The Invisible Library

Colleen Mandor thinks Harry Potter Must Live:

I’m going to make a stand here and maybe some folks will consider me a colossal sap for feeling this way, but the Harry Potter books are written for children and I think that children, especially 21st century children, deserve a happy ending every now and again. Rowling says there need to be more deaths so readers will realize they are dealing with “pure evil”. Well, I think we all figured out the bad guy was really bad when we read that he killed Harry’s parents or uses Ginny Weasley with intentions to kill her or kills Cedric or causes Sirius Black to die in battle or Dumbledore to die or even horribly uses poor Draco (a brat but not necessarily on his way to total evilhood until pushed over the edge by parents and Voldemort) and on and on.

We get it Rowling - trust me - everyone who reads these books gets the bit about evil.

So why do more major characters have to sacrifice themselves in order for Rowling to feel like she’s gotten her point? And more than that, why do children have to experience death at the youngest age (even in their literature) in order to grow up right? Why do we all have to be exposed to it as early as possible? Why do we have to understand that one day our parents will be gone, our friends might be in horrendous accidents, cancer will come, airplanes will crash, it all will end sadly or badly or both.

Why do we have to accept this at the age of 8?

[…] Some of us still need happy endings, you see.

Good does win sometimes, it does beat the bad guys, it does come out on top. And I can’t help but think that if Rowling kills off Harry it won’t be because it’s best for the story but because she has a message she wants to get across and she will use him to do it. In fact, I can’t help but think that she will be taking the easy way out and letting down her fans in the process if all the dire predictions about Harry come to pass.

But honestly, don’t we get enough death and destruction without it reaching into all our favorite books as well? (If you need to cry and rage at the world just go read Old Yeller.) And Harry Potter means the world to so many kids - so very very very many kids. Why teach them the harshest kind of lesson just to make a point (and make a bunch of adult critics happy?). Why can’t Rowling be truly brave and let Harry and his friends live? Why can’t she be bold and give them a happily ever after?

Link via Bookslut

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.