Harry Potter and the Second World War - Spoilers ahead!

I finished reading the new Harry Potter just this morning. I had sat outside reading all yesterday evening and finally grew so tired, that I decided to say good night to the book, while the sun was starting to come up. I had only fifty pages left. Harry had just tapped into Snape’s memories and knew he faced death. Should have stopped reading then.

From that point on, it was all downhill. There are no surprises ahead. Casualties are few. Only the demise of our dear old Riddlemaker awaits, who naturally had it coming a long way. And Harry, dear Chosen boy Harry, of course cannot die. Martyrs survive. For the Greater Good.

Oh well, actually, now I lied. There is one surprise in store: Guess what boys and girls, dear Lord Voldemort is dum as a rock! Needn’t be afraid anymore. He is portrayed as this classic psychopath: he’s incapable of loving, and from that somehow follows stupidity. There is nothing outside power and fear for him. Fear becomes his Achilles heel, for Harry does not fear, but embraces death as the only means to save the world he so loves.

The epilogue, the epilogue. Oh God, how I despise the epilogue. Harry has gotten married, with Ginny no less. Teen romances do last. Aww, how sweet. Not. Hermione has become a mother, is married to Ron and apparently has achieved nothing else in life worth mentioning.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t hate the book. But somehow the feeling that fills me now, when I have just laid the book down, is: how could a woman conjure up a story so sexist? I hoped Rowling would have reacted to the critique thrown: of not casting women in strong roles. I hoped she would have finally taken up the task of writing some interesting females in the storyline. At least the three Peverell brothers could have been three sisters instead. Somehow she has managed to take the female encrypted world of witchcraft and spun it around, so it becomes a man’s world. World of the Fifties, or maybe even further down the line: turn of the century.

But lets move on to happier things, nazis that is. What did I like about the book? It’s very eurocentered. Gellert Grildelwald is of course somewhat of a nazi, literally speaking, and Dumbledore is a no long the pure lamb he was once portrayed as. He has, in his days, been interested in something dark: the idea of a wizarding world that bowed to no muggle, appealed to him also. This is by far the best teaching in the book. It was not only the Germans who were seduced by the ideas of racial hygiene and eugenics, that lead to the mass murder known as the Holocaust. It was whole of Europe. A known historian has suggested that if he were to pinpoint a place where these ideas would have gained ground in the 1930s, it wouldn’t have been Germany, but France. In actuality, Jewish people have been prosecuted for a very long course of European history. There should be a shared collective guilt in being seduced by dark ideologies. No one person is purely evil or purely good.

The allure of the books seems somewhat seedy to me. The HP books have prospered and sold millions around the world, because they depict something that it’s by now lost to us forever, but what we earn for, all the same. The ways of the European aristocracy. Harry Potter has something in common with brands like Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Except for one thing: at least on some level the Potter books tell us to go against the old order, defy ancient blood lines and hierarchy. Burberry and Vuitton wish us only to engage in the dream.

Now, for the reasons explained above, you can see why I have a problem with the new shadow puppet of a Voldemort. He doesn’t seem to live up to the teachings of the story. Of course one could argue that by dissecting his soul to bits and pieces, he has gradually self-destructed. But Dumbledore warns Harry about You-Know-Whos mind working still racer sharp as ever. So on a metalevel, in the end Voldemort’s problem becomes lack of a soul. For all the evil he has committed there could be mercy found in remorse. Even old Grindelwald might have had some regret over his actions and doesn’t let Voldemort in on the Elder-wand. But Voldemort is incapable of repentance, without a soul he is less of a human, dehumanised. What does this all mean? I’m not sure I like the idea of a dehumanised evil. For it is ideology and structural violence, that constitute evil in my books.

All was well - and status quo.