Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
That is the sub-title to the new book by Michael ‘Culture Warrior’ O’Brien, Twilight of the West.
If you want a quick look at the Catholic version of prelest or spiritual delusion consequent to Phariseeism, the preface to O’Brien’s Twilight — complete with his experience of God instructing him to read Harry Potter and write about him — can be found here.
A blessed Ash Wednesday to you all. H/T to Perelandra and Sean.
Right into the mailbag, then; HogPro comments and questions first! SPOILER ALERT — stay away if you haven’t read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
Hello, John!
I love your reasoning and the points that you have made here. However, I have one question, about this point:
“We learn from Madge that even the Mayor’s wife, her mother, cannot travel to the Capitol for medical treatment and medicines without special permission. Obviously, though, Mrs. Undersee does get this kind of allowance.”
This does not necessarily hold true. I had always assumed that the trip to the Capitol would cure Ms. Undersee’s illness completely, whereas the pain medication simply keeps it at bay. So, couldn’t the pain medication simply have been shipped from the Capitol to District 12? If the Capitol can create mutant wolves out of the body of dead tributes, they would have to be able to cure depression.
However, this can be favorable towards your opinion. Perhaps the Capitol does not allow Ms. Undersee into its city because they suspect her, or at least are wary of her connection to Maysilee Donner.
Thank you for a wonderful article,
Sanna Sharp, HungerGamesTrilogy.com [Read more…]
Wow.
I posted my preliminary thoughts on Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games in a post here on Sunday called “Who is the Mockingjay?” It’s received quite the response in Hunger Games fandom with dedicated posts on Hunger Games.net, Boy With the Bread.com, JabberJays.com, and Team Peeta and has threads devoted to the Pearl Theory I brought up on forums at Hunger Games Trilogy.com and MockingJay.net. It has been a mixed response and at many sites (to include this one), so I’ll try to respond to the criticism, suggestions, and questions in one spot to focus discussion.
Before I jump into the mailbag and respond to the feedback, though, I feel obliged to sort the retorts into three piles: [Read more…]
I have been neglecting my Harry Potter studies of late with only occasional posts here, for which I hope you will forgive me. Except for talks with my friends the Potter Pundits — James Thomas and Travis Prinzi — for Leaky Cauldron’s Potter Cast, the usual correspondence with readers, and weekly trips to the Hog’s Head Tavern for a Taddy Porter, I’ve been neck deep in Twilight work (talks and interviews to get the word out about my new book, Spotlight) and reading books recommended to me by friends here, most notably, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. So, as you know if you’ve been stopping by of late, there hasn’t been much going on at Hogwarts Professor.
I don’t usually post just to post so gaps in action here are okay but I do have one regret about my distraction from Potter matters. Last December I was sent an intriguing idea that may join two of the more interesting qualities of the Hogwarts Saga, namely, the alchemical scaffolding and the chiastic structure of the story circle (a-b-c-d-c-b-a). The idea also solves something of a mystery about the books: the astrological symbolism that I haven’t heard anyone make much sense of. Erin Sweeney, though, may have pulled it off. After too long a time in my “to post” file, here is her theory after a short introduction about why she shared it with me: [Read more…]
[This post on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games was written in Fenruary, 2010. A lot of discussion and theorizing has happened here since then — and I hope you’ll join that free-for-all where it is now rather than back here in February! Please check out this Round-Up post (and the Pearl Plot 2.0) so you can see what’s been written in one convenient list with links. Thanks for joining us at HogwartsProgessor, where serious readers discuss the meaning and artistry of The Hunger Games.]
A few weeks ago, two HogPro All-Pros wrote to me both asking me if I thought Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games books were written with intentional alchemical artistry. Forgive me, but I doubt I would have purchased the books, Hunger Games and Catching Fire, as promptly as I did except that I ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss, and except for the facts that both these writers are very serious readers, both praised the books without qualification, and they both came up with the alchemical reading independently of the other.
I bought and have read the two books in the trilogy now in print (the finale wil be published 24 August this year). I’ve even read them twice and made a lot of notes. The alchemy question is a good one, if the story scaffolding owe at least as much to television 3 act story templating and Dante as they might to Shakespearean drama. Now that I’ve read them and loved them, I hope you will read the Hunger Games books, too, and join me in conversation about them here. If you are a Harry Potter reader, I’m confident these books will challenge and delight you — and, in being a series-not-yet-finished, will draw you into speculation about what will happen in the next book based on patterns and events in the first two.
Yesterday we learned that the title of the Hungers Games trilogy finale will be Mockingjay and saw the cover of the Scholastic edition (US). Today I want to discuss what I think will be the surprise revelation of the finale and a key to opening up the meaning of the series. If you haven’t read the first two books, of course, or if you don’t care for speculative writing about novels not yet published, this would be the best place for you to stop reading. (Hey, a spoilers warning; doesn’t that feel like old times?) [Read more…]
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