Deconstructing Harry Potter

Look at the Harry Potter books, and I think it’s pretty evident that the nature of the story changes by the time we reach “The Deathly Hallows.”

The first six books follow a fairly predictable pattern. Harry arrives at school. Something odd is going on. People suspect Harry. Harry becomes socially ostracized. Harry has difficulty with his classes, particularly Potions. Through loyalty, courage and perseverance, Harry and his friends pull through. The trouble is stopped, Harry is vindicated, and he goes home. Not so “The Deathly Hallows.” In this book, Harry, Ron and Hermione are on a variation of the Hero’s Quest, to locate the horcruxes needed to destroy Voldemort. That’s a major shift in the story, and it’s a fair question for readers to ask, as some have, whether the series jumps the shark at this point

I don’t think it’s that easy, though. Given that the series follows Harry from his 11th birthday up to just shy of his 18th, it’s evident that this series has always been about coming of age. That process begins in “The Philosopher’s Stone” and continues through the next five books, but it’s only in “The Deathly Hallows” that Harry comes of age and determines what sort of man he is going to be.

It’s a common thing to talk in pop psychology to talk about father figures. Your father figure is either your actual father or, lacking that, someone who assumes the father’s role in shaping and guiding you on your way to adulthood.

Harry has essentially two father figures. The first is Dumbledore: wise, protective, influential and yet his involvement in Harry’s day-to-day life is not immediately apparent. Dumbledore is the good father figure, the one Harry should emulate. The second, monstrous father figure is Voldemort: cruel, selfish and abusive. Voldemort gave Harry his greatest abilities: his power, his ambition and his thirst to prove himself. And of course, while he’s also not an obvious presence in Harry’s life, he’s left him with that scar that Harry can never forget.

Harry spends the first six books wanting to be like Dumbledore but often given to fits of behavior that emulate Voldemort, and he often wonders what his nature truly is. It’s in “The Deathly Hallows” as he’s burying Dobby (as Dumbledore would have done) and not pursuing the Elder Wand (as Voldemort is doing) that he finally decides. Harry is coming into his own as an adult, and choosing the father figure he wants to follow.

This is a natural progression or evolution, even if we we look at the series as the adventures of children in school. The first five books follow a common enough English story tradition of kids-at-boarding-school. Even without a boarding school experience, I still recognize the archetypes from my public school experience of teacher-who-hates-me, stern-but-kind-teacher, school bully and his sidekicks, nerd, jock, best friend, idiot teacher, friendly teacher, and so on.

“The Half-Blood Prince” is where the kids finish school, and “The Deathly Hallows” is where they must begin their apprenticeship and show that what they have learned in school, has value. They’ve trained all their lives for this task, and now they have to complete it.

“The Deathly Hallows” can be said to jump the shark if and only if the books are regarded as separate works independent of one another, as episodes rather than as items in a series, as if they were episodes of “Star Trek” rather than “Battlestar Galactica” or perhaps installments in “The Chronicles of Narnia,” rather than individual volumes from “The Lord of the Rings.”

It’s fairly evident from Rowling’s use of parallels and ,foreshadowing, that she envisioned the seven books together, as one story, rather than just making it up as she went along..