Dumbledore - “Wise Old Man” or “Going Senile”?

Someone asked in a comment recently about whether or not Dumbledore was an animagus. We don’t this for sure, though it was mentioned that, having been transfiguration master, it’s a good possibility. This led to me to start some research in that area which got immediately sidetracked by another issue which I had been planning to address. When I Googled “Is Dumbledore an Animagus,” one of the first hits I got was to the Red Hen Publications site, the rather lengthy and excellent work of someone named Joyce. I’ve been wanting to get to her writings, but I’ve not had the time for lengthy reading of various theories lately.

Her work on Dumbledore is interesting to say the least. I’ve been wanting to continue the Narrative Misdirection work by highlighting one of Rowling’s most ingenius moves that keeps us guessing: namely, Dumbledore’s admission that, not only is he sometimes wrong, but when he does make a mistake, it’s a huge one. This seems to leave a lot up in the air, doesn’t it? If we can’t trust Dumbledore, who can we trust?

My opinion on the matter is that we can, indeed, trust Dumbledore. The only definite and significant error we’ve seen from him was made entirely out of love for Harry. He wanted to protect him, so he kept his story from him for too long.

“Evil” or “Manipulative” Dumbledore theories are absurd, quite frankly, but the Red Hen site (which you will now find on the Links page) posits another possibility: Dumbledore is not a “wise old man,” but he is “clever,” a bit too old (so that he’s losing it), and a bit full of himself. Joyce writes, “Albus Dumbledore was an old man with a bad case of hubris.”

She points to Dumbledore’s overburdened work as Headmaster of Hogwarts, head of the Wizengamot and the International Confederacy of Wizards, and the fact that Voldemort’s reign and the continual corruption of the wizarding political world took place “on his watch.”

You can read the rest of her points, and I welcome feedback. For now, I’ll simply say this: I’m not buying. I am certain that Dumbledore has his faults; I’m certain there are pages and pages of them in the boxes of backstory in Rowling’s basement. But I have a hard time believing that in the 6th book, the one in which Harry finally emerges as the hero, Rowling would take pains to thrice emphasize that Harry is “Dumbledore’s man through and through” when, in reality, Dumbledore is a prideful old man who was cracking up before he died.

I’ve been toying with the idea of spending more time on the mythological archetypes present in the Harry Potter books, and I think I shall begin with some in-depth work on Dumbledore. Look for those posts to come.