back with Harry (part 3)

As my most loyal and attentive readers have already figured out, one of my goals in following Rowling's development as a writer is to raise broader questions about art, to nibble at the great "messy topics" that Sweatshirt, the Whale, and I enjoy discussing so much. (Usually these discussions go on past midnight; usually they occur while we munch through boxes of Men's Pocky.)

The question of the week is this: how does an artist outgrow mere entertainment, and learn to awaken profound feelings in her audience?

The Prisoner of Azkaban is the first emotionally resonant book in the Harry Potter series; it's the leap Woody Allen made from Love and Death to Annie Hall--how did Rowling accomplish it?

Necessary preconditions include a compelling plot (albeit far squeakier than that of The Chamber of Secrets), a likable cast of characters, healthy doses of sarcasm and slapstick, consistently dazzling wizardry, and then that same "unfailingly accessible" prose I commented on in my previous post. These qualities alone would have made for a worthy if boilerplate addition to the series; they don't create the book's emotional resonance, but they do facilitate it.

To the point, the emotional power of The Prisoner of Azkaban flows not from tricks or mysteries, but from the book's creative but recognizable portrait of grief.

From the second chapter, in which Harry inflates Aunt Marge after she insults his dead parents, to the final pages, when Harry shoots from his wand an animal representing his lost father, The Prisoner of Azkaban chronicles Harry's first serious attempt to understand and live with the death of his parents. Across the book a reader can follow Harry through all of Kübler-Ross's stages of grief: the scene with Aunt Marge shows anger, the dementors are of course depression, Harry's in denial when he believes that he's seen his father, bargaining is partly the reason Harry lets Peter Pettigrew live, and acceptance finally comes when Harry recognizes his Patronus as a stag and, the next day, when Dumbledore explains: "You father is alive in you... [I]n a way, you did see your father last night. ... You found him inside yourself."

This acceptance will prove fleeting, sadly, and in The Prisoner of Azkaban Rowling is already dropping hints that Harry's progression will not be wholly progressive. But to anyone who has mourned, the fragility of Harry's recovery cannot come as a shock. Kübler-Ross warns us that "stages" of grief are, in fact, indistinct and overlapping; most perniciously, as I have had to learn myself, they tend to recur long after you're supposed to have moved on.