Posted by Ilya Somin: Assessing My Harry Potter Book 7 Predictions: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_07_22-2007_07_28.shtml#1185152774
Last week, I wrote [1]a post posing some questions about Book 7 of Harry Potter and giving my predictions about the answers. Here's how I did. Note: if you want to avoid SPOILERS, you should stop reading NOW. 1. Is Snape good or evil? My answer: good. Assessment: Right on. 2. Is Dumbledore really dead? My answer: Yes. Assessment: Correct, but Dumbledore's spirit and portrait do make appearances in Book 7. 3. Which characters will live and which will die? My answer: Characters I think will die: Voldemort, Snape, at least one Weasley (not Ron or Ginny), Hagrid, most of the Death Eaters. Assessment: Right as to Voldemort (an easy case), Death Eaters (ditto), Snape, a Weasley other than Ron or Ginny, and predicting that none of the central Trio would die. Wrong about Hagrid. Did not anticipate deaths of Tonks and Hedwig. Some of the other minor characters who died were ones I thought might get the axe, but didn't bother to list in the post. Others (e.g. - Colin Creevey) came as surprises. 4. What are the remaining horcruxes? My answer: I don't have any really good guesses on this one. Assessment: I was right to think that my guesses weren't "really good." Still, not exactly an inspiring performance on that question. 5. What, if anything, is the most important theme of the series? My answer: No one clear moral, but several different themes. One that is certainly present is a very skeptical view of government. Another is that universal values such as love, freedom, friendship, opposition to evil, etc., cut across racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions. As Dumbledore says in The Goblet of Fire (pg. 723): "differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open." Assessment: Generally correct. Both skepticism about government and the transcendence of cultural differences through universal principles are key aspects of Book 7. Government proves utterly ineffective in combatting Voldemort; worse still, the Ministry of Magic becomes a fearsome tool for repression once Voldemort takes over. Voldemort is eventually defeated by a nongovernmental coalition made up of numerous different races, cultures, and Hogwarts Houses uniting around common principles. Of course, as I said in the earlier post, "it would be a big mistake to assume that these political and philosophical themes exhaust the series, or are even its most important aspect." References 1. http://volokh.com/posts/1184379931.shtml _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
