HBP thoughts three months later.

[amanuensis1]

What will my reaction be to Half-Blood Prince after the last book?

I still feel like the series peaked at OotP for me. Every volume has felt better than the last except for this last one--I'm still wigged that anyone, Rowling included, believes that Snape's motives are ambiguous, justifying leaving Harry in suspense at the conclusion of this book. I found Harry and Dumbledore's pensieve jaunts puzzlingly expository, and was waiting--am still waiting--to find out what was going on during those. Tom Riddle's history could have been related in two pages; what the heck happened in those pensieve jaunts that made them so crucial? I want there to have been more motivation on Dumbledore's part than exposition, or the idea that Harry had to see those moments for himself to gain understanding of Voldemort and of himself. It's not enough.

I loved the main plot of the book, the main plot being the Half-Blood Prince. Did I know who it was? Hell, no. The concept that "Prince" was a last name never crossed my mind--even when Hermione brought it up I couldn't see how that fit in. I didn't get it until I saw the chapter title "Flight of the Prince."

But I still believed that Slughorn gave him that book deliberately. Bah.

Will the last book draw it all back together for me? Will those unanswered questions finally fall into place? Or will I be happier admitting that HBP was the weak moment in the series for me and let it be?

Comments

[telepwen.livejournal.com]

It's just that when working within the message she wants to convey... it's taking two steps forward and forty steps back.

Sure, I get the whole thing within the story. Within, it's ballsy, it's great. (Except that it screws up so much good fanfic, but that's besides the point. Our bad for guessing wrong.) Without the story, though--when you start looking at it as a device--it not only doesn't help, it hinders.

It suddenly shows a man who is only what his ancestry made of him. Inbred and evil. Sure, it explains a lot. But, if we continue with this interpretation, we see that Harry grew up into a fairly well-balanced and kind boy because of good genes rather than through any choices he made. Draco is a power-hungry shit because he comes from a family of power-hungry shits.

All right, so I do want to give Draco a hug, but we're trying to stay within JKR's perception of canon here, she doesn't even see what a rich character she's created in Draco, and doesn't see that Harry ain't so well-balanced and kind as all that. But I digress.

It's frustrating as all get out that she's forgotten her own themes.

[catherinecookmn.livejournal.com]

No, she hasn't.

Remember the end of CoS? And why Harry didn't turn nasty like Voldemort? "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Look at Draco. Look at Sirius. Look at Snape. Look at Harry.

They were all raised in situations that should have made them irredeemably nasty. Instead, JKR shows that they are, in fact, redeemable if they choose to be. Voldemort's situation was nowhere near as bad as Harry's, for instance. But he chose to be bad.

[telepwen.livejournal.com]

(I'm also wondering how McTabby got brought into this. Where did I mention her or suggest that she was soft-pedalling anything?)

With that out of the way...

Tom finds out what his ancestry is pretty early on. He meets Morfin, even, when he's still a teen. He sees the pit that his family comes from. He sees it, he scorns it, and he moves on. And then he becomes it.

So the good guys can overcome their pasts, but the bad guys can't? Is that what makes someone a bad guy, then, is following familial traditions? (At this point, I'm seriously playing Devil's Advocate. I think you made a fantastic point.)

[catherinecookmn.livejournal.com]

HBP is actually a reinforcement of her biggest theme: That it is our choices that make us what we are. Not our genes, not our upbringing, but our choices. I personally think she is selling environmental influences short, but that's just me.

And that makes me think not so much of Snape, but of Wormtail: He could have chosen one way, but he chose another. Why? And will he repent his choice?

Note Rowling's contempt for astrology, as expressed through Firenze and also by her in interviews, IIRC. Why? Because she doesn't want people saying "well, of course Voldemort went bad, he's a Capricorn". She apparently feels that denies the power of choice and free will.

Note how Dumbledore tells Harry that the vaunted Prophecy -- the thing that was given such weight in OoP -- only has meaning because Voldemort thinks it does. Again, Voldemort's own choice -- not "destiny" -- made Harry into his chosen bane. I'd been wondering why JKR spent so much time setting up that red herring in OoP only to smack it down in HBP. Now I understand -- I think.

Note her refusal to give Voldemort what to her might seem the "easy out" of a childhood more difficult than Harry's (while Tom had no parents, he also didn't have the Dursleys, and the orphanage staff did their honest if imperfect best to care for the sprogs, so Harry beats Tom hands down in that department). Hell, Sirius grew up in Pureblood Dark Wizard Central, for all intents and purposes, and he didn't go bad. He never really grew up, but he didn't go bad.

Do I necessarily agree with JKR in all of this? Again, no. But so much of what she's done in the books only makes sense when you look at the prominence she gives to free will over pretty much everything else.

[telepwen.livejournal.com]

*nods* I shall have to attempt to assimilate your argument into my argument and see what comes out after I let it simmer for a few days.