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| Page 6 | Book Reviews - Children & Young Adults |
July 2005 |
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| Page 6 | Book Reviews - Children & Young Adults |
July 2005 |
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DVDs - Various
Harry Potter and
The Half-Blood Prince
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By Alidë Kohlhaas The long wait for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is over. The book has been in the hands of millions of fans, young and old, for more than two weeks. After a conversation with several of these fans, it becomes clear that for most of them Book Seven cannot come soon enough. One of many reasons is that J. K. Rowling produced a riddle, or better said, a mystery toward the end of the novel that Harry must solve on his own. She introduced an unknown character. Obviously, Book Seven will hold the answer. Rowling has proved herself once again a master at building suspense, creating tension, and leading her readers along a merry — and not so merry — chase that ends up in quite a different place than expected. In the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter makes his appearance belatedly in Chapter Three. First the reader is taken to No. 10 Downing Street where the prime minister has a meeting with Cornelius Fudge from the Ministry of Magic. Not only has subversive war broken out in the world of the wizards, but He Who Must Not Be Named, a.k.a. Lord Voldemort, a.k.a. Tom Riddle, has also declared war on the muggle* world. The Dementors have abandoned guarding the wizard prison, Azkaban, and have instead joined the evil Voldemort in his quest to let the dark forces rule supreme; Fudge also suspects that giants have joined this group along with the hoard of Death Eaters, who escaped from Azkaban in the early part of the year. So, the prime minister has to be appraised of the facts. It seems this is not the first time that Fudge, and those who preceded him at the ministry, have had such meetings over the years with British prime ministers. It is a daring twist by Rowling to add this to the Harry Potter epic, and in view of the terrorist attacks on London only nine days before the release of The Half-Blood Prince, it seems almost prescient. What must have come to young readers' minds when they heard that Kings Cross Station, where Harry and his friends catch their train to Hogwarts at Platform 9¾, was one of the targets of the July 7 terrorist attacks? In Chapter Two we meet two sisters, Narcissa and Bellatrix, the former the mother of Harry's school nemesis, Draco Malfoy, the latter the killer of Sirius Black, Harry's guardian. Bellatrix's act, of course, stunned readers in The Order of the Phoenix. The two women are on a mission that ends with someone making an Unbreakable Vow. This vow sets the stage for what will happen at the end of the novel. The result will force Harry to face life very much alone and unprotected. Chapter Three finally introduces Harry, who is waiting for Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts. Harry is in his room at Privet Drive, and the professor is late. The Dursleys make only a brief appearance in this chapter in which they are being asked to allow Harry to return just once more to their home to wait out his 17th birthday after the end of his sixth year at Hogwarts. Once 17, the magic that protected him from Voldemort during all the miserable years Harry spent on Privet Drive, will cease to exist. As Harry tells Hermione and Ron on the final page, "I'm going back to the Dursleys' once more, because Dumbledore wanted me to . . . [B]ut it'll be a short visit, and then I'll be gone for good." While The Order of the Phoenix had its dark moments, The Half-Blood Prince is not just dark but takes on a gloomy, foreboding tone that lifts only now and then, just as the seemingly endless — created by the multiplication of the Dementors — lifts now and then over not only Hogwarts, but over all of England. The story appears to move away from the Faustian aspect of the very early stories. It becomes clear now that Voldemort cannot be seen as having made a pact with a Mephistophelian figure, a pact that offers a chance for redemption, just as Faust found at the end of his life. Voldemort, perhaps in the fashion of a self-centered, self-focused sociopath, has made a pact only with himself because he is a loner and trusts no one. He is not interested in redemption because he feels omnipotent. We learn that from his earliest years he had the certainty that he was different from others, but being unable to love, he used his unusual gifts to create only pain and havoc. He was attracted, even as a child, to the forbidden dark arts, rather than to the benevolent aspects of wizardry. Harry, of course, also realized that there was something different about him, but his acts of magic were generally accidental, and never meant to do harm. Harry, as we soon learn through the progress of the epic, is able to love, to trust, and to be loyal. Whatever he has in common with his enemy is thereby mitigated and makes him a positive force in this tale. There is, however, another character in The Half-Blood Prince, who may be considered as having made a Faustian pact with Voldemort. We cannot reveal who this is because we do not want to give a way the story. Just what this character hopes to gain from Voldemort for making this pact will perhaps be revealed in the next book, and whether redemption is possible. If this is a pact solely to seek revenge on those for past grievances or for stifled ambitions, it is a poor pact, indeed, and the rewards will be short-lived. All I can say is that this character is the one who made the 'Unbreakable Vow'. In the Half-Blood Prince, Harry learns the deeper truths about Voldemort with Dumbledore's help by looking into the headmaster's Pensieve, the chalice that allows collected memories to become visible to those who immerse themselves in its spiraling vapors. Voldemort's aim is immortality, and his desire is to rule with bitter cruelty. He has come close to achieving this by dividing his soul into many slivers with multiple acts of murder, each murder cleaving his soul into yet another part. One sliver of his soul he has retained in his body to keep him alive, while the others are hidden in horcruxes. In Book Seven it will be Harry's task to find these horcruxes and destroy them. Only then will he be able to vanquish the killer of his parents, and the evil force behind the deaths of all of those who in one way or another had been his protectors and confidants. There is, of course, the mystery about the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, who gave Book Six its title. One may be led to believe that it is Voldemort, but Rowling cleverly hides the Prince's identity to almost the very end of the book. The revelation of this identity will come as quite a shock to the reader. One cannot help but admire how the author has assembled a kind of literary jigsaw puzzle in her books, with pieces slowly coming together to form a tale that gives readers just enough to help them understand yet another aspect of its many pieces, yet also pushes them forward to want to read the next installment for a final denouement. The struggle between Voldemort, aided by his loyal Death Eaters, and the good forces within not just the world of the wizards but humankind in general, is in part driven by the ferocious desire of Voldemort and that of his followers to free the wizards' world of all those who are not "pure blood" wizards, of the half-bloods like Harry, or of Hermione, who is wholly of muggle origins. This aspect of Rowling's tale finds its echo not so much in the classical past, even if her story can be said to have now taken on a kind of Miltonian tone. It might seem to many readers of the earlier books that Paradise Lost is being provoked. Yet, the character of Voldemort has more recent echoes: Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao come to mind. But, the one who truly fits the role is from a period that ended 60 years ago. Whether intentionally or not, Rowling gives the young readers—and maybe even some older ones — insight into the machinations of the Nazis. This political anomaly ruled Germany for 12 years with the same ferocious, singularly evil, and wholly self-absorbed and pathological certainty that allowed it to seek to free not just the German Reich (empire), but the whole world of those its adherents deemed undesirables: members of the Jewish faith or those with Jewish ancestry, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs, and those with politically different views then themselves, or strong Christian values. It is interesting to observe that Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, may well have been not so much a half-blood, but a quarter-blood himself as the origins of his maternal grandfather are unknown. At least one of Hitler's confidants, Poland's governor Hans Frank, while awaiting the hangman after the Nuremberg trials, claimed that the unknown grandfather was Jewish. Another anti-Semite, who nevertheless frequented Jewish artists when he needed them, was composer Richard Wagner. There are indications that his stepfather — his mother's second husband — was actually Wagner's father. That stepfather, an artist, was Jewish. Was this one of the reasons for Wagner's desire to promote Germanic legends that led to his creation of operas based on Nordic sagas, and for his strong nationalism? Did he want to prove his 'German-ness'? Is Rowling telling us that half-bloods often despise part of themselves and try to promote those aspects of their ancestry they find more desirable at the expense of the one they despise? It is something to ponder. What is certain, is that The Half-Blood Prince is a novel in the truest sense, which sees Harry Potter hurled suddenly into adulthood. He only has a short interlude in which he can indulge with his friends happy moments of growing out of puberty, and of falling in love — not the infatuated kind we met in The Order Of The Phoenix — before he has to make choices that mark him a young man at the tender age of 16. For young children, who loved the first few Harry Potter books, The Half-Blood Prince may be a tough read. I, for one, would suggest that parents take the time to read this book so they can help their youngsters to cope with the dark aspects of the novel, with yet another death that comes hurtling unexpectedly like a thunderbolt out of a blue sky, and the sacrifice that Harry must make at the end to ensure that those he loves will not be harmed. These are tough subjects to cope with for those younger than 12 or 13. It has to be emphasized that what makes Harry Potter so appealing to readers is that his world, though dwelling in the realm o fantasy, is no different from the everyday world of ordinary humans. Young readers are invariably able to identify with Harry and his friends, with their school adventures, with their hopes and dreams, and with their ever increasing responsibilities as they mature from young children into young adults. Those, who know England, will recognize that Harry's world is very much that of everyday English life. And for religious doubters, led me point out that at Hogwarts Christmas is celebrated in true English style. At the same time, the more mature readers can make the leap from England to their own surroundings, wherever they may live. That is what makes a novel great: a great read and a great story that finds an echo in everyday life. The Harry Potter books must, therefore, surely be considered as having already joined other great works of young adult literature such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, and The Narnia Chronicles, to mention just a few. *Go to www.mugglenet.com for a dictionary of Harry Potter words and phrases |
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