This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work
at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Story Over Everything. This is a Skimming Leaves episode where I
will be talking about none other than Mr. HP. That is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter in
Book 5, Order of the Phoenix. So this, I guess intro portion, is being recorded perhaps months
after I finished listening to the book. And I, you know, but do not fear, the recording
happened shortly after I finished the book, so it's not going to be awful and crazy. I
do have some fun facts that I want to share about Order of the Phoenix with you, and I'm
going to go ahead and do that very shortly. So listen up to this as I get you ready to
jump into the episode, as you hear my raw thoughts and reactions on the book, on the
story, on everything going on. There's definitely some negativity, but overall I still do like
these books in the series, and I don't have any issues with J.K. Rowling as an author.
Yes, yes. I even read the Tales of Beetle of the Ward, which were a lot of fun. So anyway,
here we go. I'm going to start jumping into the fun facts here for Harry Potter Book 6,
The Order of the Phoenix. Okay, so according to my research, the book was published on
June 21, 2003 by Scholastic in the U.S. and Bloomsbury in the U.K. It was the first Harry
Potter book to have a global release date. Okay, so last time, Book 4, Goblet of Fire,
yeah, that's right, Book 4, Goblet of Fire, had a U.S.U.K. simultaneous release, and now
this one supposedly has a worldwide release, which I would assume that means more than
just the U.S. and the U.K., because it's got the global release. The book has 766 pages
in the U.K. edition and 870 pages in the U.S. edition. It is the longest book in the series,
with a word count of approximately 257,045 words. Now let me see. I want to write 60,000
word pulp novels. How many times does 60,000 go into 257,000? It's a lot. Is that 40? It's
like 40 of my pulp novels for this one book? I think that's right, but I could very well
be wrong. That's crazy. Anyway, apparently the book won the Bram Stoker Award for Best
Work for Young Readers in 2003, and it was the only Harry Potter book to do so. Maybe
it was because of all the inappropriate stuff I didn't like in the book. And I don't care
about the characters it introduces. Oh, yeah. So it advances stuff in the kids. They're
later in school, and it shows kind of like entrance exams, finals, preparation for moving
on to learning more new interesting stuff for their careers and their futures in the
Wizarding World. But I won't go on and read those fun facts. I will stop there. And let
you listen to my reaction and thoughts to this book from a while ago. I had two interesting
things happen to me along the way of listening to these books. There's a third, but I won't
mention it, because it doesn't matter. So the two interesting things that happened to
me on the way of listening to this book is that one, I ran out of my... I had to return
the book to the library, the e- or digital library that I'm using. And I had to take
like a two week break from listening because of some training that I'm doing with somebody
that impacted my ability to listen. And when I finally got back to the book, I found that
it was time for it to go back. And then I desperately cast it around for another way
to find it. I finally did find a fan version of a reading of the book, and I went ahead
and listened to that. But that's piracy, you might argue. And I would say yes, technically
that is 100% true. However, I had the book for the entire period of time in which I could
have listened to it, and I didn't because of circumstances. And to cover myself, I'll
probably just check it out again as soon as it becomes available, because I have it on
hold again to do that very thing. So anyway, I don't know. It's kind of like... does it
really matter? But, you know, I don't know. I feel weird about it. But anyway, so I did
that. And I've also been considering just out right behind the books, because I imagine
there's something that might be re-read in the family from time to time. So we'll see.
We'll see. And so getting back to the actual book, I really liked it when I think about
it. This was a book of transition. It was a book of basically the world of Harry Potter
opening up. Harry learns a lot more about the wider wizarding world. In the end game
of the book, he leaves Hogwarts. He entirely goes off of campus to deal with things, which
is interesting to point out because at the end of book four, Goblet of Fire, he also
went off of campus to deal with things, whereas Prisoner of Azkaban had them definitely staying
on campus, as did Chamber of Secrets and Philosopher's Stone. So it's interesting. Those first three
books enabled Harry to deal with Voldemort in some way, essentially, that had him staying
on campus and doing everything at Hogwarts, which is supposed to be a very safe place
because of all the counter charms and protection spells and whatever that are there. But we
can see that dangers can still creep in. But then book four pulls him out of Hogwarts into
danger against his will. And then in book five, he goes out of Hogwarts into danger.
Because it's his will. And I kind of imagine that that'll happen again in this in the sixth
book, but I don't want to talk about that right now. I'm just talking about the fifth
book. And I don't know. It's just really interesting how it really opens things up. You get to
see more into the Weasley's family life. You get to visit with Harry's godfather at his
family home, which is very interesting and like is utilized for a plot point. Like it's
interesting. The fact that that place is chosen as the base for the Order of the Phoenix.
And then there's a certain measure of betrayal that happens because they're at that home
and one of the servants in that home. And it basically serves to pull Harry against
it. See, he leaves according to his own will, but he's basically trapped into it or fooled
into it. And it's really interesting that that happens because you get to see him making
moves on his own and doing things because he wants to do them, not because he has to
to survive, but because he wants to, because he thinks it's the right thing for him to
do, even if it puts him in danger. And that's interesting because he's going from like a
passive protagonist who's just kind of going through these things and luckily surviving
to a more active protagonist who's choosing to face things. And that's really interesting.
So I like the steady growth that we're seeing and the steady development that we're seeing
in his character. And yeah, without getting so I wonder if it's not a good idea to keep
doing these without spoilers. I'll finish off Harry Potter with not having spoilers
in the book I'm talking about. I'll refer back to things from the last book because
they're so interconnected. You'll, you'll hear those things, but I'll at least give
you a chance. So it's difficult. And I think in the casual book chats, I want to go and
do like a couple of minutes worth of talking about it without my, you know, without spoilers
and then I'll just go ahead and relax and say everything I want to say. So again, I'm
reaching back in my mind to order of the Phoenix. Yeah, it's all very fascinating. It's all
very interesting how it works out that Dumbledore basically has this private army, you could
say that he's setting up to oppose Voldemort. And then you get this dynamic of conflict
coming not from Voldemort, but from the Ministry of Magic itself. And it's partly because they
want to pretend Voldemort isn't back so that they don't have to deal with the consequences
of him being back and they don't have to look bad saying that he's back because they have
been making assurances to people that Voldemort is well and truly gone, that Dumbledore is
some sort of crackpot who thinks Voldemort is back. Perhaps he's a conspiracy theorist
and that Harry is an attention seeking, like no good kid. And it's very interesting how
the Ministry of Magic, which is, you know, essentially a government organization, is
using a newspaper as a weapon against Harry. And it's happening in a much more, if it was
happening in Goblet of Fire, it was not happening in Goblet of Fire. There was other stuff going
Goblet of Fire that mentioned the media. And I brought up, I'm curious to see if Rowling
like not doubles down, but includes the media as a force to be dealt with in the books further
and, you know, will that happen in book five? It sure happened in book five. The media was
absolutely weaponized by the Ministry of Magic. And I find that to be a really fascinating
thing because it's definitely something that happens in the real world and the non-wizarding
world. And it's interesting to see it happening in the wizarding world as well. And I know
it was just really interesting that, I don't know if it's because we live in a more modern
era or what, like obviously that didn't happen in, you know, Lord of the Rings. We didn't
get to hear, you know, fake news coming from Aragorn about him trying to stop, stop, what's
his name? The Dark Lord Sauron. And we didn't have, you know, Sauron talking about how there's
my truth and then the truth or however that went. I can't remember, like there's facts
and there's truth, something like that. Anyway, we didn't get to hear any of that, like political
double speech in that, because the media just wasn't a factor in, you know, Tolkien's epic
fantasy. But in Rowling's, like, you know, arguably urban fantasy series of Harry Potter,
we do get that. And I find that pretty interesting. And I don't quite know, again, I don't quite
know why she did that. And I don't remember how far back urban fantasy goes. And if she's
just like playing on a part of it or if she's just doing her own thing and just, you know,
it's interesting because she's trying to say, well, what if wizards were really real and
what if they did actually interact with the non-wizarding world? What if the wizarding
world was like this, you know, secret, you know, elite sort of, you know, sub population
that, you know, kind of did things in their own interesting way. And it had effects on
the rest of the non-wizarding world. And, you know, what would happen in that situation?
Which is interesting, but I don't necessarily like it. Like in Narnia, if in the Chronicles
of Narnia at some point, well, I mean, they did interact. She just interacted with the
police and stuff. Oh man, that was funny. And she interacted with the public as well.
Oh man, Magician's Nephew is a great book, by the way. If you haven't, if you haven't
read that, it's time. Just, you know, stop what you're doing and go listen to that. Or
go listen to that, go read that. It's a very good book. Anyway, but like, yeah, he had,
so Lewis that is, in the Magician's Nephew, he had the fantastical meeting and interacting
with the mundane. And it was interesting, but there wasn't any like social commentary
type thing going on. It was like a cop dealing with people who he thought were drunk or crazy,
not realizing that they were actually magical and actually like really powerful beings,
or at least one that could seriously do him harm. And there was a comedy to that because
you're seeing the absurdity of the magic interacting with the mundane in a way where the mundane
doesn't grasp it. And it just, it made for a funny situation. So, and there's other stuff
as you go further into the Magician's Nephew, where there's comedy by the contrast of the
real world versus, you know, Narnia, that world. And that's pretty interesting. And,
yeah, but it's the way it's done, the way it's handled, there's no, I don't know, it
was handled in like a very sincere and earnest way versus I kind of feel like there's something
being said by Rowling here in these books about the media. And definitely there's like
themes of authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism and like letting people in charge, I'll say
like that, letting the people in charge use fear and a crisis as an opportunity to oppress
people to make scapegoats out of any individual they want. And I find that really interesting
and really powerful and really, I don't know, strange. There's a new character, a new Defense
Against the Dark Arts instructor who does more than just that, but she ultimately lives
by the end of the book. So she's not a pawn of Voldemort, which you might imagine, or
at least she's not revealed to be one in this book. Her name is Dolores Umbridge and she
becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and she basically has the students
not learning how to do Defense Against the Dark Arts in any practical way. They do a
lot of reading. They do, it's a quiet class where nobody talks because everybody's reading,
just the teacher tells you what section to read in the book and that's about it. It's
all supposed to be theory and she's supposedly doing it out of the interest of the safety
of the children, her students, and also almost like out of a sense of propriety of, oh it
wouldn't be proper to show you these certain things. And I've heard that last year you
had teachers do this, this, and this, and this, and it was approved by the faculty here,
which that's arguable if during that year, if during year four, the things that were
being done were 100% stamped on or approved by Dumbledore or not because of who the teacher
was and how unorthodox he proved to be. But anyway, that's for another time to talk about.
So it's interesting that what happens is the kids end up figuring that, you know, if we're
going to be left without an actual Defense Against the Dark Arts education, if something
happens to us and we need to use our wands to do spells to defend ourselves, anti-jinx,
anti-charms, that kind of thing, we're going to be in big trouble and we will become injured
and hurt and killed possibly by Voldemort and his forces if they are in fact back, which
there's a whole kind of controversy throughout the entire year of the book that is Voldemort
really back. And it's just, again, it's interesting that it's this controversy and it's this kind
of this political hot potato that's being dealt with. And like, I don't know, like they're
trying to get Dumbledore fired and kicked out and there's all this staff stuff going
on with the school and like the Ministry of Magic basically puts Umbridge in as a teacher
to do their will at Hogwarts and make sure it conforms to what they are saying because
like they hold a certain position and not only do they oppose, are they upset with anybody
who denies that position, but they like basically want to use every force they can, legal and
it turns out non-legal as well, to stop them from saying things that they don't like. So
it's interesting because it almost touches on in a prescient way like a cancel culture
type thing, but it's more about like smearing of individuals who are doing things that the
people who are in charge don't like because they find it disruptive or whatever. But it
turns out that sometimes when people are in charge and they don't want people to do things
who are under them because they find them to be disruptive to the peace, that those
people in charge will go ahead and do things that are illegal in order to get the people
who they want to stop from doing certain things to stop from doing them. A favorite example
of mine because of how horrible it is and how plainly horrible it is, is that my American
FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation was weaponized against one Martin Luther King Jr. who we
now lionize and have a holiday for and they did a bunch of illegal spying on him and had
a bunch of illegal information on him and they wrote him letters sending him documentation
of basically blackmail telling him that he should kill himself and that wasn't after
his victory in the Civil Rights Movement, that was during his victory or during his work
in the Civil Rights Movement because my government wanted to assuage him and stop him from doing
what he was doing, you know, non-peaceful, I mean peaceful, literally peaceful, non-violent
protests that were fighting for good people of good character who were sincerely trying
to make a good life for themselves to be able to have the same freedoms and rights as others
who had a different color of skin. So it's really interesting how people in power in
order to protect their power, they will do immoral things, they will do illegal things
and they will hurt whoever they have to to maintain their sense of control and it's fascinating
that that's going on, like that's the subtext of the book, the text is that Voldemort is
trying to come back and you don't know what his scheme is but it's something bad and Harry
and his friends can stop it if, you know, if they do everything right and I don't know,
it's a very interesting thing because Voldemort isn't at Hogwarts, he doesn't want to be at
Hogwarts, he's not trying to be at Hogwarts, he's trying to lure Harry out basically in
order to do a thing which I won't go into and I, that's light spoilers but it's, well,
it's very light, you know he's going to try to kill him again and gosh, I don't know,
it's just really interesting. Besides all that, like political commentary that's going
on in the book, which I would say, you know, it's not speaking against the US government
directly, in fact, I at one point thought, what is Rowling talking, what was going on
in the UK during the early 2000s or late 90s when she was writing this stuff, I guess maybe
it was, these books were kind of written against the backdrop of the war on terror so that's
kind of interesting, I don't know what her, I don't know or really care to know Rowling's
full political standing to know exactly what she was talking about because the point carries,
the point matters or the point gets across that yeah, if people want to be authoritarian
like this and pretend that they're moral and that they're good and they're just doing this
for the good of the people, you don't have to trust them, you can question them, you
can defy them, you can go against them, it may hurt, you may suffer the consequences,
but that's something you're allowed to do and maybe you should consider and you should
consider doing because it might just be the right thing to do and it might help people
and it might turn out these people are even more evil than you understood them to be once
you've seen them violating certain moral things and then certain laws, it's clear, I guess
I would put morals above laws, once they're violating certain laws and certain morals
you know that they're not to be trusted and that they only care about power and then wielding
it against others so basically that kind of gives you permission to say yeah, I will take
everything on a case by case basis and defy whom I choose to defy and comply with who I
choose to comply and I think that's a very interesting, very interesting message for
a children's book especially because it shows that it isn't always people who are in power
who are right and we have many instances of children, young children and older kids being
harmed by people who are in power because they blindly trust the fact that they're a
person in authority therefore they should be listened to or complied with which is not
always true so very interesting, I mean an entertaining book but then it's got this interesting
messaging going on and this interesting like life application to be gleaned from the story
and I like that.
Anyway, besides that, besides the world of Harry Potter getting bigger and showing more
of the wizarding world and what not, we also got a very interesting like personal growth
in the world of Harry Potter like Harry gets more of a family, he gets more of a normal
family, not upbringing to be in but more of a family atmosphere to be in, he spends more
time with the Weasleys and this other extended family that all happens and they're all part
of the Order of the Phoenix which is a central thing in the book and it's really interesting
to see and it's really lovely and it also works because like the character interactions
are entertaining but they're also interesting and they cause you to ask questions about
the world and the character and the history of all the characters and like I don't know
like how they got to be where they are and how their relationships got to be at the state
that they're at and I think it's just really fascinating to see how all that played out
and it's interesting because Rowling just keeps adding stuff to the books and like texturing
them and layering them with things that make it more enjoyable to read and there are these
little hooks that kind of get in your head that's like oh well if this is the case then
what about that?
It just sparks questions and kind of sparks the imagination and she does a really good
job of and I think I can see why so many people are such crazy Harry Potter fans because there's
a depth to the story and a depth to the technique of the storytelling that really draws you
in and makes you feel I mean yeah like part of the world or like you can relate to the
world like I'm sure we all have a Snape, we all have a Uncle Sirius or whatever like there's
all that kind of those family dynamics the way they're played with it feels very reminiscent
of your own family, my own family and you can kind of see little things there which
is a lot of fun so it's like a very relatable story, a very relatable set of books and set
of characters that we're getting introduced to and it just keeps growing and it's kind
of that way with life too the older you get the more you get exposed to the more you learn
how little you know and the more you learn how much of the world you don't really know
about or never really had to think about or had always taken for granted and there's things
in the book that kind of cause Harry to question certain parts of his past that he had seen
in a certain light and now he sees them in a different light and that's just really interesting
and compelling stuff so yeah I think the well that's what I think about the book those are
my casual thoughts I'm gonna let you go let myself go because I am running out of things
to say and I don't want to start rambling so until next time folks take care thank you
for your time and attention thank you for listening come back for more be well and this
is MJ signing out I hope you enjoyed that go to MJMUNOZ.COM to leave any questions
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