Examiner column for July 16.
Right beside my classroom desk sits a stuffed version of Hedwig, Harry Potter’s pet owl. Six years ago when she took up residence, my students ignored her. Harry Potter was something their younger brothers and sisters read.
Those little brothers and sisters are all grown up now, and have been passing through my classroom for a couple of years. My most recent Potter aficionado is Kristin, who emailed me that she “LOVED” my column last week on Potter spoilers. “And it is all so true,” she added. Her plans on the 21st include a midnight run to buy the book, then a trip back home with computer and cell phone turned off “ so I can find out everything for myself.”
Kristin and others who have grown up not knowing what will happen to characters they love are in a similar situation to the reading public of Victorian serial novels. As Dickens penned each installment of “Great Expectations,” his readers let him know what they expected the ending to be.
There was such controversy over the anticipated conclusion of this popular serial that Wilkie Collins, Dickens’ friend and fellow serial-novelist, suggested Dickens change his sad ending to a happy one, and Dickens complied. It was only after Dickens’ death that the original, psychologically more authentic, conclusion was made public.
Rowling has intelligently made it clear from the beginning that she alone is in control of her plot. She claims to have written the last chapter of the last book before most of the other volumes were completed, thereby silencing anyone who had the urge to give her advice. Clever lady!
Nothing is more emotionally charged than endings, and that’s part of the hoopla over Harry Potter and every other anticipated ending. We want endings to be “just right,” in part because we have so little control over the real endings in our lives.
At memorial services it is now clichéd to say you “celebrate the life” rather than mourn the death of the deceased. We want endings to be gentle and appropriate, and too often they are sudden, or unasked for, and inappropriate in timing. This applies to the way we end careers and relationships as well; often those last sour moments color the way we remember everything about what otherwise was a career with many high points or a marriage with many strengths.
So in demanding certain kinds of endings from our authors we are expressing a hope that those endings, at least, can exhibit the kind of symmetry and rightness that real endings often lack. Life is often messy, but J.K Rowling’s plans for Harry were sketched out on napkins in a café’ long ago, and therefore are not subject to the vagaries of real-world messiness.
That’s why we care what happens on the 21st to Harry and his friends, and that’s why Rowling is an artist. Her fantasy is magical because she puts real-sounding characters in fantastical circumstances and, whatever happens in her ending, I am sure it will have the symmetry and appropriateness Kristin hopes for, and that our own real-life endings often lack.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. Email her at ejacob1@gmu.edu, before the 21st, when she will turn off email for several days.
It has been said that life is all about comings and goings. If we pay attention to how we come and go, start and stop, enter and leave, we are paying attention to life. Certainly this has a lot of meaning for schools with the beginning and ending of the school year, freshman entrance and senior graduation. You have mentioned this often in your columns and now you remind us that it is reflected in the significant relationship we all have with fictional characters who both live forever in memory and on pages, but end their lives when the series ends.
Posted by: Bob F | July 14, 2007 at 12:54 PM
As always, you are thoughtful. The "comments" section would be pretty paltry without a "friend" reading my weblog!
Posted by: Erica | July 15, 2007 at 08:00 AM