Harry Potter Spoilers

Examiner column for July 9.

It’s twelve days until the seventh and final volume of the Harry Potter series arrives. On previous publication dates fans attended parties at Borders and Barnes and Noble. But many will stay away this year. These gathering places are now considered targets of a new generation of petty criminals: those who wish to spoil the ending.

    Fan websites plan to shut down for at least forty-eight hours beginning July 21 so that readers can finish their books in seclusion, without a spoiler threatening to ruin the surprise. We know we will be saddened by the book’s ending; Rowling herself admitted to crying as she concluded her saga. But hearing the outcome from a spoiler turns sad news into something even worse—news spread at the expense of others.

     Part of the magic is guessing the future, page by page, and rooting for some characters over others. Those who shout out the ending at parties or on the internet rob readers of that imaginative guessing game. Will Snape turn out to be a good guy instead of an evil murderer? Will Harry himself be a victim of Voldemort’s fatal web? Questions we’ve wondered about for three years are on the verge of being answered, but we all want those answers to come from Rowling first, not someone bent on ruining it for others.

    On J.K Rowling’s official website, she has a statement I found moving: “I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going.” She thanks Potter fan sites for condemning spoilers and for refusing to publish their words.

    Fans are hanging onto hints dropped in interviews, most from 2006, that suggest there will be two deaths and a wedding in the last book. There are also rumors about the book’s production process; one claims that hundreds of thousands of books are being printed in the dark so that photographs cannot be taken of any of the pages.

    When Rowling has gone to such lengths to protect her readers’ knowledge of Harry’s last journey, spoilers shouldn’t be allowed to cloud the fun.

    Every year a few of my 17-year-old students groan when I refer to Hamlet’s death early in my lectures. I always joke, “What did you think was going to happen in a play titled ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark?’ It’s a tragedy! Everyone dies!”

    But I can see their point. Yes, they know Romeo and Juliet and a host of other Shakespearean tragic figures will die. But they want to discover how and why on their own, not have their teacher explain it the first day.

    So I will modify my early lectures on “Hamlet” and leave them the hope that maybe he will run off with Ophelia and beget little Hamlets in a kingdom far, far away. Every life can use a little fantasy.

    So what will you be doing July 21? Like my students, past and future, I will be with Harry--all alone, no spoilers, hoping there will be no deaths after all.

Comments

[Bob F.]

My kids have dropped away and so has my wife but I remain stedfast in reading the Harry Potter books soon after they come out. I think I will have mixed feelings about the end of the series--some regret but a lot of relief. I was beginning to feel it was more of a chore and less of a thrill to read each book past perhaps the fourth. It has been quite a run and quite a book phenomenon...I hope the joy of reading that JKR has brought to a whole generation of young readers continues forever.

[Erica]

I'm glad you remain loyal. David, Lauren, and I are still hooked. I will be away the weekend it is released, so I'll probably have heard who dies before I ever open the book---but I expect to read it slowly and lovingly anyway.