Is Harry Potter overrated? As a series, yes. Some books where good but every book has a different theme that is sometimes rather confusing. I´m thinking book 5 and 6 here.

However, some books really were awesome, especially the first one. In the first one you really feel how magical the magical world is while at the same time a lot is hidden for you to fantasize about.

Fourth book was the book i liked the most of them all. In the fourth book things changed and the children started acting more like there actually was something dark happening.

Book five was not very good but it took the series in a darker direction and i felt that it was a promising start to the big was i was anticipating.

Then came book HBP where Harry&Co became more immature then ever before and the darker direction from OotP completely turned around. The horocrux (how´s that spelled?) thing just threw me off since it was such a blatant move so that JKR could fill the forthcomming books.

Then we had DH. The book was rather uninteresting the whole way through and the general mood of the story was not good at all.
The ending part of the story was really good to read the first time until i came to the part where Harry´s body was taken to the castle. I expected him to rise and start fighting or something, not wait for a long time and use cunning he never showed before. The duel with Voldemort was pathetic too, couldn´t we have had some real action?
Don´t even get me started on the epilogue. Back then i didn´t have that much against Ginny but i still felt that the Epilogue was way over the top. I throw my book to the floor when Albus Severus name was revealed. I mean, how sick do you have too be to name you children after your Mother, Father, Godfather, the guy that gave you a horrible childhood and the guy who tormented you for seven years.


Wow, this turned into a rant about HBP and DH^^

Anyway, back on topic. The seven books together are overrated but some of the books really deserves all of the attention.

 

Yes its overrated. Mostly the last two books more than the series as a whole but still...

 

Alright, alright.

Ummm, I've had a lot of replies that contain good points for the 'not-overrated' POV, but only a few on the other one, and don't get me wrong, I'm really grateful for all the help, but could anyone point out anything other than 'the last two books are crap, so it's sort of overrated' ?

Like, I've written about Harry Potter having qualities the other books also have, like it being original and such, (other books are original too, not on the same scale, but still pretty original) and I've put in the idea of cliches like Taure said about Purebloods and Nazis, but is there anything else that might make it overrated?

Or maybe everyone here thinks it's not overrated?

Once again, thanks for your help, you guys really are something!

--Qwerty

 

Let's see...

You could make a general attack on fantasy, calling it escapist where literature is about confronting and saying something about the world.

You could attack the inconsistency of JK Rowling's ethics and the Calvanistic attributes of some of her characters (Harry is a "good guy", thus can do no evil, even if he's throwing around the Cruciatus; Voldemort was born evil and never had choice). And yet JKR is trying to tell us through Dumbledore that it is our choices that define us.

You could comment on the sophistication of the language used, saying that although in places she uses fairly advanced - for a children's book - vocabulary her style in general has no distinctive flavour like Austin's or Dickens' does. There isn't any poetry to her words.

You can comment on how massively undeveloped all characters except the main trio are. Voldemort as a shallow villain: a caricature of evil, and Dumbledore never truly explored, only hinted at.

You can refer to plot holes, such as the pointlessness of the convoluted plot of the entire 4th book.

You can criticise the books' central message of resignation to death as pessimistic and fatalistic.

Just some things to think about.

Note that I don't actually endorse most of the ideas above, but they are things that you can raise.

 

Hmmmm......

As I mentioned before, the HP books don't stand up to other classics of fantasy literature like Alice in Wonderland or LotR in terms of style, logic, or depth. You can see the deficiencies of JKR's style everywhere. Here's the passage where Dumbledore is talking to Harry about why he wants to fight Voldemort in HBP:

The paragraph does a tolerably good job of building momentum towards Harry's revelation, and then there's that sentence in bold. Holy crap. That's a sentence so clunky and simple-minded that no editor should have let it pass. JKR is simply terrible at writing about emotion (cf., the "monster in Harry's chest" when she's trying to talk about his sudden feelings for Ginny).

You could also note that the books aren't really that original. I don't have the link--someone else might have it handy--but someone created a whole page with examples of children's fantasy literature that preceded HP and used such things as talking portraits, orphaned boy wizards, etc.

Finally, the Narnia books have a corner on the market when it comes to Christian allegory in children's literature. JKR's tacked-on passion play during Deathly Hallows reeks of poorly conceived imitation. A white haired father figure (God, Dumbledore) talks a boy he loves as his son (Jesus, Harry) into sacrificing himself for the greater good of the world. The young man doesn't want to do it, but in the end willingly sacrifices himself and is raised from the dead. Puh-lease. It doesn't get any more obvious or derivative.

Just some thoughts...not sure how you could work them into a speech

 

Hi, sorry to be posting again in the what I thought might be considered as a dead thread, but this...well, here's what happened.

We got this green slips, right, where the topics were written. On it was also the date and time for the speeches. It clearly said Friday 29th of May.

Today morning when I got to school, we, my best firend and I, found out that my frigging English teacher gave us and another kid called Andrew the wrong slip, which said a different date and time to what everyone else in my year got.

Yep, you guessed it: it was today.

Holy crap! We ran to complain to my English teacher, ended up talking to the Head English teacher who told us that we could take the morning classes off to work on our speeches in the library.

So, I wrote all I could remember of my speech draft as fast as I could and...just did it, I guess.

Thanks to all your excellent tips that I was able to recall, I've got second place in the competition. Ironically, Andrew ended up getting first place; he winged it, but his impromptu speech was surprisingly good and funny.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who helped me achieve this thing. But all I ever seem to get in speaking competitions is second place.

--Qwerty

 

That's cool, now for extra credit, post your speech here and let us take a stab at it.

Just Kidding.

 

I was going to suggest that you emphasize that Harry Potter is primarily a book for children. I guess that could go either way in making your point though. Either that the critics are expecting too much from it or that its weird how so many who are not children have latched onto it.

But alas, I am too late. Woe. Woe.

 

Mmm. Not sure how to answer this one.

Is it a masterpiece? No. I cannot say that, Harry Potter, by any stretch of the word, a masterpiece.

Is it an entertaining read? Well, yes. It has disappointments, areas that could have been written better, explained better, or ships that make sense. But really, it still is a series written for the youths. It isn't a source you read to be 'blow away' or to come away pondering some philosophical truth or the like. It is a nice, flowing, easy to understand read.

I think there are a lot of people out there who overrated the series. As far as books of my younger days go, I'm conflicted on whether it matches up with, The Dark is Rising series. Probably, though I highly enjoyed it.

I think the question should be, is it overrated compared to other books in the same genre and same general age bracket.

It is a good, but not exceptional series imo. And I love em for the most part.

 

Ugh someone delete this. I posted in the wrong area.