--Malfoy

Darn.

Sorry; as I type this, Game 6 of the National League Championship Series has just ended, with the Mets finally going down for the count at the bottom of the 11th.

Ah, well. I don't know what I'm complaining about. These are the Mets; they're supposed to lose. It's not as if I'm going to stop wearing my "I ROOT FOR TWO TEAMS: THE YANKEES, AND WHOEVER'S PLAYING THE METS" T-shirt anytime soon.

Still, ya gotta admit that they had a heck of a storyline going for them, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat time after time at the end of the season... until now. I'll try not to gloat too much in that Post-Camp issue of the Camper's Paradise newsletter, when I finally finish writing the thing.

Our general consensus was that it was a good read; nothing extraordinary, but still an enjoyable, well-written bit of light fantasy. Perhaps not enough to account for the phenomenon it's become, although that might just highlight the fact that enjoyable, well-written bits of light fantasy are rarer than one would expect.

Or perhaps there's another reason, which may tie into the one aspect of the book that disturbed me.

Those who haven't read any of the Harry Potter books and intend to do so in the future will want to stop here, as the rest of this entry does contain spoilers for the first book. You've been warned.

Let's have a look at the caste system, shall we? First and foremost, there's the distinction between the Muggles and the wizards. Some people can use magic, others cannot. Okay, that in itself isn't necessarily a problem; I'm not aware of any fantasy works in which magic use is universal. And I don't think there's anything particularly classist in, say, Diane Duane's Wizardry series.

But then Harry -- Boy of Destiny -- goes off to school. Where we find that the students are immediately sorted into four groups, each according to their own nature. So right off the bat, the students are marked as being among the Good Guys (Gryffindor), the Bad Guys (Slytherin), or one of the two groups in the middle (Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw).

"But wait!" protested my sister when I was pointing this out. "Not everybody in Slytherin is necessarily bad! They're just cunning, but that could be used for good..." Well, sure, that's what's claimed when the subject first comes up. But how does it work out in practice? In the first book, at least, the Slytherin students are universally bad guys. And in the first book, at least, the Gryffindor students are universally good guys.

And while Professor Snape turns out not to be the Bad Guy of the book, the best that can be said about him is that he's trying to repay a debt to Harry's father so that he can "go back to hating [his] memory in peace." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

(As an aside, I can't seem to find any passage where Prof. Quirrell's association is given. I suspect that this is intentional, but I may just be missing a reference here.)

So Harry is marked for great things as an infant, and everybody else is assigned to their roles as soon as they start school. What sort of message does this send the reader?

Now, I haven't read the next two books in the series -- I'd like to, but they won't stay on the library shelves long enough for me to get them -- so I can't be certain that this isn't corrected therein. But I will be quite surprised if it turns out that they feature, say, Gryffindor students who try to bring Voldemort to power, or Slytherin students who strive for noble aims. Even if any such characters do surface, it's a safe bet that they'll be treated as exceptions that prove the rule.

Now, if I were better at literary criticism, I could now go into an explanation of how this ties in ideologically with our culture, or perhaps helps the reader feel that, like Harry, they too might be destined for greatness, but I'm not quite that good yet. Give me time. For now, though, my observations stand.