Hello, everyone. This is going to be a short-term weblog of thoughts about the Harry Potter series. There’s a lot of silly babbling about the books out there, and I’d like to respond to it with some detailed analyses of the books’ maturity and sophistication. J.K. Rowling has filled them with a wealth of interconnecting details, and some of the long-term arcs deserve to be called out: details in one book become significant much later. More than that, she’s given the series a real moral vision, one that fully embraces life’s ambiguities but also speaks clearly when moral clarity is called for.
Be warned: this blog will be riddled with spoilers. You should read it only if you’ve already finished the series or have no intention of ever reading it.