So, Harry Potter survives after all. The Boy who Lived, comes through in the end , against all the odds, vanquishing the dreaded Dark Lord, winning his lady love and settling down to a long and peaceful life dedicated to rearing kids, apparating between a 8 to 5 job , growing tubers in his garden on weekends perhaps….all in all, comfortable in the security of relative oblivion, with his family, friends, and memories of his heroic deeds . All this at the cost of a few, probably disposable, friends and allies ( possibly to keep a somber mood).
Isn’t that what everyone wanted…hordes of youngsters, adults, and greybeards alike had been pleading with Ms Rowling for the best part of 2 years, yearning for that ‘lived happily ever after….good conquering evil- love conquering hate’ ending. So are we satisfied? The majority , I do not doubt are, including the redoubtable author, to whom, if for nothing else, I doff my hat yet again for a brilliant narration and some genuinely fantastic creativity. The book , no doubt, will beat all previous collections by some margin, especially now that the people have been given the ending that they evidently craved.
Ah, but after all the hullaballo ,how so incredibly human and predictable a finale. Would children world over, have been able to sleep at night if it was Harry who had come out worse in the final struggle with his evil nemesis. What comfort would the people trapped in this misenchanted isle of daydreams called humanity have found if for once ‘good’ had failed to prevail over ‘evil’. What answers would Rowling have provided her legions of fans if , as Dumbledore called it , if Harry’s greatest weapon, his power to love, had come up miserably short against the malice of Voldemort.
For me Rowling had in her hands, the veritable chalice to creative immortality of a kind scarce attained , if she’d chosen to end her tale in a kind of equilibrium more suited to reality. Most of her characters were either too black or white , and the amount of white left unscathed at the end , made the whole scenario so bright, it hurt the eyes. Ah, for an ending like Tolkien’s masterpiece - “The Silmarillion”, which I consider , philosophically if not creatively (The Lord of the Rings has to come first in that regard) the most defining in the entirety of creative fantasy. Even the LotR, for its seemingly glorious finale, conveys a more than subtle gloom the very end to those who could discern it, in the form of the final waning of the firstborn in Middle-earth and the passing of the last remnants of the Eldar over the sea.
Without a doubt, as the years have numbered , the sheer mystique of literary characters has lessened considerably. Is it merely the power of the market that makes otherwise endowed authors mellow their characters and creations, or is it a tedious change into the well trodden path of memetic humanoid ‘values and social systems’. Can we possibly dream of a modern day Heathcliff, for me, the most fascinating character in all Literature, or say a Hamlet, a Dorian Gray …or even a Holmes ,with his single mindedly calculated and wonderfully unemotive persona.
Oh, for a tale akin to Orwell’s chilling 1984 or the equally memorable tale of Atticus Finch and his children.
Why do we so ardently seek escape in the form of perfection as envisaged by our culturally branded philosophies of good and bad….is it because reality has little, if anything to offer, at all ? Or perhaps, we are cocooned so securely and irrevocably in our little shells built built right from the times of childhood cathecism, that anything to the contrary seems well nigh unthinkable and outrageously blasphemous.
Is there one out there, to give us a welcome throwback to the days of old…the days when Charlotte Bronte remarked of her own sister’s creation… “I scarce think it is wise to create a character like Heathcliff…”, is there one to challenge the incumbent orthodoxy that humanity so comfortably seems to have slipped in….for me, in the present day, Gaiman with his wonderfully subdued hero Morpheus, is the only one who perwades beyond the tried and tested regimens of human acceptance…..Robert Jordan too seemed a likely contender, but he has let the narration meander far too long ; still it will be interesting to see what he has in store for Ran al’Thor and the rest of the cast of “The Wheel of Time”
……as for Potter, wishing him the best of a human life.
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2 comments:
I agree with you, but only to an extent.
Harry Potter was launched as a CHILDREN'S book - a very cunning masala of all our childhood faves.
There's the hostel life element (as with Billy Bunter, St. Clare series, Malory Towers series etc.), there's the magic and mystery element (The Magic Faraway Tree series, the Wishing Chair series, Noddy and so many other fairy tales), there's the young sleuth team element (Famous Five, Five Findouters etc.) and even some sports through quidditich (reminded me of Biggles' flying escapades).
Of course, as the series progressed, Rowling's stories started becoming more suited to more mature audiences. Yet, Harry Potter, while very enjoyable, is at its heart a children's series.
Harry Potter cannot be thought of as a good representative of contemporary literature. It isn't in the same league as anything by Tolkien and is radically different from the hidden religious agenda of CS Lewis (the two authors most frequently compared to Rowling).
If you want a Hamlet, a Dorian Gray or Heathcliff, you need to be looking elsewhere...
Read some Harold Pinter (good plays), some JM Coetzee (Disgrace is a great book), some Robertson Davies (The cunning man - it's about a doctor), some Chuck Palahnuik (of Fight-Club fame) and so on. Palahnuik's characters are about as dark as they get...
In fact a lot of contemporary writing is very dark. I'm referring to serious fiction, not bollywood-style books like Shantaram or Kite Runner (though these are good reads too).
Even comedies today, maybe especially comedies, are rather dark - even something as tame as David Sedaris exposes plenty of the dark underbelly of society. Kurt Vonnegut, though not dark, was an interesting combination of an idealist and cynic. Even though over time his works get repetitive, he was an amazing author and through various novels was able to explain evil and good as not being all that different after all. In fact, he would often write one novel where a character was like a villain (e.g. Howard Campbell in Slaughterhouse five) and in the next (Howard Campbell in Mothernight), the same character would end up being like a hero.
Moreover, literature is no longer the dominant narrative art form in today's world. It's in movies (and rap lyrics) that we see the most darkness...
Starting from the classics of film noir (Sunset Boulevard) to something as deceptively sweet yet ugly as Felicia's journey... there's plenty of grayness and darkness... whether it be a tale of a few friends (Mystic River) or a story based on as cataclysmic an event as the world war (Letters from Iwo Jima), there's plenty that will leave you with a taste so bitter and yet so real that you'll crave for more while still recovering from choked emotions. In fact it's the darkness and tragedy that's often become predictable. Of course there's only so much a movie can do - Hannibal can never become a Heathcliff - despite all the prequels and sequels (that comparison above gives me the creeps - Heathcliff is no monster...) and yet, well sketched dark and grey movie characters have become immortal, just like their literary counterparts.
Honestly, I miss feel-good, happy tales (yay for Harry Potter!). I won't deny it - occasionally, I like escapism in movies and literature. I've seen numerous "romantic movies" and "romantic comedies" over the last few months (do NOT ask why I've been seeing so many romantic movies) and sadly, even some of these movies that reviewers say will bring a smile to your face etc. aren't real comedies - they don't have unambiguously happy endings (e.g. Waitress – sweet movie, yet weirdly grey)...
On a side note, the best romantic feel-good movie I’ve seen in a long while is ‘In July’ – who woulda thunk it - Germans can also make romance!
On another, more important, side note, I recommend the Irish move 'Once' very, very highly. 'Once' also has an amazing soundtrack - simply brilliant.
I'm so glad I can go back to watching movies like Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar every once in a way!
i agree with above...Potter is indeed for just children and is amalgam of fairy tales from ukraine to grimms, from blyton to lewis ...it is just a melting pot of all of them with a very very good publicist...potter books are meant for 7th graders and should stay as such.
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