by John Granger
Even more than Rudolph, Harry Potter questions cultural myths, demonstrates to us that we shouldn’t think we know what is really going on, and blends all literary genres more than any other work of fiction, perhaps.
Like all cultures, Hogwarts has a Founder’s Myth: the story of the Four Founders and the breakup of the once dear friends Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor. Ms. Rowling asks us to see how this story poisons the minds and hearts of all witches and wizards. This grand narrative causes not only the Gryffindor/Slytherin battle that is the good/evil axis of the storyline, but also turns each magical person into a partisan defending their quarter rather than celebrating the whole. Gryffindor is core, Slytherin is “other” from the Gryffindor side; Pure Bloods are core, all other beings are “other” and “lesser” to the Slytherins. The Death Eaters are Slytherin ideology run amok and truly evil, but Gryffindor pride and machismo are equally divisive. All of them, as partisans, share dismissive attitudes about the “Magical Brethren.”
The Sorting Hat, as the vehicle of the Wizarding world’s division, says as much about itself in Phoenix.
Listen closely to my song:
Though condemned I am to split you
Still I worry that it’s wrong,
Though I must fulfill my duty
And must quarter every year
Still I wonder whether sorting
May not bring the end I fear.
(Order of the Phoenix, chapter eleven)
This division-in-keeping-with-legend colors and clouds everyone’s thinking or ability to see things as they are (Dumbledore aside). It is the root of Slytherin “wizarding pride” and Muggle-baiting and the inability of the other Hogwarts houses and the Magical Brethren to unite. The Wizarding world’s Foundation Myth is divisive and oppressive to the “other.” This is the core teaching of the postmodern worldviews we live with today, as expressed in the Harry Potter stories.
A case could be made that the Sorting Hat is the real bad guy; Voldemort and the Death Eaters are just understandable consequences of the divisive myth we confirm at the annual sorting.
The Harry Potter stories are largely about the many prejudices gripping the magical world of Hogwarts and beyond, consequent to the Four Founders’ Myth. Three of the larger prejudices are those against (1) magical people (and creatures) of mixed blood or blood that is otherwise tainted, (2) against the poor, and (3) against those Magical Brethren who are not witches or wizards.
Hogwarts’s blood problems, like those outside of the school, can be traced back to the “origin myth” of the Four Founders. One of these four, Salazar Slytherin, wanted only pure-blood wizards in his school house, and, though Slytherin left the school after a disagreement with Gryffindor, his house remains the bastion of wizard prejudice against those witches and wizards of mixed ancestry or those who are Muggle-born. We learned in Order of the Phoenix that this prejudice is not limited to Hogwarts but pervades the Wizarding world.
The “N” word among the magical folk is “Mudblood,” and Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin boy we love to hate, uses this word to describe Hermione Granger, as Severus Snape did as a student to describe Lily Evans. Other slurs used by “Pure Bloods” are “Half-blood,” “Half-breed,” and “Muggle-born.”
Draco Malfoy doesn’t restrict his prejudices to blood-lines, however, in keeping the traditions of his house and beliefs of his family. He is disdainful, too, of those individuals and families who don’t have money or worldly goods or a big house. Ron Weasley is the usual target of this prejudice against the poor—and every one of Draco’s barbs hits home, it seems, in Ron’s heart. Ron, much more than his several siblings and parents, takes his lack of spending money and his hand-me-down wardrobe as if it were a personal failing to be hidden and overcome.
As nasty as these Slytherin prejudices are, they are held by a relatively narrow slice of the population pie. The prejudices identify the evil characters of the book as surely as the Dark Mark tattoo, but they aren’t the grand narrative problem that threatens to bring down the Wizarding world.
That “otherness” is the prejudice of good and bad wizards and witches with respect to three-fourths of the world’s Magical Brethren, that is, the centaurs, the goblins, and the house-elves. The myth is depicted in the Ministry of Magic as a statue and fount called “The Fountain of Magical Brethren.”
Halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life-size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-looking wizard with his wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf. The last three were all looking adoringly up at the witch and wizard. Glittering jets of water were flying from the ends of the two wands, the point of the centaur’s arrow, the tip of the goblin’s hat, and each of the house-elf’s ears, so that the tinkling hiss of falling water was added to the pops and cracks of Apparators and the clatter of footsteps as hundreds of witches and wizards, most of whom were wearing glum, early-morning looks, strode toward a set of golden gates at the far end of the hall. (Order of the Phoenix, chapter seven)
This sculpture represents the overarching belief of witches and wizards about their fellow magical beings or creatures. First, of course, is the fealty of the “adoring” centaur, goblin, and house-elf for the “noble” wizard and “beautiful” witch. As central as this joyful subservience is to the myth, to notice those who are not depicted at all is even more telling about wizard beliefs and exclusivity. There is no giant in the fountain, nor is there a dementor. The nonhuman “brethren” in the fountain have it bad, certainly, but the real “others” in this representation of the magical world are those not even pictured.
After Harry’s hearing, he takes a closer look at the statues:He looked up into the handsome wizard’s face, but up close, Harry thought he looked rather weak and foolish. The witch was wearing a vapid smile like a beauty contestant, and from what Harry knew of goblins and centaurs, they were most unlikely to be caught staring this soppily at humans of any description. Only the house-elf’s attitude of creeping servility looked convincing. With a grin at the thought of what Hermione would say if she could see the statue of the elf, Harry turned his money bag upside down . . . (Order of the Phoenix, chapter nine)
Ms. Rowling offers us this statue as something that none of the passersby even look up at because it represents the unquestioned and unconscious belief on which the magical world and government rest.
This blind spot in the consciousness of wizards—their exclusive hold of power and misuse of those they think of as “brethren” as well as the totally marginalized others—is the agony of the Wizarding world and the cause of the Voldemort crisis. Lord Voldemort, the Nazilike totalitarian madman of these books, is anything but an incomprehensible and aber rational evil. He is only the logical extension and symptom of the prejudice against nonwizards held by a great many ordinary witches and wizards.
That the statue is destroyed by the combat between Dumbledore and Voldemort at the end of Order of the Phoenix is telling. Dumbledore explains to Harry that this myth is a lie—and that the much-uglier truth it fails to represent will have horrible consequences.
“Sirius did not hate Kreacher [his family’s house-elf],” said Dumbledore. “He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike . . . The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.” (Order of the Phoenix, chapter thirty-seven)
In case we missed the point, there is a new statue in the Death Eater-dominated Ministry of Magic in Deathly Hallows: The great Atrium seemed darker than Harry remembered it. Previously a golden fountain had filled the center of the hall, casting shimmering spots of light over the polished wooden floor and walls. Now a gigantic statue of black stone dominated the scene. It was rather frightening, this vast sculpture of a witch and a wiz
ard sitting on ornately carved thrones, looking down at the Ministry workers toppling out of fireplaces below them. Engraved in foot-high letters at the base of the statue were the words MAGIC IS MIGHT . . .
Harry looked more closely and realized that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women, and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.
“Muggles,” whispered Hermione. “In their rightful place. Come on, let’s get going.” (Deathly Hallows, chapter twelve)
VoldeWar II is a war between those magical folk who are prejudiced against Muggles, and against witches and wizards with anything but demonstrable Pure Blood status, and the champions of the oppressed. The Nazi-style statuary with suggestions of bodies in Dachau showers isn’t meant to be subtle. Prejudice is the core evil, and it is a consequence of believing without question in the Founder’s Myth.
Nothing is what you think it is, no one is who surface appearances make you think they are. We’re clueless. As discussed, Ms. Rowling delivers this message by telling her stories in the third person limited omniscient view, the perspective of a house-elf sitting on Harry’s shoulder with a minicam. We see what Harry sees and know what Harry thinks, but because it’s not told in the first person, we’re lulled into thinking we know what’s going on.
Of course, blinded almost totally by our prejudices, we have little idea of what’s going on. For clues about the larger picture, we’d be infinitely better off with a house-elf on Dumbledore’s or Snape’s shoulder—or Voldemort’s! We get from Ms. Rowling a never-ending lesson on narrative misdirection. You don’t know what’s happening. Don’t trust what you believe or you’ll wind up like Harry, convinced that Snape killed Dumbledore and that he’s not coming back to Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows.
Ms. Rowling reinforces our cluelessness by making appearances so deceptive. Between Polyjuice Potion, double agents, and werewolves-in-hiding on the faculty, we can never be sure that people are who they seem to be. And, as with Rudolph and Hermey, it’s the freaks who are good guys. The excluded “other” our culture prejudices us against is by definition the postmodern hero. And there isn’t a good guy in the Harry Potter cast of characters who isn’t on the outs with the Pure Blood elites.
Check them out:
The Order of the Phoenix includes a werewolf, an escaped convict, an overtly fecund family of impoverished redheads, a common thief, a Metamorphmagus, a bartender overly fond of goats, a Squib, a half-giant, a magical negro, a Death Eater of unknown allegiance, a paranoid retired Auror with a magical eye and short fuse, all of whom are led by an arguably gay wizard with Machiavellian tendencies.
Dumbledore’s Army isn’t any closer to being invited to the right parties. You have a brainiac Mudblood, for starters, a crowd of the children from the poor Irish family mentioned above, a nutcase who “believes anything if there is no evidence for it,” the boy raised by his grandmother with memory issues and a love for plants, and, of course, they’re led by an orphan who grew up with Muggles and has a pronounced history of mental episodes.
Misfits? They make Hermey and Rudolph look conventional. They’re all misunderstood and periodically slandered by the Daily Prophet, imprisoned or put on trial by the Ministry, and at odds with one another.
They are, as such, the postmodern dream team: Olympic-grade freaks the Nazilike bad guys are obliged to despise and persecute, and we readers are morally bound to understand, even identify with.
Genre Busting
As already noted, Ms. Rowling has said the books spring from a “compost pile” of all the things she has read and, as she said about detective fiction, she’s not above bending the rules of any given genre to achieve her story goals. About fantasy fiction she says openly, “I was trying to subvert the genre.”3 She even thinks this is the English tradition:I’ve taken horrible liberties with folklore and mythology, but I’m quite unashamed about that, because British folklore and British mythology is a totally bastard mythology. You know, we’ve been invaded by people, we’ve appropriated their gods, we’ve taken their mythical creatures, and we’ve soldered them all together to make, what I would say, is one of the richest folklores in the world, because it’s so varied. So I feel no compunction about borrowing from that freely, but adding a few things of my own.4
So we get the pile of great books and literature genres behind Harry Potter that it is the business of this book to try to sort out. We’re not even halfway through and already Harry is the orphan detective hero of a postmodern gothic schoolboy novel written by Jane Austen for children. And it’s not just Harry. We’ve already seen Heathcliff with a touch of Dracula in Severus Snape, but in coming chapters I’ll be introducing you to the inner-Dante and Sydney Carton lurking just beneath the surface of the Potions master’s scowl.
So what?
The postmodern message of political correctness (“Resist your prejudices! You are a prisoner of your mistaken, unexamined beliefs!”) can be a little patronizing and preachy. But, as with Rudolph, the combination of our confusion about what kind of book we’re reading, our delight in the characters we meet, and our lowered defenses means we don’t resent the fire hose of instruction. Rowling’s huge message is taken in by her readers, old and young, without the usual skeptical filters in place because, after all, it’s a kids’ book.
The other reason we don’t object, and perhaps the point of this chapter, is that she isn’t teaching us anything we don’t already believe. Prejudice, courtesy of the air we breathe and the PC messages we receive as intolerance-immunization booster shots daily, everywhere, is the ultimate evil to resist, individually and as a nation and a culture.
Hence the civil rights movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, pride in having elected a black president (even by those in profound disagreement with him on issues), the Rainbow Coalition, and Barney the Dinosaur. Prejudice is not only the principal evil against which postmoderns battle; our belief that this evil is pervasive, even impossible to avoid or throw off, that prejudice is the “original sin” of the twenty-first century from which we must be delivered by something greater than ourselves—say, government regulation and advanced education—makes us doubt that we can know anything certainly and as it is.
The core postmodern belief is that the cultural assumptions that cloud, distort, and poison our thinking inevitably blind us to people and reality as they are. Only prejudiced and unloving fundamentalists and ideologues think they have a periscope that sees through prejudice to perceive the truth. And these people, who do not embrace relativism and ecumenism as core truths, are the intolerant people postmoderns will not tolerate.
Harry Potter is in this respect the postmodern epic. Ms. Rowling has told us as much in almost every interview she has given since Deathly Hallows was published. In the Time magazine 2008 “Person of the Year Runner-Up” article, it was put very succinctly:[Y]ou can tell how much this all matters to her, if it weren’t already clear from her 4,100-page treatise on tolerance. “I’m opposed to fundamentalism in any form,” she says. “And that includes in my own religion.”5
Like most of us, Ms. Rowling’s religion, qua postmodern, is being “opposed to fundamentalism in any form.” She misuses the word “fundamentalism,” which refers to a set of beliefs held by a specific, historic sect of Protestant Christians, the way most everyone else does, that is, as a synonym for ignorant, prejudiced people who are intolerant of any beliefs other than their own. She, of course, overlooks the irony that she is talking about these evil fundamentalist folk the way Death Eaters talk about Muggles.
Time magazine still rather overstates the case, as is their wont in highlighting Ms. Rowling’s secular agenda, in calling Harry Potter a “4,100-page treatise on tolerance.” But they do get half the story. The hook that catches readers around the world is the story of Harry—heroic “excluded other”—fighting against the Nazi funda
mentalist Pure Blood Death Eaters and their nightmare leader Voldemort.
Why are these bad guys so bad? It isn’t just the murders, the nastiness, or the snobbery; it’s the poisoned, prejudicial thinking that they are better than others because of their blood status that we are obliged to hate. Being “Pure Blood,” of course, is just a metaphor for any caste of social class, education, or privilege. They are evil and Dumbledore and Harry are heroic because they are archetypes of our beliefs about good and bad. Harry confirms and buttresses in his readers’ minds their core beliefs against prejudice and ideological thinking in our time.
The Centrality of Love: A Step Beyond Postmodernism
One consequence of a narrative that only condemns the inevitable prejudices, intolerance, and violence that come with blinkered thinking is that because nothing can be known for certain, there is no truth per se, and, hence, no good or evil. Only relative good and evil based on personal or community advantage are possible in a world without an absolute truth that can be known.
Neglecting the obvious contradiction of “there is no truth” as an absolute statement of truth, relativism bordering on nihilism is one evident consequence of postmodern thinking. One need only talk to a group of teenagers to see their unblinking, unwavering faith in the proposition that everything is relative. Thinking about “good” and “evil” is to be judgmental—and, outside of being a fundamentalist or a Nazi or a Klansman, there isn’t much lower one can go than being judgmental.