Way to sabotage yourself, Rowling

[branchandroot]

So, here's what I don't like about that epilogue.



There are two things, really. The most immediate one is the same problem I had with book six: the author has not done the work to convince me that all this is viable and plausible. We jump straight from a mood of "holy fuck, it's finally over, can we take a breath now?" to "domestic bliss, everyone is over everything and just fine". There is nothing addressing what would have to happen after it all ended. Nothing about how wizards deal with PTSD, nothing about how Harry and Ginny could grow close to each other, nothing about how Harry might deal with the aftermath of having saved the world for real, for good this time, nor what that aftermath might look like. Nothing about how anyone deals with all these incredible, traumatic, passion-filled events.

And that makes the abrupt domestic bliss completely plastic and unbelievable to me.

The other thing is a bit more subtle, and it has to do with that "for real, for good this time" part.

The epilogue brings us full circle, all right. It brings us precisely back to where we started, complete with the Slytherin = Bad Guys, Gryffindor = Good Guys rhetoric. Harry gives us about two sentences that run slightly counter to this, but he says them to his son (who is clearly having a hard time believing him), not to Ron, the other adult who is shaping the minds of the children. Nothing has changed in the underlying social structure. The house elves are still enslaved with nothing but a few thank yous for their work, there are no magical creatures shown even passingly among students or professors, houses, after one single moment of unity, are back to their old divisive selves, urged on by the generation who should have known better, who, theoretically, were the ones to break that division down and triumph thereby.

And this means the world isn't saved for good, nothing is actually fixed, and it will all be to do over again next time, because the unchanging hostilities showed to us by the epilogue guarantee there will be a next time, a next round, because the original causes are still lying there in front of us, stinking. By making a point of coming back to the beginning, with no changes, Rowling blithely erases any lasting effect that all the characters' pain and struggle and various heroism may have had.

That really disturbs me.

If Rowling had left the ending as it was, we would have had possibilities. We would have had the potential that this moment of unity might give rise to something just a little more lasting. But Rowling didn't leave it at that. Maybe she wanted to nail down the romantic closure. Maybe she thought we needed a happily-ever-after spelled out. The effect of her happily-ever-after, though, does not seem all that happy to me. It's an artificial cap on all the ferment she stirred up in the HP world, and it sadly flattens out all the potential that had been build up. Her epilogue denies her story, and I consider that dreadfully bad writing, as well as bad ethics.



And that is why I don't believe in this epilogue, any more than I believe in the Digimon Adventure 02 epilogue.

Comments

[meitachi.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. The things I'd much rather have seen in the epilogue include all the repercussions and consequences of the war, of the Minister-less Ministry and Headmaster-less Hogwarts. And all the emotional healing everyone has to go through as they lay down their loved ones, of course. It's kind of sad when Dobby gets more grief from Harry then Fred or Remus or Tonks. We just gloss over that and then Harry is in happily-wedded bliss! (Which I also disbelive. How many sixteen-year-old crushes turn out to be True Love Forevermore? How many even last for more than a few months?)

Er, anyway. I also agree with the social structure not changing much. Harry's changed his views, obviously, with the naming of Albus Severus, but I still don't forsee any house unity at Hogwarts, which ticks me off.

::valiantly ignores the epilogue except for the part where she thinks Ablus Severus and Scorpius' names are hilarious::

Also BAH to the ending of Digimon 02. Matt/Sora WTF?

[branchandroot]

Yeah, given what a presence the dead characters are, you'd think Rowling would spend more time on how the live ones /deal/ with death. Even Sirius' death got glossed over, and the whole purpose of that one was to let the kids know adults weren't immortal and all. And this is the end of the war! Dealing with the deaths should have been /the/ major focus of any epilogue. What do we get instead? HP barbie dolls. Feh.

(Dude, no kidding. And Miyako/Ken? I mean, talk about not doing the work to make it believable.)

[selphish.livejournal.com]

Exactly what the both of you said! I could not say it any better.

More than anything, I wanted to see unity--not only in the wizarding world, between the different houses--but between the muggle world and the wizarding world. What happened, Jo? What happened?

Though honestly, I think the ending where Harry becomes a spaceman and travels to Mars, Ron becomes a diplomat for the muggle and wizarding world, and Hermione becomes a mediwitch for magical creatures would be better. ;)

[branchandroot]

*laughing* That would be /miles/ better. Thank goodness for fandom. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with this as it is.

And, really, of all the divisions, the muggle-magic one seems like the most important of all. I mean, it's the basis of so many of the intra-wizardly divisions. And Rowling seems to miss that point herself, which is disappointing in the extreme.

[selphish.livejournal.com]

She also dropped the ball on her whole "prejudice" message; she seems to discourage it throughout the book, and what happens at the end? Ron still hates Slytherin (and strangely, pure-bloods, now!), and as written_in_blue has written, Harry has absolutely no qualms with asking a house-elf to make him a sandwich, because his needs? They're clearly more important than a house elf's.

[tresa-cho.livejournal.com]

Ahahah, I know right? Matt totally belongs to Tai. >.> At least it's better than Tai/Sora, right?

...I mean, gosh! That epilogue... What a boring way to... end the story...

*more interested in Digimon*

[written-in-blue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's still getting me -- it just gnaws on me -- is that after all the battle's done, Harry just has this ridiculous Privileged White Boy thing going on where he just wants to go to bed and have Kreacher, who led the house elves into battled like a good little subaltern, and might conceivably have sustained his own injuries and losses(!), bring him a sandwich.

Oh. my. god. That was the single most appalling thing I have read in my life, except possibly barring the epilogue where everything goes back to business as usual.

And speaking of the epilogue, I absolutely abhore the way Hermione -- strong amazing Hermione who saved Harry and Ron's asses multiple times through the book! -- gets made into a scolding jokey nag ("Oh, Ron!") every time Ron does something idiotic like encourage his kids to avoid Slytherin at all costs and beat Malfoy Jr no matter what.

Just augh.

I suspect I wouldn't be so wound up about this if it weren't for the fact that the story has so much potential, and wasn't so amazingly good in spots, but ends up crippled by the author's own limitations and prejudices.

[selphish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's still getting me -- it just gnaws on me -- is that after all the battle's done, Harry just has this ridiculous Privileged White Boy thing going on where he just wants to go to bed and have Kreacher, who led the house elves into battled like a good little subaltern, and might conceivably have sustained his own injuries and losses(!), bring him a sandwich.

I'm SO GLAD I wasn't the only one thinking this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[written-in-blue.livejournal.com]

The house elf thing has been my personal Angry Button since they first got introduced, really. It just drives me absolutely batshit insane that the wizarding world rests on the backs of creatures who are, when you come right down to it, happy slaves.

[branchandroot]

Exactly. The epilogue /really/ does all of them dire disservice. I mean, are we really supposed to think that none of them actually grew up? Over the course of all they've been though, when Rowling has shown them growing up? And now, what... they revert? I say again, Feh.

This story deserves a better writing, indeed. Fortunately, fandom has some.

[chronolith.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to give the book a big fat pass and pretend it just doesn't exist. I find her world problematic on so many different levels it isn't even funny. I just ... I don't know. What she writes makes me wonder about the author, honestly. The way she writes about classes, the house elves, her female character makes me think she is very firmly within the conservative English mind, i.e quietly racist, misogynist, and classist. And honestly, what the fuck ever.

Fandom has done her story better than she did/does/ or even could because her mind is fundamentally limited.

[branchandroot]

That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to also, and I've seen British Opposition types lay into all the ways she is dreadfully conservative and following in the footsteps of conservative authors before her. My only conclusion is that she's severely lacking in critical thinking skills and is not in any way politically or ethically or philosophically reflective.

Which would be less of a problem if her books didn't attempt to address political, ethical and philosophical Big Issues.

[bloodyrose82.livejournal.com]

I love that you addressed this. It ended on a pretty good note, and then we have this ridiculous epilogue that was likely written by someone under the age of twelve who had been reading too many bad fanfics on fanfic.net.

What is with those names? What is with the ridiculous idea that they have all learned NOTHING from their experiences apart from the little nod between H/D that indicates the potential for them being civil?

Gah. It made me so mad. Glad I'm not alone. Nobody on my f-list is around so I went searching and found this. :D

[branchandroot]

The whole /regression/ thing really bothered me. I mean, they've been shown (at least a little) maturing and progressing, and all of a sudden BAM, everyone's back to square one.

Plus, yeah, I completely agree the 'romance' was amazingly shallow. I mean, after all this drama and trauma and dire happenings, we end with... Leave It To Beaver? Argh.

*grins* I went ahead and read the leak, so I've been sitting on this for days making myself wait until everyone else finishes reading.

[forochel.livejournal.com]

...Clearly she just wanted to give fandom space for more fic. And she enjoys watching HP fandom wank as much as I do!

[branchandroot]

*snorts* I don't doubt the bit about liking wank-watching. I really do suspect she added this on to make very, very sure that the Canon Ships were clear and nobody made any 'mistakes'. *rolls eyes* And, while I have little patience with HP ship wars, if she didn't do that in the body of seven freaking books, it's really a bit too late.

I will be very entertained to see the chibi-fic coming, though.

[norrowa.livejournal.com]

The epilogue... oh boy, the epilogue.

Agh. I agree wholly with all of your points. One of my biggest beefs with Rowling has always been that she has this world which is full of amazing potential, these bits of her books which are full of amazing potential, and then she does nothing with them. It's a world which is scarcely thought out and full of holes. Full of them. Hogwarts itself as a school has always bothered me, for instance. The teachers don't actually teach, and they're allowed to terrorize their students (Snape). There are no checks and balances, no... ugh. But that's irrelevant -- holding off on the rambling for one moment...

The epilogue just... yeah. You have all this build-up to a wrecked and warn-torn and divided world, and then suddenly -- poof. Nothing. Just... a regression, as you said, back to the first book. I have to admit that I was especially disgruntled by the whole Ginny-Harry thing because I had been hoping that we'd finally get some development of their relationship. Because, you know, they barely seem to know each other. The whole "happily-ever-after" thing for both the teen romances bugged be, Ron and Hermione too. (Because that relationship actually... kinda ticks me off because it almost veers into abusive at times. It's actually scarily like the Molly-Arthur relationship -- men marry their mothers? When you think about it, the way Hermione interacts with Ron can be eerily similar to the way Molly interacts with Arthur, and how often have Molly and Hermione been aligned in attitudes etc.?)

The political and ethical dilemmas were just dropped. We get no hints, not even hints, as to what happened during those intervening nineteen years. Even just, say, something as simple as a little nod towards Harry having issues as a father (or issues in general) would've been something.

To be honest, apart from annoyance, the only thing the epilogue left me with was this: a burning desire to see or write a fic in which dear little Albus Severus gets sorted into Hufflepuff. Because I just love the immediate assumption that he'll go to Slytherin or Gryffindor -- after all, neither Hufflepuff nor Ravenclaw are important enough to even warrant a mention. ::grump::

As you said, nothing changed. It just... stagnated.

[branchandroot]

*evil grin* I would totally go for a fic of Albus Severus in Hufflepuff.

And, yes, if Rowling is going to insist on nailing down the romances, she should have actually dealt with them. Shown them developing, instead of just declaring them fait accompli. That was a dreadful cop-out.

The genres Rowling seems to want to write in really do clash, too. I mean, on the one hand, we have the British School Story, in which all the things that annoy you about Hogwarts are kind of de rigeur, but equally well in which none of the Tyrannical Professors or Evil Prats are supposed to be complex or have particular depth! Laid over that kind of caricature, we have a plot which does have depth and complexity (at least for some parts and characters), and the pieces just don't fit together. Not least because Rowling doesn't seem to put any effort at all into making them. She asks us to reflect on moral complexity and then fails to give us the story-tools to do it with. Bah. It's such a sad disservice to what could be a really wonderful story.