From: lindan lee <lindanlee>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 13:27:31 +0000

Greetings!

Thanks for sending the wonderful Byatt article... I'm more Jungian inclined than Freud and now have to think about the books again through the Jungian archetypal lense. What I admire and enjoy the most about the Harry Potter world is J.K. Rowling's amazing capability to create "magical things"-- like the message owls
(especially a screecher), the magic candies, the picture password ghosts, the mirror, and countless others.

I don't find the development of her people quite as rewarding. Harry Potter in the latest adventure becomes very one-dimensional in his anger and irritation. Having been around quite a few children-adolescents-adults, I haven't seen many ki ds that display the universal anger at everyone... it's normally pretty targeted and not at their closest friends.

My main disappointment is that, for me, the Potter books violate some very important rules of fantasy and magic. Once an orphan character is rescued from their evil horrible real or unreal families they are never sent back. My biggest objec tion is how she deals with death and harm to children. For me that crosses a very big line... for goodness sakes, even the militant unicorns in the forrest say "We kill no foals"- and humans are supposed to be more evolved. Yet in this latest adventure we have adults not only wanting to kill children, but enjoying the torture of them as well. And what about poor Myrtle- she's teased so much in her real life that she spends most of the time in the bathroom where the snake just happe ns to come in and kill her and then she gets to spend the rest of her wretched ghostly life diving in and out of toilets!

My final point is about what I call the "Happy Meal Syndrome"-- the marketing approach taken can't be ignored either. If Harry Potter was originally positioned as a children's movie with cute costumes, games and figures associated with it then to segue into a NO-We're?finately-YA-Movies now just doesn't work for me. It's the equivalent of the second book of Charlotte's web having Fern piercing her navel and stomping on spiders. The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K.LeGuin did an excellent job of taking a wizard from child to adult- but there weren't any Happy Meals involved and the initial age of the intended reader did not change.

I'm a dedicated reader of fantasy and enjoy the ongoing battle between the forces of darkness and light... but even in this world, when we write for young children, to kill a child carries the gravest of consequences. Phillip Pullman's trilogy wa s very dramatic in the tearing of daemon from the child with a terrible result... but they weren't killed and they could be healed in the end.

I believe in happy endings.

Lindan Johnson

lindanlee at hotmail.com

  
  
   
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Received on Tue 08 Jul 2003 08:27:31 AM CDT