Harry Potter and the Perspicacious Analysis

[mabfan]

After I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I had a lot of ideas of what I thought was really going on in the end. Well, osewalrus has written up a detailed analysis of the end of the book, and I recommend it to anyone who has finished it and wants something fascinating to think about. (Needless to say, the analysis is chock full o' spoilers.)

Comments

Just sharing with you the comment I posted at osewalrus's

[cheshyre]

It's not "look of disgust and hatred" but "revulsion and hatred" which is slightly different.

garlandgraves had a great post theorizing about aspects in the conclusion of the book.

A commenter made an excellent point:
When forcing Dumbledore to drink, Harry is described as "Hating himself, repulsed by what he was doing" -- almost exactly the same words!
Think that's a hint?

BTW, one other interesting tidbit. When Dumbledore is talking to Draco near the end, the US edition has a few extra sentences than the British. Since I tend to think of most of the US changes (outside spelling & punctuation differences) as dumbing-down, it's very interesting what these words add to the scene: (American-only lines in blue)

"He cannot kill you if you are already dead. Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Nobody would be surprised that you had died in your attempt to kill me - forgive me, but Lord Voldemort probably expects it. Nor would the Death Eaters be surprised that we had captured and killed your mother - it is what they would do themselves, after all. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban... when the time comes we can protect him too...come over to the right side, Draco...you are not a killer..."

I can't help wondering if that first sentence might be an exoneration of Snape -- that Dumbledore was already past redemption at that point.

Still, food for thought...

Re: Just sharing with you the comment I posted at osewalrus's

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this here as well as over in [Unknown site tag]'s post. I wish I had had more time to discuss HBP, but what with the NYC trip starting the day after the book was released, I barely had time to read it, let alone discuss it.

[crackboy.livejournal.com]

gandalf. it's all about gandalf.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Because Gandalf managed to resurrect himself?

[crackboy.livejournal.com]

because gandalf is the ur-wizard. You can argue merlin, but in modern fantasy I'd have to say that if he's got a long beard and he's a good guy, it's a fair bet that he's actually gandalf.

so yeah, 'dumbledore the white' strikes me as a distinct possibility.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Good link, MAB! Thanks for posting!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Well, given that he had already written down a lot of what I had wanted to say, I just thought it made sense to point people towards it. :-)