The year of behaving badly

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?

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?

J.K. and the art of the family

I'm on a bit of a break from Harry Potter, to be honest. Not for lack of interest, just too many other projects and priorities getting in the way.

I can't say I'm lamenting having to leave HP on the shelf for a while: it should mean that, when I finally come back to him, I'll be coming to him fresh again.

Of course, the simple fact that I'm not reading Harry right now doesn't mean I'm not thinking about Rowling's world. I have... and I've been having some interesting thoughts.

For example, I've been wondering about J.K. Rowling's relationship to families and her representation of family relationships in her books.

It started when I realised that, despite the fact that we meet and get to know a number of Harry's teachers pretty well in the novels, we never actually meet any of their spouses or partners. In fact, not one of the teachers we know pretty well even has a spouse or partner.

Think about that: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Sprout, Hagrid, Lupin, Lockhart, Flitwick, Trelawny, Moody, Slughorn, Quirrell, Pomfrey, even Umbridge... they're in live-in positions and yet not one of them is shown with a spouse and not one of them mentions a spouse. Sure, Lupin eventually marries Tonks but, at the time they're teaching, they are single. No matter their age.

So what does that say about Rowling and her thoughts about family and longterm relationships?

Now let's count how many actual couples exist in the books. Yes, we have the Weasleys. And the Durlseys, the Malfoys, the Lestranges, the Grangers, the Longbottoms, and the Potters. Who else? Ted Tonks and his wife. Lupin and Tonks.

How many lead normal lives to natural deaths?

The Potters were killed as a young couple. The Longbottoms were tortured into insanity also as a young couple. Lupin and Tonks die just after having their first child.

And then ask yourself the question: how many of the families in the Harry Potter series have more than one child?

The characters who have no siblings include: Harry, Dudley, Hermione, Neville, Voldemort, Draco, Hagrid, Luna. The only multi-children family we see are the Weasleys, the Blacks, the Dumbledores, the Creeveys and the Patil twins. Oh, and Lily and Petunia.

Do you not think of this as strange? Do you not wonder about Rowling and her attitudes toward families based on this incredible under-representation of even moderately normal families in her books?

The average family in the magical world of Harry Potter is a single parent, single child family. Of the five main child characters in the novels (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Voldemort), three are parentless, one abandons her parents to join the magical world and the fifth is Ron of the massive family.

I don't really know what this all says about J.K. but I just find it strange. And telling. What do you think?

Out of Order in the Film

I find The Order of the Phoenix such a difficult book to read. In fact, it's a little like torture. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise since the first three-quarters of the book involves the torture of our favourite wand-carrier, both directly by Dolores Umbridge and more subtly by the Ministry, the wizarding community and the other kids at Hogwarts.

Even though I know what's coming, I still cringe when I read this book.

That's not an insult to J.K. Rowling. In fact, it's a huge compliment. J.K. wanted to make this book an ordeal both for Harry and her reader and she succeeds remarkably.

That's why I get so angry when I watch the film version of it. I honestly don't know which movie I detest more, The Order or the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and that's saying something since I really really really hate Part 2.

The fifth novel is a claustrophobic, harrowing ordeal. It's a gut-wrenching experience of a kind that is rarely found in literature. Because we identify so closely with Harry after the first four books, we feel every tiny sting he receives in this fifth one. We hurt for him and suffer with him.

So why did the movie makers have to turn this ordeal into a slapstick comedy (and a poor one at that)? Instead of ominous and evil, Umbridge is presented as a silly nuisance in the movie. I'm not taking a shot at Imelda Staunton -- she does a beautiful job of acting the role she was given -- but the role itself is a mockery of Rowling's villainous original.

The only thing, in my opinion, that saves the movie is the very strong performances of Evanna Lynch (as Luna Lovegood) and Katie Leung (as Cho Chang). These two make strong impressions, with some great scenes, even if the film reduces the part played by each in the main plot.

So I leave the film version of The Order of the Phoenix on the shelf while I battle my way through the tremendously well written novel. Too bad. Another wasted filmic opportunity.

Oh, and by the way, I've finally joined Pottermore. And I'm happy to report that I was sorted into Gryffindor House, meaning I can keep my wonderful hand-knit scarf! I don't have as much time as I wish I did to enjoy this amazing, interactive site but I'll keep plugging away.