Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.That's the title of the new book. Deathly Hallows? Must say it was unexpected. Both the announcement and the title itself. I did not like it at first but it is growing on me.
As usul, the web is swirling with theories what it could mean. Firstly, this could tie in to the legendary four treasures that Tuaatha Danaan brought to Celtic lands. These could tie in to the relics of founders of Hogwarts that Voldemart is trying into making horcruxes.
Or else, it could refer to Hallowe'en or All Hallow's Eve, when the veil between this world and the spiritual world is supposed to be at tis thinnest and the spirits can pass over.
Or else, it could refer to a place, the illusive graveyard of Hogwarts that's everyone is been waiting for to manifest.
Other theories include, that they are a ritual, an army of dead spirits or the name of a strange magic that Harry has already encountered or will encounter.
What they are only Rowling knows at this point.
However, I do not think she will be able to or will answer all the questions we've had about the series or will tie all the loose ends. If she does try doing that, she will lose a lot of momentum. Already we've had two big tomes which have nothing much happening in them. Ideally, Rowling should return to the first three books and try and write a genuine page turner and leave the unexplained stuff to her website or a non-fiction book on Harry Potter. Just my suggestions.
But, whatever happens this book is an end of an ear. After this, there'll be no more of standing in the queues, no more month's of chatting with strangers about theories. After you've read it the first time and it's over, it'll be the end of anticipation. Period.
The biggest flaw in The Half-Blood Prince is that Lord Voldemort doesn't even make an appearance once. Obviously, Rowling has to stagger the confrontation between Harry Potter and Voldemort over three novels and postpone it till the last novel but to totally blank out the villain like that is a real loophole. Many people found the book perfunctory and unsatisfying. When i first read it, I din't like it that much and this is one book that hasn't improved on me even after three readings. The problem is that this novel does not advance the plot in anyway except give us necessary but background information and prepare the way for the climactic showdown in the last book. Dumbledore is killed because well, the hero has to be finally do the thing on his own.
I cannot detail the plot line here because there is none. Harry is in her sixth year and he is having private lessons with Dumbledore where the professor is filling him with as much of Voldemort as he knows. Harry is supicious that his long time rival at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy is on to something dangerous but his friends are not interested. Finally, Harry has found an old potions book belonging to one Half-Blood Prince which makes Harry suddenly the best student in Hogwarts.
Now, this last plot line is definitely reminiscent of Ginny Weasley's diary in Chamber of Secrets and Rowling has said that much of the plot in this book should have been originally used in book two. And it does seem a bit late for Harry to have a book to confide in at this stage in his life. Not to mention the fact that the stuff the book teaches him is pretty lame. Even when we find who half-blood prince really is, it just means that someone has had a certain nickname at certain point of life.
Most of the book is filled with the dullest romances I've read and quidditch is not half as interesting as before. But, the biggest disappointment is that the most characters are shrill, humourless and distracted and that includes Ron, Ginny and Hermione. This last deserves to be expunged from the pages as she has become the dullest marm in literature. All in all, a disappointment.
It all began here. Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard of our generation went to Godric’s Hollow to wipe out the Potters He killed Lily and James but their son, the one-year old Harry somehow survived the attack and Lord Voldemort lost his powers and fled. The whole wizard world is happy but little Harry, with a lightning-bolt scar to remember the event, is taken to his Muggle(non-magic people) aunt and uncle and left on their doorstep.
For the next ten years, Harry grows up, rudely treated by the muggles and not knowing who he is until one day he gets a letter of admission from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When the muggles resist sending him to the school, the giant Hagrid comes to the rescue. He not only tells Harry who he is but also takes him through a tour of Diagon Alley where Harry buys an unusual wand an unusual owl for pet. Harry finds out that he has been a left a pile of wizard gold by father.
On the train to Hogwarts, Harry makes friends with Ron Weasley. He also makes enemies with Draco Malfoy. Harry is sorted into a house called Gryffindor and on Haollowe’en, he and Ron save Hermione Granger from a troll. This is their first adventure together, first of many to come and the trio become friends, a unit never to be separated.
But, the Dark Lord who had vanished ten years ago is making desperate attempts to come back and it is up to our trio to stop him.
Harry came fully formed like Athena into J.K.Rowling’s head when she was riding a train. She spent the next few years knowing more about him and his world and then began writing his story in a café as a single mother. When Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone was finally published, we muggles by birth but wizards by heart got to know the remarkable story of Harry Potter.
It all began here.
Before reading The White Goddess, I had only read Robert Graves I, Claudius novels and was vaguely aware of his interpretations of Greek mythology. His novels I did not particularly admire and I was mildly antogonistic towards his attitude toward mythology in my subconscious, though I'd reserved my opinion till I read his books.
Now that I've picked up The White Goddess. In the editor, Grevel Lindop's words, the main argument of The White Goddess is that "in late prehistoric times, throughout Europe and the Middle east, matriarchal cultures, worshipping a supreme goddess and recognising male gods only as her son, consort or sacrificial victim, were subordinated by aggresive proponenents of patriarchy who deposed women from their positions of authority, elevated the goddess' male consorts into positions of divine supremacy and reconstructed myths and rituals to conceal what had taken place."
God! Or should I say, Goddess! This particular argument was everywhere. I had read a dozen works of fantasy and at least am familiar with some whacky theories in serious disciplines like anthropology which are all based on this idea. I did not know it came from Graves.
The White Goddess takes on where The Golden Bough leaves off. If "The Golden Bough demonstrated that a wide range of primitive religions were centred on a divine king." Graves's contribution was to sugges that the god-king was important not for his own sake, but because he married the goddess-queen; and that while kings come and go, the queen or goddes endured."
For Graves, it did not stop with the fact that the Goddess was worshipped in prehistory. For him, poetry ,even the poetry that survives today is a function of her worship and is used to invoke her. As he developed on this idea, Graves himself became so infatuated with it that he began to translate the idea into posturing. Apparently, he began to have an affair with "four muses" in his later day.
No wonder a work of this sort should have lasting impact on the "flower children" but how seriously can we take it? Wiki is more helpful with this one than with The Golden Bough and the answer is not much.
Graves work is rooted in Celtic mythology and wherever he starts, he comes back to it. I am not so interested in it as I am into the mythologies of, say, Greece, Rome, Egypt, India and Near East. That's why I had hard time finishing the book.
Graves writes in a dense, sophisticated manner but once you get used to his style you can see through his arguments. But, I must say, that the idea is striking and if Graves had not been fixated with sticking a certain gender so much, he could have developed a more coherent theory of religion. An ideal reading despite it flaws.
This was the big, lumbering book that started it all. In a sense, if we didn't have this book, there wouldn't be any contemporary fantasy, or at least most of it.
Frazer's book starts with a question: Why would a single man roam the grove of Nemi, with a sword in hand, ready on a lookout for anyone who would slay him at any time? What kind of bizarre ritual was this and what did it signify? Frazer starts with this question but the answer takes him through a labyrinthine quest that fills up a dozen volumes.
The book itself grew in stages and by its third edition was so big that it'd probably fill a library. Nevertheless, what is the destination that Frazer comes to after this circumnavigatory route? In Grevel Lindop's words, The Golden Bough demonstrates that a "wide range of primitive religions centred on a divine king, a man who represented a dying god of vegetable fertility and who either killed his predecessor, reigning until killed in his turn, or else was sacrificed at the end of a year's kingship."
Wikipedia quotes a number of authors who have been influenced by his work, but out of them I'd select Mary Renault's The Bull from The Sea which used this theory to magnificent effect. But, what to make of this theory?
I am no anthropologist but for me the kind of argument Frazer uses makes me uneasy. Is it because it looks its based on induction while we are comfortably used to deductive arguements? Frazer uses a wide range of examples from around the world for each small step of his argument and carefully prepares his way through. The problem here is of course that Frazer wouldn't be personally be an expert over such a wide area, so this looks like a culling of comfortable evidence from everywhere around the world. Though it is admissable that the range of the evidence is impressive. The unease is increased by the fact that I can discern a lack of quality in representation of the cultures I am personally acquainted with.
Frazer himself included Christianity in the intial versions of his book and later removed it after the inevitable controversy. However, many of Frazer's readers had no problem in including not just Chrsitianity but most other religions the way Frazer did. That is not new itself either. For these kind of arguments could be heard even in Roman times, though not so thorough as Frazer's.
Wiki takes issue with the fact that the anthropologists are moving away from the idea that there should be a single source for a diverse set of phenomenon around the world. I do not necessarily disagree. After all, humans can think alike and the options are limited.
Whether the argument stands in whole or in part, this was one mighty influential book and one that probably you cannot do without reading if you have to be in pace with the modern discourse.
It is available online.
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