Just for the record,

[fpb]

- I loved all the seven Harry Potter books, with one exception: I thoroughly hated the epilogue. I regard it not only as bad, but as unredeemable. Its message (destroy the bad guy equals live in peace afterwards) is both dangerously escapistic (was the world any safer after 1945? And what about the widespread hope of a "peace dividend" after 1989?) and plain incredible. What, nineteen years of unbroken peace? On what planet? If that is the chapter that JKR kept in her safe all those years, it should have stayed there.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Its message (destroy the bad guy equals live in peace afterwards) ...

Destroying the bad guy does mean that one lives in greater peace afterwards.

(was the world any safer after 1945? And what about the widespread hope of a "peace dividend" after 1989?)

In order: yes, the world was safer after 1945 than it would have been had Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union confronted each other with nuclear weapons; and there was a "peace dividend" after 1989 -- the 1990's saw immense economic growth and we are safer today, even in wartime, than we were when our enemy was a atomic-armed superpower. "Better" doesn't mean "perfect."

What, nineteen years of unbroken peace? On what planet?

We do not, in fact, know from the epilogue that the peace was "unbroken." Merely that nobody as deadly as Voldemort had appeared in that time. Presumably there were criminals, monsters, and such to deal with: it was in fact Harry's job to deal with them.

We also don't know what happens after those nineteen years. Note that 19 years would have nicely covered the Interwar Era of the 1920's and 1930's.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The whole tone of the epilogue is escapistic. It ends with us being told that all was well. To use your own comparison, project that on the inter-war period and you have it happening in September, 1938.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

In September 1938, all had been well for the British, from a military point of view, for almost 20 years. Things were about to get not so well in just 2 years, but nobody knew that at the time.

Plus, the interwar example was just that -- an example. I can point to periods without major suffering much longer than that. For example, America has not suffered a military defeat, or heavy casualties, for over three decades now.

And as I said, the epilogue did not preclude threats less serious than Voldemort having been faced and even defeated in the intervening time. Indeed, Harry probably faced some of them personally.

I get the impression that nothing ever fazed him very much after surviving Voldemort, though. That would be understandable.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, everyone who had eyes to see could see trouble coming. Indeed, the reason why the public was so happy about the Munich treaty is that everyone had been expecting war. To have an agreement signed seemed a miracle of diplomacy. And the British were increasingly aware of the fragility and overstretch of the imperial commitments. I can tell you all of this from documents of the time - books, magazines, newspapers - which I have and have read. Furthermore, the previous eighteen years had not had a single year of quiet in ten. From 1919 to 1922 there had been the constant threat of involvement in the civil wars in Russia and Turkey; the conscious British decision to stay out of these left the post-war settlement in tatters and the fearsome tyranny of Lenin in control of a colossal empire. Lenin immediately, even as he was still fighting to control the territory, committed immense resources and tens - soon hundreds - of thousands of operatives to the expansion of Communism abroad by all means, fair and foul. Continuous Communist subversion in all fields had been the background to world politics from 1917 onwards. Meanwhile Italy had fallen into the hands of a warmongering tyrant, and to appease him, Britain yelded a number of colonial territories (1925). In 1923, the German government, that had never accepted even the mild terms of the Versailles treaty, deliberately destroyed its own currency in the hope of forcing a re-negotiation. France, Belgium and Italy reacted by occupying the Ruhr; Britain took GErmany's side, and for weeks there was a serious possibility of war between Britain and France. This left a heritage of distrust and dislike between two countries that, faced with an always fearsome Germany, a surly Italy and a massively hostile and subversive Russia, desperately needed each other. In 1929, America collapsed, and Europe was left to contemplate the terrible spectacle of a capitalist economy, as it then seemed, dying. They had two good years to contemplate all the worst that a Depression could do to a country; and then, in 1931, two years later than in America, the Great Depression, having given plenty of fore-warning, struck Europe, and never lifted. The thirties were a time of constant and continuously increasing threats of war; by 1935, great powers were at war in Ethiopia, then in Spain, then in China - the war in 1939 was no more than the end of an infernal cycle, and to start the world war on Sept. 1, 1939, has always seemed to me a highly Eurocentric and narrow attitude. Ethiopia had been at war for four years by then, and China for two.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Did the epidemic of 1918 have anything to do with it? I'd like to think the loss of 40 million made people cherish life a little more. But I have been wrong before

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. You have to remember that it was a very bloody age. World War One was followed by the Russian civil war, which was possibly even bloodier (records are uncertain) and by a considerable amounts of violence in Turkey, where the ancient Greek communities were annihilated, the Balkans, Kurdistan, Arabia (the rise of the house of Saud) and Somalia. It may be that the general instability and decline in living standards caused by the war[s] may itself have encouraged the disease. However, this Spanish flu has some miraculous properties: the first mention I came across of it spoke of ten million dead, then a couple of years ago it was twenty, and now you mention forty! How can a disease be so retroactively deadly?

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

The book I read said 40, so that's my "first and best" truth. All others require "unlearning" and are therefore suspicious.

Revising statistics is pretty common - it's one of those cases of the observer influencing the observation. Like happily ever after endings, unbiased data colletion is a myth we hold too dear. We make our data dance to the tune we choose. Very arbitrary.

The other number I heard was "half a billion people infected." - so some recovered and some never appeared sick.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I am pretty well read about the Great War and its consequences, but I have not actually made any serious study of the Spanish Flu epidemic, so I cannot have an opinion either way.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The thirties were a time of constant and continuously increasing threats of war; by 1935, great powers were at war in Ethiopia, then in Spain, then in China - the war in 1939 was no more than the end of an infernal cycle, and to start the world war on Sept. 1, 1939, has always seemed to me a highly Eurocentric and narrow attitude. Ethiopia had been at war for four years by then, and China for two.

You're quite right, but the specific points I'm making is that all that Rowling said is that all is right in the personal worlds of Harry Potter and his friends. Even though Harry Potter is now an important official of the Aurors, his personal world is not coterminous with the whole Wizarding world; furthermore, Harry's standard of "bad" -- a direct personal threat from a Dark Wizard of Voldemort's viciousness and power -- is a very high one indeed.

In the intervening 19 years he may, and probably has, fought all sorts of lesser threats. And there may well be Wizards as fell as Voldemort operating in other parts of the world. Harry is not Chief Auror of the whole Earth, merely of Britain.

This is also Harry's point of view. There could be all sorts of tragedy and unhappiness going on that he is not privy to or by which he is not particularly concerned. For all we know, Ron and Hermione may be having screaming arguments every night, for example. All we know is that all is right in Harry's world. He's not being hunted by Dark Wizards of a caliber that frightens him, and he, Ginny and their children are happy, as far as he can tell.

Why begrudge the poor guy a happy ending?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Because life's not like that, and you know it.

[wade-scott.livejournal.com]

Not to mention it reads like teen fanfiction. Seriously, had I read the spoiled, online version, I would have read the epilogue and thought it a hoax.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I knew this would happen eventually..... You've posted something I agree with without any reservation....

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

I am assuming that you would relate better to the way Daniel Handler (on record as hating the "happily-ever-after" way of tying up stories) ended A Series of Unfortunate Events. I would characterize it as a "happier-but-not-exclusively-happy" ending.

Personally, I didn't have a problem with the Harry Potter epilogue. It is a reflection of Harry's perspective that even if not perfect his world was much more comfortable than during his Hogworts years.

As I was pondering your premise, I was struck by thoughts of the German parallels. The reparations forced on Germany after the Great War were a contributing factor to a Second World War, but the Marshall Plan is generally conceded as the reason Germany (at least in the non-Soviet sectors prior to reunification) became an ally of the US and UK instead of becoming a problem again. One could argue that the reason why there is an extended period of "peace" in the wizarding world after the defeat of Voldemort is because the Slytherins were able to keep their house intact rather than having it disbanded, nor were there witchhunts against former deatheaters and their families. I believe this explanation would fit well with the general worldview that Jo espouses. In other words, it was not only the defeat of the villain that leads to the happy ending, but enlightened leadership thereafter.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That's funny, I am a historian and I do not think there is any consensus that the "reparations" did anything to inflame German war mania. National vanity, the excessive power of the officers corps, the whole complex of neuroses and political positions one might call "Prussia", the universal certainty that Germany had never been defeated at all, meant that no peace treaty whatsoever could be accepted by Germany. That loathsome individual Woodrow Wilson did his part in treating the Allies as though they were America's enemies and the Germans as though they were allies, thus strengthening their sense of entitlement. War was inevitable from the moment Wilson declared that his country was not an ally, but a co-belligerant.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

I just found the epilogue to be silly in so many ways, certainly one of them being what you said above. Sadly I barely remember much about the epilogue, or the last book at all. I just wasn't too blown away, and I couldn't tell if it was me or the book. Probably both.

It's still not cool to criticize JKR in certain circles around here, which I find to be just a little odd.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I am on record here as calling DH a great novel and a masterpiece, so I hope I have nothing to prove. But as the Greeks said, even the great Homer must nod from time to time. JKR has her flaws, like every other great writer.

[pathology-doc.livejournal.com]

On what planet?

In Harry's world, the Wizarding World, YES.

This is a children's fantasy series - see it in context, for heaven's sake!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do see it in context for heaven's sake and the sake of anything else sane and decent. This so-callled children's series has ended in a frightful description of tyranny unleashed and rampant, bloody civil war, and the on-screen deaths of several major characters including children. (Remember the weeping child held by Ginny during the brief ceasefire?) Perhaps if you actually looked at the heptad as it was, rather than place it in a prefabricated category ("children's story") you might understand what I am driving at. The epilogue completely subverts the whole direction of the story, and does so in the direction of irresponsible escapism.