Harry Potter

Potter Headache

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I thought the headache I had while reading Order of the Phoenix was simple transference from Harry as the pain from his scar waxed and wained.
But a Northwest Washington physician thinks otherwise:

three patients, ages 8 to 10, complained in June that they had been suffering from headaches for two or three days.
“In each case, the headache was dull and the pain fluctuated throughout the day,” Bennett wrote in a letter published in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
….
“On further questioning, it was determined that each child had spent many hours reading J.K. Rowling’s latest book in the Harry Potter series,” Bennett wrote in the letter, which journal editors titled “Hogwarts Headaches — Misery for Muggles.”
……
“The presumed diagnosis for each child was a tension headache brought on by the effort required to plow through an 870-page book. The obvious cure for this malady — that is, taking a break from reading — was rejected by two of the patients, who preferred acetaminophen instead,” ….

Hmmmm, I still think I’m right and when the next volume comes out I suggest parent’s of 8-10 year olds give them something to prop up the book.

Themes of Harry Potter 2

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The other day I noted various Harry Potter themes that were being discussed. Today, courtesy of NZ Bear’s Blogosphere Daily News and Kevin Holtsbury I found this interesting discussion of The Politics and Personalities of Harry Potter 5. Greg, the author, in turn points to a Tony Adragna post in which Tony compares Harry to bush. Tony updates with a note that Glenn Reynolds and Betsy both make similar connections.

Reynolds, in the above linked post, takes Chris Suellentrop to task for this hammering of Harry:

Of course, Suellentrop is wrong……
What he brings to the table are personal qualities rather than talents. He’s loyal, and more importantly he inspires loyalty. And he has a clear vision of what matters. Everyone else is able to forget, or to convince themselves to ignore, the threat posed by Voldemort. Harry, on the other hand, never forgets.

Reynolds attributes these same traits to bush. And a strict reading probably supports this. In making his bush as Harry argument I wonder why he leaves out so many of the other points Suellentrop uses to bash Harry, for example:

…skates through school by taking advantage of his inherited wealth and his establishment connections.
What Harry has achieved on his own, …, stems mostly from luck and, more often, inheritance.
Harry’s other achievements can generally be chalked up to the fact that he regularly plays the role of someone’s patsy.
In fact, Harry rarely puts hard work or effort into anything.

Well, in the case of Harry Suellentrop is wrong. Harry is an actor (not in the theatrical sense) rather then an intellectual. Instead of hammering on Harry as does Suellentorp, who apparently thinks Harry’s development is at an end, I am eagerly looking ahead to see if Harry will build on his strengths, learn to work with his advisors and actually grow to a level where he might achieve his potential greatness. Oh, and we should note that Harry is never awol when the time comes to enter the fray.

This is one of the wonderful things about books: the story unfolds through the eyes of each individuals world. In contrast with the perspective presented by Tony, Glenn and Betsy how many of you also thought of the bushies as you read the book but as Voldemort and the Death Eaters?

And, since my last writing on this, Kevin Drum comments that he considers Snape the most interesting character in the book. There is interesting Snape discussion in the post’s comment thread.

The Themes of Harry Potter

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Warning: Some of these links lead to spoilers.
While not all encompassing there are a lot of interesting discussions going on about the political/moral implications of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And most of them that I’ve run across seem to run counter to Jesse Cohen’s 2001 Slate piece suggesting an anti-Thatcher pro welfare state view of the Potter series through volume 4:

Aside from being a politically corrected reconstruction of the English public school, Hogwarts is a microcosmic welfare state, stepping in to care for orphan Harry when his nightmarishly bourgeois relatives fail him.

Natalie Solent enumerates libertarian aspects of the book.

Mindles suggests a Randian connection.

Brian at Catallarchy looks at market regulation and money and banking.

Update: Hanah at Quare suggests some non-libertarian themes:

There are definitely some good libertarian themes in the books. But there are also some blatant non-libertarian ones.

The Philosophical Cowboy tells us “there’s some great comparisons to be drawn between the events in the book, and Britain under New Labour.”

Greg, who has a blog entitled Harry Potter Prognostications tells us (in the comment thread to the above Mindles link)

I thought that HP5 was most similar to George Orwell’s 1984 – the overall theme of the book having to do with truth and trust. The ministry installed Umbridge as a functioning Minister of Truth at Hogwarts, suppressing facts that the ministry felt were incompatabile with their agenda.

And this from Julian Sanchez:

While most parents celebrate anything that gets adolescents to put down the remote and pick up a book-a powerful bit of magic in itself-others are concerned that the series celebrates the “dark arts.” An Australian school is only the most recent to have banned the bespectacled mage. Perhaps parents and teachers who relish unquestioned obedience are right to be concerned about Harry Potter, but their focus is misplaced. It is not the magic, but the morality of Harry Potter that is truly subversive.

In response to the AS Byatt Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, Jessica Crispen chimes in with this in response:

A. S. Byatt is full of shit. I may not understand the Harry Potter obsession among (most) adults, but I don’t go as far as Byatt. I don’t think reading a children’s book is regressing or a symptom of our society’s decay.

Frail and Bedazzled agrees with Crispin and argues:

As for there being no heavy issues or themes presented in the books, well, I think she’s wrong, and if she’s read PoA, GoF or OotP, she obviously hasn’t done so very closely, because the books are teeming with issues, simplistic at first, but still – the issues are there.

I enjoyed the book and am thrilled at the wide variety of discussion that is occurring. I don’t remember anything quite like this after book 4…but then I wasn’t participating in the blogosphere 2 years ago.

Saucy Harry

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John at Catallarchy has found some entertaining, though out of context, snippets from the new Harry Potter.

Now, I’m sure most of you have not been looking for this type of thing as you read the Harry Potter stories but have you found other examples? Rowling was not adverse to sneaking in a bit of off color humor in the earlier books.