I have written over and over again on the subject of how hard I find it to read The Order of the Phoenix. This is a gloomy, claustrophobic novel in which no one... and I mean no one... behaves well.
Of course, the antagonists -- Dolores Umbridge, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge, even Percy Weasley, Voldemort -- are insufferable. That's to be expected.
But even the so-called "good guys" are not at their best.
Mundungus Fletcher leaves his post and permits Harry to be attacked by Dementors.
Sirius Black is childish and moody throughout most of the book. putting his own unhappiness ahead of the interests of his godson, Harry.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley treat the teenagers like toddlers and refuse to let them in on what's going on with the Order of the Phoenix. Further, they fail entirely to prepare Harry adequately for the trial at the Ministry.
Professor McGonagall seems oblivious to Harry's suffering while at Hogwarts, continually chastising him for letting Umbridge upset him rather than helping him, counseling him on why his suffering is necessary and how he can better endure it.
Professor Dumbledore's behaviour is inexplicably abhorrent. He literally abandons Harry in his hour of need and leaves Harry to suffer the horrors of Umbridge without any support whatsoever. Okay, Dumbledore worries that Voldemort will use the connection between his mind and Harry's to try to spy on Dumbledore so the Headmaster doesn't want to interact with Harry face to face... but why not send him a series of letters, explaining the concerns, outlining what's happening and guiding him as to how to proceed?
You would think that, through all this, Ron and Hermione at least would behave appropriately. But Ron spends the book caught up in his own Quidditch-inspired malaise while Hermione... well, Hermione is awe-inspiring in her insipidness.
Every time the young people get a chance to speak to an Order member and obtain much needed reassurance and guidance, Hermione loses focus completely and goes off on Elf-rights tangents. She knows Harry is desperate for counsel from Sirius and yet, when Harry's godfather appears one evening in the common room fire, Hermione makes the whole, time-limited interaction about how Sirius shouldn't be taking risks and how Sirius should be treating Kreacher better.
It doesn't seem to occur to her that Harry really really really needs to talk to his godfather.
Sirius' own petulant pouting during that conversation is also way over the top.
Hermione is at her worst in Umbridge's Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. While Harry must be faulted for his own inability to control his temper in the face of the obnoxious Ministry hag, Hermione is the one who set matches to gasoline by challenging Umbridge in not one but two consecutive classes.
What is she thinking? What can she possibly be thinking? Hermione is smart enough to understand that the only way she, Harry and the rest of the students can possibly survive Umbridge and the Minister's interference is to keep their heads down and stay quiet. Yet, she goes out of her way to create conflict and confrontation and then has the unmitigated gall to admonish Harry for getting caught up in the fire she herself has created.
There are times I wonder if J.K. Rowling went too far in this book, if she let the narratorial imperative of isolating and abusing Harry in the first half of the novel cause her to undermine the consistency of her carefully established central characters.
The fact of the matter is, Dumbledore is not the insensitive clod that he is portrayed as in The Order of the Phoenix; Hermione is smarter and more sensible than the character who appears in this book.
It is possible that, in her understandable campaign to put Harry into a terrible, lonely, vulnerable and suffering situation in his fifth year at Hogwarts, Rowling lost track of who her characters really are?
Showing posts with label Cornelius Fudge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cornelius Fudge. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Friday, June 10, 2016
Umbridge a Death Eater?
This will show you how really attentive a reader I am -- I just realized, as I re-read the first chapter of The Order of the Phoenix for the 20-somethingth time, that Dolores Umbridge sent the Dementors to Little Whinging to kill Harry Potter on that hot summer night.
She wasn't playing around. She took it upon herself, without any consultation with Cornelius Fudge or anyone else, to send the most heinous of magical creatures into Surrey to kill an innocent 15-year-old boy who had committed no crime but witness the rebirth of the Dark Lord and return to tell about it.
Woweee.
I mean, these Dementors meant business. They arrived, attacked and were ready to perform the Kiss on Dudley, an even more innocent bystander in all this, without wasting any time at all.
We only learn at the end of the novel that it was Umbridge who, on her own initiative, sent them to attack Harry but, in retrospect, this action says a great deal about this delightful lady.
She could not have known that Harry was so capable with the old Patronus Charm. We can't give her the benefit of the doubt by arguing that she sent the Dementors to force Harry to perform magic so that the Ministry would then have some grounds to snap his wand and expel him from Hogwarts.
She was trying to kill him.
Why? For upsetting Fudge? For making him look bad?
Is it possible that Umbridge is actually a Death Eater who is simply never identified as such? That she is acting on the Dark Lord's orders, trying to kill the Boy Who Lived after Voldemort failed to do so in the graveyard?
If she isn't a Death Eater, Doesn't her decision to try to have the Dementors kill Harry seem like a bit of an over-reaction under the circumstances? To kill Harry just because he represents the only real evidence available that Voldemort has returned?
She wasn't playing around. She took it upon herself, without any consultation with Cornelius Fudge or anyone else, to send the most heinous of magical creatures into Surrey to kill an innocent 15-year-old boy who had committed no crime but witness the rebirth of the Dark Lord and return to tell about it.
Woweee.
I mean, these Dementors meant business. They arrived, attacked and were ready to perform the Kiss on Dudley, an even more innocent bystander in all this, without wasting any time at all.
We only learn at the end of the novel that it was Umbridge who, on her own initiative, sent them to attack Harry but, in retrospect, this action says a great deal about this delightful lady.
She could not have known that Harry was so capable with the old Patronus Charm. We can't give her the benefit of the doubt by arguing that she sent the Dementors to force Harry to perform magic so that the Ministry would then have some grounds to snap his wand and expel him from Hogwarts.
She was trying to kill him.
Why? For upsetting Fudge? For making him look bad?
Is it possible that Umbridge is actually a Death Eater who is simply never identified as such? That she is acting on the Dark Lord's orders, trying to kill the Boy Who Lived after Voldemort failed to do so in the graveyard?
If she isn't a Death Eater, Doesn't her decision to try to have the Dementors kill Harry seem like a bit of an over-reaction under the circumstances? To kill Harry just because he represents the only real evidence available that Voldemort has returned?
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
A clever opening scene
The first chapter of The Half-Blood Prince is, for me, more evidence of the kind of clever, thoughtful writer J.K. Rowling really is.
Coming off what turned out to be the longest novel in the series, she sat down to write THBP facing the challenge of getting across a great deal of information to her reader while not falling into the trap of providing a long, drawn out expository passage with little action to open the novel.
So she created something entirely new, something that very cleverly incorporates small pieces of plot that she had dropped into earlier novels and that her readers probably didn't even notice the first time around.
Rowling created the relationship between the Muggle Prime Minister and the "Other Minister", the Minister of Magic. Drawing most directly from the mention in The Prisoner of Azkaban that the Muggle Prime Minister had been alerted of Sirius Black's escape from the wizard prison, she introduced the sixth book with a fun and funny, but also informative, scene wherein Fudge visits the Prime Minister to explain what has been going on and to introduce, at the end of it, Rufus Scrimgeour, Fudge's replacement as Minister of Magic.
The scene is expressed as a combination of flashback (a clever way for Rowling to recap some of the most significant events of the earlier novels) and conversation, in which a bewildered Muggle Minister tries to figure out his bizarre new guests. It is significant to note that this chapter is told entirely from the point of view of the Muggle -- this gives Rowling the chance to show us clearly how the non-magical world understands (or fails to understand or even acknowledge) the magical world.
Earlier, we encountered Voldemort, Wormtail and Nagini from the point of view of Muggle Frank Bryce in The Goblet of Fire; this scene at the start of THBP is, to my recollection at least, only the second time in which Rowling writes for an extended period from the Muggle point of view.
In 17 short, lively pages, Rowling manages to provide her reader with a great deal of information about all that has taken place since the end of The Order of the Phoenix, including the escape and subsequent recapture of the Death Eaters, the re-emergence of Voldemort, the murder of Amelia Bones and Emmeline Vance, the possible presence of one or more giants in England, the revolt of the Dementors and the attempts by Voldemort to take over the Ministry.
She also makes it clear that the relationship between Dumbledore and Scrimgeour is not particularly comfortable.
It's an awesomely creative scene. It explains both what has happened since the last book ended and how the relationship works between the two governments: muggle and magical. It introduces us to Scrimgeour and tells us that the levels of violence and murder in the books are to rise once again.
And it delivers all of that in a very fast-paced, interesting fashion.
It's a great piece of writing.
And it's followed very quickly by a second great piece of writing: chapter two of THBP, "Spinner's End". More on that in my next entry.
Coming off what turned out to be the longest novel in the series, she sat down to write THBP facing the challenge of getting across a great deal of information to her reader while not falling into the trap of providing a long, drawn out expository passage with little action to open the novel.
So she created something entirely new, something that very cleverly incorporates small pieces of plot that she had dropped into earlier novels and that her readers probably didn't even notice the first time around.
Rowling created the relationship between the Muggle Prime Minister and the "Other Minister", the Minister of Magic. Drawing most directly from the mention in The Prisoner of Azkaban that the Muggle Prime Minister had been alerted of Sirius Black's escape from the wizard prison, she introduced the sixth book with a fun and funny, but also informative, scene wherein Fudge visits the Prime Minister to explain what has been going on and to introduce, at the end of it, Rufus Scrimgeour, Fudge's replacement as Minister of Magic.
The scene is expressed as a combination of flashback (a clever way for Rowling to recap some of the most significant events of the earlier novels) and conversation, in which a bewildered Muggle Minister tries to figure out his bizarre new guests. It is significant to note that this chapter is told entirely from the point of view of the Muggle -- this gives Rowling the chance to show us clearly how the non-magical world understands (or fails to understand or even acknowledge) the magical world.
Earlier, we encountered Voldemort, Wormtail and Nagini from the point of view of Muggle Frank Bryce in The Goblet of Fire; this scene at the start of THBP is, to my recollection at least, only the second time in which Rowling writes for an extended period from the Muggle point of view.
In 17 short, lively pages, Rowling manages to provide her reader with a great deal of information about all that has taken place since the end of The Order of the Phoenix, including the escape and subsequent recapture of the Death Eaters, the re-emergence of Voldemort, the murder of Amelia Bones and Emmeline Vance, the possible presence of one or more giants in England, the revolt of the Dementors and the attempts by Voldemort to take over the Ministry.
She also makes it clear that the relationship between Dumbledore and Scrimgeour is not particularly comfortable.
It's an awesomely creative scene. It explains both what has happened since the last book ended and how the relationship works between the two governments: muggle and magical. It introduces us to Scrimgeour and tells us that the levels of violence and murder in the books are to rise once again.
And it delivers all of that in a very fast-paced, interesting fashion.
It's a great piece of writing.
And it's followed very quickly by a second great piece of writing: chapter two of THBP, "Spinner's End". More on that in my next entry.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rowling sets a clear path at the end of Book Four
As anyone who has been reading this blog will now, I'm very interested in the question of how much of the seven-novel story arc J.K. had planned from the beginning and how much sort of fell into place as the writing progressed.
As a writer myself, I'm fascinated by the writing process. As a writer myself, I'm in awe of Rowling's accomplishment with this fantastic series of books.
But I'm not convinced that she had anything but a vague idea of what the future novels might hold while she was writing the first book. I think she had in mind a seven-year cycle (one book for each year Harry was at Hogwarts) and she knew that the Potter-Voldemort story would form the backbone of the narrative as the books progressed.
I just don't believe that, beyond those basic principles, Rowling had much more of the story planned as she wrote the first, second and even third novels in the series.
Then we come to Book Four, The Goblet of Fire. This is where she started pulling things together and developing a clear plan of how the last three books would play out. I've just finished reading this fourth novel and I found the final scenes in the hospital wing to lay out an absolute route map for the final three books.
It is clear to me from these scenes that Rowling, by this point, had figured out the major events of the rest of her story.
In these hospital scenes, she carefully plants the seeds for the rift that develops between Fudge and Dumbledore in the following novel, the slow coming together of the armies of good and evil, the interference of the Ministry at Hogwarts and the challenges Harry faces at school in the coming years.
I think it is interesting as well that Snape is, at the end of the fourth book, so clearly on the side of Dumbledore that we should, if we as readers were thinking clearly, never doubt his allegiance again.
Faced with a disbelieving Minister for Magic and a dead Barty Crouch Jr., Snape rolls up his sleeve and shows Fudge his Dark Mark, explains what it is and what it means, and tries desperately to convince Fudge that Harry and Dumbledore are right in saying Voldemort has returned.
How can we ever doubt Snape again? And yet we do. And that's the brilliance of Rowling's writing.
As a writer myself, I'm fascinated by the writing process. As a writer myself, I'm in awe of Rowling's accomplishment with this fantastic series of books.
But I'm not convinced that she had anything but a vague idea of what the future novels might hold while she was writing the first book. I think she had in mind a seven-year cycle (one book for each year Harry was at Hogwarts) and she knew that the Potter-Voldemort story would form the backbone of the narrative as the books progressed.
I just don't believe that, beyond those basic principles, Rowling had much more of the story planned as she wrote the first, second and even third novels in the series.
Then we come to Book Four, The Goblet of Fire. This is where she started pulling things together and developing a clear plan of how the last three books would play out. I've just finished reading this fourth novel and I found the final scenes in the hospital wing to lay out an absolute route map for the final three books.
It is clear to me from these scenes that Rowling, by this point, had figured out the major events of the rest of her story.
In these hospital scenes, she carefully plants the seeds for the rift that develops between Fudge and Dumbledore in the following novel, the slow coming together of the armies of good and evil, the interference of the Ministry at Hogwarts and the challenges Harry faces at school in the coming years.
I think it is interesting as well that Snape is, at the end of the fourth book, so clearly on the side of Dumbledore that we should, if we as readers were thinking clearly, never doubt his allegiance again.
Faced with a disbelieving Minister for Magic and a dead Barty Crouch Jr., Snape rolls up his sleeve and shows Fudge his Dark Mark, explains what it is and what it means, and tries desperately to convince Fudge that Harry and Dumbledore are right in saying Voldemort has returned.
How can we ever doubt Snape again? And yet we do. And that's the brilliance of Rowling's writing.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Not so fond of Dolores Umbridge
If there's one character in the entire Harry Potter series who really makes me mad, it's Dolores Jane Umbridge. Even more so than Voldemort himself, to be honest. Not only is she an inherently nasty human being but she also seems infinitely adaptable.
First, she's all for Cornelius Fudge, who appoints her to Hogwarts in the first place. Then, when Fudge is ousted, she's right there with Scrimgeour, as if old Cornelius never existed.
When the lion-maned one is killed off by the Death Eaters for refusing to divulge Harry Potter's whereabouts, Umbridge merges seamless into the new regime of Pius Thicknesse which is, after all, merely a cover for the Dark Lord's takeover of the Ministry.
As long as you're in power and just a little bit sadistic, Dolores Umbridge is there with you. At least the Dark Lord is consistent. Umbridge is like an evil chameleon.
The amazing thing is, I've known people just like her. People who seem to be able to float effortlessly from one position to the next, always moving on just before the roof falls in, only to reappear unscathed in a new role, with new bosses, ready to continue their nasty lives.
Yuck.
First, she's all for Cornelius Fudge, who appoints her to Hogwarts in the first place. Then, when Fudge is ousted, she's right there with Scrimgeour, as if old Cornelius never existed.
When the lion-maned one is killed off by the Death Eaters for refusing to divulge Harry Potter's whereabouts, Umbridge merges seamless into the new regime of Pius Thicknesse which is, after all, merely a cover for the Dark Lord's takeover of the Ministry.
As long as you're in power and just a little bit sadistic, Dolores Umbridge is there with you. At least the Dark Lord is consistent. Umbridge is like an evil chameleon.
The amazing thing is, I've known people just like her. People who seem to be able to float effortlessly from one position to the next, always moving on just before the roof falls in, only to reappear unscathed in a new role, with new bosses, ready to continue their nasty lives.
Yuck.
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