Please, Mrs. Rowling, May We Have Some More? Or Might You Simply Shut It, Altogether?

October 23rd, 2007 · 64 Comments · Albus Dumbledore, Gryffindor Common Room, Harry News and Commentary, Hogwarts School of Literature

by Dave

Update: Jamie, my wife, has forwarded me a link to an AP news story on Yahoo! The revised reading has begun…

So, we all woke up this weekend with our understanding of our favorite fictional realm…”altered”. I have to admit, my first reaction upon seeing the headline on Yahoo! Saturday morning included a stunned jaw-drop and one immediate thought: “Oh no…”. I clicked the link to the AP story and quickly scanned. “Dumbledore was Gay”. If Hogwarts had anything akin to a nuclear weapon squirreled away in some dark recess of the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling just brought it to the surface and “pushed the button”. As Travis has said, she just intertwined her work into the Culture War in a way that is immensely fascinating, apparently rather troubling, and absolutely confusing.

She took a bit of extra-textual knowledge and introduced it into the discussion of the books. That’s nothing new for Rowling. She’s been doing this for years, offering up bits of information during the interlibrum periods to stoke speculation and interest, and we’ve generally taken the bait with glee. But this…this is something wholly different. Dumbledore’s sexual orientation (or his sexuality at all) has never played a part in the discussion here on SoG, at least that I’m aware of. And just about anything on the web dealing in this brand of speculation (either gay or straight) we here at SoG have generally relegated to the realm purely of “non-canonical” in some cases, (sometimes puerile) fantasy, or flatly uninteresting. Indeed, if anything concerning Dumbledore’s sexual proclivities exists in canon, it is exceptionally vague, at best. For that matter, much of Harry’s relationship with Ginny is rather vague. Of all the criticisms of Dumbledore’s actions and character traits, we’ve never once broached homoerotic undertones in his relationship with any of the male characters in the books.

In short, not only is this piece of knowledge extra-textual, but it might be purely “non-canonical”. Not only is it something that is never explicated in the books themselves, but any implication one might find seems a stretch. For a readership like the one at SoG, who has been rather author-centered in its approach to Harry Potter, we now have a big problem. Travis founded his website on the premise that the books are built on Christian themes. The very Sword itself becomes a symbol of the Cross in medieval literature. Historian, author, and former priest James Carroll titled one of his major books Constantine’s Sword, hinting at this seminal symbolic relationship in the Christian Western Mind (and maybe the non-Christian Middle Eastern one, as well). So, how can a book with significantly Christian themes and symbols also include the positive depiction of a “gay” character? What should readers, Christian or otherwise, do with this bit of “knowledge”? Does it even matter?

I suppose the last question roots itself at the heart of things for me. I’ve said in the past here that an author relinquishes intellectual control of her work once she publishes it. Putting any kind of creative endeavor into the public realm opens it up so that the end-user (reader, viewer, etc.) has a very wide space in which her imagination might run with all kinds of possibilities so long as the facts of the canon itself support the speculation. A lot of you disagreed with me, arguing that the author’s statements about her work should be sacrosanct with respecting to shedding light on her work. But, Travis points out an important notion from commenter Alastair:

[a good book] creates a space within which our imaginations can play, the ambiguities giving us the option of reading the book in many different ways. When an author settles ambiguities like this I feel cheated. It is Rowling’s task to write and it is our task to read; I wish that she wouldn’t do our part for us.

Travis adds this:

There is absolutely nothing in the text itself that communicates anything clear about Dumbledore’s sexuality. Even as we continue to disagree on the subject of homosexuality, we can remain Potter fans together and continue to read the books as we see best. It is our task to read. Our imaginations can play. (para 8 )

This does offer up a reasonable answer to our conundrum, one with which I would generally agree. But I suspect it won’t be an especially edifying one for more than a few people, Christian or not. It’s one thing to haggle over the nature of symbols, themes, and personality traits of characters. But this is something that seems to be a “fact” in the Potter canon without ever making an “appearance” in said canon. Rowling’s comments appear like this:

My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how i [sic] always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!” [laughter] If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago! (para 28, my emphasis)

As Penny points out in the most recent HP Progs podcast, this brings into issue how we consider “canon”. Penny echoes some of the same issues stated in comments posted on Travis’s recent takes here: Rowling has changed something important after the fact.

The bolded segments in Rowling’s statement above might provide us with a distinction. Just because she “always thought of” our favorite headmaster as gay doesn’t mean she wrote him that way. The latter assumption does not automatically follow from the former fact. But, does Rowling dash this option with her further comments? That Dumbledore was gay, “fell in love” with another man, and that it was an important enough character trait to edit a film script makes the idea a “fact” with respect to Dumbledore’s character, one that might even show up on the HP Lexicon. But her phrasing of this (whether this is intentional or just lucky, I don’t know) allows this concept to exist without directly affecting the way we read the text.

And herein lies an interesting distinction, alluded to in Penny and Greg’s podcast: how do we define “the canon” of Harry Potter, anyway? The easy answer is, “whatever appears in the books.” In an especially astute observation by Bill, one of HP Progs’ commenters, he makes the following observation about looking only at the books as the source for canon:

That isn’t how cannon [sic] has ever been defined in the Harry Potter fandom. Pretty much Steve Vander Ark and his Lexicon have defined Cannon [sic] and that has always included any information traceable back to Jo — her web page, things she says in the interviews, and things she has approved like the games and the movies. Until now nobody ever challenged that definition. (para 2)

Plenty here have taken issue with the placement of the games and the films within canonical Potter studies (it sounds so official!), and that certainly is an issue worthy of debate. But, I think Bill is right in a more narrow sense. Lots of stuff on the Lexicon doesn’t trace back directly to the books; on the other hand, Steve Van der Ark has had the guts to challenge some of Rowling’s comments about details that don’t add up when stacked next to the information from the books.

In terms of canon, I don’t think debating whether or not Gay!!!Dumbledore fits Potter canon helps much because the canon itself is not a solidified, inviolate entity. No canon ever is. We lit folks spend a whole lot of time discussing canons of texts, and whether or not the idea of a “canon” is really useful, or even if one actually exists as an organic term — or if we just make up the canon to suit our own purposes.

But, What’s Rowling’s Role as an Author?
As a basic human being, Rowling has all the right in the world to say whatever she likes with respect to her own work (or a wide range of other things, for that matter). But, as an author, Alastair’s comment above points to a belief that she has a responsibility. Literary exegesis has its roots in theology and the interpretation of sacred texts. Theologians and philosophers from around the world used the Bible, Qur’an, Tao te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and further list of religious/philosophical texts too long to name here to espouse all kinds of doctrines. Consequently, they needed to understand the texts themselves — which, we’re all well aware, is not a simple, straightforward task. The idea of the sanctity of the author finds itself rooted in this pursuit. If the author of a text is divine, interpreting something differently than that divinity intended has a serious set of consequences. Nearly every Surah in the Qur’an warns against misunderstanding God’s word. Primarily, this revolves around the idea that such texts are to teach lessons, often through the “revealed” word.

By the time the Renaissance roles around, literary practitioners from across Europe had already started applying exegetical practices and theories to secular texts. And they bring with them the singular literary principle that Sir Philip Sydney phrases as “to teach and delight”. He, along with noted European literati like Dante Allighieri, John Dryden, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, work from this as one foundational principle. Thus, an author’s intention holds vast importance, especially in an age that sees not just literature with a sacred bent, but also a wide range of texts that theologically and philosophically challenge some of those sacred aims.

Authors were not just an authority, but they became responsible for the content of their work in a way that seems bizarre to modern readers. Authors often had to defend their work in public, sometimes at the risk of their own freedom or life. The list of authors repressed, persecuted, and sometimes executed for their offenses against a wide array of authorities, sacred and secular, is quite legion.

And many of their choices as authors have lasting repercussions to this day. Decisions by authors like Martin Luther to publish their work in vernacular languages instead of scholarly languages like Latin and Greek elevated English, German, Spanish, Italian, etc. to the level of scholarly, and made once intensely controlled knowledge better available to those who were neither wealthy nor scholars, but had managed to learn to read. Consequently, the authority assigned to secular texts gets more problematic because God is not the author. People are, but our flaws make this a tricky proposition. If a divine revelation is perfect because of God’s place within the process of the text’s construction, removing God implies the necessary first principle undergirding a text’s meaning is shaky because it is human — thus flawed, too.

It’s this first principle that matters. In other words, does Rowling’s place as the author give her a kind of supremacy with respect to her work? Do we have to listen to her in order to fully understand the fictional cosmos she created in Harry Potter? If one doesn’t think that Rowling plays a god-like role in the creation, transmission, and understanding of Potter (which, I’m guessing most of us don’t), then the answer just isn’t very simple. As much as the Rousseau-like idea of a “contract” between the author and the reader might be appealing, it’s also theoretical, at best.

We live and read in the “postmodern” era, which is to say, as simply as I can, that “the meaning of things” is iffy, and perhaps cannot be truly understood. Oddly enough, the root of this problem lies back in the Renaissance with the actions of authors like Martin Luther who went to great pains to address the masses directly. By making knowledge available to everyone, they also decentralized the control of its understanding. They put everyone on the same intellectual playing field, but not everyone had the same intellectual skill to play in it. And all one has to do is look at the recent comment boards to see how opposing-but-equally-empowered individuals feel about their peers telling them what to do. For orders to work, there needs to be a recognized hierarchy. The server at the Italian restaurant does what I ask because we both recognize those are the roles at stake. But, authors and readers don’t share the same kind of relationship because the authority is no longer recognized.

Poststructuralist Michel Foucault puts the matter this way in “What is an Author?” from a collection of his essays, language, counter-memory, practice:

First, the writing of our day has freed itself from the necessity of “expression”; it only refers to itself [and] transforms into an interplay of signs, regulated less by the content it signifies than by the very nature of the signifier [which means the word as it appears on the page]. [...] Writing is now linked to sacrifice and to the sacrifice of life itself [...] to become the murderer of its author. (116-17, trans by Donald F. Bouchard)

The important premise in this is the freeing of writing from “expression”. It is depressing to consider in many ways, but Foucault and his contemporaries worked from the principle that meaning was not an automatic function of language. Subsequently, “expression” isn’t an inherent element of language, either. Thus, an author’s authority over her own work disappears entirely (see Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” for even more).

I think I’ve got the most postmodern bent of the regulars here at SoG, based solely on what I’ve seen here at Travis’s lovely bit of cyberspace. And even I have a problem following the reasoning of writers like Foucault through to the conclusions some of my peers might. I think the author matters quite a bit in her work. And I would love to have a sit-down with Rowling just to pick her brain for details. But, for me, any revelation she might provide would only be one more drop in the wading pool of ideas in which her work floats. It exists outside of her control, and she chose to make that the case. As you might guess, I’m not sold on the idea that there is one correct interpretation of a text. But neither would I admit that any interpretation is as good as another. Some are clearly better than others, or at least better reasoned. And despite Harry Potter’s Christian themes and content, I’ll echo a sentiment Travis has stated on more than one occasion: Rowling isn’t God.

Eric Clapton is…

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64 responses so far ↓

1 Cory // Oct 23, 2007 at 7:31 pm

There is a well done Scribbulus essay at the Leaky Cauldron called “If the author is dead, who’s updating her website”. I thought it was a very interesting read and is very pertinent to this discussion. Here is the link:

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/essays/issue9/authordead
2 revgeorge // Oct 23, 2007 at 7:35 pm

Thank you, Dave, for such a insightful essay. This is the one I really wanted to deal with. (Although you give Luther some blame for starting all this.:)

You’re right the answer isn’t quite as simple as saying if it’s in the books it’s canon & if it’s not, then it’s not canon. Even Scriptural canon isn’t closed as most people think, it’s just that the Church has never recognized anything other than what’s already there as being God’s inspired divine Word.

But do we have to take everything an author says as canon? Even JKR’s contradictory statements? In the same way, is everything in The Histories of Middle-Earth canon for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series? I’d think we’d say no. It can be helpful & it can certainly show the process of writing the material of the books, but in the end it isn’t the books themselves.

An author can say this is what they intended but if there’s absolutely no indication of this intent in the text itself, I think it’s fair to ask, “Well, why didn’t you write it then?”

So, while an author’s intent or design is helpful & illuminating in many cases, it still isn’t the text of the work itself. A distinction has to be made somewhere. I guess that’s the fun of it all.

I had some of these thoughts about canon even before JKR came out with _the_ revelation. So, hopefully these discussion will help us analyze this issue in its totality & not just so that we can write off Jo’s big revelation as non-canon.
3 Morgan // Oct 23, 2007 at 7:57 pm

Hey everyone, never posted before, but here goes.

I was going to see what John thought about this over at HogPro as well. My thoughts are partly inspired by a post over there by ZoeRose. Are we absolutely sure that Dumbledore’s little revelation is presented in the books as a positive thing? One of the points of DH (at least to me) was Harry having to lose faith in a man he looked up to after learning of these faults that Dumbledore possessed that Harry never knew he had. We find out Dumbledore was a liar, power-hungry, nearly went all Nazi on us, and then…he was gay? Do his homosexual feelings fall in line with his other sins that perhaps he repented of as of King’s Cross? I was just wondering what you guys thought, as it almost sounds to me as if JKR is presenting his homosexuality as a destructive thing that resulted in the death of his sister, and his brother turning on him.

But alas, I don’t know. If there’s some other talk on this, maybe you guys could point me to it, as its rather hard sorting through the 100+ comments on the previous posts. Just wondering what you guys thought.
4 Sandra Miesel // Oct 23, 2007 at 8:34 pm

The availability of authors’ letters and papers adds a new factor to these discussions. Tolkien’s certainly demonstrate how often he changed his mind! But should we ignore additional “factual” information provided by his notes (for instance, that elven gestation is one year)?
But if we had no background from the author’s papers as to when he started his legendarium and with what intent, we might still be arguing about the Ring as a stand-in for the atomic bomb.

If Rowling’s papers get into an archive someday, things get very interesting.

May I say that I appreciate the level of civility and perceptiveness in posts here.
5 revgeorge // Oct 23, 2007 at 8:41 pm

The funny thing about this is that South Park of all places already tackled this issue a couple of years ago. In that case it was about a movie director’s relationship to their work. The boys were upset about Lucas & Spielberg constantly updating their movie’s like Star Wars & ET.

Their argument was that at some point the movies belong to the audience & to keep changing them just to fit the director’s vision is just jerking the fans around & ignoring their reaction to the movie.

I know South Park isn’t for everybody, but it really is a good episode in dealing with this issue. It’s the “Free Hat” one.

I doubt that JKR will ever come out with a director’s cut of the books but it’s an interesting comparison.
6 revgeorge // Oct 23, 2007 at 8:59 pm

Sandra,

Great post. You raise a lot of good questions.

I don’t think we should necessarily ignore any factual information provided by the author. But I do think we need to ask a few questions about it. One, does it have any bearing whatsoever on the text itself? That is, is it necessary to understanding the text?

And two, is it congruent with what the author wrote, that is how she herself portrayed the characters? I hate to bring up Dumbledore, but really is there any hint at all about his sexuality in the text? And since there isn’t, does it matter when Jo fills in this information?

To use someone other than Dumbledore, let’s say Jo says that Snape really did enjoy teaching & being around children, he just couldn’t show it for some reason. How would we digest that information? I don’t know for sure, but I think our reaction would be something akin to “Huh? What’s this got to do with anything?” It certainly wouldn’t be congruent with what’s in the text.

So, I don’t know the answer to how we treat these things. I just don’t think they can be on the same level with what’s actually in the text. Hopefully in our discussions we can flesh some things out.
7 reyhan // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:50 pm

Have to disagee that Dumbledore’s sexual orientation and his relationship with Grindelwald was entirely non-canonical and extratextual. Perhaps the dots weren’t connected and the t’s weren’t crossed, but in retrospect, I can see the outlines.

This is how we were introduced to Grindelwald:

‘Harry opened the book at random and saw a full-page photograph of two teen-age boys, both laughing immoderately with their arms around each other’s shoulders.’

And the next time:

‘… and there on the window ledge sat perched, like a giant bird, a young man with golden hair. In the split second that he lantern’s light illuminated him, Harry saw the delight upon his handsome face, then the intruder shot a Stunning Spell from his wand and jumped neatly backwards out of the window with a crow of laughter.’

And then:

‘It was the golden-haired , merry-faced thief, the young man who had perched on Gregorovitch’s window sill, smiling lazily up at Harry out of the silver frame.’

Each time we see him, the emphasis is on the beauty and charm. Is there anyone else who is presented this way? Only one other, I think, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if he too is outed soon.

For those of you who have read the HPL story, The Rats in the Walls, Grindelwald’s golden hair had the same effect on me as HPL’s use of the word ‘plump’. I asked myself, why the emphasis on his physical beauty? It just seemed odd. I didn’t dwell on it, and I would have described the relationship as a passionate friendship that adolescents sometimes develop rather than a love affair, but the truth doesn’t surprise me in the least.

There is other canon evidence, including one statement which - in retrospect - is blindingly obvious in its implications. But I need to check some facts before going there.

I realize this comment isn’t about the relationship of the author with her readers, and I do want go there, but it seemed important to emphasize first that Dumbledore’s sexual orientation is not extratextual but rather paratextual: implicit but not explicit.
8 Travis Prinzi // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:16 am

Well said, Dave, and I think you’ve summarized where I’m moving to in my evolving thoughts on the author and her text.

Eric Clapton rocks.

reyhan, yes, I agree - in retrospect, it can be seen that Rowling did have Dumbledore’s sexual orientation on her mind and she wrote.
9 Travis Prinzi // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:24 am

John Granger has started exploring this author/text discussion as well.
10 Eeyore // Oct 24, 2007 at 3:15 am

Great essay, Dave–thank you. By the way, can I change my mind about the author’s intent being important for our understanding the story? LOL

reyhan, I read the same passages, but I still saw a friendship and nothing more. Just because the two boys/young adults had their arms around each others shoulders and were laughing doesn’t mean anything more than they were friends. And because Grindelwald is described the way he is? If that actually means he was gay, then why is it Harry noticing what he looks like? That seems to me like a stereotype that Rowling would not perpetuate. She has done everything to break down stereotypes of all the other characters.

I really do wish at this point that she would stop talking unless it’s to clear up some inconguity IN canon–ages, number of students, etc. I just don’t need all the extras.

So I will continue to read the books and do as my 29 year old, who has gay friends in relationships and sees nothing wrong with it, says–”I’m going to forget I heard this.” That’s going to be hard to do, actually, but at some point I think I’ll manage to get there–I’ve loved these books for the last eight years; this is no reason to give them up now.

Pat
11 korg20000bc // Oct 24, 2007 at 5:05 am

I think the golden hair thing is similar to Lockhart’s descriptions- “… immaculate insweeping robes of turquoise, his golden hair shining under a perfectly positioned turquoise hat with gold trimming”. Vanity is the key here. I think Grindlewald’s deadly combination of vanity, brilliance and sense of purpose proved truely to be glamour (in the archaic sense of the word) to Dumbledore.

I used to play a roleplaying game called Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP). I really love Tolkiens writing so I knew I’d enjoy playing a RPG in Middle Earth. But I eventually found myself feeling stifled. I felt that there wasn’t any space left. All the reams of history and backstory in Tolkien’s writing hindered my creative mind. I love the stories just as much but as a destination for exploring MY creativity it’s a dud ride.

I wonder how firmly Rowling will nail down her work?

Matthew
12 Penny // Oct 24, 2007 at 7:58 am

Dave- First of all, thanks for the mention.

I think JK Rowling’s latest talk in Toronto adds fuel to the “canon changing” fire. She is quoted as saying, “The plot is what it is. (Dumbledore) did have, as I say, this rather tragic infatuation, but that was a key part of the ending of the story so there it is.”

I am not 100% sure what Jo was meaning to say there and I may be looking at this the way I want to see it to support my argument, but to me, this “tragic infatuation” brings to mind more of a sexual than friendly obsession and this is what bothers me. Nowhere in the book did it come across as a sexual obsession and to me Dumbledore’s motivations for joining the “wizard-power revolution” have changed between what is written in the book (strictly ideology) and what we know now (sextual obsession). Once again, this ultimately changes canon retroactively and this is where my problems lie.
13 Mrs. Weasley // Oct 24, 2007 at 7:59 am

Dave, thanks for a well-written and insightful essay. As a non-English major myself (in other words, never having studied literature at the level you and others here have), one thing that immediately came to mind is that, thanks to newspapers, the internet, etc., authors’ views on their own works have a much greater chance of being heard now than in centuries past. As we’ve seen, any little tidbit is immediately known around the world, for better or for worse. Whereas, if I am reading, say, a Jane Austen novel, I am free to imagine anything I like without fear of being corrected by Miss Austen. So I’m thinking that maybe in my own case, I should just pretend not to listen to these post-book revelations and keep thinking what I want to in my own mind. After all, I never would have guessed about Neville and Hannah Abbott either!

Reyhan and Travis, I have to agree with Pat and Matthew that JKR wasn’t making a “statement” about Grindelwald in her description of him; she also described Cedric Diggory as handsome, and Fleur de la Coeur as beautiful, as well as our friend Gilderoy. Things work out well for Fleur in the end, but none of the handsome guys fare very well, do they . . . . Hmmmm.

I also feel that reading any backstory in the books is useful, but that adding something post-publication is not. If it’s important to the story, it should have gone in there. If it’s not, it really doesn’t matter. Sure, we all wanted to know who ended up where and with whom at the end, but she chose to tell us what she did in the epilogue and no more (until she started talking . . . .).

So in my own long-winded way, I think I have decided that for me, canon is what appears in the books. Period. Travis pointed out in an earlier post contradictions made by JKR in the press compared to the books (just when did Grindelwald die? etc.). In the end, what’s written is written, and can’t be changed except by the author’s own written revision. So that shall be my personal definition of canon.

Lovely chatting with you all again.

~Mrs. Weasley
14 Penny // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:16 am

What are our thoughts on canon once Jo publishes the encyclopedia?
15 Mrs. Weasley // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:22 am

Penny, I think for me canon will still be what’s written in the stories themselves. It will be interesting to read the encyclopedia, yes, but I still think “the book is the thing.” But maybe that’s just my non-lit background talking.
16 Brian Pendell // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:30 am

If anyone’s interested, Time Magazine opines it’s time to ‘put Dumbledore back in the closet’

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1674550,00.html

This from John Cloud, who is himself gay.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
17 revgeorge // Oct 24, 2007 at 10:28 am

Man, there are so many great posts on here that I want to start commenting & not stop all day, but I’ve got to go to work in awhile.

Just one then. I agree with Penny that Jo seems to be changing what’s in the books retroactively with this announcement about Dumbledore. Knowing that Neville marries Hannah doesn’t change anything in the books. Knowing what Ron or Harry or Ginny or anybody does right now doesn’t change what’s in the books.

But if Dumbledore’s sexual infatuation with Grindelwald was so important & yet it’s not made obvious in the books then it changes things after the point.

Yes, Reyhan, it may be implicit, but it’s not obvious & so can be read different ways. I certainly didn’t imagine for a second reading those sections that that was Jo’s take on it. I too assumed that Dumbledore’s infatuation was more intellectual & power based.

Jo says the plot is what it is, but if she keeps changing the public plot, i.e. what’s actually written in the books, with her private knowledge of what she meant the plot to be, then the plot isn’t the plot, is it?

The thing is she clearly makes known why Snape does what he does. His “love” for Lily. And we think we know why Dumbledore does what he does, i.e. his desire to defeat LV & to also atone for his past sins. Which seems to be more implicit in the books than the other thing. And yet now it’s changed after the fact.

As I said in an earlier post, it’d be like Jo saying Snape really loved children or really did care about Harry. It really changes the meaning of what’s actually written. So there is my difficulty with it.
18 Penny // Oct 24, 2007 at 10:32 am

revgeorge- thank you so much. I have been beating my head against a brick wall trying to explain my issues with this (specifically on my website) and I think you explained it very succinctly and clearly. Yes, Jo telling us now that these were Dumbledore’s motives would be the general equivelant of her telling us retroactively about Snapes love for Lily and that being the motivating factor behind his actions.

Once again (and I said this on my website over and over again), the fact that she is making Dumbledore gay doesn’t resonate either way with me. I don’t care. I just wish she hadn’t brought it up in relation to his relationship/obsession/tragic infatuation with Grindelwald.
19 Eeyore // Oct 24, 2007 at 10:34 am

As I said before, if she’s going to give a lot of this sort of information in the encyclopedia, I’m going to skip it. I just don’t want to know all about the Hogwarts’ teachers lives.

I remember reading Lord of the Rings, for the first two times. I just read the books, didn’t read all the appendices at all. The third time was just before the movies started. After I saw the first movie I was really annoyed at all the romantic bit with Aragorn and Arwen (which just isn’t in the main text). But it is in the appendix. I don’t know if the original books were published with all the appendices but the copies I have are from the late 60s–so I can definitely accept that as canon. It was just canon I hadn’t read. And I still haven’t read Simarillion–I started but didn’t get very far with it. So while some consider that canon as well, it’s not for me as I have yet to read it. None of it influences my thinking or understanding about the books.

I think a Harry Potter encyclopedia will be the same. Those who read it will have a different understanding of canon than those who don’t.

Pa
20 Eeyore // Oct 24, 2007 at 10:36 am

Oops–typed too fast. That should say Pat, not Pa. Besides I’m a Ma not a Pa anyway.
21 Travis Prinzi // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:02 pm

I think several of you are spot on Re: Rowling’s continuing commentary from Toronto.

Sure, the canon is what it is…but very few made the Dumbledore-gay connection until you said anything about it, Ms. Rowling. Canon itself doesn’t describe a homosexual love-infatuation, you did that afterwards. In retrospect, sure, we can see it was on your mind by reading into certain statements and descriptions, but you didn’t make it a “canon” fact.
22 reyhan // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:30 pm

Lots of good thoughts here. I want to pick up on two.

Pat, I respect and admire your decision to skip the encyclopedia. In many ways my take on extra-canonical revelations is similar to yours: if the information isn’t in the canon, it’s not essential to the understanding and enjoyment of the story. Even more, if it’s not in the story, for me it’s not quite real. Thus for example, the revelation about Dumbledore/Grindelwald would have fallen completely flat for me if I couldn’t go back to the canon and trace the hidden outlines. But I did and I can. Quite a lot, actually.

The problem with being a purist, as is your stated intention, is that we’re curious. We’re curious about what I consider legitimate questions, inconsistencies in the plot, ambiguities, things that aren’t very clearly explained. And we’re also curious about stuff that is irrelevant, except to members of fan clubs: Q: Who did Neville marry? A: Who cares? And everything in between. We’re also greedy. We want more Potter.

The huge popularity of the books, and the speed and ease of modern day communications has given us the chance to engage in an extra-canonical dialogue with the author. An ongoing one. The temptation to do so in order to satisfy our curiousity is hard to resist. Each of us as a reader has to decide how we’re going to handle that temptation.

The other point I wanted to pursue is about the timing of JKR’s revelation about Dumbledore. Why here and now? Why not in the canon, where she could have explored the personal significance of that fact?

When asked point blank why and why now? JKR gave several answers. She said she didn’t feel the need to be explicit about Dumbledore’s sexual preference because she wanted to focus on character development, and also that:

“If you were an author, then you would understand that when you write the ending, it comes at the end.”

and

“The plot is what it is. (Dumbledore) did have, as I say, this rather tragic infatuation, but that was a key part of the ending of the story so there it is. Why would I put the key part of my ending of my story in Book 1?”

So she’s saying that this was important, and that she had to leave it till the end because it was a part of the ending. This makes sense from the perspective of a suspense/mystery writer and it’s true of all her books: a key piece of information is withheld until the end.

But she didn’t reveal this one at the end, did she? She left it until after the end. It’s not in the canon. As Travis said, she didn’t want it to be a canon fact.

Now my first question is, why? And the answer to that is pretty simple: look at the disappointment and sadness and outrage which has been rocking these and other posts. Look how many people are tempted to turn away from the stories because a major character – the epitome of wisdom and compassion to some – was, in their eyes, sinful. She knew this is what would happen, and quite aside from the impact on the sales, she wouldn’t have wanted the experience sullied by the controversy for the children. For many children, the books have been the contact point with the world of reading and books, and why cast a shadow on that?

She didn’t; she sat on the knowledge for years and years, keeping the canon “pure” and denying herself the freedom to speak the truth until last Friday. And that was exactly the word she used: “freedom”.

But my second question is different. If this was such a key piece of information, one of those facts which, when revealed, makes us gasp and re-think everything we thought we knew – like Lupin being a were-wolf and Sirius Black being a good guy, and Moody being Crouch and Harry having to die – then wouldn’t the story suffer if it was withheld, as it was?

My initial reaction to the revelation was: well, that’s interesting, but it doesn’t really change anything. But now that I’ve had a chance to think, I’m beginning to wonder. Did the story suffer because we never learned that Dumbledore loved Grindelwald?

Think about that question without focusing primarily on his sexual orientation. Think about what kind of person he loved, how he loved, and the fact that he loved. Think about King’s Cross, and how Dumbledore’s confession would have been different if he could have been a bit more honest.

Could it have been an even more powerful ending?

Should she have made it a canon fact?
23 Travis Prinzi // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:35 pm

reyhan, good questions. At the very least, her not choosing to reveal Dumbledore’s love for Grindelwald in the books themselves seems incongruent with everything else she’s given us about romantic love in the series.

She strung us along for 6 books on the Harry-Ginny, Ron-Hermione debate, and many of the characters’ actions throughout those books are because of their romantic love feelings. The whole mystery of Snape was explained by his romantic love for Lily. Every time romantic love affected someone’s motivation and actions throughout the series, she explicitly told us.

Except for with Dumbledore.
24 cigar95 // Oct 24, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Jumping out of the woodwork here,

If an extra-canonical revelation after the fact sheds light on something in the text that was previously inexplicable, then it may be valuable as a clarification. But I don’t see that being the case in our current instance. The relationship between Dumbledore and Grindewald could easily be explained in the text as a couple of adolescent chums who shared a bond forged by their prodigious talents.

Looking back *in retrospect*, this revelation may inform our take on a few pieces of the canon. But I can’t think of any of these instances as being something that didn’t *already* have an entirely reasonable interpretation *apart from* JKR’s revelation.

Is this distinction something that makes sense? (I’m a scientist, not a lit major - with apologies to Dr. McCoy.)

Nicholas
25 reyhan // Oct 24, 2007 at 2:32 pm

That’s a good point, Nicholas. Why offer an extra-canonical interpretation for something which already has a perfectly reasonable explanation?

Unless the first explanation is like a beard? For those who haven’t heard of the term, it’s the descriptor of a woman who accompanies a gay man so he will look un-gay.

Or unless the first explanation is plausible, but lacks substance, or just sits by itself, without connection to anything else in the book.

Try this in the real world. You meet a man in his eighties who has never been married or lived with anyone of the opposite sex. The only relationship he’s ever been involved in was an intense adolescent friendship with another boy.

What would your conclusion be?

Mine would be that the person avoided intimate relationships, and could conceivably be asexual, but that if he was sexually attracted to anyone, the only evidence we had would point to someone of his own sex.

But actually, of course, there is a lot of evidence in the canon that Dumbledore did love someone else, someone to whom he said:

“I cared about you too much. I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act … What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands?”

Eros? Philia? Storge or Agape?
26 cigar95 // Oct 24, 2007 at 3:58 pm

I wonder if other parts of Dumbledore’s backstory might include other very close friendships. There’s a lot of unaccounted time out there, but it seems possible that either Elphias Doge or Minerva McGonnagal might be possible candidates. (Though in the latter case, he did address her as “professor” and not “Minerva” in the first chapter of PS, even though the two were alone.)

Possibly Alastor Moody? Bathilda Bagshot? Armando Dippet? Just thinking out loud.

Nicholas

Nicholas
27 RenaBlack // Oct 24, 2007 at 5:45 pm

Just some thoughts on D’s relationship/obsession/tragic infatuation with Grindelwald:

I’m twenty-one years old. For the record, I’m a straight, devout Catholic girl.

But there’s this thing called a “friend crush.” When you admire someone deeply, especially a peer, you desire to be like them, but also to be close to them. Emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually. For a young person still unsure of him- or herself, this can spill over into sexuality, as well. This multifold desire easily becomes obsessive, especially if the object him- or herself is receptive to the relationship (i.e., friendship).

To be honest, part of the problem here is that we’re defining D’s attraction to G in an entirely sexual way. When you are attracted to someone, particularly in an obsessive adolescent way, it’s not merely that you’d like to interact with them sexually. It’s an attraction to the whole person or the appearance thereof. D may be gay, but the question about that ISN’T “how did their relationship play out sexually/romantically, if at all?” (I’m not speaking ethically here, but in pure reference to canon importance). Rather, the question is, “Was D’s obsession with G disordered enough to effect the storyline?” Answer–Absolutely. His attraction to Grindelwald, whether it included a sexual element or not (i.e., even if D’s HADN’T been outed as Gay!!!Dumbledore), was inappropriate and destructive, period.

I hope that made a little bit of sense.
28 esoterica1693 // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:18 pm

I don’t think it’s 100% accurate to say that there were no hints in the books. A fair number of people read it as being between the lines in DH, and I’m not talking just about fan-fiction slash-addicts. To me the part that made my gaydar twitch the most was the exchange between Dumbledore and Harry at King’s Cross when Harry suggests that maybe Grindelwald lied to Voldemort about the Elder Wand to spare Dumbledore’s tomb from destruction and Dumbledore dabs his eyes. No, it’s not conclusive, but it certainly made me think. And if Harry, whom no one can accuse of having extraordinary insight into others’ relationships for most of the series (but who did watch the GG/Voldy confrontation thru Voldy’s ‘eyes’, has figured out that there was, at the least, a profound, life-changing, friendship between GG and AD such that GG would *die* for him, years after their last contact and apparently decisive estrangement….well….

I’m straight and while I do have above-average gaydar in Real Life, I had no investment one way or the other in AD’s sexuality or whether there were any GLBT characters in the series. But after my second reading of DH, some weeks ago, I’d concluded AD had been attracted to GG ….
29 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 12:01 am

RenaBlack wrote:
“To be honest, part of the problem here is that we’re defining D’s attraction to G in an entirely sexual way. When you are attracted to someone, particularly in an obsessive adolescent way, it’s not merely that you’d like to interact with them sexually. It’s an attraction to the whole person or the appearance thereof. D may be gay, but the question about that ISN’T “how did their relationship play out sexually/romantically, if at all?” (I’m not speaking ethically here, but in pure reference to canon importance). Rather, the question is, “Was D’s obsession with G disordered enough to effect the storyline?” Answer–Absolutely. His attraction to Grindelwald, whether it included a sexual element or not (i.e., even if D’s HADN’T been outed as Gay!!!Dumbledore), was inappropriate and destructive, period.”

Great point! Part of our problem which you allude to is that we live in a highly sexualized society. People may talk about how repressed we are compared to Europeans, as if that’s necessarily a bad thing, but still practically everything in our society is sexualized to some extent. Our tv shows, our humor, our literature nowadays, our advertising. Heck, Abercrombie Fitch had that catalog a few years ago with children & preteens dressed scantily & in suggestive poses. It was quickly withdrawn but you can see the way things in our culture lean when even children are sexualized.

The problem in our culture is that we can imagine a man having a deep & abiding love for another man or a woman for a woman without automatically taking it down to the sex level. The problem is our inability to distinguish the types of love.

The Greeks for example thought that philia, a love between friends, was much stronger & abiding than simple eros. Philia means much more than simple friendship; it’s a deep companionship & intellectual compatibility. Lewis does this much better justice than I in his Four Loves book.

The point is that in our day & age whenever we hear the word love, at least in regard to people who aren’t family members, we automatically think sexual love. Maybe Jo has fallen into this same trap. Who knows?

Somebody mentioned that this whole revelation with Dumbledore had to come at the end, as Jo says, because it’s like a mystery writer revealing the meaning of the clues. But the fact is she didn’t reveal this in the books like a mystery writer would’ve. It comes after the books. The fact that she has to reveal it means it can be read several ways.

There’s a disconnect. We know now why Snape did what he did; Jo revealed the answer to all the clues & she did it in the book itself! You can’t say the same for Dumbledore. Which is where so many of us have the problem. I don’t think it can all be chalked up to the fact that people don’t want to accept Dumbledore’s sexuality.
30 korg20000bc // Oct 25, 2007 at 12:28 am

I’ve read of and watched TV programmes about soldiers in WW2 who have said that the greatest loves of their lives were the fellas in the trenches next to them, or the rest of the tank crew, or the other airmen in their bomber, etc. They stated that is was a non-sexual love but completely consuming.

Matthew
31 reyhan // Oct 25, 2007 at 1:13 am

There is a disconnect, and I think there is an important reason for the disconnect.

When you look at Dumbledore and Harry, what do you see?

I see a wise old man and a brave young one. I see the young man looking to the old man for guidance and support. I see the old man as a general, directing his troops, and the young man is his strongest soldier, his ace in the hole, the one person who can ensure victory. I see the young man struggling to trust the old man, the old man shutting off large parts of his history, plans and knowledge from the young man, for various reasons, including the fact that he trusts no one.

But what does Dumbledore see when he looks at Harry? This is what he tells him:

“I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.”

I think that he sees the equal he has been looking for all of his life, but never found. I think that at the end he realizes that Harry has surpassed him, morally, because personal power never tempted him. And also because his love, unlike Dumbledore’s, was pure, the selfless agape that we’ve been talking about. At the end, when they talk together at King’s Cross, Dumbledore still has more knowledge, but Harry has the moral superiority, and they both know it.

Dumbledore is not a pedophile. I need to say this because our society does sexualize love, and can’t conceive of a great passion without sex. So, I repeat: Dumbledore is not a pedophile, but he loves Harry. Harry, not Grindelwald, is the love of his life. Harry loves Dumbledore too, but not in the same way. At the end, Dumbledore worships Harry as a hero. Harry is sorry for the old man.

Do you see how the consistent thread in Dumbledore’s life has been his infatuation with extraordinary young men with a streak of reckless courage? He can only love someone who is his equal, so there have only been two people he ever loved: one was a dark wizard who almost tempted him into evil, and the other is the saviour of the world.

This is how I interpret Dumbledore’s tragedy: he is doomed to love people who can not return his love. And this, I think, is the reason for the disconnect, the reason why the pieces don’t match up in the canon: can you imagine how this would play amongst the religious conservatives?
32 esoterica1693 // Oct 25, 2007 at 8:02 am

Reyhan–
I really like the parallel you find there, a lot…
“His infatuation with extraordinary young men with a streak of reckless courage.” I think you’ve nailed it.

It would also explain why he was sorted into Gryffindor, if indeed he was. In the series his courage, while certainly there, has seemed of a more big-picture strategy sense than of a personal mano-a-mano or jumping into lakes/fighting basilisks kind–his duels w/ Voldy and Grindelwald being the only notable exceptions. Many have hypothesized he actually was, or should have been, a Slytherin. But perhaps there is something at his core that deeply resonates w/, and actually manages to empower, those w/ the more obviously outward types of courage–as he did to his shame w/ GG and then to his credit w/ Harry.
33 reyhan // Oct 25, 2007 at 10:07 am

I’ve been thinking a bit more about the parallels between Dumbledore’s love for Grindelwald and his love for Harry. In both situations, I see a conflict between the dictates of his heart and the dictates of duty, of what is the right thing to do.

With Grindelwald, his heart wanted to share the mad dream of world dominance, to be glorious victors together. His sister’s death was the first reality check; eventually he had to step in and stop Grindelwald. The dream was gone, and he stepped back into the role of teacher and guardian.

With Harry, his heart wanted him to protect Harry, protect him from harm but also from the knowledge of his destiny, which was to die to save the world from evil.

“What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy?”

In both cases, he chose to sacrifice the person he loved in order to save the world.

Aberforth has a different take on it. This is how he sees it:

“I knew my brother, Potter. He learned secrecy at our mother’s knww. Secrets an lies, that’s how hwe grew up, and Albus … he was a natural.”

and

“Funny thing, how many of the people my brother cared about very much, ended up in a worse state than if he’d left them well alone.”

and

“How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn’t more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure you aren[t dispensable, just like my little sister?”

Harry has a very good answer for him:

“Because … sometimes you’ve got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you’ve got to think about the greater good! This is war!”

Destiny and ability have fitted Dumbledore to be the great general of his generation, leading the fight against evil. But in order to do that, he must abandon his heart’s desire, always. The cost of winning the war is to sacrifice the ones he loves.

That is a tragedy.

The secondary tragedy, to me, is that JKR couldn’t fully write that story, although I imagine that she imagined it.
34 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 10:11 am

revgeorge wrote:
“The problem in our culture is that we can imagine a man having a deep & abiding love for another man or a woman for a woman without automatically taking it down to the sex level. The problem is our inability to distinguish the types of love.”

I meant to write “The problem is that we _cannot_ imagine…” Sorry about that.

Reyhan, your points are really excellent. I too want to state very clearly that Dumbledore is not a pedophile. I think that’s just an overreaction by people because of the way the word ‘pedophile’ is used in common parlance. Really its definition has grown to include any sexual relationship with a person that our society considers to be a minor or under the so called age of consent, which strangely varies from state to state, unlike the voting & drinking ages.

If, as you say, Dumbledore’s tragedy is to always love those who cannot return his love, then the problem seems to come in his choices & not so much in his sexuality. He makes bad choices & those choices seem not to be determined by his sexuality but by other factors, a desire for intellectual compatibility & a desire to find an equal & a desire for power (early on in life at least). Heterosexuals are equally as prone to make these bad choices, too.

Again, the problem comes in that all these things are ambiguous in the books, i.e. they can be read either way or both, I suppose. The problem is now the author is imposing a meaning on the books which in the books themselves is ambiguous. This is much different than saying who did what after the books are over.
35 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 10:24 am

Reyhan wrote:
“The secondary tragedy, to me, is that JKR couldn’t fully write that story, although I imagine that she imagined it.”

It may or may not be a tragedy. I think she could’ve written it that way if she had really wanted to & had felt that strongly about it. Sure, the books may not have been as wildly popular as they are, but the spirit of the age would not have criticized her for writing the story in that way.

In fact, she would’ve been lauded & feted by the main stream media & the other cultural institutions as being so open & tolerant & brave to write something so controversial in a children’s book.

But that’s not the choice she made. She wrote the books the way they are & at some point, like her revelation about Dumbledore, she has to say the books are what they are. Otherwise, we’re in for a constant round of Harry Potter the revised version or Harry Potter the author’s cut.
36 reyhan // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:09 am

revgeorge, I don’t think she could have written that story in a children’s book, although she might have been able to get away with it if she had written for teen-agers. It’s not something you’d want the younger ones to wrestle with, regardless of media acclaim.

I appreciate your point that she has to draw a line and say: “This is how it is. End of story.” Closure would be nice. But it’s going to be hard, because people will keep asking. I can imagine a 75 year old JKR, sitting at a cafe on Prince’s Street, and a 13 year old comes up to her, asks her to sign a copy of DH, and asks: “Did Teddy Lupin ever become a werewolf?”

For myself, I’m not into closure that much, and I have high tolerance for ambiguity. I’ll listen to the revelations and integrate them - or not - into the master story as feels right to me.

I love your idea of “Harry Potter, the author’s cut”.
37 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:33 am

I’ve just been over to John Granger’s site & read the article he linked to entitled “Dumbledore Is Not Gay: Taking Stories More Seriously than the Author by Prof. John Mark Reynolds.

It’s an excellent article, & not just because he manages to slip in the word ‘antidisestablishmentarian,’ but because I think it addresses a lot of questions that everybody has been having with this revelation.

I’ll leave you with his final paragraph & then urge you to go over & read the article. The link may be found at http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/

Prof Reynolds concludes:
“A story is crafted and then it enters the public. We read it as a whole and accept the world in which it was created. Unless Rowling writes a new book (a prequel?) and changes the canon, then she is stuck with the world she created. In it Dumbledore has no particular sexuality at all.”
38 Sandra Miesel // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:41 am

Philip Pullman certainly got away with a lot of disturbing sensuality in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy–including actively homosexual angels and pubescent sex. These books wre ostensibly aimed at the same audience as HP, were published slightly ahead of HP, have the same UK publisher. Pullman won far more awards than Rowling and is routinely cited by the “clevers” as ever so much superior to HP.

But Pullman’s books are poisonous atheist propaganda, wrapped in a prose style that is actuallu superior to Rowling’s. Yet the legions of Harry-haters are just barely starting to notice him because of the forthcoming GOLDEN COMPASS movie.
39 reyhan // Oct 25, 2007 at 12:12 pm

I haven’t read His Dark Materials, but the plot synopsis sounded so convoluted to me, with no obvious emotional pay-off, that he’d have to be some amazing type of writer for me to get into his work.

My initial probes suggested that he’s not as much anti-God as anti-Church, and it seems that some religious leaders (the Archbishop of Centerbury) agree, seeing him as attacking dogmatism in any religion, but not attacking Christianity specifically or religion in general. His denatured God figure, aka The Authority, is actually the First Angel, and not the Creator, whose nature and identity remains unexplored in the books.

But back to Potter: I want to emphasize that what I consider inappropriate for children is not primarily the sexual component of Dumbledore’s love. As we have said, Dumbledore is not a pedophile. There is no sexual component to it. But his love for Harry isn’t a simple and purely paternal love. It is tinged with his personal needs. That’s the part I wouldn’t want children to deal with because it does imply a violation of the rule that grown-ups should not bring their personal needs into their relationships with children.
40 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 1:06 pm

Reyhan wrote:
“As we have said, Dumbledore is not a pedophile. There is no sexual component to it. But his love for Harry isn’t a simple and purely paternal love. It is tinged with his personal needs. That’s the part I wouldn’t want children to deal with because it does imply a violation of the rule that grown-ups should not bring their personal needs into their relationships with children.”

Yes, I think that’s a much more appropriate question about Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry. One we definitely would’ve asked if Harry had been Harriet. The question rather is not whether or not Dumbledore is gay but whether or not his relationship with Harry was appropriate.

I think we can assume it was appropriate, at least sexually, because nothing is even hinted at in the books. Now, if Jo wants to come out & say Dumbledore felt the same attraction to Harry that he did to Grindelwald, well, that’s another whole can of worms!
41 Eeyore // Oct 25, 2007 at 2:47 pm

I’ve skipped Pullman intentionally–first, because anytime I picked up a book and read the synopsis on the dust jacket, it just didn’t appeal to me. Now it’s because of his stated intention to turn children to atheism. (I read that on his site a few years ago, and haven’t returned to that since–sorry I didn’t save the link. That to me sounds more like he has an agenda against any religion not just the dogma.)

Anyway, reyhan, I think I see what you are saying, but correct me if I’m wrong. It sounds like you are talking about the kind of situation where an adult involves a child in something that is mainly for the benefit of the adult; i.e., the widowed mom who relies on her 9 year old son, telling him that “he’s the man of the family now”, or the mother who helps her teenage daughter sneak out on dates when the father has said no. (That last was one I actually saw with one of my high school classmates. It was bizarre to be around this girl’s mom and hear her giggle about the boys and plot how and when Pam could sneak out so her dad wouldn’t be aware. As a teen, I was very close to my mom, but there was always the distinct line between parent and child, even though she was widowed when I was 10.)

So is that the sort of thing you are talking about with Dumbledore and his relationship with Harry? The problem that I see is that it forces a child to take on adult responsibilities before they are mature enough to really understand all the implications and consequences. Of course, by the time we get to the end of book 7, Harry is nearly 18, but there are all those years before when Dumbledore was gently nudging Harry towards his (Dumbledore’s) goal by giving him information or the opportunity to try to do things like protecting the Stone–and that was when he was 11.

I hadn’t really thought about it in that way, so thanks for pointing it out.

Pat
42 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:17 pm

korg20000bc Said:
“I used to play a roleplaying game called Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP). I really love Tolkiens writing so I knew I’d enjoy playing a RPG in Middle Earth. But I eventually found myself feeling stifled. I felt that there wasn’t any space left. All the reams of history and backstory in Tolkien’s writing hindered my creative mind. I love the stories just as much but as a destination for exploring MY creativity it’s a dud ride.”

I used to play MERP, too, back in the day. The producers of the material did try to find a relatively innocuous point in Middle-Earth’s history when not much was going on to allow the players some freedom to write their own story, so to speak. Which is what we did, without really impinging on the big story of ME.

Our problem with the game was that you’d spend hours & hours making up a character only to have him killed by a squirrel with a lucky critical hit in the first couple of minutes. We could do pretty well against dragons & other fearsome creatures but we always got butchered by woodland critters. The game was brutal with its critical hit system. We eventually had to play with 3 or 4 characters apiece in the hopes that one of them might make it through the adventure.

Course this doesn’t have much to do with HP, but korg’s post brought back a lot of memories. But to try to connect it to HP, I’m sure there will be a HP role-playing game one of these days. There seems to be one for everything else.
43 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:44 pm

I just read the Time article that Brian P. linked to way above & it brought up another point that I think is important.

That is, our tendency to read & impose our motives & our current cultural tendencies on a past work of literature. The author of the Time piece was talking about how Tolkien, a devout Catholic, certainly wrote a lot of homoerotic stuff into his works.

Fact is, Tolkien didn’t do that at all. We look back on his work from our perspective nowadays & impose our meanings onto his text instead of reading the text in its context. We forget how Tolkien came from a time when men had deep abiding friendships with other men, a certain bond forged either in wartime or in the pursuit of common goals. We forget the kind of deep responsibility & loyalty masters & servants felt between each other. The LOTR can just as much be considered Sam’s journey in becoming his master’s equal & friend as it can be in being Frodo’s journey to destroy the ring. The only homoeroticism is what we impose on the text.

So, it’s a kind of historical, textual blindness & arrogance we have which robs us of the richness of the text itself. This has already started to happen to HP, wherein some Christians & the mainstream media refuse to acknowledge any Christian themes or imagery in her books or to admit their importance.

As John Granger pointed out it was MTV of all places that carried the news on Jo’s statements about the books’ Christian content. None of the other msm’s got involved until the word ‘gay’ was mentioned.
44 Mary Jo Neyer // Oct 25, 2007 at 9:30 pm

I am rather in awe of the observations being made by the other posters, and really enjoy reading them.
The problem I had with Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry is that he did spoil Harry. In that, I always agreed to a large degree, with Snape. Harry and his friends were very much the rule-breakers, and it seemed to me that Dumbledore did not fulfill his role as headmaster. I have taught in the past at various grade levels, and served on our school’s education board for awhile. The teachers have to have authority and when they need to be corrected, they are never to be corrected in front of their students; they are corrected privately. Dumbledore needed to give Snape corrections privately; Hagrid never should have been a teacher, etc.: John Granger wrote at one point that he thought JKR was parodying public schools. I don’t think she was parodying schools, and it may be that she did not understand the exact role of a headmaster, but the reason I bring these points up here is that, to me, Dumbledore spoiled Harry in a way that is a false love, similar to the behaviour of estranged parents, such as Eeyore points out above. I can tell you, if I had been headmistress, I would have told Harry that if he were disrespectful to any of his teachers in class, he would have been off the quidditch team for the rest of the year. Because Dumbledore loved Grindelwald, he let his friend get away with evil. Because he loved Harry, he let the situation at Howarts with its tensions between students and teachers become much worse than it should have. Dumbledore valued love and knew it was the most powerful force of all, but I don’t think he really knew how to love with tough love (pardon the cliche, but I can’t think of a better word at the moment), and that is part of his tragedy.
45 korg20000bc // Oct 25, 2007 at 9:38 pm

revgeorge,
Coming from a D&D background, critical hits were like a breath of fresh air in MERP.

When I finished reading Half-Blood Prince I was really motivated to get a Harry Potter campaign going for Rolemaster (If you know MERP I’m sure you know Rolemaster). I spent ages scouring Spell Law and other companions for spell lists that I thought were valid for HP setting. It was pretty much all there. Would’ve been good too! I had a bit of trouble working out how wands effected spell casting. Should they be a power point multiplyer, directed spell bonus, base spell level increaser or all of the above? Then, what if you had to use a wand that hadn’t picked you?

Anyway, I kind of let it slide when I thought “who am I going to play this with?” When I realised that the answer would be “no-one” I went back to scratching myself.

I’ve looked for HP’verse RPG’s baut only found online stuff. I also read that JK Rowling has deliberately disallowed official HP rpg’s.

There you go, a trip down memory lane.

Matthew
46 reyhan // Oct 25, 2007 at 10:44 pm

Take it easy, revgeorge, the Time article was just trying to be clever. And the movie did kind of go on and on about Frodo and Sam. And it does make a couple of good points: why couldn’t JKR spare a few words to out Dumebledore in the canon? And yes, Dumbledore’s greatest emotional bond is with an adolescent boy, which is exactly the point I’m trying to make here.

Pat, you’re sort of right, but sort of not. The true story of Dumbledore’s tragedy would not have been appropriate for children because it is about a man whose love for a child under his care is not entirely adult to child, but closer to adult to adult. Again, I’m not imputing any sexually inappropriate thoughts or impulses to Dumbledore. I am saying that the feelings he had for Harry were somewhat similar to the feelings he had for Grindelwald (before the Fall, of course), minus any sexual overtones. What exactly those feelings were we have to suppose, but for me they are captured in the line:

“I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.”

Admiration? Love? Infatuation?

Certainly, by the end, at King’s Cross, it is no less than hero worship. Earned, without doubt.

I am drawing a parallel here, between his feelings for Harry and those he had for Grindelwald. It’s not clear in the text, and may be something I’m reading into the text the author did not think of. But she wrote Dumbledore to be a certain way, and the way he was with Grindelwald, the sheer sense of intoxication at the dream of conquering the world together, is similar to me to the way he talks to Harry about how he loves him in OotP and his rapturous welcome in Kings’ Cross.

How could you ever explain those feelings to a 10 year old?
47 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:39 pm

Reyhan wrote:
“Take it easy, revgeorge, the Time article was just trying to be clever. And the movie did kind of go on and on about Frodo and Sam.”

Reyhan, I wasn’t aware I wasn’t taking it easy. The article just touched off some thoughts I’d had for awhile. I knew he wasn’t being all that serious. As for Jackson’s movie takes, I must admit I didn’t even watch Return of the King. I was pretty disgusted with Jackson’s ‘vision’ after The Two Towers.

But them going on & on about Frodo & Sam in the movie just backs up the point I was trying to make. We do not read things & try to understand what the meaning of the text is anymore. We impose our meaning upon it. It’s very nicely post-modern.

I get this in Bible studies all the time when people say this passage means this to me. Most of the time I don’t want to hear what it means to them because they’ve got the meaning wrong! The question should be what does the text say & mean. That’s a big part of my job as pastor, helping people to discern how the text wants to be read & not how we’d like to read it.

That’s all I’m trying to say, & in regard to Hp, I think it fair to ask, how do we do proper exegesis of the HP series when the author’s standing right there changing things all the time?
48 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:43 pm

Oh, don’t get me wrong, Matthew, I loved MERP & its system. It was a fresh breath of air from D&D. It was just brutal, though. Enjoyable but brutal.

I’m with you on the who do I play this game with? I go into gaming stores nowadays & see a really great game & want to get it but then think, wait, I live in the middle of nowhere & in two years I haven’t found a single gamer. It makes my wife happy at least that my spending on rpg’s & board games has gone way down.:)
49 revgeorge // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:58 pm

Reyhan wrote:
“For myself, I’m not into closure that much”

Reyhan, I’m not much into closure either. If something good is happening I want it to keep on going. But every good story does eventually come to an end, despite whatever extratextual sources we may have.

And every good story ends in a way that leaves you wanting more but yet satisfied & confident that things will go on as they should in that fictional world.

Just think of the endings of three series that I didn’t want to end but did. Lord of the Rings: “And Sam went on, & there was a yellow light, & a fire within; and the evening meal was ready, & he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, & put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”

Lewis’ The Last Battle: “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world & all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover & the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

And Jo’s contribution: “‘He’ll be all right,’ murmured Ginny. As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly & touched the lightning scar on his forehead. ‘I know he will.’ The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”

Now, those are endings that leave you wanting more but not necessarily needing more. They are satisfying. We don’t need Tolkien’s appendices or Lewis’ letters or Jo’s encyclopedia to be content. The stories stand by themselves.
50 reyhan // Oct 26, 2007 at 12:28 am

revgeorge,

The Harry Potter books may add a new term to the lexicon: “to do a Rowling”, roughly meaning not to let a book (or a movie) stand on its own, but to keep adding foot notes and elucidations and maybe even alternate endings to it.

I can understand - even if I don’t share - your impatience with the foot notes. But when you compare JKR to Tolkien and Lewis, in some ways you’re comparing apples and oranges. The information sharing technology has come a long way since the 50s (was that when Narnia and Middle-Earth came out?) Lewis and Tolkien crafted their books in the privacy of their studies. Harry Potter was developed almost under the eyes of the readers. It was not quite interactive, but the degree of ongoing interaction between author and her readers was - I believe - unprecedented in the history of fiction.

What we have here is a phenomenon, and it’s not yet finished.
51 revgeorge // Oct 26, 2007 at 1:29 am

reyhan wrote,
“What we have here is a phenomenon, and it’s not yet finished.”

So, what does this mean then? Can I apply any meaning to the text because it could be changed or has been changed, even if it’s not actually changed, but has the author’s mishnah applied?

If so, then the text really ends up having no meaning at all, because, whoosh, tomorrow it can all change with JKR’s next ‘revelation.’ I really don’t mind the extra details she provides; all I’m saying is that at some point the text has to stand on its own.

Note how I ask the standard Lutheran question, what does this mean? Because words & texts mean things & they have to placed in their proper context. People can use the same words, the same text even, & put completely different meanings into them. For instance, Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, & even Mormons all use the word ‘grace,’ but we all have radically different meanings of that word. The task is to then find out what the text, in this case the Bible, actually means by the word. This becomes rather difficult if God keeps rewriting the text on us or popping in & saying, oh, here’s some extra bits or here’s what I meant to say.

We kind of have the same problem here with HP, i.e. the author keeps popping in & adding things or throwing a different meaning on them as opposed to what she actually wrote.

In the end the bothersome thing is that she is taking the mystery out of her own work. Don McClean didn’t do that with American Pie, nor did Carly Simon with Your So Vain, or Bobbi Gentry with Ode to Billie Joe. They put their works out & let them speak for themselves. People have made some really good guesses as to their meaning, but there is still a mystery. Jo just seems to be taking that mystery away.

Just my thoughts. I don’t know if we will ever settle on a definitive answer. But, gee, it is fun to argue about.:)
52 reyhan // Oct 26, 2007 at 1:50 am

revgeorge,

Agree that if it keeps on going, things are going to get very confusing.

But, JKR hasn’t contradicted herself yet on anything of importance. Understand, by this, that I don’t really care where Ron worked after graduation, or if he worked at all.

The only major revelation wasn’t contradictory, it just wasn’t that obvious - not obvious at all, actually - in the existing canon. We’ve agreed that we never did think Dumbledore had ever been in a romantic relationship with a witch. And that is still true. It’s just not true in the way we thought it was. So the new interpretation isn’t at odds with -opposed to is the term you used -what we already knew. It’s off on another tangent entirely.

As for taking the mystery away, well, I’ve got something better. The revelation has actually made the experience a richer one for me. I had conceptualized Dumbledore as a ruthless but charming schemer, and had - frankly - dismissed his protestations of love to Harry as so much bs. Now I’m seeing a pattern to his life, his unfortunate tendency to fall in love with reckless young men, his decision to sacrifice them, and his own needs, to the greater good, his resulting loneliness and emotional alienation, the constant deception. And his final confession which is also deceptive, because he fails to say the only thing he really wants to say to Harry.

It’s all good.
53 Felicity // Oct 26, 2007 at 1:58 am

For my part, I think there are three reasons that explain Dumbledore’s “two months of insanity” when he was tempted by the idea of wizarding dominance over Muggles:

1) He blamed Muggles for destroying his family and thwarting his ambitions

2) He was extremely selfish at age 18 to the degree that he found it easy to allow others to suffer so long as his own wishes were fulfilled

3) He was blinded by his tragic infatuation with Gellert Grindelwald

In the books, Rowling gave explicit information to explain the first and second reasons and hinted at the third.

Magical people have two choices in this world: A) hide their world from Muggles by maintaining the statute of secrecy at the cost of an oblivate now and then