One of the key moments of each book is the “Dumbledore Denouement” – the final conversation, after the story’s climax, in which Dumbledore and Harry have a little chat about what happened.
Here’s a little assignment for Day 5 of Sorcerer’s Stone Week. With the knowledge of Dumbledore’s backstory in mind, go back and re-read the few pages of chapter 17 of Sorcerer’s Stone which comprise this final conversation with Harry after the battle over the stone.
What strikes you about this conversation now? How do you read it differently than when you first read it? What new meanings do Dumbledore’s words take on, if any? What was Rowling really trying to accomplish with Dumbledore in these pages? Maybe a better question: What was Dumbledore really trying to accomplish with Harry in these few pages?
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
I am not sure where you are headed with this one, but after reading it again several times, I can’t say that I read it any different than I did previously. I do think Dumbledore’s main objectives were to encourage Harry in the ideal of selfless, sacrificial love, the likes of which he had just displayed, as well as to not be too quick to judge others, which Harry continued to do with Snape throughout the series.
As for Dumbledore, Rowling seems to have used him as something along the lines of an angel or the Holy Spirit, endowing wisdom and protection over Harry, but never too quickly and never giving all the information up front, only what was necessary.
I think you’ve pretty well nailed, Ryan. I haven’t gotten to the denouement yet in my reread of HPSS but that’s kind of how I remember it. Self Sacrificial love is what Dumbledore focuses on here, just as in COS he focuses on how it’s the choices we make rather than our abilities that define our true character.
We’ll still have to grapple with the character of Dumbledore in the sense of, is he a wise old mentor gradually giving Harry the information he needs at the proper time to face the challenges at hand or is he a secretive manipulator, only giving Harry the info he needs at the proper time as part of some grand, mysterious plan, or he is both?!
Another interesting thing to do is go back & listen to some of the Pubcasts where Travis examines Dumbledore & even defends him. I just listened to Pubcast #8 again & it’s very interesting how Travis was right in defending Dumbledore against him being the one who allowed Voldemort to receive the prophecy so that LV would make the move that would bring about his downfall. But how Travis doesn’t anticipate that Dumbledore is still a manipulator who works all sorts of plots & plans behind the scenes. Just not the particular plot that Travis is making a defense of DD for!
Ah, those heady days when speculation & a wild & amazing variety of theories were rampant!
And, talk about insane, I still don’t take the “Master Manipulator” view and think most of my previous commentary on Dumbledore was accurate
Yes, the speculation days were fun.
So, what is your view on Dumbledore now after DH? I can’t remember. I’m not so much in the Master Manipulator camp as I’m thinking, yes, he did manipulate things & manuever (sic) as a general would do so with his forces. Plus, someone who is a Master Manipulator wouldn’t love his people as much, even though he had to make hard decisions & hide some things.
I think it gets back to what I wrote in a previous comment: He seems to be both wise old mentor & manipulator at the same time. But his manipulations, if we call them that, are meant for the destruction of evil & the betterment of others, & he gives his life in the attempt to accomplish these goals.
I lean toward Ed Kern’s view on Dumbledore, with perhaps some modifications that I don’t have time to go into at the moment, but will hopefully find time to share soon enough!
The relevant portion from the linked article with Kern’s thoughts:
Thanks, Travis.
There’s a lot of great discussion going on, both here & Hogpro’s, & I just feel worn out after this last week & haven’t felt up to really doing much posting. But I feel like I’m missing so much. I guess that’s a plug for The Hogshead & Hogwarts Professor.
revgeorge, well, we try really hard to be awesome so that you feel like you can’t go more than 3 minutes without checking the site.
I’ve been buried too, and I’ve missed all the best parts of the SS Week discussion. Only had time to get the discussion starters up, really. I’m hoping to play catch-up soon.
On reading it this time, there seemed to be more depth to Dumbledore’s feelings towards Harry, and they seemed more personal. For example, Dumbledore smiling when Harry awoke, which previously had come over as a kindly, headmasterly way of reassuring Harry as he woke – Dumbledore doing his job – seemed to be more about Dumbledore’s relief and happiness at Harry’s recovery.
When Harry asked why Voldemort wanted to kill him, and Dumbledore said he can’t tell him, “Not today. Not now. You will know one day …” it used to come over as adult certainty and control, but now I also see Dumbledore’s distress at the prospect of having to tell Harry. I really do think Harry was a surprise to Dumbledore, and that he was taken aback by the love he felt for Harry. (I know that DD does say this in OotP, but at that point it just makes you want to hit him!)
On another note, it’s interesting that one of the most misleading and influential paragraphs of the entire series – the one about Snape wanting to make himself quits with James – is almost an aside, Dumbledore thinking aloud.
Woman ironing wrote: “…it’s interesting that one of the most misleading and influential paragraphs of the entire series – the one about Snape wanting to make himself quits with James – is almost an aside, Dumbledore thinking aloud.”
Yes, I was struck by that, too, as I reread the closing. Is Dumbledore here blatantly lying when he speculates that maybe Snape wanted to repay his debt to James. Because one, really Snape never thought himself indebted to James. As he tells Harry later, he thought James only saved him (Snape) to save himself from getting into trouble. And two, Dumbledore knows exactly why Snape would protect Harry & it has nothing to do with Snape’s feelings towards either James or Harry. It’s all about Lily & his commitment to her memory & part of that means protecting her son.
So, here we go, is Dumbledore lying here after he explicitly says, “I shall, of course, not lie?” Or is this an example of Dumbledore saying something here which we know later to be wrong because the author herself hadn’t quite worked it out yet how Snape related to Lily & why he did what he did?
Did Dumbledore lie? He could not tell Harry the true reason why Snape was protecting his life, because he had given Snape his word to never reveal the best of him, his love for Lily. Especially to Harry. But even if he hadn’t given his word, he could not tell the whole truth without answering Harry’s question why Voldemort wanted to kill him in the first place.
So he told Harry: ‘Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt’. This is not entirely wrong, I think, although Snape would have objected. Dumbledore thus also insinuated that Harry did not owe a life dept to Snape. Which is only fair.
Dumbledore is a master of concealment. He manages not to tell the truth without lying, at least in this case. But what about his explanation why the invisibility cloak had been in his possession? ‘Your father happened to leave it in my possession’. Again, this is not a round lie but very misleading, indeed.
So, Dumbledore’s pulling an Obi-Wan Kenobi here? “What I told you, Luke, was true…from a certain point of view.”
So, couldn’t Dumbledore have said in response to why would Snape try to save Harry’s life, “I’m sorry, Harry, I can’t tell you that either?” Why the elaboration about Snape feeling in James’ debt, which even Harry doesn’t buy?
Hmmm…the newest version of this theme appears to have gravatars on default. Interesting. I’ll have to disable one of the two.
I think Rena is on to something here. Maybe Dumbledore’s right. Maybe Snape does know, deep down, that James saved his life that night, even if he denies it both to himself and to Harry. Maybe Snape really is just as affected by James’s saving his life as Wormtail is by Harry’s action at the end of PoA.
Travis said, “Maybe Dumbledore’s right. Maybe Snape does know, deep down, that James saved his life that night, even if he denies it both to himself and to Harry. Maybe Snape really is just as affected by James’s saving his life as Wormtail is by Harry’s action at the end of PoA.”
Maybe. But I think it’s kind of a stretch. I still think Harry is quite right when he says in HBP that Snape never gave a blank about James. He’s wrong about Snape’s feelings toward Lily but I think he doesn’t misjudge Snape in regard to James. I’m not really sure how you could read it any differently knowing what we do from DH.
You know just like the Fidelius Charm, life debts are something Jo seems to use in a particular case between Pettigrew & Harry & yet in other equally apparent cases, she says no life debt has been accrued.
I don’t think Snape would have had to actually “give a blank” about James to still feel indebted to him. Remember, Dumbledore said Snape hated being in that position.
I think the thing about life debts is that they were never really “magic.”
Been reading about the justifications people give for lying, and about different types of lying, and specifically about lying in order to protect someone.
The three common justifications for lying are: I didn’t really lie; I had to lie; and I lied but there was a good reason why I lied. And different types of lying include lying outright, and deception, which is speaking the truth in such a way as to let the listener make inferences which aren’t actually true.
I think that Dumbledore lies as a means to an end (the distal end being the defeat of Voldemort, but the proximate end being the furthering of his schemes and plans). And he lies by omission, not telling a direct lie but giving only select parts of the truth, and letting the listener draw unfounded inferences.
One of the ways that people lie in order to protect another person is to withold from them a truth which they feel might be injurious to them. Physicians are 0ften guilty of this, which they defend as an obligation required of them by the Hippocratic oath. This kind of lying has been called “paternalistic” deception. Physicians and others argue that their lying is disinterested and benign. History has shown us that paternalism can lead to grave abuses of power, to the detriment of the person – or people – it’s supposed to protect. It is also often the opposite of disinterested: physicans, for example, often deceive in order to avoid having to tell bad news to their patients, and then have to deal with the emotional reaction. More insidiously, they lie to avoid giving control of medical decisions to their patients because they feel they themselves are the holders of expert information and thus best suited to make those decisions.
Dumbledore telling Harry, with tears in his eyes, that he could not bear to tell him the truth in OotP – and lying throughout because of course he was still not telling him the truth and never did get around to it, leaving it to the despised Snape to give Harry the bad news – is a good example of paternalistic deception which pretends to care for the deceived, but which basically serves the needs of the liar.
Which doesn’t make Dumbledore a bad person anymore than a doctor who tells his patient that the surgery “went well” while omitting to inform him that the tumour was inoperable is a bad person.
We can’t really accuse DD of lying because his musing about Snape follows on quite legitimately from his answer to Harry’s question about his father and Snape. Still, it does draw Harry’s attention – and ours – away from Lily and away from the details of the life-saving, so well done Dumbledore and J. K. Rowling!
Dumbledore’s musing also points to an important truth about Snape: he refuses to face up to his hatred of James. Snape’s hatred of James is as important as his love for Lily. It’s because he hates James that Snape feels shame at agreeing to protect Harry, and it’s because of the shame that he insists it be kept secret. The revelation of his love for Lily, coming as it does so dramatically and so late, tends in the end to overshadow his hatred of James. Fine, Snape protected Harry for love of Lily, but he hated every moment of it. The thing Snape needed to do most in his life was to reconcile his love and his hatred – which I suppose boils down to forgiving James – but it’s not clear that he ever did.
I think that with his musing DD plants an important little bit of grit in Harry’s mind – about the danger of hatred. DD must have a fair idea that Harry is going to hate Snape and that he’ll need to overcome his hatred if he’s going to vanquish Voldemort.
Coming late to this, but–I always felt that some of Snape’s reaction to Harry was that Harry could have been, but was not, his son. Harry was Lily’s son, as well as James’. Snape drove Lily away from him–he lost her by his own weakness. But every time he sees Harry, he sees not just what James won, but what he lost. I’ve never been able to get the idea that Snape is ashamed to protect Harry because Harry is James’ son, but I could get, from the first time I read PS, that Snape is ashamed to have to protect Harry because he failed to protect Lily.
YMMV.
I don’t think Snape felt ashamed at protecting – or having to protect – Harry. I think that he hated Harry because he was James’ son. It didn’t help that Harry looked like his father. Imagine protecting someone – even to the point of risking your own life – whom you hate and despise, because of a deep feeling you have for someone else. It would certainly make me feel cross. I think that most of all I would hate myself for having put myself in such a life-long position of obligation.
So I went back and re-read the last conversation in PS between Harry and Dumbledore.
Master Manipulator indeed.
The very first thing that struck me is that we have absolutely no independent corroboration of Dumbledore’s account of what happened after Harry passed out. Dumbledore says he arrived just in time to pull Quirrell off Harry. Do we even know what happened to Quirrell? He also says that the effort nearly killed Harry. And he also says that the Stone was destroyed after a “little chat” with Flamel:
They (Flamel and his wife) have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die.
Is it just me, or does that last bit sound a lot like the type of conversations disloyal but respected henchmen had with the Don before being permitted to go slit their wrists in the comfort of their bathtub in lieu of being garrotted?
And how about the bit:
No sooner had I reached London than it became clear to me that the place I should be was the one I had just left.
Say again?
We know, in retrospect, that JKR left this scene to be interpreted as we all originally did. But I now see that she left a lot of ambiguity in place, which she could have gone back to in order to reassemble the facts to fit quite a different meaning.
For example, the text could equally support an interpretation where Dumbledore deliberately leaves Harry to confront Quirell/Voldemort by himself – a first look, as it were – confirms that Harry’s heart is indeed pure, by way of the Mirror and the Stone, and both tasks done, steps in just before Voldemort kills Harry to stop but not to kill Voldemort, because that would not solve the 7th horcrux dilemma.
But even without that particular interpretation, I find that last scene very consistent with the Master Manipulator theory. Dumbledore’s debriefing of Harry was very much like that of a spymaster: stroke the soldier’s ego, encourage him to keep on fighting, but provide him very little information about what has happened behind the scenes. So he tells him about the Lily/love/protection piece of magic, tells him he gave him the Invisibility Cloak, lies to him about why Snape is protecting him (because we’re not ready for that particular truth yet), and that Flamel is dead. None of which helps Harry deal with the next challenge, except for the confirmation that there will be other challenges.
The one piece of information which Dumbledore gave which was significant – although Harry doesn’t realize it at this point – is about his own relationship with the truth:
It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.
No kidding.
I agree with you, red rocker, that Snape hated Harry because he was James’s son. He was doing this thing for Lily but when he looked at Harry he saw James.
I get the impression that Snape felt shame from what he said to Dumbledore when he agreed to protect Harry: “Very well. Very well. But never – never tell, Dumbledore! This must be between us! Swear it! I cannot bear … especially Potter’s son … I want your word!” Maybe shame isn’t the right word – there’s a kind of horror in Snape’s reaction too. Perhaps humiliation says it better. Snape couldn’t bear the idea of protecting James Potter’s son. It was humiliating, shameful – James Potter was his enemy – and he didn’t want anyone to know.