The seventh and supposedly final Harry Potter installment is due in a week and a few minutes.
I started reading the Potter books two years ago with my daughter. I read the first three and a half to her. Halfway through the fourth book, she took over to read on her own, and I decided to blaze on ahead.
While the books are neither exquisite literature nor poorly written, they are extremely entertaining. The major problem that I have with them is a bit of characterization. Perhaps someone else has (probably has) written or spoken of this, but I've neither read nor heard them.
Here's the problem.
The good characters tend to be dynamic. Harry and his friends are not perfect. They have moral highs and lows; but while they can be immature, tend to break rules when convenient, and occasionally cut corners, they do not turn to evil. They are realistic characters: good, but not perfectly good.
However!
The evil characters are terribly static. There are no moral highs for the evil characters (Voldemort, Draco & Lucius Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe, Goyle, etc.). They are unrealistically evil in that they are perfectly evil.
The evil characters even have evil sounding names. The good guys get either regular names or irregular but charming names: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley, Albus Dumbledore, Neville Longbottom, Colin Creavy, etc. But the evil guys apparently must have evil sounding names.: Lord Voldemort, Draco (Dracula?--also I think that it's Latin for dragon) Malfoy (Malum /Malus is Latin for evil or bad, and we use it as a prefix to indicate evil or unfitting: malevolent, maladapted, malfeasance, etc. ), Lucius (Lucifer?) Malfoy, Goyle (Gargoyle), Delores Umbrage (i.e. offense, annoyance, displeasure), Severus Snape, etc.
The only good character with an evil sounding name is Sirius Black--and it had to be an evil sounding name because the first three quarters of The Prisoner of Azkeban required the reader to think that Black was a mass-murderer who sought to add Harry to his list of unfortunate victims.
On an artistic level, this is author J.K. Rowling's worst offense. It's to literature what bubble-gum pop is to music, or what "I'm Being Eaten By a Boa Constrictor" is to poetry. Still, I've always been able to get past it and enjoy the stories. You should too.
My mom says "Malfoy" is french for bad faith. Wikipedia says "The Old French "mal foy" itself is derived from Latin "mala fide", which as a judicial term means intentional mischief, ill will or evil intentions."
ReplyDeleteI think it's right that Rowling doesn't make the bad characters change, or hasn't yet. Voldemort doesn't change because he wants ultimate power, Snape doesn't change because he bears a grudge, the Malfoys don't change because they want to be on the side they think will win. None of them have reasons to change... so they don't.
The French would be malfoi, wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteI'm not suggesting that the evil characters change. I'm just suggesting that they could be a little more dynamic.