds; the
sinister Severus Snape has been named the new teacher of defense against
the dark arts; two Hogwarts students are nearly killed in mysterious
attacks; and Dumbledore suddenly turns up with a badly injured hand,
which he declines to explain. One of the few bright spots in Harry's
school life appears to be an old textbook annotated by its enigmatic
former owner, who goes by the name the Half-Blood Prince - a book that
initially supplies Harry with some helpful tips for making potions.
The early and middle sections of this novel meld the ordinary and the
fantastic in the playful fashion Ms. Rowling has patented in her
previous books, capturing adolescent angst about boy-girl and
student-teacher relations with perfect pitch. Ron and Hermione, as well
as Harry, all become involved in romantic flirtations with other
students, even as they begin to realize that their O.W.L. (Ordinary
Wizarding Level) grades may well determine the course of their
post-Hogwarts future. As the story proceeds, however, it grows
progressively more somber, eventually becoming positively Miltonian in
its darkness. In fact, two of the novel's final scenes - like the
violent showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the last
"Star Wars" movie, "Revenge of the Sith" - may well be too alarming for
the youngest readers.
Harry still has his wry sense of humor and a plucky boyish heart, but as
in the last volume ("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), he is
more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than the young Wart. He
has emerged, at school and on the Quidditch field, as an unquestioned
leader: someone who must learn to make unpopular decisions and control
his impetuous temper, someone who must keep certain secrets from his
schoolmates and teachers.
He has become more aware than ever of what he and Voldemort have in
common - from orphaned childhoods to an ability to talk Parseltongue
(i.e., snake speech) to the possession of matching wands - and in one
chilling scene, he is forced to choose between duty to his mission and
his most heartfelt emotions. In discovering the true identity of the
Half-Blood Prince, Harry will learn to re-evaluate the value of first
impressions and the possibility that his elders' convictions can blind
them to parlous truths. And in embracing his own identity, he will
discover his place in history.
As in earlier volumes, Ms. Rowling moves Harry's story forward by
chronicling his adventures at Hogwarts, while simultaneously moving
backward in time through the use of flashbacks (via Dumbledore's
remarkable Pensieve, a receptacle for people's memories). As a result,
this is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the hero's evolution not
only by showing his maturation through a series of grueling tests, but
also by detailing the growing emotional wisdom he gains from
understanding more and more about the past.
In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books
are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding
school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her
tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at
the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such
disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and
more recent works like "Star Wars") and making them her own.
Perhaps because of its position as the penultimate installment of a
seven-book series, "The Half-Blood Prince" suffers, at moments, from an
excess of exposition. Some of Dumbledore's speeches to Harry have a
forced, summing-up quality, and the reader can occasionally feel Ms.
Rowling methodically setting the stage for developments to come or
fleshing out scenarios put in play by earlier volumes (most notably,
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," with its revelations about
the young Voldemort, a k a Tom Riddle).
Such passages, however, are easily forgotten, as the plot hurtles along,
gaining a terrible momentum in this volume's closing pages. At the same
time, the suspense generated by these books does not stem solely from
the tension of wondering who will die next or how one or another mystery
will be solved. It stems, as well, from Ms. Rowling's dexterity in
creating a character-driven tale, a story in which a person's choices
determine the map of his or her life - a story that creates a hunger to
know more about these people who have become so palpably real.
We want to know more about Harry's parents - how they met and married
and died - because that may tell us more about Harry's own yearnings and
decisions. We want to know more about Dumbledore's desire to believe the
best of everyone because that may shed light on whom he chooses to
trust. We want to know more about the circumstances of Tom Riddle's
birth because that may shed light on his decision to reinvent himself as
Lord Voldemort.
Indeed, the achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the
great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to "The Lord
of the Rings": the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular
world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own."
-------------------------------
DSH