George MacDonald

This story, the most gruesome of Beedle’s tales, draws a little bit more directly from a tradition Rowling has already pulled from for the creation of Horcruxes: the magical ability to remove one’s heart and keep it in a safe place. As Colin Duriez notes in A Field Guide to Harry Potter and I expound upon on Harry Potter & Imagination, Horcruxes bear certain similarities to George MacDonald’s story, “The Giant’s Heart.”

I had wondered if the comparison was too much of a stretch, but this story (would that I had it in my hands before the book went to the printers!) confirms the parallel. Dumbledore makes the point clearly, commenting on the young warlock’s magical removal and locking away of his own heart: “The resemblance of this action to the creation of a Horcrux has been noted by many writers” (p. 58).

There is, of course, the obvious moral lesson: if you lock away your own heart for fear of love, you will turn into an evil person. But deeper than this is the philosophy of life and humanity espoused by the story: You cannot separate from yourself what is essential to humanity – and that includes pain and death. “To hurt is as human as to breathe,” Dumbledore writes (p. 56).

The story also confirms the definition of evil that I argue for in chapter 4 in Harry Potter & Imagination. When the man locks his heart away for fear of falling sway to the foolishness of love and family, his heart begins to grow black hair all over it. His heart has become a beast, and when he returns his heart to his chest, he can only act like a beast. He has dehumanized himself, and so become evil in the process.

Being the darkest of the 5 tales, it most poignantly taps into elements of evil and fear. For more on these themes in Harry Potter, see chapters 3 and 4 of my book (which manuscript I wish I still had in my hands).

{ 19 comments }