VENTING MY ANGER at Harry Potter book 5 by TragicStory

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VENTING MY ANGER at Harry Potter book 5

POSTED BY: TRAGICSTORY
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 06:20
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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 9:09 AM

WEll, I know this isn't really the best place to rant about Harry Potter books, but since I lovew this board more than any other, here it is.

IMHO I found the book to be WAY to long with too many sub plots which were never resolved, a mailn plot which was just terrible and the whole Hogwarts part of the story just screamed of "Matilda" so badly.

BTW, did anyone notice how when Harry was doing his homework he came across a potion ingredient that caused irritability, hot headedness and the like? What came of that NOTHING. Even though it was repeated 3 times in italics The ending of the book was rushed and not satisfactory at all. I guess she was too busy sueing people to care about the product she was putting out.

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 9:41 AM

LUPA

Quote:
BTW, did anyone notice how when Harry was doing his homework he came across a potion ingredient that caused irritability, hot headedness and the like? What came of that NOTHING. Even though it was repeated 3 times in italics The ending of the book was rushed and not satisfactory at all. I guess she was too busy sueing people to care about the product she was putting out.

Perhaps it was forshadowing that will be resolved in a future book.

"Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal."

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 10:32 AM

TRAGICSTORY

I honestly don't think it is. I believe that Harry was being "poisoned" if you will into behaving irrationally, but due to a rushed end, it is now chalked up to teen angst. If you remember in the first 1/4 of the book he seems to be angry at everything and for no reason.

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 11:59 AM

LUPA

Quote:
If you remember in the first 1/4 of the book he seems to be angry at everything and for no reason.

You see, I really like angry!Harry, because I think he seems more human here than in any of the other books. Plus we have to remember we are in his head for the entire book. A lot of his irrationality is uncharitable thoughts and we all have those. Besides which, I think he has a few reasons to be upset (list created by Gamlain of the Sugar Quill message board). Harry:

- has been emotionally abused and physically mistreated for the first ten years of his life pluss summers for the last four - by his only living relitives.
- has been thrust into a world that he A: did not know exists and is almost entirely ignorant off and B: Idolizes him for something that he did not really do.
- has been pitched face first into a terrorist war without any self-denfesnse training to speak off, and forced to teach himself how to survive
- has become the mass media's favorite subject du-jor: Object of worship *and* public whipping boy all at once...
- is being told both that he is vastly important to this terrorist action going on around and focused on him - but kept in the dark as to what it is that is actually happening.
- personally contributed to the death of a friend and classmate last year
- personally contributed to the restoration of his own parents murderer at the same time, how fun
- is suffering from irregular psychic contact with one of the most hatefull, evil creatures in the world - that same murderer of his own parents
- has inherited several people's (coughSnapeDracocough)'s feud with his parents and is bearing the brunt of their hatred for people he never knew and resembled superficcially at best
- is target #1 of ridicule, harrasment and torment by the government for the crime of telling the truth
- is going through puberty
- is having all the things he enjoys doing pulled out from under his feet.
- is surrounded by angry, stressed out adults, never mind his classmates - even the Order is flying off the handle, and frequently he's ground zero
- and is faceing one of the most important set of exams in a wizards life, a set of tests with a Collage-level stress index
- hasn't had a decent night's sleep in months.
- has had a near constant migrane for several years now

I think I'd be a little pissed, too.

"Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal."

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 1:59 PM

CHRISTHECYNIC

This is very long.

I don’t want to put half of the thread in a spoiler field, you probably shouldn’t be reading the thread if you don’t want spoilers. So be warned that the spoilers are going to be here. I will tell you where they start.

I didn't like it either. It seemed to me that Harry was being poisoned with that. The fact it was left out could be due to a rushed ending, or perhaps she had writer’s block and just wrote through it. I remember I read that first and thought how normal it was, stock all the way through, read the second and thought it was bad, the third I thought was a significant mark up, and the fourth I thought was really good. (I read them all in a few days.) I read this one in under 24 hours, would have taken longer but my insomnia beat the medication and I gave up on sleeping and read in stead.

Harry’s behavior was very out of character, and if it was just him growing up then there is something wrong with him. When the ingredients showed up I thought that had to be it, and I still think that. But it could be that however someone is managing to drug him they will keep it up into the next book.

The character of the book bothered me, it just seemed wrong, the voice seemed off somehow. I’m not sure how to describe it, it just seemed like the voice was wrong, as if it was a very long fan fiction and not an actual part of the series.

Voice by the way is a literary term. It’s kind of hard to describe, but when you read a story you should get a feeling, kind of the attitude of the narrator, if the story telling is sarcastic for example that’s part of the voice. The story should be different if told with a different voice, so it would be the same story but a different point of view. Note that in a story like this the narrator is not a character, but the narrator still has character.

Most of the examples for why harry seems angry at everything don’t add up, he has already dealt with most of it and it doesn’t seem to phase him anymore. He still doesn’t feel good about things like what happened to his parents, or his place in the press (be it good or bad) but it didn’t carry over.

Spoilers begin here.

In the book his brain just wasn’t working. For example he knew he had been possessed, and knew it could happen again, and didn’t want it to. He decided that he would learn how to keep his mind safe in spite of Snape, yet the decision is ignored. It never says he changes his mind, never even made out that he considered changing his mind, it just took for granted that his mind changed.

Dumbledore seemed to have total stupidity with regard to Sirus, which we have never seen before. His understanding of people has been excellent in the other books and it suddenly goes away here in just the right spot to set up a major plot point? I have trouble with that. It’s one thing to have coincidence, it’s another to have people act out of character to further the plot. The wrap up to the dementor issue seemed contrived, ok so we have this sadistic person and they … tried to kill someone in the way that would best further the goals of those they oppose.

You can’t simply say, “Dumbledore will be out of character here so I can do this in the end, everyone will forget about this so I don’t have to deal with that, Harry will be out of character for almost all of the book, Lupin will be here even though he isn’t in the book that much, the mean person will be so out of character here that she must be a MPD for it to possibly to work.”

Of course I will read the next one hoping this was fluke and that one will be good, and I’m sure most others will too, the series is too good to give up on it because of one (well two) bad books, but unfortunately that puts it at a 28% failure rate if the rest are good.

It just seems to me like the characters actions were created to support the plot, which shouldn’t happen. If you need something to happen for the plot to continue you make it so the character would do it, you make it so someone else does it, or find a way for the plot to work without it. Making characters do something they wouldn’t in order to move the plot forward is a very beginner move.

So suddenly Dumbledore doesn’t understand enough about people to know he should let Sirus out, or at least not leave him all alone in the house. Everyone forgot about polyjuice potion and the plethora of other ways Sirus could leave. Though the elf would still have lied to him it would only take one person to check on Buckbeak. And if he were out doing things it would be harder for Harry to believe in the vision.

Harry was out of character for most of the book, too much to go into.

The mean teacher, oh god that was stupid. I can suspend my disbelief on what is primarily a children’s book enough to have a horrible teacher who makes people carve things into their hands, punishes them for disagreeing with her, and does most of the other bad things she does without having anything resembling good in her, but the Dementors was too far. I admit that I’m not in the same mind set as that sadistic one, but still the train of thought for that seems even more outlandish than me saying I can do magic. Let’s try to recreate it, shall we?

“This kid who we all believe is crazy is riling people up. We need to have people calm, they can’t believe that this kid is right that the dementors will begin to disobey us. If that happened people would be afraid that the prisoners would escape. Of course they wouldn’t believe that if he wasn’t convincing them that the dark lord was back. Everyone knows that if the dark lord would kill Harry Potter if he was back.
“So … I’ve got it! I’ll send out dementors to kill him (well do something worse than killing him actually), I can’t admit that I did it so people will think that the dementors are disobeying us. Because he said the dark lord is back, and he and his cohort Dumbledore said the dementors would release their prisoners, and now the number one enemy of the dark lord has been attacked, somewhere far away from where the dementors are kept, by apparently rouge dementors, people will now be convinced that the dark lord is back, and that the dementors will be betray us, and release the prisoners at the prison where we keep the worst people around. They will also fear that they aren’t safe anywhere from the dementors.
“To recap my goals are to stop people from believing this boy, make sure they don’t think the dementors are anywhere other than where we want them to be, or doing anything other than what we want them to do, make sure people don’t think the dark lord is back, and keep people calm.
“To achieve these goals I will have the boy attacked which will result in him suffering the only thing wee know of worse than death. This will prove without a doubt that dementors are where we don’t want them to be, and doing things we don’t want them to do. The reason it will prove this to people as I will cover up the fact that I do want them to be there doing that. His unfortunate end will convince people that the dark lord is risen. It will create panic as people realize that nowhere, not even in Little Whinging, is safe.
“Yup that’s a good idea and it certainly achieves all of my goals”

You know what, I take it back. Dolores was clearly following a perfectly logical train of thought. Oh yeah, I was wrong it’s not that this book has plot holes the size of Montana, it’s just that… well it does. That is by far the weakest plot I have seen and I watch cheep sci fi all the time. It’s not like I’m saying it should live up to the standards of Firefly, but if the plot is worse than movies like Alligator I and II, Shark Attack I and II, Mosquito, and any made for the Sci Fi channel movie, well that’s saying something.

The plot should have been better than the plot of Army of Darkness. But here we see elements reminiscent of the Chemistry 101 and How to Build a Steam Engine books in the trunk. The problem is the book wasn’t a comedy, and had plot elements that were worse than anything from the evil dead series.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 4:43 PM

FEWINE

See, I took the whole send the dementors to Pivet Drive as a way to discredit Harry. This is the logic behind it that I saw: send the dementors to scare Harry, not to kill him or to give him the "kiss" - they get carried away while on the mission, and so their attack on Harry and Dudley is of their own accord (similar to the way they appeared on the playing field in book #3 despite Dumbledore's rules that they remain at a distance from the school).
Anyway, back to the logic...Harry comes back to the wizzard world full of tales of how the dementors are walking around in the muggle world. To the wizzards who have been reading The Daily Prophet, this would fit nicely into the rumors of his hullicinations and attention-seeking personality. To the wizzarding community still trying not to believe in Voldemort's return, there would be no reason for the dementors to appear in the muggle world. The dementors are still under government control, and there would be no reason for the government to send them after Harry Potter (!), so he must have imagined it (made it up, is lying, etc.). Thus, Harry is once again discredited because no one would believe a tale like that one.
The fact that he defeated them through magic only helped this cause, because not only is he now considered delusional, but he also did something that is considered an illegal offense.
However, getting Harry to use magic probably was not the original intent behind sending the dementors. Like I said, it was probably along the lines of making him sound crazy. Umbridge's lines about Fudge not wanting to do something drastic, as I saw it, probably referred to his fear of someone realizing that Harry did face dementors (sent by the Ministry no less) or that, in fact, the dementors would act in a manner similar to how they did act - out of control, interacting with a muggle, and so on.
As for his behavior, I believe it was about time he had some issues about what has been his entire life. Until this point he has taken everything good naturedly, and while he might be annoyed/disappointed/upset he has never had the time or opportunity to vent it. He's going through puberty, discovering the joys of the opposite sex and realizing that he has the right to be angry about the way his life has been going for the last couple of years.
I took the mention of the spell to be on purpose. I thought that Harry was reading it and was interested in it as a way for the reader to explain his behavior and mood. Aha, I said to myself, it is all a spell. I also originally thought that the same idea must be running through Harry's own head. But I think Harry's discovery of the spell and subsequent forgetfullness of it went to show that his outbursts and his emotional (and verbal) tirades were natural and not manifested or manipulated by magic. It was one of the first truly non-magical, genuine Harry moments that we've been able to see. He's had a hard life and he's pissed about it - just because we want him to remain a pleasant young man, and hence, likeable character doesn't mean that it would be the most realistic or intriguing route to take. His ability to not blame a spell for his current state of mind and to vocalize his emotional and psychological state at various points in the book show the fact that his maturing. He might not have shown his growth in the most adult ways (yelling, throwing things, action irrationaly without consulting an authority figure), but his realization that he did have emotions, that he was capable of independent thought, and his warriness of authority given that every adult that he's trusted has at some point withheld important and highly personal information from him did show a large amount of "growing up" and thus character development. There's nothing wrong with character development in a children's book; especially because the children who are growing with Harry will appreciate many of the themes behind his outbursts.
Dumbledore's sudden change in human relations stems from his self-imposed distance from Harry. He though himslef a danger to Harry (Voldemort would use Harry for information about Dumbledore and the Order) so he kept himself uninvolved in his doings. Consequently, I believe he kept his distance from those close to Harry as a way to make sure he didn't get involved in his life. He would only get invovled if it was serious - the bought with Dumbledore's Army (Harry's expulsion from school) and his dreams (Voldemort's manipulation of Harry's mind). Harry's worry over Sirius and his inclination to protect him at all costs went unnoticed simply because he wasn't in a position to notice them.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 5:00 PM

LUPA

Frankly, I was surprised when people started theorizing about Harry being given the Confusion and Whatever Potion. I thought it was mentioned because the evil house elf was secretly drugging Sirius!

"Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal."

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 5:03 PM

LUNATIKAT

Dear Mr. theCynic,
Couldn't finish reading your post, haven't finished HP5 yet, but enjoyed your noticing the "voice" of the book, and wondered if you had read Theodore Sturgeon's "Godbody", which is a fascinating exercise in the author's "voice" being carried through multiple character "voices"? If not, I highly recommend it, AND I hope you'll enjoy the foreward by, guess who, Robert Anson Heinlein.

Lunatikat - dog wrangler to the stars

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 6:00 PM

CHRISTHECYNIC

Lunatikat I hope you, and everyone else, enjoy the book more than I did.
Many people enjoyed the second book more than I did, and I’m happy for them. To me both are kind of a stain to the series. I know that for a children’s book series my hopes shouldn’t be high, but after books three and four it seemed like it was going to be like Redwall, you know all of it good, improving every book to start with and not plateauing until the standards were quite high. I haven’t read Redwall in a while though, so it could have some very sub par books too.

Anyway, I hope you like it more than I did. Books three and four I got finished and I wanted to read more because it was so good, and I found myself rereading. This book I want to read more because I don’t want to have to have the last bit I read be that bad, and I can’t see me reading this again except to refresh my memory.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2003 6:46 PM

CHRISTHECYNIC

fewine,
I think that Dumbledore's lack of insight into human relations was mostly Sirus, he should have known that it would be detrimental to have Sirus there, especially alone. He should have found something for him to do, there were enough magical ways to disguise him. Although if Sirus was away the end would have happened the same way, if he wasn’t alone in that wretched house then whoever else was there would have caught Harry’s call and it wouldn’t have gone down. Also it was Sirus’s prolonged time cooped up in the house that made him say the fatal “Get out.”

It seemed odd of Harry to not tell any one (other than Sirus) of his suspicions when the elf didn’t show up for a time. Harry always seems to tell his suspicions always, you know the repeated mentions of how he doesn’t trust Snape, telling Moody (really Crouch in disguise) how he was suspicious of Crouch, that kind of thing. If he is emotional I would think it would come out faster. Really the most realistic thing, character wise, from Harry was smashing things and yelling at the end (this is my opinion of course.)

I don’t think you explanation covers the dementor thing, Fudge knew that dementors couldn’t be controlled around Harry, and Fudge is the kind of person who would go around the office talking about it (er about it.) However Fudge did not know that Harry could make a patronus, remember that the patronus wasn’t created until after Harry first spoke with Fudge, and he did not tell Fudge what happened with the time turner. There was no one who could use magic around (her plan would have to center on this no matter who is right), so Dolores was sending dementors out, to the one person who they would kill without orders (in her little delusional world where they could be controlled) and this person couldn’t defend himself.

It with the information she had at hand the only outcome she could predict would be Harry being kissed. And though they might be able to stop the news of an attack from getting out, the destruction of his soul by the worst mode of execution they know of would make it (I think.)

Sorry for the long rant, I’m glad you enjoyed it more than I did, and I hope the next one is better.

On a side note, I don’t consider acting exactly the same except when he’s really pissed to be a development of his character. If his character developed it would, well you know develop. Just putting in much more angry time is not a development. Now Neville, there’s a character who’s developed.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 12:11 AM

TRAGICSTORY

More things that annoyed me but I forgot to mention. For 4.9 books we have been hearing how Valdemort only fears ONE wizard (beside harry) the great Dumbledore. We FINALLY get to what should have been the second best wizard fight of the book (right after the Last Battle in book 7)and it SUCKED. I mean REALLY SUCKED. It lasted maybe 2 pages.

Second one, AND I MAY BE WRONG Cronologically, but didn't Potter have a MIRROR that would let him talk to Sirrus at any time and place? WHICH WAS FORGOTTEN and a fire used instead. Because EVERYONE doesn't open presents from the person they love the most in world.

Why on earth did Dumbledore need the giants? I mean was it just a really bad plot line to get the giant in the forest (I know who he is, but am trying to avoid spoilers)It seemed so important to get the giants, but then nothing come from it.

Ditto for the D.A. I was expecting ALL of them to do something to defend Dumbledore, instead only Fred and George showed any loyalty/resistance.
***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS

Finally, Doesn't it seem REALLY STUPID that Voldemort would have tried to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic instead of trying to get the prophecy from Dumbledore's office or the Seer herserlf? Considering that he managed to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts before and that he was removed from Hogwarts on his own. All to get a prophecy that was so STUPID and contained nothing not previously known/assumed and pretty pointless to try and learn ****15**** years after the fact.

On a last note, I would really rather read the adventures of Fred and George opening up their store than another book like this one.

Anyone else think the Fred and George rebellion at Hogwarts was the best part of the book?

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 2:34 AM

STRAYCAT

Shame...

I really enjoyed the book. OTOH, I haven't bothered analysing it overmuch. I've found that doesn't really pay off for Harry Potter.

And too much of my mental energy's gone into analyses of Reloaded of late :)

Andy

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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 2:54 AM

TRAGICSTORY

Have you ever read Matilda? THAT's what really got me annoyed in the first place.

PS. My favorite redwall book is Mossflower.

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 8:02 AM

CHRISTHECYNIC

Usual warning here are the spoilers.
I was surprised by Fred and George. I had never thought that they held back with their pranks for any reason other than a fear of expulsion, but we learned that their loyalty to Dumbledore played a key role in that, and was enough for them to keep going to a school they didn’t want to, that even their mother couldn’t make them stay at. That did seem to be the best part of the book.

Like I said before it felt like a fan fiction, a bad one at that, and not like a sequel.

For some reason she made the Voldemort fight lousy. The giants thing, it was in no way an appropriate follow-up, Dumbledore described them as a force to be reckoned with, here they were noting more than a dying race. Like the Spanish sending out an envoy to the last 40 Aztecs for fear they’d ally themselves with the English.

Follow-ups have been rather bad though; for example does anyone remember how Ron and Harry learned where the elder Malfoy kept his illegal stuff. Information that could have had him arrested before the end of the second book.

I think the prophesy line isn’t nearly as nonsensical as most of the rest of the book. After all, the reason Voldemort was after the prophecy was because he didn’t know what it said, so he had no idea how useless it was.

STRAYCAT,
I found that analyzing really did pay off for the third and fourth books. They just seemed to get better the more you did it. The exception was Harry’s parents they died in the order of dad, mom so when they came back (in reverse order) it should have been mom, dad. That is a very minor complaint however, so overall the analyzing had favorable results.

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Tuesday, August 5, 2003 6:20 AM

CONSTNLYTALKIN

I believe you are completely wrong and should have thought more about the actual plot of the book in regards to why JK may be making Harry become more angry and irritable. The prophecy stated at the end of the book states that either Harry must kill Voldemort or Voldemort must kill Harry. Harry at the present time does not have the right mind set or enough anger built up inside of him for him to just kill somone in cold blood. I believe very strongly JK is doing a wonderful job of slowly bringing these characteristics into Harry's character. By slowly building up his anger and animosity towards the world, she will be able to get him to reach a climax where he is angry enough to kill. This is turn may change the way we think about Harry, but in writing terms is an absolutly brilliant idea.

I also agree with the post after yours that states that this book made Harry seem more real, I could not agree more. Anyone one of us put in a situation like Harry has been put in would probally be just as angry if not more so then he was in this book. I don't think you have the right to bash an author unless you think you could do better, and judging by the book sales and how many people do like the book I highly doubt you could. Instead of getting mad cause harry doesn't fit the way you want him to be, look at the book as a piece of literature doing exactly what a piece of literatire is supposed to do. relay a story using things such as twists and turns and surprises.

I am an author myself and understand how hard it is to come up with good plots and chracter especially plots that actually make sense and dont have holes in them like dreams do, and I must say I believe JK is doing an excellent job at doing her job.

Samantha...If you have comments please e-mail them back at OrangeBug16@hotmail.com as I most likely will not be comming back to this site

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