On Oedipal Relationships in Harry Potter
Deborah Stokol

Like many, Harry has an incredibly deep and important link to his mother. In his case, that link goes further than for most, though, in the sense that not only did she sacrifice her life to save his, and not only did that loving sacrifice give him the protection necessary to ensure his survival against and defeat of Voldemort, but the fact that he never met her forced him to imagine her as a perfect, idealized version of herself.

He also does not remember his father (a bold, intelligent, popular guy who, however, may not have been particularly nice or charitable on the microcosmic level, as we see from his treatment of the young Snape, unsavory as the latter may have been), but he, Harry, looks very much like him and wishes to be like the man who sired him, a man many remember as charismatic, athletic, and courageous (joining the Order of the Phoenix is not for the faint of heart).

Perhaps it stands to reason, then, that he should wish to repeat some of the aesthetic patterns his father began so as to reenact – yet improve – history. He did not get to know his parents, but he could be like them – in their more positive behavioral guises and in the life he could make in their stead that would complete, in a legacy-oriented fashion, their shortened one. [Read more…]

Go Set a Watchman and the Loss of Literary Belief

Chris Calderon

“You think she’s racist?” That’s the question I might have asked if Go Set a Watchman had been released instead of its critically acclaimed rewrite, To Kill a Mockingbird. If Watchman had been released in 1960 and I’d been around at the time, I might have said I was in the hands of a very immature novice, one who may or may not share in some of the prejudices of her characters; it’s kind of hard to tell (I would have hypothetically said).

For the record, I don’t actually think that Nellie Harper Lee is in any way a segregationist. Her best and only work displays a mind that is too mature for such nonsense. This is what makes the shortcomings of a book like Go Set a Watchman all the more glaring in light of what it would become. In reading Watchman, it’s possible to tell what makes it a mediocre work in comparison with the powerhouse that is Mockingbird.

I also notice a trend in the lengths some reviewers were willing to go in order to defend what’s really just an over-glorified first draft. I think an examination of both the draft and the response of certain readers, as well as a look at the peculiar circumstances surrounding Watchman‘s publication can shed light not just on the quality of Watchman as a novel, but also what it says about how modern audiences and even publishers look at the very concept of fiction.

An Overview

In terms of story, Go Set a Watchman is fairly straightforward. It tells the story of twenty-something Jean-Louise Finch, a displaced Southerner living in New York and perhaps a failed Bohemian (there really is nothing approaching the little rabble rouser nicknamed Scout, and what little there is proves to meager to save the proceedings) during a visit back to her old home town of Maycomb, Alabama. [Read more…]