by Dave

A standard literary trope is to set characters against each other, playing one’s personna in relationship to another. Typically, we find the “arch”-nemesis, especially in adventure or heroic stories. The main character is opposed by a primary antagonist, and the juxtaposition of these characters reveals something about one or both to the reader. For Harry Potter, the primary juxtapositions are fairly obvious:

The nature of these juxtapositions often relies on the narrative distance between characters. Characters that don’t share much narrative space (i.e. rarely appear in the same scene) can reveal much about each other. But, the characters that often do share space create the more compelling narrative because the conflict is much richer and more immediate to the reader’s experience. The conflict most recognizable from these books is the eternal, perhaps transcendent, clash of good versus evil, and the characters listed above generally fall into some definition of those two categories.

As a postmodern writer, Rowling’s answers to the inherent problems of good versus evil are not simple; yet they reflect some classical tendencies. In his 1970 scathing critique of the emergence of “pop romance” signified primarily by comic books, Roger B. Rollin states that as readers of pop heroes “we experience at some level the defeat of Evil (as we imagine it) by the Good (as we have learned it). Even though we consciously are aware that such victories do not always occur in reality, there is a part of us that very much wants them to occur” (432). His assessment hinges on the belief that classic literature can accomplish something that “pop romance” cannot, at least not in full measure. The Aristotelian hierarchy in the Poetics must unfold in a manner where in the narrative’s twists and turns are consistent. Thus, they take time. Pop media tries to accomplish this inside of a small narrative space.

That many graphic narratives deploy simplistic stories and character-types is definitely true, yet there are examples proving Rollin’s concerns shortsighted. Later in 1970, Robert Barton points out the naivete with which Rollin had approaches comic book heroes, especially with respect to Batman (313). Nearly sixteen years later, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns fully recovered Batman and his Gotham City from the camp that had defined the series since the (in)famous 1960s TV series. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s seminal Watchmen takes on the hero topos and treats it with a thorough poststructural demolition. Graphic storytelling in the 1980s took on the stereotypes inhering in comic books and turned them upside down, redefining the “hero” concept in the process.

Watchmen may have accomplished more for graphic novels than any other text. Time famously named the book one of the best written in English since 1923. Of course, the list also includes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as Lord of the Rings — with no mention of any of the Harry Potter books published at the time. Watchmen is one of the few examples that has garnered serious academic criticism, mostly noting its treatment of the superhero paradigm. Jamie Hughes identifies what might be considered a conceptual inversion of Rollin’s thesis concerning “pop romance”. In the narrative we see a “rousing question, ‘What would happen to our concept of the superhero if such crusaders were a real part of our world?’ Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons set their story in the real world of 1985, albeit in a slightly altered form [...] In many ways, the world of Watchmen is terribly close to our own” (548).

If anything, the world of Moore and Gibbons’s story is a blistering criticism of the world living under the domination of threatened nuclear annihilation. Any fantastic element of the setting is both effected and deconstructed under the use of a metafictive comic story called Tales of The Black Freighter that parallels the emotional turmoil pervading the 1980s setting. In this subtext, the main character is a sailor plagued by demonic pirates who destroy his ship and comrades, then set out toward his homeport. The sailor’s worries over his family’s fate prompt him to take measures so drastic that he sacrifices his sanity and humanity in the name of reaching homeport of Davidstown before the Black Freighter and its devilish crew can. Once reaching his destination (after building a raft from the bodies of his dead crewmates and lashing the carcass of a slain shark to it), the sailor happens across two lovers sneaking to the beach away from prying eyes. From mistakes clear to the reader, he kills both in fits of moralizing revenge: “Thumbs crossed, I closed her windpipe. A buccaneer’s whore deserves no pity” (X 13). His decisions lead to further tragedy: in a fit of revenge he accidentally murders his own wife, mistaking her for a pirate sentry (XI 6).

The moment serves as a commentary upon a simplistic, binary approach to good and evil. To further complicate the nature of the hero, most of the titular characters are anything but purely heroic. Their names are parodies of the heroic ideal: Dr. Manhattan, The Comedian, Hooded Justice, The Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Captain Metropolis, and Rorschach constitute the primary characters — or “extranormal operatives” in Dr. Manhattan’s terms (I 21) — the only of these to have “superhuman” powers. Manhattan’s name ironically invokes the accidental atomic testing in the late 1950s that lead to his state of being — again parodying the standard tropes attached most notably to Marvel Comics’s stable of characters. Both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen play upon the definition of the superhero’s identity and its relation to the hero’s archnemesis. The Watchmen take back up their roles as “masked vigilantes” again in response to The Comedian’s murder, prompting questions about a potential conspiracy to murder former “masked avengers”.

But Moore and Gibbons thoroughly deconstruct this sense of purpose in the final chapter. It turns out that one of their own put the conspiracy into effect for the purpose of devaluing a larger menace: the threat of nuclear war so pervasive throughout the book. Ozymandias, real name Adrian Veidt, has created an appropriately absurd menace. A giant cloned monster whose “death would trigger mechanisms within its massive brain, cloned from a human sensitive…the resultant shockwave killing half [New York] city” (XI 26). Proceeding a longwinded explanation for both Nite Owl and Rorschach, the two heroes express their disbelief. With the reader on the precipice of expecting a final showdown, Moore and Gibbons let the air out of the narrative balloon:

Dan, I’m not a republic super villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago. (XI 27)

The moral impetus for acting is removed. The villain is not purely a villain. He is, in fact, working to “better” mankind…

Perhaps in a fashion close to Grendelwald and Dumbledore’s boyhood plans…

By now, we’ve dispensed with simple concepts of good and evil — that Harry’s world is not a purely contrasted set of binaries is patent. The four characters listed above are perhaps the most recognizable personifications of good and evil in the books. Yet, consider four a minute just how little narrative space some of these pairs share.

Thus, it is Harry and Snape that I find the most compelling juxtaposition. We watch Harry grow into a brand of moral sophistication, aware of good and evil, and the trouble of simple binary moralisms. Harry refuses to fall for the false dilemma, recognizing that the dilemma is only obvious at the extremes. His moral education is not complete with the defeat of Voldemort, but only so once he recognizes Snape’s good amongst his vast array of flaws. Snape teaches Harry of dedication and forgiveness with a tinge of irony.

From a literary perspective, a nemesis draws from the classical Greek construction of retribution in symbolic form. That retribution manifests itself in a way that teaches a character something about his or her own pride. Snape is a nemesis, perhaps Harry’s most impressive and definitive nemesis — something of an emotionally abusive father figure who constantly berates with a combination of loathing jealousy and a hope to toughen up his son. Snape and Dumbledore are antipodes within Harry’s emotional and moral education — perhaps one reason why Snape’s attempts at formal academic education often fail miserably. Both are misdirected characters developed as deconstructions of the simple binaries mentioned above. Neither is Dumbledore perfectly good, nor is Snape a fortress of evil.

Deathly Hallows burns away much of the fog enveloping both of these pivotal characters, their motivations, and their actions. We learn that Snape is on Harry’s side, despite his clear sadism. In what is perhaps one of the most striking moments of the entire series, we are caught with the fitting Pensieve chapter in which Harry learns from Snape (a relationship Rowling has denied the pair up to this point). It is Snape’s memory that finally leads Harry from knowledge to transcendent intention:

Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished: Neither would live, neither could survive. (691)

Of course, the irony is apparent. Harry has only succeeded through Snape’s clandestine help. The one man he has loathed, I think, perhaps as much or more than Voldemort is in fact one of his greatest allies. Once we are let into this revelation, the rest of the series is put into a different perspective, one more and more complicated. Readers’ fascination with Snape is predicated upon the fact that he is, perhaps, the most human of all characters in the book: deeply, deeply flawed, remorseful, and tragically unable to fully reveal himself except as a literal afterthought, or fully understand himself.

Dumbledore’s manipulation is put into full effect in this scene, as well:

“And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?” said Snape as he swung a traveling cloak over his robes.

“No I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. (690)

Read side-by-side, we see another interesting set of juxtapositions emerging among these characters. Harry learns from Snape’s memory; Snape is learning something from a memorial of Dumbledore. Snape’s memory leads to a disclosure necessary to Harry’s task. Dumbledore, even up to the end as only a narrative trace left in a painting, still obfuscates seemingly innocuous details. Instead, Dumbledore follows up the query with an obvious and dismissive warning about Snape’s role in “George Weasley’s mishap” (690). Deathly Hallows makes apparent Harry’s tutoring is in fact a matter of a symbiotic relationship between Dumbledore and Snape. Snape’s memory in the last book is an ironically straightforward account making plain Harry’s role, whereas the Pensieve episodes in Half Blood Prince are exercises in the fine art of inferential reasoning.

Snape’s antagonism of Harry is the ultimate misdirection. Rowling hides Snape’s true intentions by relying on his very real personality flaws — animosity toward Harry and the resulting sadism chief among them.

Works Cited

Barton, Robert. “A Response to Rollin’s ‘Beowulf to Batman…’” College English 32.3 (Dec. 1970): 313-15.

Hughes, Jamie A. “‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’: Ideology and ‘Real World’ Superheroes.” Journal of Popular Culture 39.4 (2006): 546-57.

Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986-87.

Rollin, Roger B. “Beowulf to Batman: The Epic Hero and Pop Culture.” College English 31.5 (Feb. 1970): 431-49.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, 2007.

—. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic, 2005.