Magic

[andrewducker]

communicator makes a very insightful summation of Harry Potter here:

The idea of Harry Potter is that the story portrays a bad world, which the p.o.v. character takes as a good world. Harry in book 1 is rescued from an abusive family life into a world where he is a celebrity, and has power. What could possible go wrong? The reader, and to some extent Harry, realise over the course of the series that this is actually a world which is sick - not just with the infection of the death eaters, but with ingrained class and race prejudice, judicial torture, official lies, indifference to suffering. I think fans who read it as a portrait of a healthy, lovely, magical world are quite mistaken.

And this is one of the things I've been enjoying more and more as the series progresses - it's about the journey to adulthood, and realising that the world isn't "good" or "evil", but just full of people.  Order of the Phoenix did a good job of showing that Harry's Dad and his friends (who Harry effectively worshipped) weren't necessary all that nice, and Half Blood Prince managed to make me feel sorry for the young Voldemort.

Comments

[theferrett.livejournal.com]

I like that a lot, I really do.

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

Actually I think that this is intentional on the author's part - the world is not ideal, it's different. Certainly more colorful, but also a hell of a lot more dangerous.

The best way I put it, I think, was in a discussion of Snape. The Wizarding World is a place where people weild great power, and thus the chance of death, destruction, and accident-by-misfortune are much higher. Better an abusive but smart teacher than a kind but ignorant one - because in the Wizarding World, ignorance is death.