Thursday, December 28, 2006

Harry Potter and the Deathly (S)Hallows

For what it's worth, I'm betting Harry won't die. Instead Snape will sacrifice himself at the 11th hour in order to save Harry's life. And not only that I would put money on the fact that J.K. Rowling had initially envisaged that this final sacrifice would have been Draco's but she never managed to steer Draco towards maturity and adulthood in the same way that she managed with Harry; Draco has never been a fully formed character; he's never been a true threat. I think for dramatic value and in order to live up to the Harry-Will-Die hype, she'll probably have to kill off Hermione or Ron, but I hope she doesn't do this - I don't think it would be true to the story. Nor would killing Harry in my opinion. I think she's tempted to kill Harry off more because she doesn't want the franchise to continue - she's got control issues - than because the story demands it. I sympathise, but as a reader I think Harry's death would actually be an anticlimax. For him to have survived as a baby only to die as an adolescent, for us to have read seven books (some of them overlong and overdone) to follow Harry's fortunes only to have his future negated (especially considering that Voldemort has risen from the dead already, so what's to stop him from doing it again even if Harry sacrifices himself in order to defeat him a second time?), well what would be the point of that? An ending like that would ricochet back through all the books and, well, flatten the mood, trivialise and render temporary every gain, every small win at the climax of each book.
Nah, Harry won't die. And if he does, it won't be for the sake of the story, it would be for the sake of the franchise. And that would be criminal.

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