Harry Potter

For the first post of substance on my blog, I have chosen the least surprising subject possible: the new Harry Potter book. Yes, I know that every blog on the entire Web probably has something about the book. But, hey, Andy Warhol made paintings of Campbell's Soup cans, right? J.K. Rowling's books are way better than Campbell's Soup cans, so if we've reached complete popular culture saturation with Harry Potter, then that's OK because it's good saturation, like the first rain after a really dry summer when the rain doesn't run off, but instead percolates into the groundwater so that plants can use it and, at some point, it becomes available for people to pump and use. If we need complete Harry Potter saturation so that the good stuff in the books sinks in, then saturation is good.

SPOILER ALERT: if you haven't read the book, then don't read this post because I'm going to give away lots of the plot twists.

There are essentially two key happenings in the book for the progress of the series' central Harry v. Voldemort conflict.

First, we discover that, by killing people, Voldemort has divided his soul several (probably six) times and infused the soul slices (there's an image -- it's like Barry White-brand pizza) into vessels, called "horcruxes." This is how Voldemort survived whatever happened to him when he unsuccessfully tried to kill Harry as a baby. The six horcruxes must be destroyed before Voldemort can be killed. The book says that two horcruxes already have been destroyed. Dumbledore says that he has destroyed one, which wrecked one of his hands. He also says that Harry destroyed one because Tom Riddle's diary that Harry destroyed in The Chamber of Secrets was a horcrux. So that leaves four. Harry and Dumbledore try to get another in a particularly harrowing scene, but it turns out that it is not a horcrux because someone named "R.A.B." destroyed that one. (Sirius Black had a brother named Regulas, who was a Death Eater, tried to get out of it and was killed by Voldemort or another Death Eater. That's probably who R.A.B. was.)

As an aside, I like the initials R.A.B. My first and last initials are R and B and one of my favorite Supreme Court decision is R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, in which the Supreme Court held that a state's decision to punish a crime more severely because of the message it sends violates the First Amendment's protection of free speech. It's probably the best Supreme Court case to show that the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing someone for the message that they send. If you want to read it, go to http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html and go down to Citation Search and enter 505 for the volume and 377 for the page. It's a decision written by Justice Scalia, which kind of goes against the dominant perception of him.

See, I told you, that there would be random thoughts here.

Second, Dumbledore is killed while Harry watches helplessly because Dumbledore has bound him to be silent and immovable by a spell. More precisely, Snape kills Dumbledore after Dumbledore does some ambiguous pleading. At the beginning of the book, Snape makes an unbreakable vow to help Malfoy on some mission that Voldemort has given Malfoy. Malfoy corners Dumbledore, who has no wand because Malfoy expelliramused him just after Dumbledore totalised Harry (for Harry's protection, presumably). Malfoy can't bring himself to kill Dumbledore, then Snape shows up and does. After Harry is untotalised after Dumbledore dies (apparently the death of a spell's caster releases the target), Harry chases after Snape, who parries all of Harry's spells, but doesn't attack Harry because, he says, "Potter is for the Dark Lord." During this confrontation, Snape tells Harry: (1) no Unforgivable Curses (Imperius, Crucitae) for you; and (2) your spells will be parried "until you learn to keep your mouth and mind shut." (In this book, sixth year students like Harry were learning to cast spells without speaking. In the last book, Snape was trying unsuccessfully to teach Harry to close his mind to mindreading, at which Snape apparently has Bibbyesque talent -- that's lots of talent for you non-Kings fans). Snape gets away.

Now, we have to fit all of this in with the popular culture that derives from the basic tenets of mythology as passed on to us by Joseph Campbell. That sounds really pretentious, but my knowledge of Campbell basically derives from the fact that I have tried to soak up as much about Star Wars as possible without becoming a total geek since I first saw Star Wars as a six-year-old after waiting in a line at the old Fox theater in Hanford, California, through an entire showing of the movie. We waited all the way around the block back to the old gas station that I think was a vaccuum cleaner store at the time. (This is one of the greatest things my parents ever did for me. It will be referenced often on this blog.) Apparently, George Lucas spent lots of time with Campbell to understand the underlying themes of mythology as handed down through the ages. The Star Wars saga reflects these themes.

In addition to Star Wars, Harry Potter must be read in relation to the Lord of the Rings, which shares many of the same themes. There also are similar themes in the Star Trek movies, at least those with the original cast (don't know much about the Next Generation movies, though First Contact was quite good, particularly given that the only previous movie that I had seen James Cromwell in was Babe and it was a kick to see Farmer Hoggett play a completely different role).

So what do Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek tell us about Harry Potter? The part about Dumbledore seems the simplest. There is a theme that the mentor's sacrifice is necessary for the hero to become what he -- it's always a he, damn paternalistic mythology; someone tell me what Ursula K. LeGuin does -- needs to be to do what he has to do. Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in Star Wars, telling Darth Vader that "if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." (Never quite understood that part. Was Obi-Wan going to be moss on Luke's rolling stone?) Similarly, Gandalf is killed or something by the cave monster thing. (The "Bullrog?" Who knows? It was hard enough to keep track of Saruon and Sarumon.) Spock is killed in Wrath of Khan (if you haven't seen the Seinfeld where Jerry and George tear up in talking about this, you should because it is classic.) Both Obi-Wan and Gandalf return to indirectly help the heroes as more powerful beings, Gandalf turning from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White. You just have to trust Obi-Wan when he says that he is more powerful because I have watched the first three Star Wars movies (not the first three "episodes" -- George, you may have more money than God, but you don't get to reorder my childhood) lots of times and never seen a lot of evidence that Obi-Wan became more powerful than Vader could imagine. While Gandalf returns to life, he doesn't return directly to Frodo until after the Ring is destroyed. Spock returns, too, although he is much more active in Kirk's adventures (plus Star Trek doesn't involve one evil that must be defeated, so it's not a perfect analogy anyway).

If you accept that Harry Potter must be read in the light of Campbell-esque mythology as expressed in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, then that leads to three conclusions: (1) Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him; (2) Dumbledore will return in some manner to help Harry, possibly through portraits or something that allows him to give Harry advice (like Obi-Wan telling Luke to turn off his computer and "Use The Force" when trying to blow up the Death Star, advice that Luke followed to Leia's and CEPO's temporary dismay as the Death Star got ready to blow them up); and (3) Snape, though vile, is not evil. This would explain Snape not attacking Harry. (While Voldemort said that he wanted to kill Harry himself in the fourth book, he didn't seem to hung up on doing it himself in the first, second and fifth books.) This also would explain Snape preventing Harry from making any Unforgivable Curses and essentially giving Harry advice on how to be a better spellcaster.

The more difficult conclusions to make are about Snape's future role. What role does he have exactly? Is he a Rogue Hero along the lines of Han Solo or Aragorn? That would be hard to swallow. Since saving Harry's life in the Quidditch match in the first book (which I don't think has ever been properly explained -- even if Snape is not evil, why would he decide to be the Good Samaritan?) -- he has done little but make Harry's life difficult. Han Solo and Aragorn came around pretty early in the action.

I think that the better answer is that he will be more like Gollum. Star Wars doesn't really have a similar character, unless you count Darth Vader in the light of his conversion back from the Dark Side. Either one of them, however, works as an Unexpected Agent of Evil's Destruction. Gollum causes the Ring to fall into Mount Doom when it is unclear if Frodo will do it. Darth Vader pitches the Emperor down what some critic called an "intergalactic sewer" in reviewing Revenge of the Sith (that was a good one, if I could remember who wrote, I would attribute it). Harry probably can't kill Voldemort directly. That would involve an Unforgivable Curse. Morever, as we discovered at the end of the fourth book, Harry's and Voldemort's wands won't work against each other because they have the same core of a feather from Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes. This means that book seven will have to involve an Unexpected Agent of Evil's Destruction. Because of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, I am putting my money on Snape.

There you go. This is what happens to your mind when a significant part of it is hard-wired for this stuff by Star Wars.