'He was never free.'

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being the final book of the Potter septet, is perhaps Rowling's finest work, written at the peak of her literary power.

In this post, my aim will be to contrast what I see as the dramatic success of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows as a book, and the dramatic failure of the film adaptation. Chiefly I shall focus on what I should like to call the 'quiet climaxes' of The Deathly Hallows; three moments in the book the importance of which to the plot are pivotal, but which are not spectacular, so to speak.

Of course The Deathly Hallows is a book the pacing of which is excellent, and which is also tense, exciting, and literally spectacular; the menace of Voldemort and of death leavens the whole work. Critics who disparage the part of the book in which Harry, Ron and Hermione travel fruitlessly across Britain seem to forget that it consists of but two chapters and just over thirty pages, just over one-twentieth of the book; this suggests that, far from the pace flagging, Rowling's use of pacing is masterly given that she is able to create such an impression with so small a segment of the work.

To return to the 'quiet climaxes', there are, I believe, three such moments in the book; I shall describe them in greater detail below. As I said above, these three moments are pivotal to the plot of the book, and, what is more, are immensely important in terms of developing or representing the character of the agents. They are also, in addition, aesthetically excellent. The film version, on the whole, does not adapt all of them uniformly well, and it is my contention that the films suffer dramatically as a result. I should note that I will be providing any details I deem necessary to explicate my point, so you may wish to avoid reading this post if you have not read The Deathly Hallows in its entirety.

On we go! Or, as Dumbledore said in The Half-Blood Prince (HBP3, 59), 'let us... pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.'

Dumbledore's Man Through and Through

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the theme of loyalty is an important one, and, sadly, it is omitted in the film, for Rufus Scrimgeour does not appear in it, nor do many scenes between Harry and Dumbledore, nor does much of his questioning of Snape's loyalty, nor his disagreement with Ron and Hermione about where Draco Malfoy's loyalties now lie (with respect to the latter the film pretty much tells us flat out what he is doing; a dramatic necessity, perhaps, given restrictions of length, but again, omitting much of Rowling's genius in plotting and in leaving subtle clues and hints for the reader to enjoy and savour).

It is my intention in this post, then, to explore what I believe to be one of the chief themes of The Half-Blood Prince; namely, the theme of loyalty. If anything, of course, Harry's loyalty to Dumbledore is sorely tried more in The Deathly Hallows than in The Half-Blood Prince, but, if loyalty be a virtue, it is one which Harry had to learn as a habit in The Half-Blood Prince (not that he hadn't already demonstrated loyalty to Dumbledore; see The Chamber of Secrets) in order to remain loyal to the Headmaster and carry on the struggle under the most trying and difficult of circumstances in the last volume of the series.

The edition from which I will be quoting is the Raincoast/Bloomsbury edition of 2005. For those of you who wish to read the passages I quote for yourselves but have a different edition of the book, I will include the chapter from which the quotation was taken, using the abbreviation HBP (indicating Half-Blood Prince), followed by the number of the chapter; thus, for example, the first quotation is from the first chapter, and so is noted as 'HBP1'. This form of noting the chapter I am taking from the Harry Potter Lexicon, which is an excellent reference and resource. Needless to say, I will freely discuss what happens in the book, so if you haven't read it, proceed no further.

The Wizarding World in The Order of the Phoenix

In my last post about a Harry Potter book, I wrote that:

[o]ne of the most enjoyable aspects of The Goblet of Fire... is the discovery of the wider wizarding world, to which Harry has been (despite his importance as the Boy Who Lived) a peripheral figure, and which has a life and energy of its own apart from Harry and Hogwarts.

The unfolding of the broader wizarding world, especially the Ministry for Magic, is likewise a source of enjoyment of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Whereas in my post on The Goblet of Fire changed focus to look at Barty Crouch, Sr., as a tragic or semi-tragic figure, in this post my focus will be on the use of virtue in the wizarding world. As we shall see, virtue is not in every case good, or agreed-upon. Much of the conflict between Dumbledore and his Order and Fudge and the Ministry has to do with what virtues are most important, what constitutes virtuous behaviour, and to whom one owes the duty of being virtuous.

First, I need to set the stage briefly by looking back at the events of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Tragedy in the Goblet of Fire

If J. K. Rowling had written Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as a tragedy, the protagonist would not be Harry Potter, but Barty Crouch, Sr.

Now, upon investigation, the story of Barty Crouch, Sr., does not follow the Aristotelean definition of tragedy; still, I think there is no question that Crouch is a tragic figure, at least if tragedy is loosely understood.

I want to explore the tragic story of the Crouch family because upon further reading of and reflection upon The Goblet of Fire I believe that it is this story that drives the plot. It is in many ways one of the most important elements of the book, and the degenerate form which it took in the film was a weakness. Barty Crouch, Sr., became a timid old fart; and Barty Crouch, Jr., a cardboard nutjob with a tic. One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Goblet of Fire (the book, I mean) is the discovery of the wider wizarding world, to which Harry has been (despite his importance as the Boy Who Lived) a peripheral figure, and which has a life and energy of its own apart from Harry and Hogwarts. The story of the Crouches is part of that world.

Dumbledore's epitaph on Barty Crouch, Jr. is applicable in part to his father: 'see what that man chose to make of his life! [p, 615]' We shall see how essential the tragedy of Barty Crouch, Sr., is to the plot of The Goblet of Fire, how the Crouch family dynamics and relationships implied or discussed in the book imitate, in however fantastic a way, those of ordinary families, and what lesson, if lesson there is, we can take from the example of the Crouches.

How Not to be Virtuous: Wormtail

I'm not going to remark upon the use of time travel in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Captain Kathryn Janeway, of Star Trek: Voyager, once said that thinking about time travel gave her a headache. Puzzling it out certainly gives me one. I'd be interested to see if the Harry Potter and Philosophy book has an essay on the subject.

Nor am I going to write about identity and the distinction between appearance and reality with regard to it, as I did for The Chamber of Secrets, even though that sub-theme is even more prominent (and with all those shape-shifters in The Prisoner of Azkaban, even more confusing).

What I am going to scribble in the margins about is how Peter Pettigrew - Wormtail - fails to display virtue.

The Heir of Slytherin

The question of identity is of paramount importance in the Harry Potter series.

In each book, Harry himself undergoes the process of discovering his identity. This process is long, arduous, and dangerous; indeed, answering the question, 'Who is Harry Potter?', takes all seven books to do and changes the wizarding world.

The nature of identity is at the root of problems for a lot of other characters. The crisis (krisis, to make it less hyperbolic) of every person in his or her teens is to make sense of one's identity, and how a person's identity is formed in childhood and adolescence goes a long way toward determining what kind of person he or she'll be as an adult.

Books one through three, and book five, probably have the most to do with identity, especially Harry's identity. The Goblet of Fire, it may be said, is the book which identifies the Ministry of Magic for what it truly is, while The Half-Blood Prince is in large part about Voldemort's identity, and The Deathly Hallows Dumbledore's.

Of the books which focus on Harry's identity, The Prisoner of Azkaban is probably the best in that regard. But I want to look at the question of identity in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. One weakness of The Philosopher's Stone, it may be said, is its occasional clumsiness with regard to the matter of identity. The uncovering of Quirrell as the real villain attempting to steal the Stone is not well handled, compared to nearly every revelation of a similar nature in the rest of the series, and in some respects Harry's discovery that he is a wizard is treated superficially. On the other hand, The Philosopher's Stone has some keenly felt and superbly written passages on the need to feel belonging (a yearning most poignant in Harry's case), such as the following:

A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you're very nervous [notice the clumsy authorial interjection]. What if he wasn't chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train [p. 90]?

One almost believes that Rowling consulted widely among eleven-year-old boys for this passage, because Harry's anxiety could hardly be put better, from a boy's perspective. Those of us who are grown-up would not think about our fear of rejection in such basic terms, but this passage (except for the phrase beginning with 'as horrible thoughts') is a piece of perfect characterisation.

What I specifically wish to treat in The Chamber of Secrets is the sub-theme (under identity) of appearance versus reality. A person (or situation; but my focus will be on people) will appear or seem to be one thing, but will really be another. The Chamber of Secrets is in many ways the liminal book of the series. Had Rowling been unable to master her treatment of identity in The Chamber of Secrets, I question whether she would have been able to complete the series at all (and certainly the remaining five books would have been the poorer for it, even if the series were completed).

So, we'll examine some of the characters in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and discover how Rowling handles writing about their identity, particularly as it relates to appearance versus reality.

The Boy Who Lived

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

So reads the first sentence of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the book, published in 1997, which began Pottermania, a phenomenon which has yet to run its course; if it subsides, it will be following the release of the second half of the film version of The Deathly Hallows (in 2011) and the official Potter encyclopaedia which J. K. Rowling plans to publish.