Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - the SPOILER thread!

I thought I forgot to mention something in my last post! I thought of the Jesus connection while reading the book as well, especially when he said that him dying protected all those people in the castle who were fighting against Voldemort and the Death Eaters!

To me, that bit was a lot more Narnia than anything else.  Which is of course a Jesus reference.  It just reminded more of Aslan.

It just reminded more of Aslan.

Me, too.

am I the only one who never caught that dumbuldore's brother was the hog head's barman?  i just read the wikky entry on him and boy did i miss a bunch of things!

There were a lot of Jesus/Narnia allusions (similar, after all), but I kept pick up major WWI vibes.  I mean, the registration and expulsion of Muggles??  Come on, could it be less obvious??  The Death Eaters taking over the Ministry!  I swear it's not just me seeing this...(nothing to do with my MA in Holocaust Studies, I promise!!)

no, it's not just you.  It cannot be a coincidence that Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald and stopped his mad plans of wizard blood purity in 1945.  There's definitely a WWII parallel.

There were a lot of Jesus/Narnia allusions (similar, after all), but I kept pick up major WWI vibes.  I mean, the registration and expulsion of Muggles??  Come on, could it be less obvious??  The Death Eaters taking over the Ministry!  I swear it's not just me seeing this...(nothing to do with my MA in Holocaust Studies, I promise!!)

Nope, not just you. I had just thought of that a few books ago, so didn't really mention it this time.

no, it's not just you.  It cannot be a coincidence that Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald and stopped his mad plans of wizard blood purity in 1945.  There's definitely a WWII parallel.

I didn't catch that one though!

am I the only one who never caught that dumbuldore's brother was the hog head's barman?  i just read the wikky entry on him and boy did i miss a bunch of things!

I didn't ever think that either, but even after going to read the Wiki entry, I still don't see much that makes me feel too badly about missing it! I still don't quite understand how some of those "clues" can lead to predicting that Aberforth was the bartender.

JK Rowling did an interview with the Today Show and answered questions about the epilogue (purposely being vague) and what the different characters are doing job-wsie (Harry and Ron are Aurors). Here is a link to the article.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/

Am I the only one who thought that Harry sacrificing himself for everyone else was a bit of a Jesus allusion? I mean, he rises from the dead... I found that a little corny.

Don't know if anyone else noticed, but she slipped in two Bible verses too: the one on Harry's parents tombstone "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also", and the other "Death Eater" one "Death is the last enemy to be defeated" (These are paraphrases, I don't have the book in front of me, DH has made off with it).  I wondered if these quotes would be easily recognised by others not raised as a Christian (both are NT).  Sneaky JK!!

I figured they had to be from somewhere else. No offense to those who are fans of her writing, but JK Rowling isn't exactly a classically trained writer. I really enjoy her books, but they are poorly written when compared with other contemporary fiction novels (even children's and YA fiction). I honestly didn't think something so prolific would have come from her directly. I suppose that's a mean thing for me to say, but there it is.

I know that obviously the HP stories revolve around the age-old hero's journey formula, but all that nonsense about dying and coming back to life is just way too copy-cat for me. I'm not such a huge LOTR/Star Wars fan that I immediately spotted those connections, but most people in the western world at least have the general gist of the basics of the Bible. Copying the whole story of rising from the dead to save others was pretty lame, and actually kinda ruined the end of the book for me. Just too cliché, even for supposedly being children's literature.

I figured they had to be from somewhere else. No offense to those who are fans of her writing, but JK Rowling isn't exactly a classically trained writer. I really enjoy her books, but they are poorly written when compared with other contemporary fiction novels (even children's and YA fiction). I honestly didn't think something so prolific would have come from her directly. I suppose that's a mean thing for me to say, but there it is.

I know that obviously the HP stories revolve around the age-old hero's journey formula, but all that nonsense about dying and coming back to life is just way too copy-cat for me. I'm not such a huge LOTR/Star Wars fan that I immediately spotted those connections, but most people in the western world at least have the general gist of the basics of the Bible. Copying the whole story of rising from the dead to save others was pretty lame, and actually kinda ruined the end of the book for me. Just too cliché, even for supposedly being children's literature.

Oddly enough, she is classically trained.  Her degree was in medieval and classical literature 

Oddly enough, she is classically trained.  Her degree was in medieval and classical literature 

Okay... I totally didn't know that... and now I am disturbed by it! The likes of Jane Austen, Plath, and Dickens are rolling over in their graves.

Oddly enough, she is classically trained.  Her degree was in medieval and classical literature 

Well, reading/studying amazingly-written classics doesn't mean one will necessarily be able to write amazingly-written classics....I mean, my undergrad is in Classics, and I'm no Virgil. 

Well, reading/studying amazingly-written classics doesn't mean one will necessarily be able to write amazingly-written classics....I mean, my undergrad is in Classics, and I'm no Virgil. 

True enough, but Someday's beef with the book is that it was derivative.  I would argue that it was written because of her background, not in spite of it.  It falls into the grand tradition of allegory.  Whether or not you like allegory is entirely a matter of taste.  Interestingly enough because someone made a reference to Narnia.....Lewis liked allegory (was a medieval literature professor), Tolkien hated it (was a philologist).  Not surprising, medieval literature is riddled with allegory and symbolic usage.  None of this is meant snarkily, ladies (tone is hard to convey in print sometimes), but darn it, I love a debate!

That's actually really interesting, Ellie! Thank you for pointing that out. I don't mind a bit of allegory, I just felt a little cheated. The imagination she used to create a world like Harry Potter's is truly impressive. While she obviously stole ideas from various things in history (like the WWII references, the traditional hero's journey formula, etc), I think in the end I was just expecting something totally original to come at the end. Not something that has been used to many times before. I mean heck, had the avada kedavra (sorry if I spelled that wrong, I always seem to..) just bounced off harry and killed voldemort outright, I would have been more surprised than I was by the whole "Harry goes to limbo and chooses to go against the light to relive!" thing. And at least then we could have had more of a taste of the true aftermath of his defeat like how Hogwarts was repaired, how deaths were mourned, who was honored for their participation, and who got to be headmaster.