Last Wednesday, I found out my paternal grandfather passed away at the age of 88 at 7:30 that morning. My memories of him are sparse and fuzzy — tied to some history before my parents split. I have an odd affliction with memory; nothing serious mind you, just a strange dividing line between what I recall quite clearly after the age of 12 and what seems a starkly vague early childhood. I don’t know if there is a true condition for such a thing, but there it is. At this point, I’m not sure how I feel about my grandfather’s death. My family is not especially close, neither on my mother’s side nor my father’s side. I have aunts and uncles, from both parents, I’ve met only once — most of them, in fact. My mother’s parents passed long before I was born. And I was 11 or so the last time I was around my father’s parents. I’m 29 now.
Perhaps saying something about my character, I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I only had a very short notice and I couldn’t arrange for coverage of my classes or make it to Northern Indiana in time. I did send flowers to my grandmother, and my father thanked me for always “coming through” in times of need — what’s harder for me to swallow was his sincerity.
I’m asking myself what all this has to do with Harry, but these ruminations do lead to one of the things that always struck me about Harry’s character, something I’m fascinated with but can’t always identify with: his intense devotion, loyalty, and love for a family that he never really “knew” except in fragments of memories that are often presented more as nightmares. While I don’t have nightmares about my grandparents, I feel a sense of attachment that has not been nurtured since I was very young, either by me or anyone else involved. Why? Believe me, I’m not turning to Harry for answers. Perhaps, again, my nature says something about me as a person that is distasteful, but my inclination is to turn at least some of this question outward into what I read and observe.
The theme of love in HP is almost a substance in and of itself. It’s independent of the person — how often does Harry try and fail to distance himself from his feelings for Ginny? — yet, it is also tied quite intimately to certain characters. Take for instance this quote:
[Harry] simply acts on his instincts, knowing that Voldemort has killed his parents and is therefore also his enemy. Harry is determined to face danger, and possibly even death, to prevent Voldemort from coming back and causing injury, pain and death to many innocent people.
In acting on this instinct, Harry is showing his innate capacity for love. He is willing to risk his life so that his friends, their families, and the wizarding world in general may have a future. [...] That this child is capable of any kind of love or trust seems miraculous. J.K.Rowling has said that she believes children are naturally, innately good, and that this is one of the things she wanted to show in her portrayal of Harry and his friends. (Mary para. 5-6)
With all the privations inflicted at the hands of the Dursleys, Harry could be the posterboy for the disaffected Gen-X wizard — imagine Harry at college, played by Ethan Hawke in every movie he’s ever made. The closest version of this meme we get is a disaffected-but-brilliant goth kid with the bad attitude to match: Snape. As Mary’s quote above points out, though, Harry is born into love, protected by love, and often lashed to his emotions, at least early on. His memories are often frightening. But Harry gets another source from those who knew his family and pass on a “magic” tradition to him. Emotion and memory are, without question, physical entities in Harry’s world. They can be manipulated and understood from limited third-person perspectives in the Pensieve (I often wonder if they don’t represent at least subconsciously something about Rowling’s writing process).
“Maturity” in Rowling’s world reflects a very real concern: emotional control, in both an abstract and physical sense. Nearly every sage piece of wisdom Dumbledore offers to Harry is of this nature (and hints at why we generally dislike Gambon’s portrayal). It’s ultimate expression? Willingly facing death — maybe the ultimate brand of physical control of one’s emotions. Lily does it. James does it. Snape does it. Dumbledore does it. Dobby does it. Of course, Harry does, too. This notion of sacrificial love is not just an abstraction about the greatest good a person can do. It is the ultimate expression of connection to and control of one’s place and purpose in the world.
Thus, it is an ultimate irony, as well. There’s a something absurdly humorous from the scene in which Hagrid is forced to carry Harry’s “dead” body back to the Hogwarts threshold. Voldemort thinks the ultimate expression of maturity — “superiority” is a better term — is one of power. What more power can one wield than the power of life and death? In pretending to such grandeur, pronouncing his power, will, and mercy to the Hogwarts survivors, he misses the obvious; his decloaking is complete. How can he wield power over someone who loves life but chooses death? It’s the final nail stemming from Dumbledore’s assertion to a very young Harry, that death is just the next adventure. The absurdity of Voldemort’s impotence is so open in the final combat that Harry’s statement of pity for Voldemort is nearly condescending.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You’ve got a strange brew of ideas going on there, Dave.
I like where you started from: the fierce love Harry feels for the family he never knew, and then for the friends who take that family’s place, and how unexpected and even miraculous that love is, given the treatement he received at the Dursleys’. I like the contrast you draw to Snape, whose misanthrophy was surely the more expected outcome of emotional deprivation.
But I can’t agree with equating emotional control and maturity with willingly facing death. Nor looking at sacrificial love as the “ultimate expression of connection to and control of one’s place and purpose in the world.”
I think facing death with equanimity could come with maturity, the realization, as per Dumbledore, that death is the next stage in a journey. But I think that could only occur in an older person; surely there is almost nothing as tragic as a young life cut short, or the death of a child. Harry, when he sacrifices himself, is seventeen years old. There is no logic that could persuade me that the death of a seventeen year old is anything other than a horrible tragedy: no seventeen year old should have to shoulder such a burden.
And I can’t see how sacrificing your life – even out of love – connects you with your place and purpose in this world. I can see that it is an affirmation of what is important. But if the act of affirmation takes you out of this world, where is the connection? It is letting go, moving on, disconnection.
How do you turn disconnection into connection?
I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather.
Shane, thank you. And I want to thank everyone here who has expressed the same sentiment, either to me privately, or perhaps to yourself.
Reyhan, I feel the same way you do about death (especially the death of children) in general. But, it just always seems that maturity in these novels is generally expressed in the willingness to face death in times of crisis. Order of the Phoenix is a great example, when members of the DD know what they will face. Dumbledore’s eulogy for Cedric Diggory at the end of Goblet of Fire hints at the same suggestion to, that to deny the circumstances of Diggory’s death is an insult to his memory. Death seems to figuratively invade Hogwarts at this moment. And Ginny? It’s hard not to notice the distinct change Rowling writes into her character after the ordeal from Chamber of Secrets.
Of course, I’m not sure these stack up to a coherent statement about this issue on Rowling’s part. I wonder if it all doesn’t point to simply the constraints of the literary conventions that she’s drawing from. The books are literary, but as adventure stories in the 21st century marketed to an audience that grew up on a steady dose of 9/11, Master Chief, and Solid Snake, the books will ring hollow if Rowling doesn’t constantly confront her readers with real-life death.
That death makes us wise is a meme that floats through Western Culture for sure. I think Rowling is tapping into that, even if she isn’t consciously promoting the idea.
Dave,
I think that the ability to come to terms with death is the second most important theme of the series. It distinguishes the good guys (as led by Lily, Harry and Dumbledore) from the bad guy (Voldemort).
But is this ability necessarily a sign of maturity or wisdom?
I think there are differences in how people in the series who do accept it think about death.
Dumbeldore says that there are worse (far worse?) things than death and argues that to a well-ordered mind death is just the next stage of existence (I hope I’m not putting words into his mouth). But Dumbledore has lived a long life (and possibly unnaturally extended it via the Philosopher’s Stone). His acceptance is the natural or normal attitude we’d expect from someone whose natural period of life is near its naturallly predestined end.
Lily Potter prefers death to letting her son be killed. Heroic, yes, but again natural. Many mothers – and many fathers too, I think – are like that. The instinct to save your child is one of the deepest ones we have (and share with a lot of other species).
Sirius Black faces death without a thought. He is recklessly brave. Perhaps his ten years in Azkeban have done this to him, but I suspect that’s how he always was. He doesn’t waste a lot of time thinking about consequences. And he doesn’t have that much to lose. Great soldier to send on a kamikaze mission, although perhaps not one to lead his troops back safely from a mission.
Lupin is a bit more cautious than his friend. But he too prefers life in the battle zone, although for different reasons. He has lived in the battle zone most of his life because of his condition (!) He seems somewhat lost in the cozy domesticity of diapers and three am feedings. Harry has to slap him around verbally to remind him of the duties which go with his choice. It’s ironic that death finds him even after that.
Harry? Well, we’re agreed about Harry. He makes the ultimate sacrifice not because he wants to die, but because he knows that is the right thing to do. I wouldn’t call this maturity or wisdom. More like courage and strength. As I indicated earlier, a seventen year old who lays down his life for the good of the world is not mature, he’s a hero.
I think part of the problem I’m facing with your argument is the definition of maturity. Both Lupin and Black would fail the test if we defined maturity as the ability to accept the responsibilities that accccompany one’s stage in life. And what Harry and Lily do goes way beyond maturity. The definition would only fit Dumbledore’s actions.
But you need to provide your own definition of maturity; perhaps it fits better than mine does.
There’s a sense of loss that cannot be explained even if you never truly were close. Perhaps its that realization of the lost opportunities with them that can never be now, or maybe it’s the intrinsic connection we share simply from being of the same blood line…that however small or unaware we may be..apart of them is included in who we are..and what makes us truly us…in a sense when we lose a relative, we lose apart of ourselves..forcing our candles to shine a little brighter en lieu of them.
You mentioned at the beginning not being able to remember memories from your early childhood…my uncle suffers the same fate. Nothing before 12yrs old, however, at twelve his entire family structure fell apart when his dad (my grandfather) died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Often times I think it’s the bodies way of coping with trauma of some sort that shook our core unit. I’d be curious to know when your parents split.
Onto Potter..what I do love about Rowlings ability is that innate unexplainable connection that Harry has to a family he never really knew. His desire to look longingly into the mirror of Erised just to have more time with them, his fairly immediate memory recall of the sound of his mothers voice screaming on the night of her death, the photoalbum full of images of a time he didn’t get to experience. It’s the hurt mixed with deep need to be apart of of them in anyway he can. It’s about being connected to something far greater than we can ever explain…and sometimes a connection that occurs even when we don’t wish for it to.