A Fascinating Interview

November 19th, 2007 · 14 Comments · J.K. Rowling

by Travis

I found in my inbox this morning a link to a fascinating Rowling interview, in which once again the spiritual elements of the books are discussed, along with some of Rowling’s own religious history. John has already got discussion rolling over at HogPro.

It is evident that Rowling intends to continue to talk about her books, meanings, plot, and characters, and my guess is we’ll get another one of these interviews every time another translation gets done (how many are left?). Some interesting points from this one:

Regarding the scene at King’s Cross:

” You can interpret that conversation in two ways.” [Sarcastic interruption: Gosh, thanks, Jo, for setting our interpretive parameters for us; at least we get two options! Now, can you tell us what our options are?] “Either Harry is unconscious, everything Dumbledore tells him he already knew deep inside. In that state of unconsciousness his mind travels further. Dumbledore is in that case Harry’s personification of wisdom; he sees Dumbledore in his head so he can come to certain insights.Or Harry has traveled to a place between life and death. From which Dumbledore and he will leave in opposite directions. Harry also sees there what becomes of Voldemort. He doesn’t exactly know what’s that heap that lies there on the floor in anguish, but he doesn’t want to touch it; He feels it’s a fundamentally evil and perverse creature. It’s the only time that Harry the hero of the vulnerable, is in the presence of someone who’s hurt and doesn’t come to their aid.”

This is actually interesting stuff, despite my sarcasm. I’ve been an advocate for the second option she presents here, though I’ve had discussions with folks who believe the former. I’m quite glad Rowling didn’t give us a final word on this, and I think the ambiguity of the text is indicative of her own struggle to believe in an afterlife. She seems to almost be telling us that even if we after-life believers all end up being wrong, self-sacrificial love is still worth the cost.

Regarding Dumbledore:

He’s a complex character. I don’t see him as God. I did want that the reader would question Dumbledore’s part in the whole story. We all believed that he was a kind-hearted father figure. And to a certain extent he is. But at the same time he is someone who treats people as puppets; who caries a dark secret from his past and who never told Harry the full truth. I hope that the reader will love him again in the end. But that they love him like he is, including his faults. Is Dumbledore divine? No. He has certain divine qualities though. He is merciful, and in the end he is just.

Definite points for reyhan on this one! Despite being a big time Dumbledore advocate and finding much less fault with him than most (even Rowling herself), she does hit the nail on the head here: those who are still bitter at Dumbledore (I read one popular LJ writer refer to him consistently as Rat!Bastard!Dumbledore) are worse than he is (and much worse than Harry), because he was capable of forgiving faults. Something about that last sentence makes me feel like I’m taking the story a little too seriously. Let me put it this way: Rowling wants to teach us about loving and forgiving people regardless of their faults; we are supposed to experience these things as Harry does. Harry’s forgiveness of Dumbledore is a model of what ours should look like.

As far as Dumbledore being a puppet-master, however, I’m still not buying it entirely. Actually, the question to which Rowling gave the answer above explains that the Trio “thought that behind his words and actions there was a grand scheme; they are disillusioned when this doesn’t turn out to be the case.”

What?

How, exactly, did this not turn out to be the case? The only part of Dumbledore’s “grand scheme” that didn’t work out was the attempted end of the power of the Elder Wand. If Rowling was really trying to show that evil puppet-master Dumbledore really blew it, she sort of messed it up, because the almost the entirety of Dumbledore’s plan worked. And the central element of Dumbledore’s plan was the raising up of a man who had the power and motivation to love - a man who was better than he himself was.

And can I also add that we all have dark secrets in our past? Most of us don’t have any plans of telling the whole world, and that’s actually OK?

In my opinion, we’re beginning to see some obvious character breakdowns within the text itself as Rowling keeps talking. I could be wrong, of course.

I’ll turn my rant off now, and move on.

She does affirm that Harry has “messiah traits” and that he is “just good.” She also discusses at greater length than she has yet her religious history, which is interesting. She’s definitely a “spiritual” person who’s not much into institutionalized authority, though she admits to being an active church-goer. I think there’s more merit to John’s Dumbledore-as-spiritual-authority reading than Jo herself might be willing to admit. She’s written a character whom she believes deserves to be mistrusted, and yet puts in his hands the plan that succeeds in bringing down Voldemort as well as establishing firmly Harry’s need to trust him in the face of conflicting evidence. Likewise, Rowling believes the church to be an authority not much deserving of trust…yet she continues to be drawn back to it.

On the whole, I’m with John, and Alastair, and Dave, and the others who have said it’s about time for Rowling to stop interpreting the series for us. For me, I’ll keep reading what Rowling says, of course, because her interpretation should, of course, be given weight (as I’ve argued in the past). But if she says, “This is a HORSE” (MacDonald), and I don’t think it’s that obvious that it’s a horse, I’ll go with my view.

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14 responses so far ↓

1 reyhan // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:57 am

Travis,

I feel the urge to defend JKR’s conceptualization of her characters against those who want to argue that she is wrong.

Which is totally weird. She can’t be wrong. She’s the author.

I think that it’s important to consider the fact that there is a difference between JKR and the rest of the world. When the rest of the world talks about Harry Potter, we are interpreting. When she talks about him, she is describing her conceptualization. She can’t be wrong. What she says is.

Now we could plausibly argue that the text doesn’t support what she says. A lot of people don’t see any clues about Dumbledore’s gayness, or his fallibility, or his manipulativeness in the books. If that were so - and I’m not convinced it is - it wouldn’t necessarily mean that JKR was misinterpreting her work. It could also mean that she didn’t do a very good writing job to begin with.

I of course don’t see it that way. I see that she laid her clues very cleverly, so that if we were looking at things one way, Dumbledore would seem benign and wise. But if we looked another way, we’d see the darkness and miscalculations.

Miscalculations. It wasn’t only the slip with the Elder Wand that led to Snape’s death. It was the lack of transmittal of vital information to Harry - btw, dear boy, you do understand that you have to let Voldemort kill you so the world may survive? And that, Snape, whom you loathe, is your strongest ally? And I’ll be leaving before the final chapter because of a slight mishap with one of the horcruxes/hallows. Hallows? Oh, did I forget to mention that?

I also think that it was necessary for Dumbledore’s plotting to be less than perfect for several important reasons. Amongst other things, the story is about a boy growing up to become a man. That entails realizing that even the best grown-ups are not infallible. To be a man you have to make your own decisions, based on contradictory or incomplete evidence. Also, of course, it’s only in fairy tales that things turn out exactly as foreseen. This is not a fairy tale, despite Gambon’s on-set cavorting.

And I don’t think JKR is in any danger of saying “This is a HORSE”. At least not with the important things. To my (admittedly biased) mind, what she told the Dutch reporter about King’s Cross is exactly what she told us in the text:

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
2 Mary Jo Neyer // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:26 pm

There is no question that Dumbledore behaves as a puppet master JKR’s world. Others besides myself have seen it and pointed out the textual backing for this part of his character. JKR is describing what she herself made him to be.
One can argue that the clues weren’t obvious enough. That is a reasonable debate. But there plenty of people who did see this aspect of Dumbldedore, and had previously commented on it. JKR is affirming the perceptions of those who had already made such observations. She is not introducing new material.
3 Travis Prinzi // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:41 pm

Lots to respond to here. First, I’m not saying, Mary Jo, that she is introducing new material, nor am I saying that Dumbledore does not, in any event, act as a “puppet master.” I’m saying Rowling has contradicted herself in the text about Dumbledore himself.

I’d also balk at statements like, “There is no question that…” That’s the kind of thing that shuts down discussion pretty quickly.

reyhan, this is where you and I disagree (and actually, where I’ve changed my mind). If an author were completely self-aware, I might argue that an author can’t be wrong about her characters. This is not the case. There’s a lot of subconscious stuff that goes on in the writing process, and it’s entirely possible for a character to have taken on a different life than the author intended.

I plan to either write or podcast at length about this in the near future.
4 Travis Prinzi // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:48 pm

Quick responses to these points:

It was the lack of transmittal of vital information to Harry - btw, dear boy, you do understand that you have to let Voldemort kill you so the world may survive? And that, Snape, whom you loathe, is your strongest ally? And I’ll be leaving before the final chapter because of a slight mishap with one of the horcruxes/hallows. Hallows? Oh, did I forget to mention that?

This wasn’t a failure of the plan at all. It went down exactly as Dumbledore planned it, and it worked. There might have been a better way to do it, but it worked. Dumbledore intended for Harry not to know these things until a certain time, particularly because of Harry’s “hot head” (and who on earth can say Dumbledore was wrong about that?). If Dumbledore had conveyed some of this stuff to Harry earlier, my money’s on Harry’s acting completely irrationally in response, blowing the whole plan.
5 reyhan // Nov 21, 2007 at 12:22 am

I think that Dumbledore’s plans worked despite his poor planning. What if Harry hadn’t been around when Snape kicked the bucket? What if Hermione hadn’t had the presence of mind to collect Snape’s memories? What if someone else had picked up the Elder Wand on the Astronomy Tower?

But understand what I’m really saying here. I’m not saying that Dumbledore is fallible - he is, but that’s not my point. I’m saying that Dumbledore had to be fallible for Harry to find his own strength.

Travis, I’ll be very interested when you explain how an author’s subconscious can take infiltrate the writing process.
6 Travis Prinzi // Nov 21, 2007 at 8:40 am

I’m saying that Dumbledore had to be fallible for Harry to find his own strength.

And with that, I’m in complete agreement! In fact, I recall now that post-DH, I had wanted to write an essay on why Harry really is a “better man” than Dumbledore, and what Rowling needed to do plot-wise to make that happen.
7 reyhan // Nov 21, 2007 at 11:48 am

Yes, Travis, we had originally conjectured that Dumbledore had to die for Harry to learn to walk alone. This would be in keeping, I believe, with the myth of the hero: the Wise Man who guides the young champion in the earlier part of his journey dies so that the latter can be transformed into a hero. We saw this very clearly in Star Wars when Luke loses three mentors: Obi Wan, Yoda and his father (whom we could regard as the Shadow side of the Wise Man) before he is strong enough to take on the ultimate enemy: the Emperor.

However, JKR doesn’t settle for taking away the Wise Man by simply killing him. She makes the hero question every aspect of the Wise Man’s teachings by providing information which casts his nature and motives in doubt. Not only does Harry have to literally go into the Underworld before he can defeat his enemy, he has to wade through a metaphorical underworld of doubt, confusion, distrust and anger before he emerges with the resolve to follow Dumbledore’s teachings, regardless.

Speaking of old conjectures and intentions, I was thinking this morning about how we discussed the theme of forgiveness at lenght before the release of DH. There were some commenters (Pat and Mrs. Lovegood, I believe, but forgive me if I’m wrong!) who argued compellingly that Harry would have to learn forgiveness before he could be a true hero. At that point we were talking about the possibility of his forgiving Snape, and perhaps Voldemort. We didn’t seriously consider the possibility that it was Dumbledore who would require - and receive - Harry’s forgiveness.

Worth a post?
8 Travis Prinzi // Nov 23, 2007 at 12:53 am

Definitely worth a post, reyhan. I’ll give it some thought.
9 Matthew // Nov 27, 2007 at 5:31 pm

The oddest part for me was

“But Voldemort chose evil. I’ve been trying to point that out in the books; I gave him choices.”

which is the exact opposite of what I took from the books. Book 6 made it quite clear (I thought) that Voldemort was born without the capacity for human feeling, and therefore had no meaningful choice about his path. But that’s not what JK thinks she’s written.
10 Travis Prinzi // Nov 27, 2007 at 6:34 pm

Matthew, Rowling really seemed to paint herself into a corner with Voldemort. I think LV is one of the examples of Rowling getting a bit confused on a character, or making character choices that conflict with what she actually wants a character to be.
11 reyhan // Nov 27, 2007 at 11:36 pm

Don’t quite agree that freedom of choice is inconsistent with being born without the capacity for human feeling. And don’t agree that JKR is confused on Voldemort.

We need to start with which human feelings Riddle was lacking in. Anger he could do, pride too, and fear. WHat was missing was empathy for others of his kind, and the need, I think, for intimacy. He seemed to need people, at least to admire him, but not to share his thoughts and feelings with. Being without empathy or the need for intimacy doesn’t make you evil, it just makes you cold and distant.

The evil came from something else: how he chose to meet his needs. He wanted power, and he wanted to master death. And he chose to use and hurt and kill people to get those needs met.

Although Harry’s situation parallels Riddle’s (orphans growing up unloved amongst Muggles) Harry isn’t his true parallel. I think that instead Riddle’s character is reflected in aspects of Dumbledore and Snape: Dumbledore in his tendency to use people and underlying coldness, and Snape the other cold outsider, not needing any other human being - with one exception.

My point is that all of these people - Harry excepted - had their inner demons to contend with. They all had the basic material to become evil. But Dumbledore and Snape after an initial misstep or two chose to not do any more harm, and to try to work for the good. Riddle pursued evil.

Sometimes I think JKR deliberately wrote these parallel characters, and deliberately showed their different paths. Sometimes I think that the parallels come from her understanding of how human nature is, rather than a deliberate plan. Either way, it’s masterful depiction of character development.
12 revgeorge // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:11 am

I’d say Harry has his inner demons to contend with, or at least his personal flaws, of which he has many, which we all do, too.

In some ways Harry had it worse than Riddle. Harry lived in a home where he was unloved, unwanted, & abused mentally & emotionally, & sometimes to a degree physically.

Although Riddle lived in an orphanage, the staff did what they could to care for the children. I mean the lady in charge at Riddle’s orphanage is a far cry from the one lady in Annie. The staff took the kids out someplace nice once a year. Riddle was acknowledged to be handsome & intelligent. It’s still not the way you’d want to grow up, but it is a far cry better than Harry’s lot.

So, if anyone was going to turn out bad, you’d think it would be Harry. Go figure!
13 reyhan // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:36 am

I’m glad you returned to Harry.

I wouldn’t say Harry doesn’t have personal flaws (he certainly doesn’t like to do homework) but his flaws are fairly minor. And no, I do not hold his unwavering hatred towards Snape to be a fault: Snape treats him miserably. His virtues, on the other hand, are huge. His most important need is in fact the opposite of Voldemort’s: he needs to help people in distress. Ignoring the whimpering flayed child at King’s Cross definitely went against his grain. He needs to save people.

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I sometimes think of Harry as someone who was born without original sin. This befits a being who eventually becomes a Christ-like redeemer.

Assuming this to be mere speculation, however, we are left with the fact that many of the major characters are presented with choices about which way they are going to turn: to good or to evil. And the choice each makes reflects a personal decision which sometimes goes in the face of everything pushing him in the opposite direction. Spiteful Snape becomes the guardian of a child he hates because he loves the chid’s mother; powerful Dumbledore renounces power because he kills his sister (or thinks he may have); the obedient servant Peter Pettigrew feels a microgram of mercy for his master’s chief enemy; hate twisted Kreacher fights on the side of the good because the love he felt is validated; wannabe-Death Eater Draco can not raise his wand to zap Dumbledore because - because he can’t.
14 Mia // Nov 28, 2007 at 8:48 am

I’d say that Harry was as flawed as anyone else and he wasn’t born without original sin. But he was deeply loved by his parents and his mother’s sacrifice protected him from evil. He was very blessed and therefore could survive the Dursleys without too much damage.

Voldemort was never loved, he was conceived under the influence of a potion and born by a mother who could not care for him. He was deficient in many ways but I don’t believe that he was always incapable of human feeling. He made himself incapable of it by splitting his soul, which was a deliberate and meaningful decision.

His choices may have been limited, but he didn’t have to turn himself into a soulless creature. In the way I understood the character, he really chose evil.