Andrew Wheelhouse
posted 3 September 2007

So here we are. After a decade of shaping the most spectacularly successful literary series in publishing history, after writing a string of books whose sales rivalled those of the Bible, JK Rowling has finally put Harry Potter and his chums out to graze. Where once there was Blyton and Dahl, there is now also Rowling, although I doubt that either of those earlier authors could have matched the publishing dreadnought behind Harry Potter that has sold 325 million copies of the books and which has netted Rowling well in excess of £500 million.

Rowling certainly had her work cut out for her. The intricacies of the six previous novels left countless loose ends that needed to be tidied up to achieve decent closure. It was clear after Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince that the final instalment would have to break away from the established format in order to avoid looking unbearably twee and naff. Happily, it does. This final book sees Harry’s fortunes reaching their nadir, the narrator noting despondently at one point; ‘All was ashes: how much more could he lose? Ron, Dumbledore, the phoenix wand…’.

The Ministry of Magic has been infiltrated by Voldemort’s Death Eaters, and now serves as a puppet organisation to rubber-stamp legislation allowing Voldemort to perform his own little bit of ethnic cleansing, brutally persecuting wizards of non-magical lineage. Harry, Ron and Hermione are forced to go on the run, hunted at every turn, and cut off from loved ones. Their spirits are dampened by dissolution, internecine bickering and the abominable English weather. And Harry is forced to live up to the truth that his deceased mentor and hero, Dumbledore, had a rather dark history of his own.

So far, so bleak? To be sure, getting ‘heavy’ does not make Rowling’s work necessarily better, just as making each of her tome-like volumes gradually approximate the size and weight of a doorstop does not make Harry Potter into Anna Karenina, but even so, the darkness was bound to encroach. Rowling tries to take a more heavyweight approach that correlates with the maturation of the initial generation of Harry Potter fans, evidenced by the preface quotations from Aeschylus’ ‘The Libation Bearers’ and William Penn’s ‘More Fruits of Solitude’.

This is Harry's final test, and Rowling makes it even more powerful and believable by moving the plot further into the real world, into the ancient copses of the Forest of Dean or onto Tottenham Court Road, with the lager louts and the dodgy cafés that sell rubbish cappuccinos. Stripping away the ritual contrivances of Hogwarts heightens the sense of vulnerability surrounding Harry in a way similar to that of King Lear in the storm - Rowling even employs the archetypal pathetic fallacy, with Harry and Ron having a thunderous row in the middle of a tempest.

Rowling has resisted the temptation to let characterisation stagnate in order to keep the exposition central. With the young wizards on the cusp of adulthood, their behaviour is well adapted to reflect their trauma, and the horror of the situation they have found themselves in; ‘there was no map, no plan. Dumbledore had left them to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed of terrors alone and unaided’. The changes in Harry’s character are subtle, but all the more important for his coming of age. Rowling has previously endowed her protagonist with great reserves of bloody-mindedness and obstinacy, but here they appear more like leadership and strength. Despite the self-doubt, Harry soldiers on. But then, Harry has always been a conventional hero, his selflessness meaning there was scarcely a shred of moral ambiguity about him, as Dumbledore says; ‘I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man’.

But while long time readers will find that the character development of the young wizards draws to its logical conclusion, as evidenced by the inclusion of a mercifully brief epilogue, the author also forces a rapid re-evaluation of Professors Dumbledore and Snape. I feel these characters are the real gems of the final book, injecting a dose of moral relativism, and hence reality, into the proceedings. We were always led to believe the two were polar opposites, Dumbledore being all heart and goodness next to Snape’s brooding and sinister figure. In fact they ultimately prove to be the same; good men, trying to make amends for the hideous mistakes of their pasts.

The question remains as to why exactly the books have become such a phenomenon. The opinion of one Times critic, which I agree with, is that in some ways Harry Potter has become more British than the Brits. The stiff upper lip, the forbearance of grief and pain, and the insufferably snobbish boarding school house tribalism. They strike a chord by painting something of a picture, composed of the blessings and curses and the enigmatic nature of ourselves and the island we inhabit. Or maybe I’m being over-sentimental and all it really provides is a cheap sort of ‘marketable Englishness’. Then there’s the politics. Throughout her books, Rowling has made cheeky jabs at meddling, paranoid government, bureaucracy and the educational system, but always without letting it overshadow what is a darn good yarn. In fact, the very fact the series had an expiry date from the outset has added to the urgency of the frenzy. Personally, I think it gives a sort of organic life to the books, where the story becomes utterly compulsive in a way James Bond or Bart Simpson could never could be.

Like many great novelists, Rowling draws on a huge array of literary and cultural influences. Harry’s story betrays traces of Oliver Twist, of Oedipus and Hamlet in its focus on the role of fate and destiny and in the palpable sense of ordinariness that we feel about a protagonist who has unwillingly accepted the glory and fame thrust upon him. The horcruxes, bits of Voldemort’s soul that he has stashed away in a gambit for immortality and invincibility, smack of Tolkien, especially when the wearing of one of them causes Ron to undergo a sort of Frodo-esque swing to the dark side. Of course, like all novelists, Rowling has her flaws. Dickens for instance was susceptible to saccharine Victorian sentimentalism, and had an unpalatable moralising streak. Rowling’s works suffer from occasionally clunky narration and dialogue, blind alleys that don’t make sense for several books, and her amusing penchant for using the word ‘ejaculated’ in dialogue. One of the great pleasures that the films hold for me is in seeing how each director chooses to prune the sprawling narrative tree in creating their own directorial vision, something that has made the last three films particularly enjoyable by allowing them more imaginative scope.

Some accuse Rowling of ‘dumbing down’ adult reading and lowering the horizons of child readers, as though she is the root cause of the generation-long educational malaise that is supposed to have gripped the country. It is a vapid argument. Critics said the same thing about Dickens, and rancid arguments don’t really improve with age. It would be a mistake to think Rowling’s simple style of prose is a sign of low intellectual horizons. Like many epic works, Harry Potter can be boiled down to a few simple premises, such as the clash of good and evil and their respective natures. Despite being written in language that most children would understand, Rowling grapples with some pretty heady philosophical questions; when do the ends justify the means? What difference can love really make? How do we do the right thing? Besides, whatever the stylistic flaws, there is no doubting the power of Rowling’s imagination which has spawned a world so rich and detailed that it could almost be real.

Rowling’s success has been the source of more than a little envy. We were responsible for putting her on her pedestal. We probably felt ourselves to be progressive and liberal in creating a success out of this debut author, this struggling single mum. But when we saw her actually start to enjoy her success, manifested in a gated Edinburgh mansion and beach holidays to the Maldives, we decided the pedestal had to go. Both these impulses, the championing of the underdog and the scorning of the nouveau riche are curiously British urges and highlight, for better or worse, that while the Harry Potter PR bandwagon trundles along under the power of American capital, it is, and always will be, an essentially British phenomenon.