Harry Potter, James Kugel, Metamorphoses

I finished the last Harry Potter book on Saturday. Like all the books after 3, it could've used a lot of editing, but ever so much more so. For most of the first half, Harry, Hermione, and Ron are wandering around, going nowhere in their quest for the horcruxes. Rowling wants you to realize how hard it is to figure anything out, and so they make absolutely no progress for 300 pages. In the earlier books, though, while Harry was trying to figure out the evil plot of the moment, there were other distractions around, like quidditch, arguing with Snape, not to mention classes. In this book, we have none of those things, and it ends up feeling very sterile.

I think Rowling's great strength is the way she can toss out neat ideas one after another. Unfortunately, by the time we get to Deathly Hallows, her previous ideas are starting to tie her down a bit. I think that's why she ends up with tons of ad hoc rules to explain the prophecy (Voldemort's soul is split into 7 pieces. No, it's 8 pieces. And one of them's in Harry. And wands give their allegiance to someone who beats their owner. And so on and so on). I'm looking forward to her starting something new where she can wipe the slate clean--I'm hoping she doesn't write another HP book.

I also started Jacob's Ladder, an analysis of midrashim connected with Jacob. The first chapter (all that I've read so far) is about the eponymous ladder. The midrashists were concerned with a few problems about the ladder. Why didn't God speak to Jacob using regular language, instead choosing a vision of a ladder? What does the vision mean? Why does Jacob wake up fearful from what should be a good vision?

The midrashists have a few different answers--the commonality of them all is that the ladder was real, not a dream. This solves the problem of how God spoke to Jacob; it wasn't through the ladder, it was in plain speech. The question then is, what is the symbolism of the ladder? One answer is that it's not symbolic; the angels are going up and down to look at Jacob because he's such a perfect human being. Alternatively, the ladder symbolizes the length of time that the other nations will rule over Israel, with one angel representing the Persians, one the Greeks, and so on. And the message to Jacob (and us, of course) is to take heart--no angel will go up the ladder indefinitely; at some point, they all come down, and then Israel will rise again.

I also finished book I of the Metamorphoses. That's the Io story, the Syrinx story, and the beginning of Phaethon. It's an odd place for a book break--Phaethon is introduced, along with the conflict that will lead him to drive the chariot of the sun, but things are left hanging there. Id somehow remembered that the books are more independent than that, but I read it in English so long ago...