After digesting and re-reading certain parts of the book, I am ready to write what I thought of it. To read, simply highlight the hidden text below.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was not a disappointment at all. I can’t say that it was my favorite book of the series, but J.K. Rowling did an excellent job putting all the pieces of the puzzle together and giving us a fast-paced, riveting story. What I am most pleased with is that there is still so much left to discuss. We now know that all is right in the Wizarding world and Harry defeated Voldemort, but Rowling left it so that there are still items for us fans to ponder.
Dumbledore turned out to be a much more complex character than originally expected. In the first six books he appeared to be an all-knowing, infallible hero, but there were times during Hallows when I began to dislike him. Specifically when we reading about Snape’s memories and Dumbledore so casually mentioned that Harry was going to have to die in order to defeat Voldemort. He was redeemed in the next chapter, however, and I could then understand his intentions. While Dumbledore was a good person overall, he was susceptible to making errors and was tempted by power, glory and immortality, just as most people are. He makes us realize that there is a little bit of good and bad in everyone, and what makes a person truly good is their ability to overcome the bad.
And this is just what we learn about Harry. Here is a character that started off as a young, timid boy in the first book and grew into a true hero and leader by the end of the seventh. He was also tempted by evil – the Deathly Hallows were a strong temptation for him – but what made him good was that he was eventually able to focus on his original intentions and defeat Voldemort. What I found most interesting about Harry was that throughout the first six books, was that while Harry was courageous, he never did anything all that extraordinary. He either had help from his mother, his friends, or Dumbledore. In Book 7, he was revealed to be a true hero. He accepted his fate willingly and was going to die in order to save his friends. By doing this, he gave them extra protection from Voldemort in the final moments of the battle at Hogwarts. Another true heroic feat was that Harry did not have to use the Avada Kedavra curse on Voldemort to defeat him. He maintained his innocence and offered Voldemort another chance to survive by only using the defensive Expelliarmus spell, which collided with the killing curse that then brought about Voldemort’s own demise. Harry did not actually kill Voldemort, Voldemort did it to himself.
Harry won the Elder wand earlier in this scene by disarming Draco (the true owner of the Elder wand), which gave him what many others, Dumbledore included, sought, the three Deathly Hallows, but Harry realized that what he truly wanted was what he saw in the Mirror of Erised all those years ago, not the power, glory and immortality that the Deathly Hallows bring. While Harry became obsessed with the idea of the Deathly Hallows for a while, he was able to snap out of it in time to realize that his more important mission was finding and destroying the Horcruxes, the only way to defeat Voldemort.
Rowling was able to make love a central and important theme in the books, without it becoming sappy or overbearing. Harry saw a loving family when he looked in the Mirror of Erised in Book 1. What he truly wanted was to love and to be loved. Even the Malfoys showed their good side in this book by stressing the importance of family and love, the only thing that helped keep all of them alive. Harry’s desire for a loving family came true after he realized that the Deathly Hallows would not give him happiness, for that is not what power and immortality bring. Harry’s story mirrored Dumbledore’s, because both had a chance at having all three Deathly Hallows but willingly gave them up for love. Dumbledore lost his own family but still surrounded himself with loving people, those members of the Order of the Phoenix. This is a subtle but valid point. Every member of the Order of the Phoenix had the ability to love and to love strongly – from Lupin to the Longbottoms to the Potters to Snape. Voldemort lacked this ability, as, it seemed, did Bellatrix and that brought about their downfalls.
Overall, the book was well-done. I could nitpick, but the only negative I am going to include is that a lot of information was crammed into a small amount of space. Rowling would have been better off tacking on an extra 100 pages and giving us more detailed explanations. I found this especially true in the King’s Cross chapter with Dumbledore. But she certainly gave us an excellent story, that was both original and clever and that is sure to become a classic.
