Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix
December 22nd 2006 08:44
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
The Order of Phoenix is the longest of all Harry Potter series and also its most plotless book. Until Arthur Weasley is attacked in the middle of the novel, nothing much happens.
The problem with this novel is that one comes to it with heavy expectations from the previous one. When Goblet of Fire ends on a rising note that a second war is looming, you strap your belts for action. But in Order of Phoenix, the Second War between Good and Evil may have begun but only a minor battle is fought.
After the incidents in the last novel, Harry is incensed that he is being kept in the dark by his friends about the goings on. Dumbledore had constituted a secret order to fight the resurrected Voldemort but Harry is not allowed in it and just glimpses the action tantalizingly from outside. The Ministry of Magic is at odds with Dumbledore and has sent an odious teacher called Umbridge to take the school from Dumbledore’s control. Harry is the first victim of the plot. Meanwhile, he has been enjoying a psychic connection with Lord Voldemort.
The Umbridge angle is not strong enough to deserve the attention it gets here. Contrast it with the Dumbledore dismissal in the second novel and you will find how overblown the whole episode is. The showcasing of bureaucracy of the Ministry and how it impedes in the conflict is a necessary part of the story but its over-extended too much for our liking.
Rowling took three years to write the novel and perhaps forgot to edit a large portion of it. Also, Rowling has to stagger the Potter-Voldemort confrontation over the next three novels. Since, Goblet of Fire this angle has become the main plot of the novels, depriving therefore from Book Five, each novel of its own separate adventure. Perhaps, to make amends for the sluggish initial portion, Rowling wrote in a heavy-duty climax with jaw-dropping action. But, the denouement is based on our caring for the HP universe and the charcaters in it and not on surprise.
In many ways, Order of Phoenix is a weak novel but it also reveals one reason why so many people take to these books: loneliness. Harry is an orphan, Ron, overshadowed in a large family, Hermione by her own intelligence, Sirius by his inability to transition from adolescence that was brutally cut off—these are all lonely people fighting to survive their loneliness. Just like us who are all imperfect by some artificial standard and therefore lonely. And when we meet the cool people, James and even Sirius in their teens, we are not impressed. That is perhaps the real lesson of the novels: in spite of being a cliché it teaches us to value our inner, real self.
In the early chapters of the novel, we are introduced to a sculpture of the wizard world: a handsome pair of wizard and witch is being worshipfully attended by the other magical creatures. By the end, this sculpture shatters, symbolizing the fissiparious nature of the wizarding world.
The message is quite open-ended depending on how Rowling would approach the problems posed here and to her eternal credit, Rowling does complicate her narrative and the moral compass in her next novel. Therefore, when you come back to it, you can read Order of Phoenix without feeling that you were cheated.
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