Adventures In Extraneous Plotlines
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I have a confession. Every so often, when I am very anxious about the outcome of a book (or more often, the fate of one of the characters), I have to read the ending in order to reduce my anxiety enough to go back and read the book in the proper order. If you think that’s crazy and weird…well, I can’t really disagree with you.
This confession is by way of an introduction to a little story about the release of the final Harry Potter book, the Deathly Hallows. I did not discover the Harry Potter series until after the fourth book had been published, but once I got into it, I sucked down the books as fast as they were released. All Potterphiles were, of course, anxiously awaiting the conclusion of the series. So a friend of mine (we’re going to call her Lois) and I decided to attend a midnight “release party” for the last book. We first trundled into downtown Portland to view the goings-on at Powell’s Books; police had cordoned off four blocks for the party and the exterior of the building (which occupies the entire block and is the biggest independent book store in the world) had been done up to look like Platform 9 3/4. The line of people waiting to get their book stretched all the way around the building and down the street; many people were in costume. It was fantastic. Lois and I had to park blocks away and walk in; then we walked around the building, took in the whole spectacle, and agreed that while it was fun to visit, we wanted no part of this line.
So we walked back to Lois’ car and drove out to a mall in the next county over, where we got a ticket (I’m not sure how it worked, but if you got a ticket, you would definitely get a book; eventually; I guess) and took our place in the line which snaked halfway down the inside of the mall. There were far fewer people in costume at the mall, but Lois and I had a grand time making conversation with complete strangers on the subject of our shared obsession. We had arrived at the mall before midnight, but it was 1:30 in the morning before we finally had our books in hand and returned to the car. Lois started to drive back to her house (where I’d left my car) and I jittered in the passenger seat, extremely anxious about the fate of my beloved trio. Would they live or would they die? The book was 759 pages long, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to just read through to find out the answer…I was so anxious that I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the journey. Maybe just a little peek at the end…?
I looked over at Lois, who was still driving quietly through the night, and finally said, “Would you mind if I turned on the interior light and did a little reading?” She answered, “I don’t mind, go ahead,” through gritted teeth and in a tone that said I was the most inconsiderate friend in the world. Yes, I was being inconsiderate, but grudging permission was still permission and so I turned on the light and cracked open the book near the end. I would have been okay if I’d just gone to the epilogue…everything I needed to know would have been there for me and no real plot points would have been spoiled. But instead, I opened to Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale. And when I read about Severus and Lily, I gasped out loud. I mean, loudly. The car swerved as Lois jumped and then she managed to glare at me while she said, “If you do anything like that again, I will put you out at the side of the road and you can walk back to your car.” I closed the book and turned off the light.
Given that I am still alive after such a grievous transgression, I have to say, Lois is a true friend. I drove home and read the whole book in one go, not even pausing for a bathroom break. It was fabulous. And…it was very long.
My bibliophile friend (let’s call her Bea) has long held the opinion that as authors get more popular, their editors have less power to cut down their prose, resulting in longer books. This is often to the detriment of the story, unfortunately. And I think that J.K. Rowling is a prime example of the problem. While the Deathly Hallows is not the longest book in the series (The Order Of The Phoenix is more than 100 pages longer), the books overall got longer and longer as the series continued. This “problem” is also present in Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series (written under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith). The first book The Cuckoo’s Calling, is not short at 561 pages, but it is tightly plotted and there’s no feeling of lag or padding. In contrast, the latest book The Ink Black Heart comes in at a whopping 1462 pages and would have benefited from much more stringent editing. There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be in there and which detracts from the plot. Oh well, those who can’t write novels critique them, I guess…
Spoilers ahead for the Harry Potter series.
Beautiful but unnecessary and irrelevant…
In the case of The Deathly Hallows, my personal opinion is that while the hallows have been woven into the plot, they are nonetheless completely non-essential to the story. And I think the book would have been better without them. It would have been shorter and the plot would have been tighter. And the reader would have been spared Harry’s long, angst-filled diversion from pursuit of horcruxes to obsession over the hallows.
I ran this notion past my brother, the other Potterphile in the family, and he said, “Well, sure, that could work but the author would have to find some other way for Harry to defeat Voldemort in the final battle.” I considered this, but then I remembered that Harry came out on top the last two times he’d dueled with Voldemort, so why not a third? Problem solved.
After consultation with Bea, we agreed that there’s really only one plot point that would have to be changed to account for the removal of the hallows from the story. And that’s Voldemort’s execution of Snape to finalize his possession of the Elder Wand. Snape does need to die, and slowly enough that Harry is able to reach him and obtain essential information before Snape passes. But if Voldemort isn’t killing Snape to fully possess the Elder Wand, then why is he killing Snape? Bea and I could only come up with a couple scenarios, both revolving around Voldemort’s increasing instability and rising irrationality; basically, Voldemort kills Snape in a fit of anger over…whatever. I’m sure with time, I could work out a better solution but it would likely involve altering more of the existing plot (aside from removing the hallows, I mean) and for this mental exercise, I wanted to leave the plot as intact as possible.
So remove the hallows from the story entirely, and what do you have? Well, you have a need for a new book title for one thing…how about Harry Potter And The Last Horcrux?
If you enjoyed this discussion, you might be interested in a previous post discussing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
