The two biggest flaws in Harry Potter

[lavivi]

I love the Harry Potter series.  I sincerely do.  I perhaps wouldn't call them my favorite series, but I've certainly obsessed over them far more than I have over any other book or movie.  I think J.K. Rowling is a fabulous, fabulous writer, one of the best of our day.

But despite this, I am forced to acknowledge flaws.  Not the Flints - the real, plot flaws, which make me very sad.  In my mind, there are really only two glaring ones.

1. Lord Voldemort.  It's so sad.  But at this stage, I, and many others, have to admit he has no depth.  Ms. Rowling grounded this when she said somewhere that he's never loved anyone.  That was a mistake.
   But the bigger issue is that his motivation for a pureblood world is cardboard.  He's more of a halfblood than Harry is!  I have difficulty, no matter how much else Voldemort has acomplished, seeing Lucius Malfoy truly respect him.  But his evil plan to kill everyone because his Muggle father was a bad man is a cliche and just doesn't fit with the rest of Ms. Rowling's well-rounded world
2. Peter Pettigrew, as seen in the fifth book.  Before the fifth book was published, I read a fanfic called There Is No Such Place by Liz Barr*.  In short, it's a Marauder-era fic.  And in it, Peter is an equal.  He banters with the rest of the Marauders, they don't mock him.  Yes, he has problems with schoolwork, that's canon, but he's part of the Marauders.  You may argue that McGonagall, who knew them for seven years, called him a "tag-along" - but isn't Colin Creevey Harry's tag-along, and if Harry, Ron, and Hermione made something, would they put Colin's name on it?
   But canon is canon, and what we saw in the Pensieve is how things were - with Peter's applause and Sirius' derision.  I accept it - but I have trouble believing that they would really trust him with James and Lily's life.  Unless he went under the miraculous personality change James allegedly suffered, too. 

But what do you think?  Am I crazy, did I miss even bigger ones?

* No Such Place is an abandoned WIP, so investigate at your own emotional risk. ;-)

Comments

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could not agree more. I too love the series and many of the clever plot twists, plus the red herrings and clues about what's going to happen. However, I also think that the nail in the coffin was the statement about Riddle/Voldemort never loving anyone. Could we make him a little LESS human, please? And no, the reason readers want this (okay, not ALL readers) is not to put him in relationships with EVERY OTHER CHARACTER in fics (that already happens, despite the 2-D nature of the villain); it's to show us how he got to be the person he is. Even a sociopath, who has no ability to feel guilt, is capable of loving. This problem is carried through to the other evil minions, especially the Malfoys. There is no clear indication about motivation, it's all just, "I want to be on the winning side."

I thought that Peter stood a chance of at least being a well-rounded part of the evil side of things, especially as there are hints that he will do something to redeem himself before the end, but even if he does that it will not erase the atrocious images in my head of Sycophant!Peter from OotP. I know that fics are not the canon, but I've seen a number of fics that depict him brilliantly, believably and cleverly without reducing him to a caricature. (Especially cedarlibrarian.) When I wrote (http://www.schnoogle.com/authors/barb/LG01.html) Peter myself I tried to make him the strategist of the group, the one with less innate magical talent but the critical planning ability to work out the details of how to find a place to work on the Animagus Transfiguration, how to make the map, etc. Unless it was supposed to be an act (and I don't think it was), JKR hasn't depicted a Peter who is plausible as an evil minion, because the Peter who helped Voldemort get his body back would have needed to be a hell of a lot cleverer and more independent than the one JKR wrote in OotP to succeed.

And while I appreciate her impulse to give James feet of clay, I think he turned into a caricature as well. The Lily/James love/hate cliche is also rather disappointing; they didn't need to be in love from the moment they met, but they could at least have been platonic friends. I could have done without the shrill confrontations we saw in OotP.

I think that the issues you've raised come down to her characterization. She's painting on a canvas of Dickensian proportions and weaving a tale with far-reaching ramifications for the characters in the world she's created, yet I don't think she has quite the ability needed to adequately develop characters who are very important to the overall plot but who are NOT the hero and NOT on the hero's side. She seems to be deathly afraid of making a villain sympathetic. Now, one can't expect every "walk-on" role to be well-rounded (although I've seen some authors who can do this in their sleep), but it would be nice if some rather important roles weren't executed in such an utterly ham-handed fashion. We can have someone's motivations explained without feeling that their motivations are righteous/justified. There's a huge difference between explaining and excusing.

Plus she SO needs someone do to her mathematical calculations for her. ;)

[driedplums.livejournal.com]

>Even a sociopath, who has no ability to feel guilt, is capable of loving

Actually, as an aside, there's something called an attachment disorder.

Math: agreed. I think she's had not-great editorial help, though who knows what the manuscripts began as.

[wheresmytower.livejournal.com]

I also think that the nail in the coffin was the statement about Riddle/Voldemort never loving anyone. Could we make him a little LESS human, please?

-I'm going to have to reread this part to make sure this is even possible, but I had always read the line about Voldemort having never loved anyone, as saying that Voldemort had never loved anyone, whereas Tom had. There's a "choices" theme going on in the books, so Tom's choice to undergo transformations and become Voldemort made him forget how to love or understand love, in a manner similar to Smeagol's descent into Gollum. Of course, it's quite possible that I'm giving JKR more credit than she deserves here. I've never thought she was the epitome of writing genius like some people I know continue to do, and I've never quibbled with the fact that there are several definite flaws in her writing where logic and characterization are concerned.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Smeagol->Gollum is an excellent example of someone who is EXPLAINED but not EXCUSED. I would need to check, but the impression I had from her response was that Tom Riddle had never loved anyone, and by extension Voldemort, rather than the other way around. I could be wrong. He was a murderous little snot when he was only sixteen, after all. The thing that gets me is that he lived for fifteen years before that, and although eleven were in an orphanage (presumably a hellish one), we never learn about how he found out he was the heir of Slytherin, whether it made him feel connected to his mother to claim that title, whether he felt that his actions were motivated by love for his mother, etc. I'm not saying that anyone had to have loved Riddle back, that he had to have a failed love affair and that's what fueled his hate. (I wouldn't care for that at all, in fact.) But villains with depth are interesting and 2-D ones are not. Another good example, besides Gollum, is Spike in BtVS. Capable of love, somewhat warped, also capable of great evil. But never simple and never 2-D.

[wheresmytower.livejournal.com]

Aha! Have just reread it: Voldermort is the only term used. *Holds out hope for the future.*