Last night I finished rereading Harry Potter. Its the first time I have picked up the book since the series began to develop momentum many years ago. Not surprisingly, I have come to the same conclusion; Harry Potter is a wretched book.
There are so many problems with the book, I don’t even know where to begin. And, I am not talking about the whole sacrilegious angle. I suppose my biggest gripe would be the style of the writing. It is inconsistent, and agitating. Reading it is like talking to someone that keeps slipping in and out of an irritating accident. This however is just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the things I found most disturbing about the book is the promotion of a strong sense of classism. There is a sharp delineation between the “elite” magic users, and everyone else, whom are referred to as “moggles” with some level of contempt. And, to make the normal people seem even more awful, the author reinforces her stereotype by having the foster family of Harry Potter behave brutally towards him.
In fact, the whole situation with his family is another annoying facet of the story. The book basically begins with him, as a very young child being dropped off at his Aunt’s house. This was necessary as his parent were slaughtered by a wizard who is apparently not a nice guy. The problem is that his aunts family essentially hate him. In this section of the book, Harry is apparently a well behaved child, but is constantly punished. On, the flip side, once he is taken to the magic fairytale land to learn to be a wizard everything is different.
Harry Potter seems to be a character of opposites. In the regular world, he is good but falls downwards. In the fantasy land, he constantly does foolish things, and is quite reckless. However, the worse he screws up, the more upward he fails. It makes little to no sense. While I agree that no good dead goes unpunished, it is pretty rare that failure is directly rewarded either. And, really is this a lesson we want to teach our children?
I could rant about this forever, but I am going to tie it up here. Upon reading the book twice, and giving it due consideration. I am whole heartily issuing it my lowest possible rating, -5. Please people, avoid this book at all costs.
9 Comments
Here’s the problem with the Harry Potter series.
Books 1 and 2 do legitimately suck. All of what you say here is accurate. I have pleaded with Vanlandw and Vanbergs countless times to give it a chance and get past this but I can understand for somebody reading the 1st one would not want to continue.
HOWEVER, from the third book on, the story become much darker, much less childish. It’s almost the story grows up as Harry does. The whole aunt/uncle thing ends up going away. etc etc.
I am a huge fan solely because of Books 4-7. It sucks that you have to do that much work to get to that point – but if you can muster it then the story is truly pretty epic. It takes on a “Neo from the Matrix” style situation where one person is the only possible means to any end. “Neither can live while the other survives”. It’s honestly pretty bad ass.
As a promise to vanberge I have read Harry Potter 1. I looked at everything very lightly but my main grip that I’m shocked you didn’t note here that we have discussed in the past is how magic is handled. The series uses the most steriotypical elements of “magic” that I just couldn’t get behind. At some point I do believe I will watch the films but the books I pretty much agree with you on this one jja. I unless I spawn life will be avoiding at all costs. Sword of Truth/Mistborn/Ice and Fire are much stronger fantasy for young adults/adults looking for magic based fiction/fantasy.
I agree about the others being stronger works of fiction, but sword of truth is way worse than harry potter, plus it has disturbing rape scenes, not something I would recommend reading at all. Harry potter is light fiction ,and this is part of what makes it so successful, but it is still very entertaining and word for word by far the most entertaining modern young adults fantasy.
I gotta agree with vanberge here. I breezed through all the books this summer and the first couple are childish and irritating, but the last several are definitely the better ones. So, muster up the courage and press on. You may be disappointed still, but at least you tried.
I am amazed that you guys came to that conclusion. Seriously, how do you get three books into a series when the first two are horrible? Doesn’t it go, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me? So, fool me thrice, shame on…?
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@Fathermocker
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Jja,
I read the first three while working in the Layaway dept at Meijer. Therefore it was better than working at the time so I didn’t have to sacrifice free time to get to that level.
I would say at the VERY least you should watch the movies 1-6 and then read the 7th book.
I think the problem, with the beginning Harry Potter books, is that they are something a child would enjoy and not something written for adults. Since I read the first few Harry Potter books when they first came out, when I was a child, I loved them. However, when I tried re-reading the first ones, I found out that I no longer liked them (the first three, anyway). I agree with the other people here that the later books are better- in part because as Harry ages the books become oriented to an older audience, and that it seems like the author’s writing skills improved as well. The problem with this is, though, that it might cause trouble for an adult trying to read the series for the first time.
So I would not say that the Harry Potter books are horrible, per say, just that they are child-oriented and not really meant to be read by adults. If you compare the plot holes, dubious moral lessons, and sub-par writing to other children’s books, then Harry Potter isn’t any worse than most. Comparing it to adult fiction, however, there will be obvious disparities.
Also, another thing you must keep in mind when trying to critique the plot of Harry Potter is that it is part of a seven-book series with an ongoing plot- a lot of the points you pointed out as being annoying or something that might not be good to teach to children do get addressed in the later novels (for instance, Harry’s family is shown as not just being evil abusers, Harry gets into serious trouble for his ill-advised actions, etc).
I’m not trying to say that the Harry Potter books are super awesome or anything, I just think that your critique came off a little too strongly because (1) you are critiquing a book meant for children almost as if it was adult fiction, and (2) you critique plot when you haven’t finished the series.
I wouldn’t recommend you to try and finish the series, though. Since you are an adult, you really shouldn’t be trying to read books meant for kids.