Thinking about Dumbledore tonight . . . .

I'm not really sure why I think this is worth sharing, but I think it was really interesting how in Harry Potter 7, Rowling went out of her way to portray Dumbledore much less idealized than she had in the previous books.

I don't remember exactly when I first thought of my parents as real people in their own right with any amount of emotional depth. I think we tend to see our parents almost only in terms of their relationship to ourselves and it takes so long to really be able to grasp that they are just as complex as everyone else. I don't think I'm unique in this. We wouldn't associate our either of our parents with many of the same emotional foundations that we ourselves experience.

Are you comfortable with thinking of either of your parents' first experience of heartbreak? Can you really imagine your parents being your age and dating or being your age and caring for children? Deep down, do you really think that the depth of your emotional range is the same as your parents' or is it easier to think of them as something more 2-dimensional?

I personally have a hard time thinking of that. It just feels alien. I can't imagine my parents at some point when they weren't my parents. I guess this meandered pretty far from where it started but the truth of the matter is that I really think the genius of what Rowling did in HP7 was make it so that it was okay for Dumbledore to, in many ways, fail Harry and still be a completely heroic character. Likewise, her treatment of Snape was the same tactic but in reverse.

Ultimately, I think the trick in HP7 was that Rowling was able to take a boy, his hero, and his enemy and expand their characters more in one book than she had in the previous 6 books altogether so that Harry could look at them all in terms of adult relationships rather than in the idealized ways that Harry had previously.

Anyone who says that Harry Potter isn't literature needs to reassess the series after book 7 and take it as a whole from beginning to end, because the glory of the series is that when it is really all said and done Rowling has put us all through the paces and shows us, possibly better than any other author, through his eyes, how Harry's perspective changes over the course of a childhood.