J.K. Rowling’s Favorite Shakespeare Play

I started a few days ago with a post on the Centaurs in Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone to tackle J.K. Rowling’s fate/choice theme, which she largely addresses through the centaurs, the Hogwarts subject Divination, and of course, the prophecy itself.

An astute reader here at SoG recently commented on the significance of Dumbledore’s statement to Harry at the end of Chamber of Secrets about the importance of a person’s choices. I think most of us, upon reading that line, realized it was quite significant, but perhaps many readers miss how vital it is to the story. We learn from an interview with Mugglenet that JKR sees that statement as being hugely important. Discussing the death of Dumbledore, the following dialogue ensues (emphasis mine):

ES: The wise old wizard with the beard always dies.

JKR: Well, that’s basically what I’m saying, yes.

[Laughter.]

MA: It’s interesting, because that moment — I think we all sort of felt like he was going to die as soon as he started imparting these huge swallows of wisdom.

JKR: Mm.

MA: And the moment when Harry said, ‘I realize this, and my parents realized this, and this is about this choice,’ we stopped, and we said, “All right, let’s let everyone catch up, and talk about this, because a) Dumbledore is dying, b) this is the flag that signals that we’re going to power through to the end.” I feel like that was a defining moment of the entire series. Do you tend to agree?

JKR: Yes, definitely, because I think there’s a line there between the moment in “Chamber of Secrets” when Dumbledore says so famously, ‘It’s our choices that define us, not our abilities,’ straight through to Dumbledore sitting in his office, saying to Harry, “the prophecy is significant only because you and Voldemort choose to make it so.” If you both chose to walk away, you could both live! That’s the bottom line. If both of them decided, “We’re not playing,” and walked away… but, it’s not going to happen, because as far as Voldemort’s concerned, Harry’s a threat. They must meet each other.

The fact that it’s based on choices seems to give less credence to the insistence upon the necessity of fate that dominates the minds of Ronan and Bane (though, of course, they would argue that the stars are more certain than silly human prophecy). JKR shows us her hand a bit in the dialogue that follows by giving us some insight via her favorite Shakespeare play, MacBeth (emphasis mine):

ES: I remember thinking when I read “Order of the Phoenix,” what would happen if Harry and Voldemort just decided to —

JKR: Shake hands, and walk away? We’ll agree to disagree!

[Laughter.]

ES: What if he never heard the prophecy?

JKR: And that’s it, isn’t it. As I said, that’s what I posted on my site -

ES: I’m glad you put that up.

JKR: It’s the “Macbeth” idea. I absolutely adore “Macbeth.” It is possibly my favorite Shakespeare play. And that’s the question isn’t it? If Macbeth hadn’t met the witches, would he have killed Duncan? Would any of it have happened? Is it fated or did he make it happen? I believe he made it happen.

In the Shakespeare’s MacBeth, MacBeth is given a prophecy by the Wyrd Sisters (ever wonder where JKR got that band name from for Goblet of Fire?) that he would be king. Following what he thought to be the necessity of fate, MacBeth committed multiple murders in order to secure his kingship. What he thought was fate drove him to evil, but as JKR herself said, “I believe he made it happen.”

The debate about fate and free will is older than the hills, and it’s not going away any time soon. But Rowling’s message for us is that Harry’s choices – and our choices – matter.

We’ll pick up the connection with MacBeth as it relates to the prophecy and Voldemort in a later post.