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Thanks for this, looking forward to: 1 - have some decent time to read 2 - get all the previous books and finally this last one, my knowledge of the entire serie comes from the movies, which anyhow are fabulous, yes, I loved them all ... a good Sunday for those who are already there, anny From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]> > At 1:49 PM +0100 21/6/03, Dominic Fox wrote: > >Interesting the objection that Hogwarts isn't a comprehensive. In every > >sense except one - the requirement that pupils possess magical ability - it > >is exactly that, as one of today's correspondents pointed out. However, > >magical ability is allowed to be a) something that some people have got, in > >significant measure, that others haven't, b) something that can be measured > >to at least the extent that it is possible to tell which of the two kinds of > >person someone is, and c) something that intrinsically has nothing to do > >with class, poverty or social privilege, although the Malfoys of the magical > >world might wish to pretend it were otherwise. It is, essentially, what > >"intelligence" or "academic ability" or "aptitude" was taken to be (or > >advertised as) by the architects of the grammar school system... > > Thanks Dominc, I had a look at the letters. Quite right too. Though > I think there's justice in the accusation of tokenism in the ethnic > minorities, it does seem a little mean minded to ignore the basic > decency (I don't mean that in a snide way) that the books project. > > Well, I sat up to 1am last night reading The Order of the Phoenix - > research, research, of course - because I couldn't put it down. > Obviously the narrative is compelling as the others; it also struck > me that Rowling has taken on board some of the criticisms of the > ideology of the books. When I finished it (I will say that in many > ways it's a book that an adult will find impossible to read without > being aware of the context of Current Events) I couldn't quite decide > whether it was simply conservative; it's always been very negative > about aristocracies, for instance, who are all presented as evil and > corrupt. It's a bit more complicated than that. It can be read as a > justification of aggression; at one point the idea of negotiation and > diplomacy is mocked, and all the way through there's this sense of a > war and a subtext that appeasement is wrong, which reflects certain > things which in contemporary political life I find to be deeply > problematic. But there's also a wider world in this one, and an > insistence that the denial of anyone's humanity (probably the wrong > word in this book) is the great evil, and a deepening of complexity > of all the issues within it, which I find quite attractive. > > There's quite a lot of shouting in capital letters, which I found a > little annoying since it takes all the nuance out of rage. Harry is > very pissed off almost all the way through. But I had better not go > on, for fear of spoilers - at the end I did wonder what I think of > it. Still not sure, although I obviously enjoyed it > > Best > > A > -- > > > Alison Croggon > > Blog > http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com > > Editor, Masthead > http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ > > Home page > http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/