Harry Potter - A review

 

 

 

I just finished reading the 6’th Harry Potter book.  I had had no interest in these books until I started receiving e-mails about how evil and satanic they were.  I was familiar with the tone of these messages.  They were being generated by alarmists.  Curious about what the books did contain I took it upon myself to read the first in the series.  Since I was working in a school at the time I already knew these books to be very popular among the students and an asset to our reading program.

 

I found the first book to be very entertaining, exciting, mysterious and adventurous.  Harry Potter’s life, according to the book, was larger than life.  Coming from a British writer, I found it strange that she would use so much exaggeration when the British are usually the kings of understatement.  Then in retrospect I realized that there were some disturbing elements in the book.  Three times in the first book, Harry openly breaks the rules, and instead of being punished, he is lavishly rewarded.  In fact, the one time that he goes out of his way to help someone, he is caught and punished.  As far as life lessons go, these are not the lessons you teach young children who are still sorting out right and wrong, or the difference between real and fiction.  As such this is not a good book for children.

 

Having read the series, and just finished the latest addition, I maintain this position.  J.K. Rowling’s books are well written, adventurous and mysterious.  They are entertaining and they are most definitely not for children.  In the series so far we have had the visual imagery of Harry’s mom being mercilessly murdered, demonic like creatures sucking the soul out of a man, Giant spiders and so on.  Just about anything that might cause nightmares has been covered.  In book 6 we find Harry in a dark cave, surrounded by a dark underground lake, standing on a very small island in the center of the lake and being ambushed by zombie like dead people who are trying to drag him off to the water and drowned him. This is not good imagery for children!

 

Now if you have read the book, or if you don’t ever care to anyway, read on.  If you are going to read it and do not want me to spoil it for you stop here & read no further!

 

At the end of book 6, Dumbledore is dead.  Or is he?  I submit to you the possibility of a huge plot twist to come in the next book, that being the reappearance of Dumbledore.  The clues that I’m following are these.  First, Dumbledore spent some time talking to Malfoy about his ‘options’.  The suggestion here was that his death could be faked and thus he would be hidden & safe from Voldermort.  What if this is what Dumbledore has done?  What if he has faked his own death?  Consider that Dumbledore has been spending a lot of time shaking off both the Death Eaters and the Ministry of Magic.  By faking his death he has freed himself to move around and do what he needs to do without their interferences.  Second, He has absolute trust in the double-agent, Snape.  Is it any wonder then that Snape would be the one to ‘pretend’ to kill him?  This could have been pre-arranged.  Dumbledore only had to worry about someone else doing it before Snape could arrive, and that is why he kept dialoging Malfoy.  Then there is the question of why Dumbledore would stun Harry at that moment to prevent him from doing anything… Harry would have been a lose cannon and if he were faking his own death, he did not need Harry’s heroics to mess it up.  And the final clue is Dumbledors blackened hand.  This served as a reminder to him that he is not as young and invincible as he once thought himself to be.  This is why he has chosen to fake his death.  Because he knows that his life is on the line here and that only one thought to be dead would be safe to move around and collect the information that he needs to collect.  Oh, and one last hint, why bury him on the school grounds?  Because it is the one place that Voldermort can not go to discover the deception.  As for the true allegiance of Snape… consider the following, while on the run out of the school grounds, it was Snape who not only told the Death Eaters to leave Harry alive, but actually stunned one of them that was attacking Harry.  Now we know he enjoys taunting Harry, but also note that he only deflected Harry’s attacks he never did anything to hurt Harry back.

 

These are the main reasons I’m thinking that Dumbledore will return in book 7. 

 

Please take this to heart.  These are adult books.  Do not give them to children under 16 years of age.  They are too dark in places for kids under that age.  I might be persuaded to drop the line to 13 years olds in some cases, but they would have to be mature 13 year olds.  Take it on a case by case basis.  I do not recommend that anyone under 16 be given these books!