Chapter 4 of the Deathly Hallows Read-Through is brought to you by Lily Luna!

In Chapter 4 we get many echoes of the past and foreshadowings of the future set in an alchemical framework. First off in this chapter we get a completion of the farewell to the Dursleys with Harry reminiscing about his old cupboard, dreams, and solitude. We learn the final part of the Dursley legacy to Harry: from Dudley Harry learns of the possibility of redemption even in the unlikeliest of people; from Petunia Harry learns muggle cleaning and how to cook breakfast (skills he sadly fails to use on the camping trip to come); and from Vernon he learns some choice swear words (always useful).

There are several instances in which Harry is analogized to Voldemort. When Harry reflects on the times he enjoyed when the Dursleys left him at home in peace, “it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost.” This phrasing echoes when Harry looked at the name “TM Riddle” in the diary in “Chamber of Secrets” and thought it was “almost as though Riddle was a friend he’d had when he was very small, and had half-forgotten.” This provides a subtle hint of Harry as Horcrux.

A more obvious hint is Mad-Eye Moody saying “even You-Know-Who can’t split himself into seven” while explaining the merits of the Seven Potters escape plan. Voldemort actually splits himself into eight leaving seven horcruxes. Six horcruxes are evil objects/Nagini and are destroyed. Six of the Potters are fakes and revert after an hour. The real Potter and the last horcrux are identical and the trick is to destroy the Voldysoul within Harry without destroying the container (Harry). We get a small hint of how this will occur with what happens to Hedwig. There are seven snowy owls similar to the seven Potters – six fakes and one real one who is killed. Rowling has said Hedwig’s death is supposed to represent the death of innocence, but it also seems to foreshadow Harry’s death. While Hedwig does not come back to life, Harry explodes her cage to attack the death eaters, similar to Fawkes’ spontaneous-combustion which heralds his resurrection. The curse Harry uses (Confringo) is the same one Hermione uses in Godric’s Hollow which breaks Harry’s wand.

Mad-Eye is like Santa Claus with his two bulging sacks, where the gifts are not of tangible things but of love: thirteen people willing to risk their lives for Harry (okay, twelve plus Dung). “Harry’s heart seemed to glow at the sight” of them but when he learns the plan he doesn’t want to let them do it. He is still used to “solitude,” to going it alone. This is the real Dursley legacy: that adults are not to be relied on and he must do everything for everyone all by himself. This lesson must be unlearned for him to succeed and yet in the end it’s still Harry going alone into the forest to sacrifice himself with only shadows of the dead for comfort. Note also the contrast between Harry’s keen “sight” when he’s sensing and responding to his friends’ love as they arrive and Hermione’s comment on Harry’s poor “eyesight” which aptly describes Harry’s inability to accept his friends’ willingness to endanger themselves for him. In addition, the Order rises “oblivious” into the circle of Death Eaters: they have been kept in the dark about Dumbledore’s machinations and Snape’s obedience thereto.

Here are some of the alchemical elements in this chapter; I’m sure there are others: the window of the Dursley car burns scarlet as they are leaving; we have an alchemical wedding (Remus and Tonks); Harry’s Polyjuice Potion is a “clear, bright gold” as befits Harry’s future status as the golden individual who is the mirror of the Philosopher’s Stone; the Order rises into the center of a circle of Death Eaters; red and green spells collide during the chase like fireworks, another allusion along with the motorbike to the night Voldemort was defeated the first time; Harry knocks out a tooth, a possible veiled allusion to dentists (like Hermione’s parents) who use mercury (Hg) in their work (the tooth is regrown magically by Ted Tonks, who is a muggleborn like Hermione); Harry’s wand shoots golden fire breaking Voldemort’s (Lucius’ wand); and finally the chase itself.

The chase is an inverted clone of Harry’s usual end-of-book descent below ground to combat danger in which he nearly dies but wins out (it’s inverted because it’s up in the sky instead of underground, rather like Katie Bell rising six feet in the air when she touches the cursed necklace in HBP instead of being buried six feet under). The chase foreshadows the Gringotts break-in; in both Harry escapes on a dragon(-fire bike). Some interesting points:

• The bike is souped up by Arthur Weasley like a James Bond car is by Q. This reminds me of Voldemort telling Wormtail to untie Harry and give him back his wand in the graveyard, a very Bond villain-like stupid idea.
• Hagrid tries to fix the sidecar with his flowery pink umbrella. It doesn’t work for him, but the fact that he can do magic at all with a wand that was snapped in half seems to be a subtle hint for us to wonder why. It’s likely that at some point Dumbledore repaired it with the Elder Wand as eventually the Elder Wand repairs Harry’s wand.
• Some of the curses such as Wingardium Leviosa are nice reminders of events in earlier books. Expelliarmus, the big one he learned from Snape, gives him away.
• Voldemort comes flying “like smoke on the wind” like the specter he’s becoming, rather like Nearly Headless Nick when he was petrified by the basilisk and dulled to dark smoky gray.
• Harry’s alchemical figurative death occurs when he “was sure [Voldemort’s red eyes] would be the last thing he ever saw.” Voldemort vanishes when Harry enters the protection of the Tonks property. This both mirrors the Death Eaters appearing “out of nowhere, out of nothing” at the start of the aerial chase and is similar to Voldemort vanishing after he tried to kill baby Harry. The crash into the ground recalls “Prisoner of Azkaban” where Harry falls out of the sky when the dementors come into the Quidditch stadium and Harry hears his mother’s screams and Voldemort killing her.
• All four elements are present in this chase: fire (dragon-fire bike, Confringo), air (it takes place in the air), earth (smashing into the ground), and water (smashing into a muddy pond)

There’s lots more I didn’t touch on which I will leave for the pub.

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• Chapter 15: The Goblin’s Revenge

John Granger is intending a post in the near future on Snape’s place in Harry’s alchemical transformation, which should be great reading.  He linked this site recently, and I did some browsing and found this description of the state of the soul at the end of the White Stage:

The whitening is a phase when we sense or have a prevision of the end of the work. It is a polar swing from out of the blackening – the appearance of seeds of the future development of the work. It is that stage of catharsis after some intense experience of being consumed in the crucible, when we glimpse the appearance, however fragmentary, of a new possibility – a flickering light in our souls which draws us towards its promise of change.

Sounds like a good description of Harry at end of Half-Blood Prince?  Not completely who he should be yet, but new possibilities ahead: the realization that he is “Dumbledore’s man through and through.”

In fact, this entire article on Animal Symbolism in Alchemy is incredibly fascinating, if you can plug through it (it’s a little wordy, and it’s a type of specialized language we’re not quite used to, perhaps).  Read it, thinking of all the symbols, colors, and animals present in the Harry Potter books.

After a catch-up PubCast (whenever I get to it), I’ll finally do one on alchemy.

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This is big news (at least in my very strange world of thinking about Harry Potter):

John Granger has found a quote that should finally put to rest all the doubters about the alchemical framework of the Harry Potter series:

I’ve never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that’s a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I’ll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories’ internal logic.

It’s not actually even news. The quote is from ‘98. But there you have it. I’m baffled that there ever was a debate to begin with, but now it’s over. Alchemy was one of the first topics I ever addressed here at SoG. I haven’t spent much more time on it, since John’s got it covered really well already, and I learned about it from him in the first place anyway.

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I promised some posts on alchemy. I’m getting there.  I’ve been working with a Jungian view, but this weekend I’ll be picking up Titus Burckhardt’s book on alchemy, and I want to work a bit with both views before post significantly on that topic.

Until then, brush up a bit on literary alchemy as it relates to Harry Potter in The Alchemists’s Tale and The Alchemical Keys to the Last Harry Potter Novel, both by John Granger.

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I think I’m finally getting the hang of this alchemical framework for literature thing. After reading the newest article at Hogwarts Professor, I was working my way through the closing chapters of C.S. Lewis’ Peralandra when it hit me. Ransom passed through utter darkness for a time, deep below the mountain when fighting the Un-man (Weston possessed by Satan). When he emerged, he found himself on a mountain composed of crystal, almost transparent features. From there, he could see a mountain ahead that was a rose-red color (or colour, since C.S. Lewis is the author). After several weeks of restoration on the crystal mountain, he travels to the red mountian, where he witnesses the marriage of the King and Queen of Perelandra. The whole process is quite transformational for Ransom. Now, why am I saying this?

Well, if you’ve been reading your Granger commentary on Harry Potter (or are familiar with alchemy), you’ll know that the three stages of alchemy are the black, white, and red stages. Let’s look at this briefly in Perelandra and make some parallels to Harry.

Black Stage: In Perelandra, Ransom passes through the utter darkness for several days, during which he battles the Un-man and then feels his way through an undergound mountain. When he emerges to a place lit by fire, he battles once more and destroys the Un-man, defeating forever the threat of Satan on Venus (Perelandra). He suffers several injuries during this “black stage” and comes out entirely spent.

In Order of the Phoenix, Harry goes through some of his greatest struggles (especially inwardly), descends into the underground of the Ministry of Magic, engages in battle with the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord, during which his beloved godfather Sirius Black (note that, Black) dies. Harry emerges from this encounter an absolute mess, as we see from his destruction from Dumbledore’s office and J.K. ROWLING’S USE OF ALL CAPS WHENEVER HARRY IS TALKING!

White Stage: Ransom emerges from the dark mountain tunnels through a stream and an outdoor pool, out of which he climbs (baptism symbol?) and is refreshed for several days or weeks by a grape-like fruit (“the fruit of the vine,” perhaps? A symbol for holy communion?). He notices during his recovery that the mountain is surrounded by a mist.

Half-Blood Prince opens with London in a mist. Harry is no longer the emotional wreck he was in Order of the Phoenix, and spends a good portion of the book with Albus Dumbledore. Note that “Albus” is a reference to the color “white.” In like fashion, just as Sirius Black dies at the end of the black stage, so Albus Dumbledore dies at the end of the white stage. The result is Harry’s new resolve to destroy the Dark Lord.

Red Stage: Ransom passes through to the red mountain upon which he meets the eldil (angels) of the two planets he has visited (Malacandra, or Mars, and Perelandra, or Venus), as well as the King and Queen of Perelandra (like our Adam and Eve), who have finally been reuinited in marriage and are pure and unfallen (unlike our Adam and Eve) because of the work of Ransom.

If Rowling is truly following the alchemical pattern (it would be really hard to deny it at this point), as Granger has noted, we can expect a lot more attention to be paid to Rubeus (“red”) Hagrid in the final installment. Further, if you’ve read Granger’s newest article, you’ll note that there is to be a marriage of “red” (mercury) and “white” (quicksilver) in the red stage. He points to the red-haired Bill Weasley and the cool half-veela Fleur and their upcoming marriage. As I just mentioned, there was the marriage of the King and Queen in the red stage of Perelandra. (The use of the “white coffin” as Ransom’s vehicle of transport is also fascinating in light of Dumbledore’s white coffin at the end of HBP, and “white stone” is another phrase for the Philosopher’s Stone, the end product of the alchemical process).

Much more can be said and speculated about Ransom’s and Harry’s experiences as related to alchemy. For example, the use of the word “gilded” by Lewis twice during Ransom’s travel from the crystal to red mountains (“gold” being the pure result of the alchemical process). Or, for another example, the presence of rose-colored lilies on the red mountain (think “Lily” as Harry’s mother, and both “lily” and “rose” are other words for the Philosopher’s Stone). But the point I’m getting at is that I’m beginning to see more and more the tremendous use of alchemy in great literature. Head over to Hogwarts Professor to learn more than I can tell you, of course. For anyone well-studied in these matters who happens to stumble upon the blog, I’d certainly welcome recommendation for a good starting place to learn more about alchemy and its role in literature.

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