This was the scene at the Bookmark in Charlottetown on the stroke of midnight as we were thronging to buy our copies of the new Harry Potter Book. What an event!
I finished the book last night (Sunday). Rowling has pulled it off and has turned in another page turner. I can hardly imagine the pressure that she must be under to keep up the standard. Only two books to go. Like much of what is popular today, the book dwells mainly on the split between the corporate and the magic world. The Matrix and Lord of the Rings also speak to the inhuman aspect of the corporate/bureaucratic world and our longing for freedom. In this book, the split is deepened beyond merely the Muggles and the Wizards to include the invasion of Hogwarts by the Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Magic. Rowling uses Dickensian names just to ensure we don't miss the point. The ever so political and self-inflated Minister is called Fudge and his bureaucratic and poisonous Heydrich is called Umbridge. The conflict is between those who know what is really happening - Harry and Dumbledore - and those that will pay any price to keep the uncomfortable truth from emerging - the Ministry and the bureaucratic world.. The real evil, Voldemort, lurks in the shadows for most of the book. There is a Munich feeling about the appeasement group who feel that identifying the threat is worse than the threat itself.
As I read my words it sounds boring - I assure you that it is not. The conflict between being human and being a robot is central to our time and Rowling exposes our Matrix with extreme vividness. This, like the Matrix, is a very revolutionary work and will set up millions of children to "see" the true face of the evil that exists in our world - the mind that cares only about the institution versus the people. The action races along and the tension is built cleverly throughout the 766 pages. Knowing that one main character dies provides a poignancy as we interact with the characters. The characters also build. Harry is becoming a Neo like reluctant hero who like Frodo is becoming aware of his true burden and how it separates him from all others. The lines between good and bad blur further. Is Snape all that bad? Was Harry's father all that good? Why is Dumbledore so un-supportive of Harry?
Sex is entering the story as is the mystery of girls for boys - especially sensitive boys like Harry. Rowling has a real touch here and I suspect that the later books will build on Harry's growing sexual as well as emotional maturation. Anger is a major element of Harry's life now. Understanding it and controlling it again portends to be a development feature.
Rowling works on many levels. On the surface, the book is an adventure story like the Odyssey or the Matrix. You can read it just for that and have a great time. Below the explicit adventure is a drama - a drama of our time about the struggle to regain our humanity in a machine world where magic has been all but extinguished. Where Muggles can't see the wizards all around them and where the Wizards' own bureaucracy is working to extinguish magic. Below this, as in the Lord of th Rings and in the Matrix. is an epic. The epic is the development of an innocent into a true hero - reluctant, modest, confused who has no idea of the greatness of his real powers. Who finds out who he is by the process of ordeal. Who in the end, while supported by a fellowship, is alone and now understands his destiny is to stand alone and to confront our greatest threat - the loss of our humanity.
I find it ironic that many of the so called religious right claim that Harry Potter is a dangerous book because it brings us back the world of magic, nature and evil. How they fear our true humanity! It is now clear to me that Harry embodies what we know of the life of Jesus. A reluctant hero who likely thought of himself as only a carpenter but who was called to a mission. Who was confused for a long time in the desert. Whose ministry was aimed at exposing the inhumanity of the establishment. Who understood what this attack on the establishment meant. Who provoked them beyond their limit and in the certain knowledge of what this would mean.
Is not this true heroism? To take on your own society and expose its institutions for the self serving, faceless prisons that they tend to become?
Great artists communicate great ideas so simply that we take on the revolutionary idea without even knowing that a Trojan Horse has entered the walls of our mindset. Rowling is such an artist. The Wachowski brothers are as well. They use the mechanism of adventure to warn us of our peril. They use their ability to be popular to plant a virus of "seeing" the world as it is in our children. In so doing they prepare our society for change.
8:02:58 AM 
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