Rowling is no Tolkien

[ivyfic]

The ending of Harry Potter 7 just did not work for me, and it's easy to see why by comparing it to the end of Lord of the Rings.

The end of Lord of the Rings has its own problems (like being how many hundred pages long?), but it gets a lot of things right, including that it's genuinely satisfying and leaves me missing all the characters. You know that feeling: book grief.

The reason, I think, is because everything changes.

Frodo, when he returns to the Shire, can no longer be happy with the things he loved at the beginning of the books. The journey he's been on, and the close contact he's had to evil (like Harry being the horcrux) has irreversibly changed him. Even the Shire itself has changed.

It's also the beginning of the age of man—the elves are leaving. There's a sense of the ending of everything that has gone before, the death of hundreds of years of tradition and history, and that this is necessary for the hope of the new age. This makes the battle against Sauron the fight between good and evil, not just a fight. It was such a struggle that it changed the world.

Rowling, on the other hand, has snapped her world back to the way it was at the beginning of book one. Harry is perfectly content with the things he found joy in before. The evil has been surgically removed from him and he is, essentially, untouched and pure. From the epilogue and what she's said in interviews, it seems like the wizarding world is exactly the same as it was after Voldemort's first defeat, with a few superficial changes.

Now, she spent six books showing how deep the scars from the first war against Voldemort went and how these laid the groundwork for his reemergence. See how unsatisfying it is then for her to have Harry wave his wand and *poof* the entire problem is gone?

This, added to what I was saying before about Harry not going through a hero's journey, just proves that the book isn't epic. Our main character is a soldier, not a hero; Voldemort was a dark wizard, not the dark wizard; the final fight was just one battle between good and evil. The wizarding world had Grindelwald before Voldemort; there will be another dark wizard in the future. It's not even a reactionary anti-epic, like the final season of "Angel." It looks like an epic…and then isn't, like somewhere along the way the story missed an exit.

In talking about this to people, I've heard it argued that of course Harry's world didn't change, it's a children's book. I haven't read a ton of children's fantasy series, so pipe in people if you know other examples, but look at Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King). It's been a while since I read them, but in The High King, things for the main characters changed a lot. Both this and HP7 have the coming of a great war, but Taran, who spent the entire previous book on a journey of self-discovery, travels through the land trying to raise an army, therefore confronting the people and seeing how the old ways of life are being lost. Harry, in contrast, spends the book camping in the woods and occasionally doing something daring. He only has superficial contact with what we are told are massive changes in the wizarding world—he's isolated.

At the end of The High King, all magic begins to fade from Prydain, echoing the end of Lord of the Rings. Taran decides to give up what he wants most to do his duty. You may be saying here—yes, but Harry decides to die because it's his duty, but the important thing is Taran makes his sacrifice after the battle is over. Both the Prydain Chronicles and the Lord of the Rings acknowledge that the real struggle is after the war is over, rebuilding everything into a better world. (There's a reason I've always thought of the Prydain Chronicles as training wheels for Lord of the Rings.) This makes everything poignant. I cried more when Fflewddur Fflam burned his lyre than for any of the deaths in HP7. And the Prydain Chronicles are definitely children's books.

Rowling is quite possibly one of the best line writers I've ever read. Her writing is far more fun and her world far more interesting to me than either Alexander's or Tolkien's. But what good is all that if it's in service of a story arc that's limp and predictable?

Which just leads me to ask—why did she choose not to write epic fantasy?

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. (Yes, I finished HP7 last night. It was okay. Not stellar, not awful, and a lot of "oh, didn't I mention this? Here!" going on, which I hate).

LotR is truly epic. The Prydain Chronicles (which I love!) are also epic. Potter isn't.

And yeah, it's partially because nothing's changed. But it's also because Harry isn't an epic hero. He doesn't *do* anything! Dumbledore set it all up and Harry just follows along with what he's told to do and prodded to do and manipulated to do. That's it! His one big epiphany is that his death could spare/save others, but so what? He never overcomes his own flaws, which are his stupidity, his recklessness, and his egotism.

I enjoy Rowling's other characters, particularly the Weasleys, but Harry has always been a waste of space--if not for the gender and age I'd wonder if he were a Mary Sue. The books would have been far stronger if they'd been told from Neville's POV, because Neville *is* a true hero. He overcomes his flaws and essentially saves the day. Potter just dances like a puppet on Dumbledore's strings.

And I doubt Rowling chose to write or not write epic fantasy. I don't think she's that flexible. She wrote what she wrote. And probably all she'll ever write. This story was in her, and now it's out, warts and all.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Yes, Dumbledore set things up and planned ahead, but it was still up to Harry to make the choices he did. Just because he pretty much always chose the right thing, which is what Dumbledore wanted and expected of him, doesn't invalidate the fact that he had a choice. I think he does overcome some of his flaws, and even if he doesn't, who says a hero can't be flawed? I think that one of the points of his character is that Harry doesn't think he's a hero. He doesn't want to be a hero. When people expect that of him, he tries to be what they want, but really he just wants to be happy, he wants to have a "normal" life (as normal as it can be with magic, that is). He wants a family. Sometimes all a person can do is react to the things that keep happening to him and do his best to make the right decisions and reach the best outcome. By the same Tolkien token, Frodo kind of followed a similar path (taken from a normal life, manipulated by a wizard, forced on a quest he didn't want), when you think about it, and everyone thinks he's a hero. When you get down to it, Frodo actually failed and Gollum saved the day by accident.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Except that Frodo chooses to go to Mount Doom by himself. That's not something anyone expected or set up, it's entirely him saying "I have to do this, but I want to spare my friends." Harry says something like this to Ron and Hermione at the end of book six but doesn't mean it, which is why he's easy to convince they should go with him. (Sam has to force Frodo to save him in order to go along). He also makes it all the way to that point and then fails, and yes Gollum saves him, but it's his own kindness from earlier coming back into play--if he'd killed Gollum he would have doomed them all.

Despite all this, I'm not saying Harry's a bad person. He clearly has good intentions and a good heart. He's an idiot, but that's because Rowling can't figure out how to plot with a smart main character. But he's definitely not an epic hero. Frodo is closer to one, and Aragorn is one, which is part of why LotR works as epic because you've got both Frodo and Aragorn, not to mention Merry and Pippin and Sam.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You seem pretty down on Rowling. "I don't think she's that flexible. She wrote what she wrote. And probably all she'll ever write." "...Rowling can't figure out how to plot with a smart main character." You make some good points--HP would have been a better series if the other characters had done more than support Harry, though they all have their moments. But we can compare and contrast plenty--Harry granted Dobby his freedom, which was an act of kindness all on his own, which later saved Harry's life and lost Dobby his own. But I think Gollum and Dobby have already had it out with each other...

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

"You seem pretty down on Rowling."
Never made any bones about it, either. :)
As I said above somewhere, I enjoy most of her characters. She does a very good job with their voices and personalities, and her setting is lovely and well-crafted. It's plotting she has problems with, particularly the idiot plot, the red herring, and the rabbit out of the hat. And it's those problems, plus her inability to prune her work and thus maintain a good fast pace, that prevent her from being a great writer. Obviously, the majority of the world disagrees with me, and that's fine. But hand me any one of her books and a red pen and you'd get back a far better book.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I agree with you 100%. I would go so far to say Harry is an insipid little puppet, and the series may have been wonderful without him. I think her world-building is fun and creative, albeit superficial. I love the rest of her characters--not because they're complex, but because they're great types that always work. And you know what? That's okay with me. She couldn't find her way out of a plot even with runway lights and blinking arrows, though, and there are a thousand more things that irritate me about the books than that I liked.

Honestly I think all the problems go back to Harry. He doesn't change, he doesn't grow, he doesn't evolve. "Growing up" to him means "learning Dumbledore's plan." As I mentioned earlier, a big thing for me about coming-of-age fantasies is that a critical part of becoming an adult is realizing that you have the capacity for horrible, awful, evil things. That sometimes what seems like the right thing to do is teh worst thing to do because you don't always have perspective to know the difference. And that great power is a great vulnerability. However at NO point does he understand ANY of those things. He wants to KILL Snape, he uses unforgiveable curses. When he uses the Imperio curse on that guy in Gringott's he remembers Bellatrix saying that you have to MEAN a curse like that for it to work, but he doesn't stop and think "Gee, maybe that means I mean it! Maybe that's JUST A LITTLE F***ED UP!" He has absolutely no danger of ever becoming evil (this is the brilliance of both Frodo and Luke Skywalker). He has a thousand parallels to Voldemort, except he's the "good" one and we get a nice reminder from time to time. And he never seems to make the wrong decision in a way that's actually dangerous or hurtful.

Another disappointment for me was that she set up Draco and Harry as huge parallels (including being pawns of a greater wizard) but Draco never amounts to anything. He fizzles out of the story, totally unremarkable.

And goddammit I wanted to see Neville kill Bellatrix.

Also: I would not argue that HP are children's books. The first three are. The rest are absolutely not.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Man, I'd forgotten about that imperious curse thing, but good point. What the hell? I mean, she could even have gone the easy route and explained it away as the bit of Voldemort in Harry making it possible for him to cast unforgivable curses but, no. He does it because it's expedient. The end. And though one of the imperioused was a death eater, the other was a completely innocent goblin! No excuse!

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Frodo also didn't get his normal happy life. That's what ticked me off more than anything. That the evil in Harry that he has worried so long about is surgically removed and he's fine. It's not even like he's a different or lesser or less complicated person--it's just that everything that he disliked about himself is whisked away without consequences.

Yes, Harry made choices and went on a journey, but his entire journey was necessitated by Dumbledore being secretive and he spends the whole time thinking "What Would Dumbledore Do"? And then to find out that everything that Harry chose was Dumbledore's plan all along? Not only is that seriously implausible, but it calls into question Harry's free will. If this is what Dumbledore wanted him to do, then he's tweaked Harry in just the right way to propel him to do it, which means that everything Harry's done is reactionary. She's shown us that Harry is easily manipulated, not that he's a hero. He never once makes a truly independent decision. Even when he thinks he is it turns out that Dumbledore anticipated that as well. Would it really have been so difficult for Harry to understand one thing that Dumbledore did not and choose one action that Dumbledore didn't foresee?

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

He never once makes a truly independent decision.

See above re: Harry freeing Dobby. I'm sure there are others.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

But his quest for the horcruxes, his quest for the hallows, and both confrontations with Voldemort at the end were perscribed by Dumbledore. So much of this book was about Dumbledore. When we weren't getting pages and pages of backstory we were getting Harry obsessing about him. For a dead character, he certainly took up a lot of space.

It's frustating to me that with his mentor dead Harry doesn't step up and say, "this is what must be done," he says, "this is what Dumbledore wants me to do." I see that as a serious flaw.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I actually have a previous post (http://ivy03.livejournal.com/278192.html) where I express my *hem* frustration at Harry not doing a damn thing for himself.

I'm not as anti-Harry as some; I don't mind that he's not the smartest or the bravest. I do mind his arrogance. I also mind that she made him greater than Dumbledore by bringing Dumbledore down, giving him flaws, and not by making Harry great.

Man, I'd love to see the Neville Longbottom series. Maybe in eighty years we'll get a play about it by Tom Stoppard a la Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

If she were writing epic fantasy, chances are I would have been less interested in the series. I was more engaged by the characters and their relationships, which came to a satisfying conclusion for me. I also think that Harry and the other students, and the people who play a role in the wizarding world, have undeniably been changed by their experiences--not all state changes need to be external. People comparing fantasy to Tolkien is why we have so many weak knock-offs of The Lord of the Rings. And just because in the grand scheme of things the world returned to a status quo, doesn't mean their struggle and subsequent victory over Voldemort was pointless.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

"Pointless" and "unsatisfying" are very different.
Sure, they won the day. Sure, they get to live happily ever after. But where are the scars? Where are the sweeping reforms? Where do we hear that Dementors are gone forever, that goblins and wizards have reached new accords, that centaurs have more rights, that house elves are free? All we see at the end is "aw, and they're together and they're together and they're together." It's too sappy, esp. after such a dark book--it undercuts the sacrifices other characters made by essentially hitting Reset.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

I agree that all of that should have been in the book, or at least implied a bit more strongly, especially since she has addressed most of those issues outside of the book in interviews. But I think she made a conscious choice (not necessarily a good one) to focus the ending on the characters. I think that at the heart of these books, the theme has always been about family, and sappy ending or no, she concludes it with a glimpse into their family lives: about Harry as a father, not an Auror. It mostly works for me, though I still wanted to know more of the aftermath--but mileage obviously varies.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of my problems with the book could have been addressed by another fifty pages at the end. After how many thousands of pages leading up to the epic battle, the closing was really brief, especially considering how long she spent on the endings of the other books. It certainly would have felt more satisfying. To meta a little, I think it really shows that the epilogue was written in 1990 before the rest of the book. She would have been well served by throwing it out and writing something more organic. It felt like she finished the fight with Voldemort and was like--done!

But that wouldn't fix my problems with Harry's lack of agency or the fact that the final battle was Harry talking for pages then casting one spell. Jesus christ. It's almost as bad a let down as the Sylar-Peter non-fight at the end of Heroes season 1.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that what happens at the end of Heroes? :P

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

That was vague and non-spoilery! If you've seen the show, you can guess. The only thing I've spoiled is that it sucks.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of high fantasy, but that's not what this is. I also don't think that the proliferation of bad imitations invalidates looking at Lord of the Rings for structural guidance. So many of the knock-offs are just imitating the surface (cloaks! and magic rings! and rangers and elves!) and not the underpinnings, which is what made all that work. He did a very good job of writing a classic epic story. I'm just baffled why Harry Potter didn't follow the classic storyline. You know how they say there are only two stories--well, she didn't write either of them.

To me, I've always liked Rowling's characters better, but her *poof* and everything is happy! ending made it impossible for me to be satisfied with just that. She has a ton of characters in play and it would have been difficult to give all of them their due, but I don't feel like she gave anyone a truly satisfying moment in the sun. It all felt like short shrift.

Perhaps this is a function of the brevity of the denouement, but I don't see any changes to the characters or the world, external or internal. I don't see Harry confronting his assumptions or wrestling with what he's gone through and I don't see the sea changes in the wizarding world I expected to see in their treatment of the muggle world. It felt very superficial and pat.

In the end it felt like the struggle with Voldemort was just very hard. And something simply being difficult isn't enough for me. You can tell me all you want how hard it was to accomplish something in a story but without seeing the emotional and character changes, I don't feel it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The problem, I find, is magic. Magic is the problem with fantasy. You compare this to Lord of the Rings, but there's not the same kind of magic to that as there is in Harry Potter. The problems you have seem all to relate to the problem of magic existing and providing caveats and deus ex machinas wheresoever an author wants it.

A lot of things should have been introduced earlier than they were in the series, but perhaps you'd have been better satisfied were she to have mentioned Grindelwald, in particular, much earlier. He was excised from the wizarding world without (so it appears) any lasting effects and he was supposed to be the second darkest wizard ever after Voldemort. This just points up to the flaw of the wizarding community which, funnily enough, likes to hide from itself as much as it hides itself from muggles. They might also be excuse for being less permanently distraught because they finally believe and know Voldemort to be gone for good, as opposed to his first "death" under strange circumstances.

I think, too, that you've got a point in that the ending needed more, a closure better than the paltry epilogue could provide it, but there was no space for it. Writing the aftermath would be less interesting than you think and also somewhat of an anticlimax (which is why so many people disliked the epilogue, methinks). You know what will happen, from the moment Voldemort dies.

And I still say that, while not being a hero per se, Harry does change. Without Voldemort breathing down his neck, Harry is suddenly free. There's a line in DH where he talks about Ginny getting married to someone else and how resentful he is that that someone else and she have the liberty of an unscripted future whereas his is all Voldemort, all the time. His entire world view is now changed, whether he and all the others completely recover from the battle or not.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

But that's an external change. He removes Voldemort, he removes the constraints on himself. He learns nothing.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If Rowling wouldn't keep contradicting her own ending, it would seem he does. Part of what Harry has to do to break the cycle of ambition for power is lead a normal life and stop jumping in to save people or start up trouble. His seeming banality in the good life is meant to affirm that. Rowling saying he went on to become an Auror....doesn't.