By Orson Scott Card
Editor’s Note: This blog post does not reveal any plot points in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
“Jane, you ignorant sl–…”
Oh, wait, I’m showing my age. Just because I’m in a two-person debate in public doesn’t mean I should make a connection with Dan Aykroyd’s and Jane Curtin’s parody of Point/Counterpoint on Saturday Night Live. Who could possibly think that was funny?
In fact, even when that sketch first appeared on SNL, I didn’t fully get it because I had never seen Point/Counterpoint. I knew they were making fun of something, but I didn’t know what. I thought it was funny, but mostly because of Aykroyd’s deadpan delivery of a semi-shocking word — a personal attack in the midst of the news.
Humor is hard to bring off, and parody is harder. Which brings me to Hermione and the house elves.
More Serious? Or Less Funny?
Patrick makes the case that the Harry Potter series has been getting more serious in the later books, perhaps leading toward tragedy — even, possibly, the tragedy of Harry Potter’s own death.
But I’m not sure the series itself has become that much more “serious.”
Patrick’s impression is correct — the series has become markedly less funny. But is that because Rowling is leading us toward tragedy? Or because she simply ran out of funny stuff to do?
Let’s not forget how grim the series has been from the start. Even though the Dursleys were played as a satire on suburban propriety (gee, a writer who’s an underemployed single mom — could she possibly have come to resent people who have a husband, wife, and fat little boy in their suburban house?), the fact is that Harry Potter is an orphan living with a heartless uncle and aunt.
Why? Because, we discover, his parents were murdered. A cheery start — shouldn’t all children’s books begin that way?

That first book is full of funny bits — cute names for spells, surprising ways that wizards do things we use machines for, fun interfaces between the ordinary world and the magical one. Rowling relished showing off her world and her inventiveness, and we enjoyed it too.
But if that had been all that was going on in the first book, would it have become a favorite of readers around the world?
Compare that first HP book to the Series of Unfortunate Events by “Lemony Snicket.” That series is all jokes. It pretends to deal with children having tragic lives, but in fact it’s more like a Road Runner cartoon. And just as the Road Runner has never been extended to feature length (unless one counts the horrible movie The Villain that marked Arnold Schwarzenegger’s acting debut and the nadir of Kirk Douglas’s career), so also the Series of Unfortunate Events never became anything to care about. For me and my family, at least, it became one dumb thing after another. We stopped caring. We stopped reading.
But the Harry Potter books, even when they were at their most amusing, contained tragedy at their heart. Harry Potter’s first venture into the wizarding world wasn’t just funny, it was also touching. It was exhilarating to see that far from being the less-than-nothing the Dursleys had told him he was, he was a celebrity, he had magical powers: We weren’t just amused, we were thrilled for him.
We were invited to empathize with Harry — and then we became more and more concerned as serious attempts were made on his life.
When, at the end of the first book, we find out what’s really going on, it’s monstrous, isn’t it? The killing of unicorns, a man with another face on the back of his head, the sacrifices Harry’s friends make to get him to a position where he can keep Voldemort from resurrecting using the Philosopher’s stone — dark and dangerous things were going on even in the books that we remember as being lighter in weight.
Rowling has always been telling a dark and dangerous story. People were always getting killed or nearly so; cruel, sadistic evil was always present.
People who seemed dangerous turned out to be better than we thought, right from the start; people who seemed beneficent turned out to be dangerous and vile, right from the start.
Then Why Does the Series Seem So Much Darker Now?
Because Rowling ran out of funny stuff, that’s all.
We’d seen the funny magic bits — in fact, they were essentially done to death by the Weasley twins. Rowling took these prankety boys and turned them into businessmen. So much for magical practical jokes.
And then there was the single most disastrous attempt at humor in the entire series: Hermione and the house elves.
It is clear that Rowling thinks that this whole bit is going to be a riot. Hermione is bringing the protest-march sensibility from the muggle world into the wizarding one.
The trouble is, the house elves mostly don’t want to be liberated. And here’s where Rowling’s attempt at humor falls apart: What exactly is she making fun of?
It’s true that some protest movements in the real world have become absurd. Without naming names, people have long protested things — or sued about things — that are astonishing in their stupidity.
But liberating the house elves does not evoke any of these silly protest movements. On the contrary, it evokes only three possible things: The American civil rights movement. The struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Or the Abolitionist movement opposing slavery before the American Civil War.
The oppressors in all three cases claimed, as is claimed with the house elves, that it’s “in their nature to be servants,” that “they don’t really want freedom,” that “they wouldn’t know what to do with freedom if they had it,” that “they need us to tell them what to do.”
The difference is that in the real world, we have all seen that these white supremacist claims were false — Africans are no more servants by nature than anyone else, they did want freedom, they have handled freedom about as well as anyone else, and they never needed white people to tell them what to do.
But in the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling has made it true that the house elves don’t really want freedom, can’t handle it, are servants by nature, and definitely need humans to tell them what to do.
It is unfortunate that Rowling, in an attempt to get a little humor out of making fun of protest movements, set up a situation that makes it look as if she is siding with white supremacists throughout history.
The irony is that children who read about Hermione’s protest movement aren’t going to think it’s funny because they don’t read the news and they have never seen a ridiculous, ill-thought-out protest movement. Without that frame of reference, there is nothing funny about Hermione’s campaign.
The result is that children find this obsession of Hermione’s to be off-putting, then tedious, and finally outright boring.
And adults, who do have the frame of reference, also can’t help but make the further connections that I’m sure Rowling did not intend. So to the audience for the Harry Potter series, this huge, time-consuming “joke” is either boring or quite possibly offensive.
It’s a flaw in the series — but it is certainly no more harmful than, say, the equally tedious sequence with Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Even great works of art can be (and usually are) imperfect.
Rowling is equally heavy-handed and unsuccessful in her attempt at political satire, when in Half-Blood Prince she shows the new Prime Minister of England regarding the “President of a far distant country” as a “wretched man.” While it’s true that the U.S. President in 1996 (when this volume presumably takes place) was a wretched man, it was hardly amusing to put in an anti-American dig into the opening chapter. Children won’t understand why it’s there, and adults will only perceive it, inevitably, as Rowling’s reassurance to the British public that she, too, despises America (even as she spends all that lovely American money).
Hard Times Make Grim Characters
While the books become steadily less funny from volume to volume, it’s not for lack of trying on Rowling’s part! It’s clear that she intended later volumes to be much more funny than they are. She had simply run out of genuinely funny ideas. She could no longer surprise us with mere novelty.
In other words, comedy is far, far harder to bring off than tragedy.
Also, the closer you get to the climax of a story, the more aware the characters are of the seriousness of the enterprise they’re engaged in. In the early novels, there could be a lot more banter and wit and teasing and trivial arguments among the characters in the Harry Potter series. But now, there’s no disposition on their part toward taking much of anything lightly. Any humor that takes place among them will be gallows humor.
As the characters approach the crisis, as they suffer more and more terrible losses — Sirius Black, Dumbledore — and see themselves as outnumbered, betrayed, and underskilled for the coming crisis, they are going to be less witty and humorous.
No wonder the books are downright grim!
But nothing about this implies that Rowling is setting us up for the unbearable: the death of Harry Potter.
“Getting more serious” is not a sign that the author is setting us up for tragedy. Indeed, if I were actually planning a tragic ending, I would be laboring to set up plenty of lightness, plenty of hope, so that the choices leading to a tragic end would be all the more agonizing, the ending all the more bittersweet.
Rowling certainly understands this. In setting up the death of Sirius Black, she filled us with hope concerning his character. So his death came as a tragic shock — we had reason to believe that he was Harry’s hope for a happy life.
Even Dumbledore’s death shows us how this sort of thing is prepared for by a good fiction writer. The death of Sirius felt tragic because the author had built up so much hope around him; the same is certainly true of Dumbledore.
Though we were not told what his plan was, we knew there was a plan. Only at the last moment did we realize that the plan was for Snape to kill Dumbledore! Yet it was because of this that Dumbledore’s death felt so tragic. We had been set up to think of Dumbledore as indispensable to victory, the master planner behind the war against Voldemort. Suddenly, as with Sirius Black, he is torn away from us, by his own choice …
Leaving everything up to Harry Potter.
Think about that. Everything in this story has set us up for Harry Potter to be isolated, with none of his beloved supporters able to help him.
If anything, we should be worrying about Ron and Hermione, shouldn’t we? And as Neville gets elevated in importance, as Patrick pointed out, he starts to get a little red laser dot on his forehead, too, doesn’t he! Rowling certainly could fill the stage with corpses in the best Hamlet-like fashion.
How Will Deathly Hallows End?
Is it possible that Rowling will kill off Harry? Sure, of course. She’s the author, she can do whatever she wants. But if you think about it, we have already had the climax in which Voldemort is stopped by heroes who give their lives to stop him — it happened before the books began.
If the only way to stop Voldemort is for Harry Potter to give his life, then we know Harry will give it. Indeed, we can fully expect that at some point in the final volume, Harry and we will come to believe that only if he gives up his life can Voldemort be killed.
I have my own speculation on this: I believe that it is quite possible that we’ll find out that one of Voldemort’s horcruxes is one he didn’t plan to create. He meant for Harry Potter to die; but when, instead of dying, Harry lived, he was left with that scar on his forehead.
The scar is tied to Voldemort. It connects them. Part of Voldemort is in the scar. Though Voldemort certainly was in no position to cast a spell to make Harry (or at least Harry’s forehead) into a living horcrux, it’s quite possible for Rowling to tell us (or for Harry to come to believe) that as long as Harry lives, with that scar on his face, Voldemort cannot be completely dead.
So I think that as we head into the climax of The Deathly Hallows, we may very well be expecting, as Harry expects, that only if he himself dies will Voldemort be fully destroyed. Harry may even make provision for his own death, with Dumbledore as his example; wouldn’t it be within his character to make someone — Ron? Hermione? Neville? Snape? Dobby? Hagrid? Lupin? — swear to kill him immediately after Voldemort’s death?
“If I win, then to make the victory complete, you must also kill me.” That would be the kind of wrenching, emotional situation that Rowling reaches for in order to make us care deeply. It works because it’s the stuff of true heroism.
Rowling is setting us up, not to break our hearts, but to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
I can see Harry defeating Voldemort by taking an opportunity created by Snape, who gives his life in the process of distracting or weakening Voldemort so that Harry can prevail.
And then, in the moment of triumph, we can see that Voldemort is indeed trying to arise out of Harry’s own body — out of the scar. What if we see Harry start to turn into Voldemort, even as he stands over Voldemort’s body? And in the midst of a struggle between them for possession of Harry’s soul, one of those sworn to kill Harry actually does it?
Wouldn’t it be a delicious irony if Neville casts the terrible spell and, because we know Neville is such a clumsy oaf, he does it wrong — but in precisely the way that doesn’t kill Harry, but rather kills only the lightning bolt scar on his forehead?
More likely, though, Harry will actually die — but then Hermione, bless her muggle-born heart, will perform CPR on him and bring him back to life, only without the scar and without Voldemort as a hanger-on.
I don’t see the slogan “the boy who lived” as putting a big kill-me target on Harry — quite the opposite. I see it as the promise Rowling is making to her readers. What protected Harry before will protect him again: The love of those around him.
The first time Voldemort tried to kill him, the only people who knew Harry enough to love him were his parents, and their love saved him — particularly his mother’s love.
(Indeed, it is symptomatic of the times we live in that not only is it specifically stated that it is Lily’s, not James’s, love that saved Harry, we have also watched the moral character of James become steadily more ambiguous, even reprehensible, as we keep watching memories of James bullying Snape. It is mothers who love, saving their children’s lives, while fathers create burdens of enmity that the children must deal with long after their fathers have died.)
Now, though, Harry has earned– or has at least been given — the love and devotion of quite a list of potentially powerful people: Hermione, Ron, most of the Weasley family, Dobby, Lupin, Dumbledore’s phoenix (and a few other magical creatures), Hagrid, and quite a few people with less of a connection to him.
Why shouldn’t we expect the series climax to have Harry absolutely defeated, just as his parents were the first time — and once again to have him saved by the deep magic of love?
If you think about it, this is where the whole series is headed. If Harry wins by killing Voldemort, even in a fair fight — the standard Hollywood climax, in which the hero is forced to kill the bad guy — it still might not feel right. Harry has been tempted by the Slytherin side of things. Wouldn’t the slaying of Voldemort tip the balance the wrong way?
Harry almost has to lose and be saved by love.
The Ending Can Still Be Wrecked
The real danger, then, is not that Rowling will do something so dumb as to kill off a beloved hero and consign her whole series to a bitter memory of one generation’s childhood. (“I read the whole Harry Potter series and I’m never putting my children through something so devastating as to watch Harry die!”)
The danger is that she will make Harry so weak that, even though he lives, we’ll be disappointed in him. Because, despite how Rowling has sentimentalized a mother’s innate love (we’ll just forget how many children are abused or neglected or tormented by their mothers in the real world), we want our heroes to prevail by their own actions.
Now, admittedly, there are works of literature that violate this rule. But I think it’s a deep flaw in, say, Stephen King’s The Stand that in the best Jonathan Edwards tradition, it is by grace alone that the devil is destroyed. When the finger of God appeared to detonate the Walking Man’s nuke, I, as a mere reader, was not just disappointed — I was disgusted.
If that’s what God was planning, I thought, why did we have to read about all these people and their struggles? What was the point? All this time I thought the novel was about these people, and it turns out it was really about God, and their struggles were just entertainment for him.
Take another case: Frodo, at the Cracks of Doom, is finally overwhelmed by the Ring and, instead of destroying it, puts it on. In other words, he fails. It takes Gollum to bite off his finger and then fall, carrying the Ring, into the Cracks of Doom.
What saves the ending of Lord of the Rings is that Frodo has repeatedly decided to leave Gollum alive, despite the danger he poses to Frodo’s mission. Partly because of Gandalf’s words, and partly because of his own pity for Gollum, Frodo leaves the final instrument of the destruction of the Ring available.
Still, aren’t we forever just a little disappointed that Frodo could not do it? Being carried by Sam was a sign of the weakness of the flesh; but seizing the Ring himself was a mark of his own inner pride. It was a moral failing, not a physical one.
I know, some people think this is the glory of the book, that this is where the book becomes most Christian. As with The Stand, the message is, “After all you can do, it is by grace alone that you are saved.”
Rowling seems to be setting up a similar situation: Her hero will fail, but then through grace — this time not God’s grace, but the grace of the Mother (or the Love of Friends) — the world will be saved, and quite probably the hero along with it.
I can only say that while I approve of heroes having plenty of help, we need also to see that their own choices, courage, strength, and wisdom were essential to their victory. If Harry turns out to be no more than a prop in the final victory over Voldemort, then the series will be remembered with the same sense of disappointment and anti-climax as, in Patrick’s excellent example, The Matrix.
Where Patrick Gets It Right
Snape really is Harry’s father, in this sense: He has bullied Harry exactly as James Potter bullied Snape in earlier years. The more we learn about James’s natural disposition, he was a proud bully.
This is another task Rowling has set herself — I hope she does not let us down. For she must redeem James in our eyes — and in Harry’s. We must see James’s moment of repentance — and no, I don’t count warning Snape not to go down the tunnel to where he’ll find a ravening werewolf. Refraining from murder does not equal redemption, Return of the Jedi to the contrary notwithstanding.
I suspect that Harry will find out how James had to change himself before Lily would fall in love with him and marry him. And if she was already pregnant with Snape’s baby, so much the better. (Though the uncanny resemblance between Harry and James becomes much harder to explain …)
As for Neville getting to be “cool,” I wonder what planet Patrick lives on. It’s only in the imagination of writers that dweebs turn “cool.” In the real world, they become reclusive computer-immersed novelists, turning out stories about characters much cooler than they will ever be in the real world. I speak, of course, from tragic experience … of friends. (Not me! Why would you think I meant me?)
Oh, but of course — Harry Potter isn’t the real world, so Neville is not doomed to become a fantasy writer. He can be a hero after all. Too bad for him. Because as the dweebish non-star, the moment he starts a-heroing, he might as well be wearing a red shirt.
By the Time You Read This It’s All Moot
I’m writing this at 4:30 on Friday afternoon. Seven-and-a-half hours from now, bookstores will be selling copies of The Deathly Hallows and all our speculation will be moot.
In fact, the thing that really concerns me is: What are they doing globally to protect readers on the wrong side of the planet?
It is already well past midnight in Japan — have the Japanese people already bought their seventh Harry Potters?
They can’t very well make British readers wait until it’s midnight in New York before they can buy their copies. So … how long before spoilers go up on the Internet?
By the time BeliefNet gets this essay online, maybe you will already know what really happened!
But I’m refusing to look. In the morning, as my family leaves the Outer Banks of North Carolina to head home from vacation, we will buy the copy that a local bookstore has reserved for us. I will read the book aloud all the way home, and then continuously thereafter until we reach the end.
And you won’t hear anything from me until I’m done. I expect that to be sometime Monday, but it might be sooner — it depends on how well my voice holds out.
Then watch this space. Because Patrick and I will publicly crow in triumph — or eat crow — over the degree to which our predictions and prescriptions are borne out.
I hope that what we write are essays that vie with each other with praise of Rowling’s monumental achievement: a perfect ending for the book and for the series.
But if the ending sucks, or at least gasps a little, we will be ruthless, unsparing, and amazingly clever in our criticism. We will do this, not because that’s what critics do to us when we make mistakes in our books, but because we are shameless fan-boys who expect nothing but perfection from our literary role-models.