Well today I had just finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix, in order to know what happened in the book before I would see the movie. Firstly, I’d just like to say this was the first book for me to actually sit down hours a day and finish reading it in six days, which for those of you who know me well could possibly find this surprising. The Harry Potter books are undoubtedly helping me get more into reading, and I hope to start becoming a regular reader sometime within this next school year. With reading this book in six days, I still have a very good idea of what happened throughout the entire story and thought I’d give it a little review while it’s contents are still fresh within my mind.
Firstly the one thing I disliked about the whole story more then anything else was Professor Umbridge. I am not saying that she should have never been introduced into the story; I just found her to be very annoying. Every time she came up in the story, things became more complicated then they were even when it was thought impossible that the situation couldn’t get any where worse. Her described appearance gives me a picture of this plainly hideous woman that is not bright or delightful in any way. Every time it came to parts with her I just wanted to move on to the next part and hope that she didn’t make things even more fucked up. If her arrogant and complete absent-mindedness were never introduced to the story and was instead more reasonable (not reasonable to the point where she didn’t make things complicated at all, but rather more of just a very strict teacher, like McGonagall) with Harry, I thought the parts with her included would be a lot more pleasant to read.
Next throughout the entire story, I thought Harry would act very child-like and arrogantly. Even after Ron and Hermione had fully explained themselves for why they couldn’t write to him and that they were deeply sorry (even though they didn’t need to be sorry) Harry still grudgingly held it against them like they meant to not write to him. At this first part, I really was thinking is this the forgiving and heroic Harry that I had read about in the first four books? I thought he was being a ‘little bitch’ and really could have used a nice punch in the face. Though he continued to be a little bitch throughout the school year, some of it is a little more thanks to the straining homework and Professor Umbridge. Harry’s attitude changes a lot in this book from the last one, though some of it can be attributed with the return of Voldemort. It’s just I thought that the return of Voldemort would have had an opposite-effect on Harry. Instead of becoming more angry and bitter at his friends, I thought he’d be more loving and comforting (at least to the ones who weren’t talking about him behind his back) in order to sort of differentiate himself with the way Voldemort acted. Though with all the stress that is put on him in the fifth book, a lot of his anger and bitterness could be attributed to this stress. However at several moments of the book, I felt that Harry really would just put an arrogant foot down and no one else’s advice, even Dumbledore’s, would be allowed into his mind, especially with the death of Sirius Black. I didn’t think that Harry would ever come back to his senses when Sirius died, thankfully the events of the last chapter gave me hope that Harry was not going to remain the arrogant, little bitch he had become.
A part of the book I really enjoyed was the more involved work of Albus Dumbledore and the introduction of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s secret army to stand against Voldemort. I was very glad when I got to see Professor Lupin return to the storyline as a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He was my favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts, as I’m sure is the favorite of a lot other Potter fans. The idea of a counter army against Voldemort and signs of a war really had me excited.
I always enjoy reading about action happening within a story. It always gives me the chance to imagine just how the fight went, really letting my imagination getting the best of me. The fifth book, in my opinion, has the most ’serious’ action then any of the others (though Goblet of Fire had the Triwizard Tournament, it didn’t involve life-threatening parts until the end of the story) and included Dumbledore himself a part of the action. He even fought Voldemort himself! The battle between the students and the Death-Eaters was also very enjoyable to read as well. The battles had vivid detail (especially since they were fighting in such an interesting building) and full of plenty of action and suspense.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in my overall opinion is a very good book and deserves to be a part of the amazing Harry Potter series. However, the course of Harry’s attitude is slowly changing within the series and in a direction I was hoping he wouldn’t go. The books are becoming more dark as to keep with the age group that started with it. My only hope is that when I get the chance to read the sixth book that I hopefully Harry will not become overly depressed and arrogant because even though he is dealing with more stress then anyone I have ever seen, becoming depressed just makes the reader depressed and the stress just becomes that more worse. It’s better to be an optimist rather then a pessimist because believe me I know what it’s like to be a pessimist and its nothing to rave about, it only makes the people around you sad and it just makes the pessimist that the more unwise. Harry’s biggest struggle I believe is his battle with his deceitful feelings. If he can learn to not rely entirely on his feelings and more on wisdom, he is going to be much better off against Voldemort and his own sanity.