Harry Potter And The End Of An Era

Published in Ceylon Today

'Finite Incantatem' is what people in the world created by J.K. Rowling say when a spell has run its course, or has ended its usefulness and is now causing damage. 

I want to say these words, as a requiem for Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, because it has been 19 years since he was created, and the latest work about him, the play 'Harry Potter and The Cursed Child' that was co-written by Rowling, and published last week, marks the end of an era. Not because the readership is not interested in what happens next, but because what we are told in this play happens next is a bewildering let-down of our legitimate expectations. 

As a great fan of the series, I find myself in the equivalent of a Body Bind Curse when it comes to putting into words what I want to say about the latest instalment. Please bear with me, because I wanted so much to find that the magic never ends, that the cupboard door in the spare room which led to the magical world was still partly open, that there was still a possibility that that wonderful childhood pleasure of discovering interesting characters in a world parallel to my own, was not outgrown. 

I have heard many people with children praise the series for their story-telling, the exciting adventures, for getting kids interested in reading again, for their wit and their humour. Social commentators have praised the inclusion of characters whose situations raise even young readers' awareness of socio-political issues in our contemporary world: of injustice and inequity, of bigotry and of race, class and gender prejudice, in accessible ways. 

The 7 books portrayed a battle between Good and Evil that was only thinly rendered in metaphor, and in which the hero and his friends grow and evolve in moral awareness, and in insight into the complexities of human nature, including their own. This in itself in my view was a great literary achievement, although the story-telling itself is uneven at times in its quality, and the best sequences show up in stark contrast the labouredness of the weaker sections. 

It was a stroke of brilliance on the part of Rowling to fix the personal development of her protagonist onto the natural and familiar organisational structure of every child's Senior School curriculum and syllabus, so that his emergence into adulthood at the age of 17 was also the point at which he would meet his (un) Maker, his arch-enemy, and battle him for the last time, avenging his parents' murder and saving his generation and the wizarding world from impending doom. 

The world which was created in that parallel universe portrayed diverse ethnicities, girls known for their intellectual ability, and ways people could literally learn to successfully deal with their demons. This fantasy world was an original one, product of an interesting perspective, which, despite its stifling Anglo-centrism, its tokenism and its formulaic tendencies, brought many blessings to child readers in the form of ideas which formed the basis for their beliefs about friends, enemies, and what side to choose when life presented them with dilemmas which tested their evolving character and aspirations. 

So this play which is presented as portraying the world in which Harry and his friends are in their early middle age, and have married each other and had children, should have been interesting, even fascinating - as it is interesting and fascinating to meet a person you last saw in their teens now 'all grown up' and in the midst of their destined life. 

It is acutely disappointing to see potential in real people, in real life, unrealised. And when writers create characters who impact our imagination, we have hopes and fears for them as we do for real people. So I must say that Rowling's creation of Hermione Granger, easily the most interesting character of the original central trio, is a travesty in this play: the idealistic, sceptical, insightful girl, whose combination of despised 'Mudblood' status and brilliant intuitive talent challenges all the prejudices of her world, has become the mother of a daughter whose snobbery and sense of entitlement are qualities the young Hermione would have seen through and mocked into proportion 'at once'. 

Even alternative outcomes clumsily and confusingly accessed by Time-Turners do not outline any better alternatives. Of all the infinite possibilities available, generated by the better parts of her own imagination, Rowling in the end ultimately endorsed THIS? This shop-worn and self-limiting, parochial vision? 

It does not make sense. And the tortured central story of the second generation resolving their parents' differences ought to be interesting and morally instructive, but is not. And middle-aged, navel-gazing Harry with doubts about his ability to parent, the contrived passion and faux chemistry of the two ill-assorted married couples, the weirdly self-defining children, the lifeless dialogue, make the experience of reading the script increasingly worse. What ought to have been a longed-for pleasure has become an ordeal.

We are presented with easy answers to difficult questions. Rowling over the years created an audience who became accustomed to a far higher standard of creative characterisation and thematic presentation. Whereas great writers generally create the audience by which they are appreciated, in this case the inverse seems to have occurred. The story's worth is only in its value as a commodity by booksellers at point of sale, and tickets for performances of the play sold out two years in advance. The franchise and its dictates have engulfed the central narrative, and a light has been put out which had made the world in the late 1990s and the 2000s a much better place. 

The wishing well is dry, and the coins at the bottom of it have lost their value and their currency. 

A terrible end to the telling of a wonderful story. 

Vale, Harry Potter