Nuketown

CNN: Final Harry Potter Book Arrives July 21

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 02/01/2007 - 8:51am

J.K. Rowling's announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last novel in the series, will be released July 21, 2007. I'm looking forward to it, but I sincerely hope she doesn't kill Harry -- that would be a very Hollywood-type ending, and it would drag down the entire series. Yes, other people have died in Harry's years at Hogwart, but ultimately the series is about good triumphing over evil ... and Harry dying in some climactic fight with Voldemort would feel like a draw.

Besides, I'm not ready for these books to end -- I'd love to see another two or three with Harry as an adult and a family of his own. It do a great job of closing the circle, and allowing him to live the life his parents were denied.

evilgenius said,

Fri, 02/02/2007 - 7:17am

Sorry but I have to disagree. Rowling has been clearly building to Harry's death for the entire series and has said numerous times that the series will not continue past this book, in any form.

Spoiler Speculation
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In addition, she's also clearly been building up that Harry is in fact a hoarcrux for Voldemort's soul (their strange connection, being able to scry into Voldemort's head and vis-a-versa, being able to speak Passeltoungue, or for that matter, why Harry lived at all {cause V didn't try to kill him, he put his soul in him instead, also the sort of grave magic that would leave the scar}). So in order to lay Voldemort to rest once and for all, that will need to be resolved, and Harry's death is by far the most likely resolution.

Also, and this is more of an asthetic thing, if Harry wasn't going to come to an eventual bad end, the normal literary development would have dictated that Harry and Hermione would be the couple, instead of Ron and Hermione. There are certainly other reasons she could choose to do that, like to reinforce Harry's isolation. But it certainly points toward Harry's probably not being around much more, IMO.

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Kenneth Newquist said,

Fri, 02/02/2007 - 8:34am

spoiler speculation
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While that certainly could happen (and Rowling has let us all know it might), I'm not convinced by the Potter-as-hoarcrux argument -- didn't Voldemort set those up in advance to guard against his eventual death? He went to the Potters looking to kill them, and everything we've seen says that he was as surprised by the outcome as anyone else. I don't think he's been faking his inability to attack Potter directly (prior to Book 4 that is).

That said, there is a connection there, and the standard tragic hero troupes demand that Harry be sacrified to defeat the ultimate evil ... but I'm still hoping that Rowling will (or has) allowed him to triumph and go on living the life his parents should have had.

As an aside, I think it would be much harder for me to read these books to my kids knowing that Harry died at the end ... unless it was a spectacularly good tale.

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evilgenius said,

Fri, 02/02/2007 - 8:42am

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I think the way it's going to play out is like this:
1) Voldemort started messing around with hoarcruxes to insure immortality.
2) Voldemort started killing his rivals and opponents.
3) Voldemort tried to kill the Potters but Harry's mother's magic protects the baby.
4) Unable to kill Harry, Voldemort instead places a part of his soul in Harry, for nefarious purposes.

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