“The Tale of the Three Brothers”

by Dave

If a reader drops Deathly Hallows on the ground in expectation of the book opening to the literal center of its story, she will more than likely find Chapter 21, “The Tale of the Three Brothers”. Presented as a children’s story of three brothers attempting to cheat Death, Beadle the Bard’s tale narrates the evidence used by Xenophilius Lovegood and his cohorts engaged in the “Hallows Quest”. The collected Tales of Beadle the Bard in their original runic language are Dumbledore’s gift to Hermione, knowing she will take great pains to exercise her skills from one of her favorite classes at Hogwarts, Ancient Runes. She spends the first half of Deathly Hallows translating the text. Readers finally learn of the whole text in the middle of the book.

Rowling has played with literary metanarrative, or metafiction, in the past. Riddle’s diary is the obvious example, while the concept floats at the periphery of the Pensieve episodes. In English Studies, metanarrative is pursued as a moment within a book when the book seems to be commenting on itself and its own story, or on the practice of storytelling, in general. And Deathly Hallows is obviously filled with it. In fact, Harry’s crisis of faith centers upon the collapse of the narratives previously constructed around Dumbledore and, later, Snape.

Rowling uses “The Tale of the Three Brothers” as more than a simple plot device, then, providing far more than an introduction of Harry to the temptations in the Hallows that he must ultimately reject in favor of his own Horcrux-destruction quest. Dumbledore seems to have foreseen the exposure of the Hallows legend to Harry and Voldemort. The Tales of the Beadle the Bard, in fact, warn of the Hallows as objects seemingly cursed by their genesis: Death itself. Yet, the scene abounds with simplistic interpretations of the story. I had said before that Rowling is relying on interpretation as a method of attaining knowledge in the series. Here, she expounds upon the trouble with unfounded interpretations.

The scene comes to fruition in the ossified receptions of the story Hermione reads aloud, ironically “to make sure we all understand”, in Xenophilius’ terms ( US ed., pg. 406). Ron interrupts her reading to quibble a detail in the scene (the time of day), while Harry has trouble suspending his rigidly realistic frame of mind: “but Death spoke to them?” (406-7). Hermione’s rejoinder that “It’s a fairy tale, Harry!” (407) doesn’t make the rhetorical situation any better. None of the three can step beyond their interpretive preconceptions. Ron simply sees what Molly has taught him; Harry can’t suspend his disbelief; and Hermione distrusts the fantastic. The two older brothers die in horrifyingly mundane ways; one suffers his own throat to be slashed, while the other takes his own life in despair of his separation from the apparition of his one true love. Only the youngest of the three brothers illudes Death’s pursuit, and only because he stayed hidden until ready to confront Death (408-9). We’re also struck by the fact that the trio have been hiding under their own invisibility charms, staying out of sight of Death in the form of Voldemort’s minions. The moment is an obvious foreshadow of what is to happen in later chapters: Harry must sacrifice himself and greet death with open arms.

Xenophilius’ version of events makes even less sense, though:

He picked up a quill from a packed table at his elbow, and pulled a torn piece of parchment from between more books.

“The Elder Wand,” he said, and he drew a straight vertical line upon the parchment. “The Resurrection Stone”, he said, and he added a circle on top of the line. “The Cloak of Invisibility,” he finished, enclosing both line and circle in a triangle, to make the symbol that so intrigued Hermione. “Together,” he said, “the Deathly Hallows.”

“But there’s no mention of the words ‘Deathly Hallows’ in the story,” said Hermione.

“Well, of course not,” said Xenophilius, maddeningly smug. “That is a children’s tale, told to amuse rather than to instruct. Those of us who understand these matters, however, recognize that the ancient story refers to three objects, or Hallows, which, if united, will make the posessor master of Death.” (409-10)

We learn from Dumbledore later, in fact, that “The Tale of the Three Brothers” is probably the origin of the Hallows “legend” (714), something Chapter 21 does hint at. The symbol that Xenophilius draws, then, is an isogetic creation. He seeks to impose upon the narrative an interpretation in no way suggested by the content of the text itself. The unity of the three objects is even more a fiction than the story itself. The story is about dissolution in the face of Death. The brothers cannot possibly survive forever. The Hallows, in fact, are not a trio of objects designed to defeat Death itself once united together. Instead, they serve as divisive objects that can never be united, only mark their owners as targets and serving as alleghories for bad temperment, arrogance, and humility. Only through the last character trait can one come to terms with mortality. And Xenophilius is anything but humble, constantly casting his pursuit as a “Quest” of its own, aping the language of the hero. Yet the Chapter ends with Xenophilius ethos collapsing under his own cowardice.

Of course, a sensitive enough reader might catch all this with a smirk in the corner of her mouth. After all, we’re in the same position with respect to Deathly Hallows. We have a series of books becoming increasingly dependent on the idea of interpretation as a mode of understanding, culminating in the seventh book’s shattering of many of the interpretations we offered and clung to for so long. Was Rowling toying with us? Is “The Tale of the Three Brothers” at least partially Rowling having a bit of fun with her readership? I’m not sure what Rowling may have had in mind while writing this chapter, but I have to think she was smiling to herself, especially with all the time spent by fans scouring the web before book 7’s release tracking down the giant Red Herring of a symbol she puts in the hands of her oddest character. I know I spent quite some time trying to find the Deathly Hallows symbol once I saw it on the UK edition’s cover. Giving us over to Xenophilius Lovegood to first learn of all this serves as a giant red flag. It’s both the literal and figurative fulcrum of Deathly Hallows over which Harry teeters, dragging us along with him.