“It would have been a cop out to kill him,” J.K. Rowling says:
In many ways it would have been a neater ending to kill him. For sure, I knew that all along. felt that the books’ overriding message was that love is the most powerful force in this world. My model with Harry really was war veterans, who have seen horrors and are asked to go home and rebuild, and go back to ordinary life and care for a family, be a father – particularly be a father – [it is] a difficult job, in troubled times. I felt it would be a betrayal of my character if I did anything other than show him doing that. And I think it’s an absolutely heroic thing to do, to go home after that, not to become a mercenary, not to live forever frozen in a time of excitement and danger, but to be mentally strong enough, to an extent physically strong enough, to return from war and to raise a new generation with values that you hope will not lead to another war. That’s massive.
Of course you can say, yes, to an extent, as ever in life, that’s the eternal paradox. What’s is most worthwhile may well be seen as slightly dull, but God knows without those people who were prepared to come home and raise the family and rebuild, help rebuild… rebuilding is much more difficult than destroying. So, I felt it was almost a cop-out, morally, to kill him. I wanted to show a man who, yeah, he went back and got his hands dirty and tried to rebuild. I liked that. And again, it made a lot of people were livid, but God knows by that time I was used to that by then!
I’ve heard her explaining this before. Thoughts?
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I agree with her. I think it would to some degree it would have been a cop-out. I just wish we got more of an epilogue to see this notion of re-building.
I think you’re right, Michael. It would’ve been nice to see some of this rebuilding, especially since she seems to press this point in interviews in response to people who claim that nothing seems to have changed in the wizarding world in the 19 years since LV’s defeat.
The problem is she really couldn’t show much of this in an epilogue because it would’ve taken too much time & distracted from the main point of the epilogue. Ah well. Since I doubt she’ll ever write about the interim, we’ll have to be satisfied with fan fiction regarding how Harry & company rebuilt after the war.
I’m reminded of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in this regard. The Scouring Shire” might seem somewhat anti-climatic after the defeat of Sauron. But Tolkien wanted to make a similar point. (The Peter Jackson movie skipped over this scene, which horrified a lot of fans of the books and probably would have horrified Tolkien.) Frodo, unfortunately, was not able to re-integrate himself back into The Shire — but Merry, Pippin, and Sam were. Tolkien also had such soldiers scarred by war in mind as a pattern for Frodo.
I’m also reminded of the delightful movie Stranger Than Fiction. The author (played by Emma Thompson) has a similar decision to make about killing off her main character, and she discusses with a literature professor (played by Dustin Hoffman) the effect her choice has on the quality of the work. (For those that haven’t seen the movie, I won’t say any more. It was an unexpectedly good movie, and I highly recommend it to people — like the patrons of The Hog’s Head — who spend time thinking about and caring about the power of narrative.)
Jo wrote: “it made a lot of people were livid [keeping Harry alive], but God knows by that time I was used to that by then!”
Uh, who’s she talking about? I don’t remember anyone being livid that Harry survived. Some people thought it was a cop out, true. Some people thought it wasn’t the best ending to the story. But who was livid?
The only people who should still be livid are the Harry/Hermione Shippers. Well, and maybe the Harry/Snape Shippers.
Or perhaps she will include some information regarding the interval in her Encyclopedia. I agree with JKR on this one. I mean Dumbledore’s words to Harry at King’s Cross explain it all: “By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls, are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the moment.” And we know that Harry chose to go back rather than go on.
I tend to like stories where everyone dies at the end, but I can see how keeping Harry alive was the better choice. When Jo explains how Harry had to live to rebuild, I’m reminded of V for Vendetta (more so the comic, than the movie). When V is nearing the end of all his plans, he explains to Evey that there are destroyers and rebuilders. Someone has to do the dirty work and take down the old regime, but then someone has to build things up again to make the perfect society, and there is no place for the destroyers in the new regime.
I see Dumbledore as V in this instance, and Harry as Evey. Dumbledore does the dirty work. He sets up the dominoes, he does the morally ambiguous things, and then he dies. Then, its Harry turn to finish things up and make sure the world turns out the way it should. And, both V and Dumbledore refuse to allow their proteges to kill, no matter how necessary it may seem.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
I mean, how much justification do you need to let your hero live happily ever after? Especially given the kind of saga which you are writing, a tale originally meant for kids, and carrying the expectations of those kids, no matter how much your topic – and your characters – has evolved with the years. Kids (and quite a few grown ups) need tidy endings, virtue rewarded, vice punished, the bad man in hell (or under a bench in King’s Cross) and the original pattern – the platform, the train, the nervous young kids waving good-bye to their parents as they embark upon a scary-exciting voyage of learning and adventure – reassuringly restated. Why would you ever need to justify that?
And of course there’s also death, the presence hovering behind the stories. Was she going to let death win by taking Harry? Take James and Lily and Sirius Black and Lupin and a Weasley and even Dumbledore and the unmourned Snape, but not Harry. No, not Harry.
There is a lot of comfort in the story, about death not being the worst thing that can happen to you, and death as but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; but I don’t think there was enough comfort to reconcile any of us to the death of Harry.
I fully expected Harry to die in the end. I didn’t want him to, (not Harry!!)but I thought that was the only way she would get away with never writing another book. It would have been a cop-out for sure, in my humble opinion, and I admire her for being able to keep him alive, and still stick to her guns…so far
I also don’t remember anyone being “livid” that Harry had survived, and I’m going to have to disagree with those who think keeping him alive was a cop-out. Killing him would have been the easy thing to do, she had already set it up!
I’m loving Red Rockers comments, very nicely said!
Am I too cliche in saying that Harry is my favourite character?
Am I too cliche in saying that Harry is my favourite character?
Not at all, Chelsea. In fact, I think that actually makes you unique
Well, not quite unique: about 18% of the respondents to a Hog’s Head Poll agreed with Chelsea. But 82% disagreed.
I’ve been thinking about the fact that Harry isn’t my favorite character either (Lupin is, but that’s because of Thewlis), but that his death would have been totally insupportable. Why is that?
Well, he is the hero. And a very sympathetic one at that, even when he’s being surly, or self-pitying, or cheating off of Snape’s old Potions book. The kid doesn’t take himself too seriously, doesn’t buy into the “Boy who Lived” hype, is humble, and genuinely tries to do the right thing as much as he can. And part of it has to be due to the fact that we’re used to seeing the wizarding world through Harry’s eyes – and through his perspective. Without him, we’d lose our eyes, and with that, our way of understanding what we see. This is Harry’s tale in more ways than through the simple fact that the story is about him. I think that it also has to do with the fact that it’s Harry’s idea of right and wrong which is at the moral heart of the stories.
But beyond all that, his act of self-sacrifice, which he performs with a sense of inevitability which has everything to do with his character, and with such little fuss and angst, makes him a genuine hero. Which is an admirable thing, even in this skeptical, ironic, post-modernist age.
Well, not quite unique: about 18% of the respondents to a Hog’s Head Poll agreed with Chelsea. But 82% disagreed.
I’m thinking primarily of what I’ve seen at the conferences, and it’s more like 99% to 1% there.
Wasn’t that poll mainly about which character we thought was most interesting or intriguing rather than which character we considered to be our favorite?
The right choice, if one can say that about a fictional work, was for her to keep Harry alive. It would’ve been a cop out to kill him. It would’ve been too easy to do it that way. Plus, I agree with Red Rocker’s comments about Harry. The story comes to us through Harry’s eyes. To cut off his story at the very end would be to cut us off too. It would be too jarring & something even beyond anti-climatic.
It asked: Who is your favorite character?
Travis, I think we’ve been over this ground before. Are you thinking of all the fans dressed as Death Eaters at conventions and conferences? And was it mainly the grown-ups? The ones who lack the imagination to conceive how doing and being good could be way more interesting (see: Harry Potter, Lily Potter, Luna Lovegood, Sirius Black, Reubus Hagrid, Remus Lupin, Regulus Black, Dobby, Kreacher, Fred and George, Hermione, Snape and yes, even Dumbledore) than doing and being evil?
Thanks, Rocker. I had forgotten. Too much stuff going on since then. I was disappointed I couldn’t participate more in the Lovecraft stuff so far this month since I’ve been out of town a lot.
But anyway, at least I chose a good character for my favorite & that was Luna. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like Harry or any other character for that matter. I don’t imagine seeing the story through anybody else’s eyes but Harry’s. And Harry also shows us that living out life & doing the right things isn’t necessarily exciting or even interesting but it gives us the capacity to weather all the struggles of life & to really enjoy life.
Actually, I do find Harry interesting. It’s not so much his character – he’s a decent chap, as I mentioned earlier, but without too much charisma or flash, and very little of the dark side in him – but how he responds to his task. I’m reminded of Gandalf talking to Frodo, responding to his stated wish that he didn’t have to deal with the ring and Sauron’s gang:
So do all who see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that we are given”?
And Harry certainly rises to the occasion, shouldering his burden without a whimper, and walking bravely to his death. As I’ve said before, I find that enormously moving. I am often attracted to characters with more of the dark side in them – Dumbledore as Master Manipulator or the reluctant werewolf Lupin would be more my thing – but Harry’s act of courage trumps everything else. JKR has convinced me (or maybe it’s because I’ve finally grown up): goodness is more interesting than badness.
Rocker, what I mean is, uninteresting compared to what the world normally considers to be interesting. I, too, think gooodness is more interesting than badness & that goodness, because it is harder, leads to a more fulfilling & interesting life.
Badness or edginess or rebellious is often taken for interesting. But it’s not.
Red Rocker – I’m so glad you are so well spoken, because you are saying exactly what is in my head but can’t get out of my fingertips, and you have given all the reasons for which I love Harry so much… and perhaps I wish I had even an ounce of his courage.
“But beyond all that, his act of self-sacrifice, which he performs with a sense of inevitability which has everything to do with his character, and with such little fuss and angst, makes him a genuine hero.”
“…shouldering his burden without a whimper, and walking bravely to his death. As I’ve said before, I find that enormously moving.” – Me too
In my own words, the reason I find Harry such an interesting character is that he actually thrives in the face of the unthinkable. His parents are murdered and is raised by neglectful and cruel relatives, yet he remains polite and kind. He is taunted by some, placed on a pedestal by others, yet he is able to commit himself to doing right by his friends and enemies alike.
Although I too usually am attracted to characters who have a bit of an edge – Sirius would be a good one, and Snape for sure – but in this series, it is Harry I find most interesting (with Snape running a close second) and the one with whom I relate to best.
Thanks for the kind words, Chelsea. And thanks also for reminding me of my other two favorite black sheep: S. Black and Snape.
Here’s a revelation I just had. JKR is very good at writing death scenes. Lily dies well, on a note of anguish: “Not Harry!” Cedric Diggory dies touchingly, speaking the eternal wish of the dying soldier: “Don’t leave me behind, Harry” (or words to that effect) S. Black dies heartbreakingly, his insolent smile intact on his face until he realizes the unthinkable – he’s dead. And he comes back to reassure Harry about the thing we all fear: “Dying? Not at all… Quicker and easier than falling asleep.” R. Black dies off camera, but the defiant message he leaves in the locket moves us even from beyond the grave: “I’ll be dead but you’re going to get yours, you s.o.b.” Dumbledore dies dramatically (being the showman that he is), with maximum effect on the living. Luna’s words over Dobby’s grave are the most basic vocabulary of grief: “It’s so unfair you had to die when you were so good and brave.” Snape dies in the best anti-hero tradition – thinking of the woman for whom he sacrificed all: “Look at me!” Lupin and Fred don’t get much of a send off, it’s true, but JKR was running out of time to wrap up her tale.
My point: Harry’s death stands out even amongst all those masterfully crafted demises. The others are just working up to the main event. And the scene is so powerfully written, the only thing that makes it bearable is what comes after.
Very well said yet again Red Rocker.
I think that JKR was writing that scene with the emotion she was feeling herself for Harry’s impending death, which is probably why it has had such a profound impact. I think I sobbed through chapter 34 – in my defence though, I was 8 months pregnant
Having said all of which, I have to ask myself: where is JKR coming from when she says she wanted to show how her hero came home from the wars and became a good father, rather than living in a frozen moment of excitement and glory or bceoming a mercenary, by which two analogies I believe she means rather than dying or not getting married and settling down?
Because as outspoken as I have been in protecting the author’s right of exegesis – or at least to have her comments about her own work taken seriously – that last one truly does seem a little out of left field. It’s supported by the canon, it’s true, at least by the epilogue. And the theme of fathers leaving their sons to grow up alone (or in single-parent households, a la Snape) has run through the series: Harry, Tom Riddle, Dumbledore, Snape and Neville, all grow up without fathers. The Black Brothers might as well not have a father for all the influence he appears to have had. And the whole Lupin/Tonks/Teddy sub-plot seems to emphasize the importance of being there for your son over fighting the good fight. So, ok, the canon supports the theme.
But am I the only one to think that theme doesn’t really fit too well with the others (love and death and self-sacrifice)? That it’s kind of forced onto the main story line, and doesn’t really resonate emotionally, much like Harry’s verbal slap to Lupin:
Go home and take care of your pregnant wife.
Yeah, right. And how old are you again Potter? And you have sustained how many long-term relationships?
I thought that this point was interesting and one I hadn’t thought of before explicitly. Many veterans have a hard time making that transition – from the horrors and “excitement” (if that is the right word) of war to the doldrum every day existence. It is going from the mountaintop to live in the valley. And it really is harder to live in the valley in some ways – it is clear what is right / wrong and what you have to do on the mountaintop, but not so much when you’re not faced with these great choices. But I think its those every day ones – how do you really live your life – that show how you really make choices. I have that experience as a Christians at retreats or such – where everything is clear (like Aslan’s country or mountaintop in Narnia) and it becomes less so in everyday living. I too have feel the “disappointment” and hurt in some ways going back to the everyday from an intense year-long experience of “Mission Year” (Love God, Love People. nothing else matters is their motto) in which my team became very close and we lived very simply to living now. In some ways it was harder in Mission Year – everything was so intense, but in other ways it was easier – choices seemed much clearer. I’d imagine veterans have a similar experience and some of them do not make it which is where I think the mercenary point comes in – this is why we need to have intensive counselling and help for our veterans which sadly sometimes is a lot priority.
I feel like this choice has connections with Buffy in Season 5/6 too (something pointed out on another site – I’m editing some of my thoughts to comment here too). Buffy and Harry go through similar things (but Joss can never let Buffy or any character really be happy in a relationship, unlike JKR). Harry could have stayed where he felt it was “done” or made the choice, that Buffy didn’t get to make, but eventually did, of staying in the cold, hard, edgy world, now where she was safe and warm and done. Buffy Season 6 is my favorite season because it shows some of the realities of being an adult – bills, divorce, confusion over direction, etc so well – and Buffy just struggling to be there and going self-destructive for awhile. She finally made the right decision, but had to consciously fight every day and remember that “the hardest thing in this world is to live in it”. I don’t think that Harry had quite as much of a difficult time coming back and living, though he did have to go back into a hard situation. DD was proud of his decision to return and fight for the world, knowing he could have stayed and been done, but decided to save more lives (the decision Buffy ultimately made too but with much more angst)
Red Rocker, that scene with Lupin in ‘The Bribe’ didn’t resonate much with me either. I also realized a ‘father theme’, but the ‘fatherless children theme’ did not seem to be especially prominent to me. (Snape had a muggle father and Harry, Neville, Riddle and Ted Tonks grew up without any parent, not only without a father.)
Harry had four main father figures: James, Sirius, Lupin and Dumbledore. They all loved him and he loved and admired them, but each of them was debunked at some point of the story. His biological father James and his godfather Sirius had been reckless bullies. His ideal teacher Lupin was a bit of a coward at times. His mentor Dumbledore used Harry all the time and never told him the whole truth. Later they were all redeemed to a certain degree, because they gave their life for Harry and / or a voldemortless world. However, a bitter taste remains.
Last not least there is Snape who never loved Harry and never was a father figure for him but protected him effectively because of his love for Lily. He always was a bitter man but JKR added some sweetness to him in the end.
I can’t help but get a message for the boys / children of the world to never take their fathers (or surrogates) as a role model but to trust only themselves and good friends of their own age.
Of course, there also is a ‘mother theme’ – but that’s another story.
Rena, I have thought along the same lines as you about JKR’s portrayal of Harry’s male role models. If I wanted to drag in the author into the discussion, we could wonder what role JKR’s relationship with her father & perhaps even her ex-husband played in her writing of the male role models.
However, after thinking about it a bit, I think there’s a good in text explanation. That is, all of Harry’s male role models have suffered through a long traumatic war. Dumbledore, in many ways, has been fighting against Voldemort since the day LV came to Hogwarts. James was an ass but as Sirius quite rightly notes most guys are at that age but James got more mature. But he too didn’t really know adult life without a war going on. Sirius was involved in the war, too, & then imprisoned wrongly for over a decade, & then in hiding for three years. Lupin has been involved in the war too & knew that it hadn’t ended when LV first fell.
So, all these men have been heavily defined by the wizarding war. In a sense they can’t help but be formed by that. But if we take Harry as a good male role model, the series ends on a positive note. Harry survives the war & grows beyond it. He becomes a loving father to his children & a very involved godfather to Teddy Lupin. Ron, too, in a similar way. And all throughout the series we do have one good fatherly role model, Arthur Weasley.
I don’t think Harry has too many good male or female parental role models present in his life. He has to more or less bring himself up.
But I think that’s a necessary thing for at least two reasons. Harry’s life is the hero’s journey from a very early age. And while the hero may have many allies, he needs to make his way through life alone. He has to be an orphan. As well, all children’s adventure books require absent parents. The author sometimes has to resort to incredible strategems to get the adults out of the way. I will always remember Enid Blyton’s Adventure series where the adults were always summarily removed from the storyline at the latest by the third chapter so that the four children could proceed to stumble upon some bad guys and defeat their nefarious plots, all the while sleeping in rugs and eating lots of tinned stuff which, for some reason, they found irresistible. The books were also unbearably sexist, but that’s neither here nor there.
As for Arthur Weasley, his survival, or rather JKR’s decision not to kill him, tells me that she decided to give fathers a last chance, perhaps realizing that her fictional child, Harry, was going to have to grow up and be a father, and that he was going to have to be a good father.
The one, dedicated, pure father-figure is Arthur, without question. Like Red and a few other suggest, if this theme were really all that important, then DH needed a significantly longer ending to explore Harry’s re-adjustment to “civilian life.”
The theme is certainly present in many of the other characters, but I’m not sure it’s really all that central to understanding Harry.
I recently heard someone on the radio, I forget who, who was saying that all soldiers returning from war wanted was a quite life where they could own a house and raise their kids in a stable world. Which is very understandable. He then said that all the children of those soldiers wanted was to break out of that safe (staid) world that their father’s desired so much.
If that’s right, what could it mean for ASP’s generation?
Will harry be a good father figure for his kids?
Context is everything, and we don’t know the context of these comments by JKR. I guess she was thinking of returning war veterans as the model for Harry of the epilogue not Harry of the main body of the story. In DH she took some pains to have Harry not be a soldier, in fact, and to have him not kill. He was camping in the woods while his fellow students rebuilt the DA, and looking for horcruxes during the battle of Hogwarts. He didn’t kill Voldemort, and it was essential to his survival that he didn’t. But the connection is worth making because, as she says, both face the challenge of creating an ordinary, peaceful, family life after being used to the extraordinary and horrific. As we know from the Mirror in PS, an ordinary family is what Harry wanted. It’s what Voldemort had taken from him, and what he was fighting to regain.
I suppose the Lupin incident fits in here too. Lupin was terrified by the ordinary, everyday responsibility of parenthood. Of course, his circumstances were rather extraordinary and tougher than most. Harry was unkind – he was thinking of himself, not Lupin – but he was broadly right. And ironically, he was giving Lupin the same short shrift Lupin had given him about courting danger in PoA!
A lot of people were livid about the ending of DH and about the epilogue. There were lots of reasons for this, and I have the feeling that one of them was not that Harry survived, but that he survived and didn’t change the world. He survived and pursued an ordinary life. Harry is ordinary, and he’s interesting because he’s ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. (Actually, this makes a lot of people livid too, come to think of it!) What protected him from Voldemort in the first place was something ordinary – the love of a mother for her child. Children all over the world are protected by this in an unspectacular fashion every day of the week. The mystery that started and finished the story – Harry’s survival – had nothing to do with magic at all, or not the magic of spells and charms and so on. I think this makes people livid as well. So many people (In fandom, anyway; perhaps not in the real world.) seemed to be expecting DH to be a different kind of book and Harry to learn lots of terribly powerful and clever spells to vanquish Voldemort, as well as become a great general and lead his troops into battle against the forces of evil, and finally to take charge of the wizarding world and turn it into a politically correct paradise. Instead DH was yet another collection of bizarre adventures, culminating in Harry being saved by luck (i.e. courage and love) and hankering after a sandwich. (A politically incorrect sandwich, at that!)
Good points, woman_ironing. The usual model in fantasy books (well, fantasy comics and video games) is for the hero to become great and powerful and defeat the villain at his own game. The sheer ordinariness of Harry’s subsequent life might have been a bit of a downer. And yes, I know that some people wanted Harry to fix all wrongs, and change the system, rather than settling down and becoming part of the system. And some people (me!) thought that sandwich was way politically incorrect. I guess JKR might have been reacting to their vociferous feedback.
Korg, I think Harry would have made an excellent father. Just the kind of father kids love to have: loving, fun loving, playful, decent, fair, and a hero to boot. Do you think different?
Ah, that sandwich, Red Rocker! I’ve been reading John Granger’s ‘Deathly Hallows Lectures’ – which is great – and I think a sixth key could be added to his five: comedy. (I’m pretty sure John Granger has talked about HP being a comedy somewhere.) JKR has a devilish sense of humour and HP is full of mischief.