Defending Harry Potter - not that he needs it, really.

NOTE: This post contains spoilers about both the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the books that follow it. If you don't want to know details about the movie or the books that follow, do not read this post.

My good friend C.K. ranted in a recent post about how the biggest problem he has with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is that Harry doesn't really do things in the story - things are done to him, and he reacts to them. Then C.K. wonders whether it makes a diff that he hasn't read the books, and alleges that, if so, that is yet another fault with the movie.

No, C.K., it isn't. The Harry Potter movies take lengthy books (734 pages in the hardcover version of Goblet of Fire) and condense them down into just over 120 pages of script. Naturally, there's a lot that's left out. Furthermore, you have to view Goblet of Fire within the context of the overall story arc of the Harry Potter series. Author J.K. Rowling had all seven books outlined before she wrote the first book. It's not a story arc that's been randomly pasted together as she went along; each book, as it is written, has its place along the arc that leads to the resolution (of some sort) in Book Seven. 

Trying to understand the impact of the entire series based on watching one movie that abbreviates even that part of the story is a bit like trying to grasp the full impact of, say, one of Mozart's symphonies by listening only to a bit of the part written for a single instrument. Although you can read each book (or view each film) as a standalone, each book by itself is but a part of the whole. To hear the full harmony and really feel the individual character arcs and the overall symphony of the story as a whole, you have to read and understand each of the books as they relate to what came before and what comes after, within the context of the full story arc. Although the stories are popular with kids and teens, there is more than enough meat in there to satisfy even a more discriminating bibliophile like me.

The Harry Potter series is a traditional young hero story, with a hero who is inexorably tied to the villain from his infancy. Harry and Voldemort's fates are melded in a way quite unlike any other hero-villain pair; just how linked, we won't really know until the last pages of the last book, but there is plenty of speculation out there among readers about what the prophecy means (and whether Harry is the last horcrux),  and how Harry, Voldemort and Neville are tied up in it. It's a carefully drawn story construct, each book revealing more pieces of the puzzle and clues to what will follow. Furthermore, there are many intricately-drawn characters in the series: Ron and Hermione have heroic arcs of their own, as does the bumbling Neville; Dumbledore, as aging mentor to Harry's young hero, is a hero every bit as big as Gandalf in Tolkien's work; Sirius Black has become as well-loved as Harry himself by many fans .

The bad guys in Harry Potter's world are complex as well, as really excellent villains should be - Voldemort is well-drawn in and of himself, but Severus Snape is like a kaleidoscope -- with each new turn of the story you get a new picture of him. Just look at the debates raging in the Potterverse about whether Dumbledore is really dead and whether Snape is, once and for all, a really bad guy, or if he was really acting on Dumbledore's orders. What other recent works of literature come even close to the passion the Harry Potter books have inspired in fans? The Lord of the Rings series, perhaps, but it was written in 1954 and 1955.

Goblet of Fire, in terms of the overall story arc, hits at a point in both the character and story arcs where Harry has yet to really fully accept his fate as the Boy Who Must Slay Voldemort.. If you've read the books, you know that in the first three books, and most of the fourth, Harry doesn't really want to be a hero. He wants to be an ordinary boy; he wants to play Quidditch, maybe be chosen Proctor in his fifth year. He's getting interested in girls and dealing with all the fluster and fury of adolescence, right at the same time he's expected to grow up, be even more of a man than most of the grown men around him, and deal with the most evil wizard the magical world has ever known -- a wizard so evil, even grown men won't speak his name.

Now think of yourself as a pimple-faced adolescent, dealing with grades and peer pressure and erotic dreams and girls (or boys, as the case may be). Life is scary enough when you're 14. How many of us, at 14,  would have been able to find the inner core of bravery Harry Potter has up to the point in the story arc of Goblet of Fire - taking on Voldemort in the first book, at age 11? In Chamber of Secrets, at the age of 12, taking on Voldemort again, in the form of Tom Riddle's ghost, and fighting a basilisk? Fighting off dementors in Prisoner of Azkaban at 13? By Goblet of Fire, Harry has been tested his entire adolescence, sure, but he still hasn't really accepted the mantle of Hero of the Wizarding World. He is an adolescent hero, full of self-doubt and conflict, wrestling with the draw of a normal life against the sacrifices he senses he will have to make as a hero.

This is part of the appeal of Harry Potter as a character - that he behaves and reacts much as we can imagine any of us might react under the same circumstances. He is not a superhero; he is just a boy, thrust into extraordinary circumstances by his parents' deaths at the hands of Voldemort. The whole story arc of Goblet of Fire really revolves around Voldemort's attempt to do two things: to come back to life and to, once and for all, kill this "boy who lived", who by surviving his attack, has weakened Voldemort's power over the wizarding world. Harry is thrust into the Triwizard Tournament against his will, by Voldemort working through Barty Crouch, Jr., who is disguised as Mad-Eye Moody. Voldemort wants Harry to compete - and win - so that he will grasp the trophy, which is a portkey, and be transported to where Voldemort lies waiting, so he can use Harry to come back to life and then kill him.

The point of Goblet of Fire, therefore, is not whether Harry is in charge of his own destiny - he isn't at this point in the story - it is about how Harry ultimately reacts to being toyed with by Voldemort, once he grasps fully the impact of all that has happened. It is in Goblet of Fire that Harry begins to realize the enormity of the pull Voldemort has had on his entire life. Voldemort is a very personal villain to Harry; he tried to kill Harry when he was only an infant; he robbed Harry of his parents and a normal childhood; he has, by his very existence, robbed Harry of his adolescence. Through the events that transpire in Goblet of Fire, Harry really grasps, for the first time, how deeply he is tied to Voldemort, however much he might wish it away. Moreover, Harry is suffused with guilt for not being able to prevent Cedric's death, and for being an unwilling instrument of Voldemort's resurrection. These events force Harry to take up the mantle of hero in a way the events of the previous books did not.

Goblet of Fire is beloved by Harry Potter fans is because it is the turning point for the entire series. The events in Goblet of Fire - Harry's realization that his life was put in danger, that he had to compete in these terribly dangerous tasks against his will, and, especially, that Cedric, who is good and honest and true, is killed by Voldemort with as little emotion as one might kill a fly that is buzzing around one's face - are pivotal to all that follows in Book Five, Order of the Phoenix, and Book Six, The Half-Blood Prince. Harry's determination to fight Dolores Umbridge in Order of the Phoenix, for example, is drawn directly from his fury at the events that transpired in Goblet of Fire.

Goblet of Fire is the first point in the story arc where Harry begins to accept his fate. The events in the Triwizard Tournament serve as the impetus for all that is to follow, and for Harry increasingly acting against Voldemort rather than reacting to him. So to answer your question, C.K. -- yes, you really do have to read the books and "get" the whole story of Harry Potter in order to really appreciate the movie. Trying to grasp the full impact of the events that transpire in Goblet of Fire without that understanding is a bit like watching the film The Two Towers, without having read the books or understanding the rest of the story and asking, "why is this little Frodo guy whining about this ring so much?" You simply cannot grasp or appreciate the whole of the story arc of Harry Potter just from watching one movie (or, really, even just from watching the movies at all, because there is so much more information in the books).

Take it from a fellow lover of literature, C.K. Give Harry a chance. I was once a skeptic myself, believing the Harry Potter books to belong to the realm of adolescent fanbooks, but I have been a believer since I finished the last page of the first book. If you are the kind of reader for whom characters come alive, who gets drawn into stories as if they are real events, I cannot imagine you would come away from reading the series without at least an appreciation for the fantastic characters and wonderful world Rowling has created in the Harry Potter books. My 8-year-old daughter, who is a great lover of Harry and his world, believes wholeheartedly that Harry, Ron and Hermione, Hogwarts, Voldemort -  all of Harry's world exists out there, if she can only find it. And I, drawn as I have been into Harry and his world, half believe it myself.