..:: Muggle Matters ::..: Merlin's Manifesto: Further Support of Chiasm in the Harry Potter series

(Disclaimer:
This essay weighs in at 50 pages at "college rule" [double spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 point Times New Roman font in an MS Word document], my heaviest yet on this site, and maybe anywhere. That is basically in the lower-to-mid qualifying end of length for an MA thesis. Of course, this may be my last major post before July 21st [and even after that it will take me a while to process book 7, even though I will probably complete a first reading within 3 or 4 days time] ... I'm not saying I am leaving the site at all, just that I have a busy summer ahead of me with much writing, research and editing in a number of venues. And so this has been kind of a last ditch, final shot manifesto of what means the most to me in the series, before book 7 closes the series in July and I have to begin approaching it thinking about it as a closed corpus. Shoot, if this is MA thesis length, I sure hope the one after book 7 is out is not PHD dissertation length ... but then this 50 pages here has a lot of more informal styling from online discourse etc [jokes etc] than you would find in a normal MA thesis or PhD dissertation, so I could not really claim to have written an MA thesis here ... but still ... lol

I just wanted to warn the reader of that before the reader sets out on this little mental adventure of mine [meaning the word "mental" in all possible ways, including the one in which Ron most often uses it]. I also want to warn the reader that the larger portion of the essay deals with the conceptual matters of the proposed structures, and my "hard evidence" for my own reading of the Potter series is given at the end in much more condensed format and style [ok: comment here from Merlin wearing his editorial hat, after looking back over the essay - um, Merlin the writer/composer was not quite, um, accurate in stating that the final, hard evidence, portion is in a more condensed format and style - he has consequently been labeled "Merlin the Morosely Verbose panderer of prevarications" and been shuffled off to bed]. The conceptual exposition, however, is done by way of Potter specific material throughout, and so it is not as if the essay is, for the most part, a completely non-Potter essay on literary theory, with a little bit of Potter material thrown in at the end to try to justify putting the otherwise largely unrelated, or at least not concretely related, theoretical essay on a Potter specific site. I wanted here, however, at the outset, to let the reader know exactly what to expect before he or she gets too involved in the essay.)

This is material gleaned from recent "reading" of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (actually the audio book in MP3 format driving across Pennsylvania overnight ... apologies if there are any Scholastic/Bloomsbury discrepancies in the GOF material, since the version I have been listening to is the Bloomsbury edition read by Stephen Fry, but anywhere where I cite actual page numbers, rather than simply the chapter a ting is located in, the page number citations are from the Scholastic US editions), but it also contains considerations from the rest of the series we have thus far because the material is focussed on and organized in a chiastic reading of the series (there is a bit of primer intro on chiasm and etc before getting to specifics, but I do get to specific details of the books) . I will be using what is called a "foil" - a proposed similar, but competing thing of the same kind (IE to show both similarities and differences, but ultimately to propose and argue for my own suggested reading over and above the other). I will get into that in a moment, after some recap of what my proposed structure, the chiasm, is in general.

Right off the bat though, I just wanted to be clear from the outset that in using somebody else's theory as a foil I am not trying necessarily to slam on them. I see some valid and helpful comments and insights coming out of their reading, which I will note, and even though I ultimately disagree with their overall system/theory, I must note that the foil method would not be possible here if they had not written their proposed theory and that I find the foil method very helpful on the positive side for further clarifying and working out my own thoughts on the chiastic structurem and sometimes their exposition has even more directly positively impacted my own reading, as will be mentioned in specific detail. So, I really do view it as a good thing in the exchange of ideas and dialectic that such other theories have been written and would not want to appear to be slamming on them. The particular foil I am using is a structure proposed by Joyce Odell/Red Hen in her essay in John Granger's (ed.) Who Killed Albus Dumbledore? published last Christmas (and there is some good stuff in that book ... Harte's stuff on the Black Family Tree is really good).

CHIASM 101

(Note: If this material sounds vaguely familiar at points, and you read the recent conversation between Morganna and myself in the combox thread on a just previous post ... I lifted my brief explanation of chiasm from there and just edited it up and filled it out some.)

A chiasm is a structure used in ancient literature that has a number of "elements" or "sections." The name "chiasm" comes from the Greek letter "chi" - the "X" letter - and the structure itself visually resembles one half of the X when the X is split vertically (cf below - just by nature it is usually the left half, in languages that read from left to right, like Greek, Latin and English, but in something like Hebrew, that reads from right to left, it can be the right half) . The chiasm structure can be applied in varying levels of length and size: a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, an individual story arc that spans several chapters, a book ... a series. One of the reasons I suspect Rowling of using chiastic structure is that it was so common in the ancient world, where writing was rare. Writing was not non existent but, as I said, rare, and the shift from oral tradition to written text is usually a key point in the tradition development of any classical story or work (in some ways, on the natural literary level, it is a "betrayal" of the oral tradition because it kind of radically freezes and concretize one particular version of the story, leaving behind the many other strands of the oral tradition life of the story, but at the same time, this is a very natural human thing to do in grasping and presenting unified meaning to a larger audience ... kind of the way life always takes place in"bitter-sweet" choices).

I see chiasm as a much more likely candidate (than the foil that I will describe as the "tripping billies" structure) for the over all structure of Rowling's work for reasons I will discuss more at length in a few moments, but also, on a simply preliminary level, because of the prevalence of the structure in ancient literature, in both Semitic literature and other Ancient Near Eastern works (standardly referred to by the acronym ANE), as well as Greco-Roman literature. When I was taking Hebrew I asked the professor about a line we had just translated, "would this be a good example of chiasm?" and he replied "well, yes, but not necessarily conscious in the way we think of conscious in our day ... they pretty much simply had chiasm on the brain." The reason the ancients had chiasm on the brain was the oral stage of literary traditions - there were several such devices that facilitated, say a bard whose job it was to tell the cycle of stories that became the Illiad or the Odyssey, being able to remember the stories. Another such device in Hebrew Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms, is know as the "acrostyc" - in which each successive line begins with, in sequence, a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Now, I just said that such devices are strongly tied to the oral stage of literary traditions, but the chiasm is named after a letter in an alphabet, which is an element of the written stage, so that might seem a bit off to the observant readier. The structure operated well in advance of the written stage but a classical bard or poet may not have thought "better use a chiasm here" definitely not "hmmmm, I bet the letter X would make a good structuring device to memorize this story by." Structures like this operated in those stages (although I would guess that while a chiasm operated in oral stages, something like the acrostyc is more properly developed after the alphabet is developed, in the stage when basic composition begins to be done in the writing stage), but it was not till later that somebody analyzed and cataloged the structure and named the already existing phenomenon a "chiasm." And the "chiastic way of thinking" has continued long beyond the stage where oral tradition was more the norm, into even our own day when our mode of literature involves one individual human author composing in written language with an alphabet (at least that is what I am going to argue about Rowling), only now as more of a way to organize meaning, and less focussed on facilitating memorization.

Chiasm Structure Specifics

A chiasm has two "legs," like the two legs in one half of an "X" split vertically (the diagrams below will help a lot) and each "leg" has the same number of" elements ." The elements/sections in the first half of a chiasm (the top "leg") correspond to those in the second half (the bottom "leg) and there is a "crux" element in the dead middle or center that is the interpretive key. Each second half element is a further development of its counter-part in the first half and the development in the second half element of any pair (development from the first half element of the pair) is made by way of passing through the crux in the middle, and thus the chiasm is characterized primarily by a forward linear motion (more on this in a moment).

A chiasm can have any number of elements, and it can be an odd number or an even number. In even numbered chiasms it is the connection between the two inmost elements that is the interpretive crux, whereas in odd-numbered chiasms the crux is a single element (as in the 7 book HP series, where GOF is the single element crux with no individual pairing).

Here the old adage is really true: a picture is worth a thousand words.

A 6 element chiasm would have the connection between C and C1 as the crux and would look like:

A
.....B
..........C
..........(Crux is connection between C and C1)
..........C1
.....B1
A1

A 7 element chiasm would have the single "D" element as its crux and would look like:

A
.....B
..........C
...............D (Crux)
..........C1
.....B1
A1

(This holds special meaning for me, the D line, which I catch at the Fordham and Grand Concourse station in the Bronx, is my pathway to the wild, wide world of Manhattan lol)

Thus my proposed structure for the Potter series looks like:

A- SS/PS
.....B - COS
..........C - POA
...............D - GOF (Crux)
..........C1 - OotP
.....B1 - HBP
A1 - DH

Similar structures

There are a couple of "other" structures similar to chiasm. The two most common are the "ring composition" and the "inclusio." These structures have some similar elements to chiasm, although usually the method of organization and construction of meaning have a different way of emphasizing things. An inclusio means simply a paired opening and closing element such that everything between the two forms a distinct and discrete unit of meaning in which the elements of it hang together in a distinct way connected to the nature of the opening and closing elements (Latin uses compound verbs this way a lot ... everything between the main verb and the helping verb is understood to be uniquely related to the verbal action in some uniquely unified way). The "ring composition" is like the chiasm but with emphasis only on the opening and closing pair and the crux, so it is kind of more focused on a fluid circular motion in which the relation of the opening and closing elements is seen as a more fluid motion that is defined by passing through the diametrically opposed crux (the midpoint of the circumference of the circle or "ring," which would be directly across from the paired opening and closing elements, as the other terminus of a diameter that transverses the circle completely in half).

The chiasm contains much more of a linear concept of time and flow but the chiasm and the ring structure, as well as the inclusio, can be be used right alongside each other (comprised of the very same elements). In fact they may not be distinct in some cases, in fact in most cases. In most cases you simply have a structure evident and you wind up saying, "I think it is primarily along the lines of simply inclusio, or ring, but at points it does show evidence of a more linear concept of progression and of more distinct elements that strains more towards chiasm"- or maybe you argue that "this work definitely goes to the level of full chiastic structuring" etc.
(In other words, if you have a chiasm you always also have, at least to some concrete degree or another, a ring, the circular motion of which is what I will describe as the key difference between chiasm and the foil I use in this post, what I call the "tripping billies" structure, and you have an inclusio. Actually a chiasm would be a structure composed of multiple layered rings and inclusios. Likewise a ring always is an inclusio. But the converse direction is not necessarily true: just because you have an inclusio does not mean you have a ring, and just because you have a ring [and thus an inclusio] does not mean you have a chiasm. In what I will describe below as the 3-4-5 and 2-4-6 "inner chiasms," they would technically, on their own, simply be rings, but I refer to them as chiasms because of their connection to what I am arguing for as the chiasm of the whole series. In a number of cases I talk about how, for instance, the elements of a 2-4-6 chiasm, that has its most concrete elements in those books, also has latent echoes in the other books and connections such as the 3-5 connection. There may also be present in the series elemental connections that are technically only inclusios, with the elemental connection not passing through the interpretive crux of book 4, but here in this post I am only focusing on connections where I believe I can demonstrate the book 4 crux connection as well).

Chiasm, Image and Language in Literature

I will discuss in the next section the primary foil I have been talking about and my specific disagreement with it in favor of the chiastic reading (and why I do not see it as a possible complimentary structuring alongside or with chiasm as I do see, as I just said, that being possible with an inclusio or a ring structure). For here, though, what I want to note, before hand, is that the primary advantage I see in the chiasm is its ability to work with imagery as imagery in a text (or as the philosophers like to say "image qua image" - precisely as image), rather than simply material plot development. The material plot moves along on its own terms but congruous with the imagery, character developments and other elements that are the elements of the chiasm. In short, I think that a chiastic reading makes the most sense out of the work as a whole, holistically as a piece of literature - rather than simply a material plot line.

I will, in the section after next, defend my position with specific details from text. For here though I want to fill the reader in with a little more theory on literary elements. My own concentration on these things came into sharper focus this past semester in a paper I did (that I am working on beefing up for shopping around for publication in peer-reviewed academic journals in my field) on the use of animal metaphors, and particularly the predatory image of the lion (a nice Gryffindor reference, eh? or actually a combination of the Slytherin predatory character with the valiance of the lion?), in the book of Jeremiah.

One of the things I need to correct and beef up in that paper before I shop it is the language I used for metaphors and further exposition of what has gone on in that field recently, developments in terminology used for speaking of Biblical use of metaphor. I poorly used a set of terms borrowed from what is known as "semiotics" or "sign theory." The word "semiotics" comes from the same root as the word we use when speaking of the definitional range of a specific word - "semantics" - and that was the main problem with my using the terms "signified" and "signifier" to speak about metaphor - that those terms and that field deal primarily with single words as "signs," and do so along the lines of a more arbitrary approach to the matter of "meaning" - a "one to one correspondence between signified and signifier"(this field actually began largely, or at least in such a concentrated way, in St Augustine's theory of signs in his De Dcotrina Christiana, referred to affectionately by my friends/colleagues focusing in Historical Theology as the DDC, and the big name for more contemporary semiotics is Umberto Ecco, author of the famous The Name of the Rose, the book they made the movie of with Sean Connery).

The thing with a metaphor is that it does not rest in arbitrary correlations but in shared qualitative aspects. The language that is more proper in studying metaphors is "tenor" (the thing metaphorized, like the enemy) and "vehicle" (the metaphorical element used, like an attacking lion) introduced by Ivor Richards in his 1936 The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Some have tried, more recently, to modify the language to be more accurate, such as Max Black in his 1963 Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, where he proposed the respective terminology of "focus" and "frame."

I have even recently honed some of my own thoughts on something that used to sort of bug me in Latin class and now presents me with what I believe to be poetics as a mid-level between semiotics and metaphor. It always used to bug me that when the literal "with fire and iron," as in "they attacked the town with fire and iron" was found the facile "handy" quick translation was offered of "with torches and swords" (this is a very "solely semiotic" way to do it), and I would think "no, it means more than just the mere physical objects, it carries an idea in the language of humanity wielding the elements themselves." Now I begin to see this as a poetic hybrid, a unique level of language - not merely semiotics but also not fully metaphor.

I go into all this detail here because that seems to me to be what literature is about: images and language, the way they are c0nstructed and used and how they are intertwined with things like the material plot of a story to create meaning. This is where I think a chiastic type reading is distinctively more accurate because of its ability to incorporate the role of the images more holistically into the whole thing.

The "Tripping Billies" "Unified Theory of Everything"

This proposed structure comes, as far as I can tell, mainly from Joyce Odell/Red Hen but the name "Unified Theory of Everything" comes from Wendy B. Harte/Professor Mum (it will become evident in a moment, from my comments, the difficulty I had in pinning this information down more solidly ... RH speaks of her own specific proposed structure, noting it in terms of Harte's title "UToE" on p 207 of the WKAD book). I find it easiest to build my exposition of this theory by verbatim quotation of sources, but before I do I would just like to be clear that the name "tripping billies" is not used at all (as far as I have seen) by the proponents of the theory I am about to describe. It is my own way of describing the "hiccup" feel the theory leaves me with (as in there was a big hiccup in the middle of the series [book 4] before it, on this theory, went and repeated itself without much reason for why it repeated itself). The name "tripping billies" is completely my own way of speaking of the theory - actually I took it from the title of a Dave Matthews Band song on the "Crash" album in the 1990s (in fact, doing this piece generates warm fuzzy feeling for me about that music and I haven't listened to it in a long time so I am popping it in now - they put on a great show on that tour, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals [thank you, Sirius Black] opening and Matthews did maybe one of the best live covers of All Along the Watchtower I have ever personally heard).

So, first, here is basically the RH theory of structure as best a I can pin it down: books 5, 6 and 7 replicate (she calls it a "redux") the specific plot elements of, respectively, books 1, 2 and 3. Thus the difference in pairings from a chiastic structure would be RH's 1-5 connection and the 3-7 connection (rather than 1-7 and 3-5 in my proposed chiastic structure, with the 2-6 connection remaining the same). I had thought I had read in RH's text somewhere in Granger's Who Killed Albus Dumbledore? that the idea was of book 4 as an unique (IE no other book paired with it) interpretive key, which would have been a plus for the presentation of the theory, in my opinion; but I could not find it in looking back over any of RH's material I have access to, including the WKAD book (it may have been in Harte's piece in the same book but I thought I looked back over that too ... and I scanned back through some recent comments by RH on Granger's HogPro site and even tried scanning around on RH's actual site too, but could not locate anything ... if it was in the WKAD book and I missed it, if somebody knows where that particular is and wants to drop the info in the combox on this post, that would be most agreeable and kind ... in my opinion such a statement would at least make the theory more comprehensive and thorough as a proposed meta-structure).

The most salient statement of this theory by RH that I am able to put my finger on at present comes from her piece in the WKAD book, p. 200:

... if Rowling holds to the established pattern she has set up; wherein the first three books of the series are being echoed by the last three;

and on page 207 RH writes:

... we were all being set up to watch some version of a redux of the events of book 3, The PRISONER OF AZKABAN, play out in Book 7.

In the margin of my book on the p. 200 citaion I have written next to this: " Where has she provided any thorough support for this?" If anyone else has read the piece and can show me where in her piece in that book, or anywhere else, RH has provided more thorough support (or if anyone, after reading the rundown I give here, would like to provide their own evidence culled from the HP texts), I would be more than happy to hear it in the comments thread of this post.

Here are the basic correlations necessary to support for RH's theory in general, 1-5, 2-6, 3-7. As for the last one (3-7), it is not something that, at this time, by its very nature, can be corroborated in and of itself ... since book 7 has not yet been released and there is no text from which to cull evidence. This in and of itself is not a problem, if one is making an argument for the probability of that particular correlation. The proper way to go about it is to argue for the probability of the 3-7 correlation (as a method by which to predict what will happen in book 7), but the way to do that is offering evidence for at least the likelihood (although it is even better if you can demonstrate the logic itself and how it contributes to the meaning) for the 3-7 seven connection by way of demonstrating the other two connected pairings, 1-5 and 2-6.

2-4-6 Chiasms

As far as any debate between the "tripping billies" proposed structure and the proposed chiasm structure, evidence of the 2-6 connection is not really that helpful in choosing between the two, since it is the same in both proposed structures. I'll list here briefly just three examples of 2-6 connections that I think support the 2-6 connection, which, as I said, fits both proposed structures, but also how I think the movement flows through book 4 (and my examples will be specifically image-based, as per my comments above on the import of images).

The first is what I have called elsewhere on this site the "backfiring slugs" reading. In book 2 Ron's broken wand backfires on him when he tries "eat slugs" on Malfoy and he then is himself chucking up the vile things for the rest of the day, including one last little episode while polishing things in the trophy room ... hurling a slug or two right onto one of Tom Riddle's trophies or badges. In book 6 we meet a little bit larger slug (well, actually quite a bit larger one) ... Horace Slughorn, and I suspect that he "backfired" somehow, like Ron's wand and stoumach, right onto the same character, Tom Riddle, under his present name of Lord Voldemort. The reason I think the backfiring is so key is that in book four we meet a magical creature with a rather sudden, powerful and dangerous case of flatulence ... the blast ended skrewts (I feel alright mentioning flatulence here because of JKR's mention of chiuahuah flatulence in that "Only For Girls" piece on her site, and while the skrewts may be more physically dangerous, I think that the weiner dog's wind would definitely be more, um, aesthetically disturbing ... although I do think that "the weiner dog's wind" would make an excellent name for another wizarding band to open up for the Weird Sisters sometime - but maybe, y'know, give the name some more WW styling, like "Wizard Dog's Wind").

I will more properly address below the specifics of what I call 3-4-5 chiasms (3-5 connection by way of passing through book 4), as support for the chiastic reading, but here, because I am dealing with a magical creature as an image, I will relate briefly what I think is a 3-4-5 chiasm of magical creatures, thus showing the import of magical creatures as an image in the series. First of all, books 3, 4 and 5 are the only books in which we have Hagrid teaching our trio care of magical creatures and we all know, from Granger's alchemical work [see below] how important Hargid is to the series. In book 3 he introduces us to Buckbeak, the royal and stately, and [properly] proud, hypogriff. In book 5 he shows us other winged horses that are a bit darker and definitely tied to Rowling's themes of death, the thestrals. In book 4 is where we are introduced to the fact that Hagrid's fascination with the "monster" side, or magical creatures that are less obviously beautiful or grand and stately, might be something central to the works, as an image, in that he is able not only to get a dragon egg from a stranger and get himself in hot-water with a singed beard, like with Norbert in book 1, but actually to teach a class on a "less than friendly" magical creature - those same blast ended skrewts that we just talked about as a symbol of things that backfire powerfully.

So in the "Hagrid's pets" 3-4-5 chiasm we move from book 3's "wow pretty stately and powerful bird you got there Hagrid, I mean, um horse you got there, I mean lion, I mean .... um ...", to book 4's "Hagrid, what is that thing? not quite as nice as the hypogriff you had last year, a tad bit darker and the thing looks like its butt, at least I think that's its butt, could take my leg off at the knee", and finally to book 5's "These [thestrals] look reptilian, starved and downright ghostly, Hagrid ... what's that you say? death? ... yes, you're right - seeing/coping with death has changed me ..." Below I will touch on some other book 4 ways that Hagrid is very important to the series on the image and character level ... but hopefully taking a little extra time painting details on this [magical creatures] chiasm has helped convey the way I am thinking about the inter-relation of images with plot and thus why I am writing on this and siding with chiasm distinctly over against what I have called the "tripping billies."

The second 2-4-6 combo I'll point to is the spiders Ron loves so much. In book 2 we meet Aragog, just before he puts Harry and Ron on the menu for his colony. In book 6 Aragog dies (again, the death theme). In book 4 we have some beginning hints of death imagery in regards to spiders, by way of damage to spiders, when, in the maze, it takes both Harry and Cedric to blast the big 8-legger over before it does a number on both of them.

The third 2-4-6 connection is one I have spoken of on this site before as the "house of seekers." In these three books I think we see the image of the Quidditch seeker as a unique carrier of meaning in a series of seekers in relation to Harry the Seeker. The book 2 seeker is Malfoy becoming Slytherin seeker. He seeks Harry (the golden soul/snitch - cf Granger's work on alchemy) as an enemy. The book 6 seeker is Ginny, who seeks Harry as lover, and gets him after she fills in for him in catching the snitch to win the game (I forget where but somewhere in HBP leading up to the last match Harry specifically sees his chances with Ginny as directly tied to the outcome of the match ... and he is right, just a bit mistaken about who it will be that will win the match by catching the literal snitch). But the Malfoy element that makes book 6 a pair with book 2 is the way Harry continually scours the Marauders' Map for Malfoy, from above, the way he scours the Quidditch pitch for the Snitch in matches. The development comes from the fact that Harry will have to transform Malfoy seeking him into him seeking Malfoy, and he will have to transform it in a crucially qualitative way: Malfoy sought him as an enemy and he watched the map for Malfoy like an enemy - but to survive with his soul in tact, even if losing his life, he will have to change to seeking Malfoy as a friend.

The 2-6 connection of the house of seekers passes through the heavy territory of book 4. First you have the most central seeker image in the whole series, I think, Victo Krum, who I think will seek Harry (and Hermione - as the only 2 people he felt he could ever really connect with) as savior in book 7. Moreover, on the death theme, you have, in book 4, the house of seekers with their love dashed: Heaven (air) and Earth come together in the persons of Cedric, the earth (Hufflepuff) house seeker, and Cho, seeker for the house of sky (Ravenclaw), but then their love is dashed by Wormtails curse of Cedric in the graveyard at Voldy's command. (In regards to Krum and the core of the seeker image, sometime on here I posted a great observation from my brother Steve on the seeker image, basically how what Krum actually does in the World Cup, catching the snitch but losing the match, echoes the Gospel call to avoid the final mistake of gaining the world but losing your soul).

The Tripping Billies missing link: any support given for a 1-5 connection?

Moving on (between the weiner dog, the skrewts and Aragog's corpse, the air was getting, um, a bit stale there, at best), as I have said, the pairings in both competing proposed structures that involve book 7 are not technically viable as "evidence" until we actually have a book 7 text in our public hands to examine. However I will include here something from RH's WKAD essay that I think is an insightful reading of character and theme and the role of character in relation to theme in a proposed 3-7 correlation that is built upon observations on Sirius Black in book 3 and what has been built up concerning Snape throughout the whole series, but particularly in book 6, Half Blood Prince. RH suggests that the POA revelation of Sirius as innocent of the murder he was framed for will be fulfilled in a book 7 revelation that, while Snape did kill DD with an AK atop the tower, he did it in cooperation with DD, as "Dumbledores man" (WKAD, p. 201), and I think it is a really interesting theory and based in a pretty good read of how Rowling uses characters in plot development.

The "nullification" of the 2-6 and 3-7 connections as evidence for the "tripping billies" over the chiasm structure, however, leaves the 1-5 connection as a central lynch pin for the demonstration of the "tripping billies" as a proposed structure. I have combed RH's text as best I can at present, but have seen no specific evidence offered for 1-5 connections (and this may be due to lack of time on my part, and, again, whoever might wish to find the evidence, either in RH's text or from their own combing of the actual HP books, I would be more than happy to listen in the combox of this present post).

My Conceptual Problems with the "Tripping Billies"

My main problem with the "tripping billies" structure proposal is not the fact that it might be a competing structure to chiasm, for the ring composition and an inclusio would also be such that somebody might argue for them and I would be more inclined to toy with the idea. Somebody might easily argue "I don't think it goes to the level of chiasm, I think you are stretching it on the proverbial procrustian bed if you take it to that level of concrete chiasm." I myself have had such arguments with myself on other works ( lol self-against-self arguments in the cell of Davey Jones locker right next to the Jack Sparrows - from the recent 3rd pirates movie which blew me away and I am currently working up an essay on). Over last Christmas I watched the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with mine and Pauli's and Lissa's friends Nathan and Julie. At the end you have the double wedding and I thought "HEY! 4 elements, just like 4 element cosmology and 4 humor anthropology! Now I have to figure out who is what" - and after a while I decided, "I think Austen is definitely using the symbolism of the number 4 as two pairs, maybe one pair as attraction/compatibility between those who appear to be opposites and are revealed to be complimentary on a deeper level (Darcy and Elizabeth) and the other pair as complimentary on the surface as well (Bingley and Jane) ... but it feels like tying it to the specific 4 elements cosmology would be a stretch on it. It just doesn't feel like she is taking it on that particular level of concrete 1-to-1 correlation between the characters and the 4 elements and to try to make it fit would be to put it on the procrustean bed." (The truth here is not that I do not think the qualities are not there, but simply that they are not isolated so prominently in each character as is done with, say the 4 houses in Harry Potter - for instance Darcey and Elizabeth both have qualities of at least water, air and fire - cunning/chaos, thought and spirit - mixed in them).

My main contention against the "tripping billies" structure is that it seems to me to stay only on the level of strictly material plot. I recently wrote to Pauli in an email (discussing/forecasting writing this post): My main contention will be that the RH structure focuses exclusively on material action elements of plot, and that her exposition brings in at most "themes" and "character development" only when it is convenient. The point above about correlation between Sirius in book 3 and Snape in book 7 would be an example of such drawing in of "character/character-development" and themes, and it is only fair to say that while the context of RH making the connection still seems to me to be mainly the convenience on only the material plot discussion, I did note above that she let that stream carry her into some cool characterization and theme focus.

I also have to note, however, that in another place in RH's WKAD text I see instances of a lack of recognition of the proper role of character development. She writes concerning Malfoy's refusal of help from Snape in HBP:
"For that matter; when over the entire preceding 5 books has Malfoy ever refused Snape?"
(WKADp. 168).
The context here is an assertion (by RH) that Malfoy's shift in disposition towards Snape must have had something to do with some clear directive from Voldy in the task of killing DD, to do with Voldy trying to hold Snape over a barrel from helping the Malfoys avoid their punishment (RH writes here of Draco's shift:
"And if he is suddenly doing it now, doesn't that suggest that he has been given a compelling reason?").

I definitely think there can be elements in the mix that concern Draco reading between certain lines and having some comprehension of what is going on between Voldy and Snape - the boy can definitely read politics. But RH's comment seems to me to take that and "engorgio" it in isolation from character development - the result being "engorgioing" the shift from what might be just Draco reading between lines, into Voldy giving concrete statements. The real net result is missing the characterization - Draco's comments are not cover ups, at least I don't think they are. He really has "grown up" a bit in the world of politics and wishes Severus Snape to keep his hooked nose out of the matter (much like the map tells Snape to do in book 3), in part for the stated motive of glory, but, I think, also for the unstated motive that Severus not foul the thing up (Draco, in his manic fear, would want no chance that DD dying could be construed as anything other than him fulfilling the stipulation Voldy made for him if he and his parents are to continue living - although in fact in the end it must be known as Snape indeed stepping in and doing the deed, which leaves Draco, Narcissa and Lucius in a questionable place with Voldy). In fact, in support of RH's statements of Snape as "DD's man," I think this is a pretty good point ... Draco knows Voldy's mind and is conforming to his wishes, Snape should be able to see that from the get-go ... I just disagree with the structure RH proposes as the way of getting there :) ...

I also think RH demonstrates well the role of the Unbreakable Vow in the political motivations and movements, albeit I think some of her comments reveal a large deficiency in understanding of the place, role and, most importantly, nature of vows in the ancient world that forms a backdrop for Rowling's world and something like the UBV. Oaths/vows were sworn not by the name of the officiator, the priest of the diety, but by the name of the deity itself ... in short they were part of the same sort of transcendent binding magical contracts as the Goblet of Fire. The officiator was/is only a conduit, not a source (this is from some comments in WKAD p. 177, but it is more of a side point here ... but you can see the ancient style of oaths etc, I think, in the way Bella and her wand function primarily as a conduit for the UBV magic: the binding magic comes from her wand but is occasioned by the actual vows spoken by the 2 parties. I think RH is way off in thinking Bella would have the authority to let Snape and Narcissa out of the deal - the magic is only managed by the wizard, not created by the wizard to the level that they could nullify it like that. It should also be noted that this element of the "source" of magic corresponds to some of John Granger's comments on invocational vs incantational magic in his Looking For God in Harry Potter book on Tyndale press. I believe that what makes it incantational, and not invocational, is the fact that there is no personal deity involved [although Voldy is sure trying to become one], but this does not keep magic from having a transcendant quality in the Potterverse as Rowling has written it) .

I also believe that the "tripping billies" structure provides less concrete sense, in that you simply come out with repetition as the core element, without much concept of movement or logical progression (not meaning a progression dictated by "logic proper" but a progression with its own discernible logic ... stories have their own way of making meaning, not necessarily identical with the proper logic of discursive reason, although I would argue that even a discursive essay has a "plot" - it is usually called "flow of argument"). When you combine this point with what I wrote to Pauli in that email, what you get is, I think, a certain flatness of a solely linear concept of "plot." Above I compared the chiastic structure with the ring and inclusio structures and said that the chiasm provides a more linear concept than the other two. Where I think the "tripping billies" errs is in going to the radical other end of the spectrum from something like ring and inclusio structures, in going to the level of a radically solely linear concept of plot (the vocabulary RH chooses sort of hints at this too - she speaks of a "redux" or a simple "leading back through" the same material elements ... in fact, the same Latinate roots that compose the word "redux" also compose our English word "reduction").

Final Caviats

As a final section before heading into my specific proposed evidence for the chiastic structure of the series I just want to be perfectly clear as to what I am about here. I will not be using any pejorative or pedantic attitude language about Red Hen or her writing or thinking. As I said, I view the rise of this proposed structure (which I have called the "tripping billies") as a fine, albeit, according to me, inaccurate, thing because it provides an opportunity to delve into the issues in a way that has helped me to clarify my own thoughts on the chiasm more clearly and concisely. In truth I think this is the way the best dialogs work. My main contention is with the accuracy of the "tripping billies" structure and how that, as I see it, inaccuracy inter-relates with the elements of examining the works holistically as literature in the highest sense of the word. I will, and have already, of course, criticized the elements in the theory I think are inaccurate, but I don't want to appear to be doing anything more than that (as can and does often happen on the web) - I disagree with RH's reading here but I think examining exactly how I disagree is a profitable way to discuss the positives I see in chiastic reading, and that is the whole of it.

Beyond that, may the best commentator win and I could, on July 21st 2007, be proven to be completely barking mad - as woefully wrong as Horace Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron (always LOVE that line, slip it in whenever I find an opening lol).

As a point of clarification, I do, however, concretely disagree with the "tripping billies" proposed structure in a way that I do not disagree with other structures proposed by, say, John Granger. Fortunately at this level of writing I do not have to cite secondary sources as thoroughly, and so I will save space, but if any wish for citations of these elements in Granger's writing I can look up the sources pretty readily (although, the reason I could do it so readily is that these elements are pretty much his main schtick, or at least one of a few select schticks that are his bread and butter, and so I do not anticipate needing to do too much citation work because any who have read Granger at all will probably recognize them immediately). Granger deals in literary alchemy and alchemical structure. Thus he proposes the seven stage alchemical process as the structure of the whole series and the three stage alchemical process as the structure of the final 3 books. The evidence especially for the three stage process is pretty solid, I would even say densely solid: the black stage involves Sirius Black dying in book 5, the white stage involves Albus (white in Latin) Dumbledore dying in book 6, the third stage is the red-rubedo and we have a character named Rubeus Hagrid. I do not, however, see this as controverting the chiastic structure in the way I would see the "tripping billies" structure as controverting it (who knows maybe if the "tripping billies" winds up being defensible in the end, but I still also find confirmation of the chiastic structure in book 7, I will have to adjust this statement and work to show how the "tripping billies" can operate as a structuring element for the physical/material plot alongside the chiasm as the structuring of the "meaning" plot ... I don't think that will be the case - I think the chiastic and the "tripping billies" are divergent enough on a tight enough circle of element types to be seen as mutually exclusive - , but it is theoretically possible and I have to admit that fact, at least until the text of book 7 can be examined publicly, if I am going to be an honest thinker in genuine dialog). The alchemical structure can operate in concert with the chiastic, and indeed I think it is one of the marks of the greatness of Rowling's work that she has done such a melding.

I would even propose other structures alongside the chiastic and the alchemical, working in concert with them (and this other structure I am about to propose is actually more akin to the motion and breakdown of the alchemical), such as a structure based in the 4 cardinal virtues and 3 theological virtues in the Christian Tradition (I think I have discussed this here on this site but it was a while ago so I will touch on it here briefly again). I do not necessarily think that each book can be tied out neatly to a specific virtue (much as I did not think the use of 4 in the wedding in Pride and Prejudice could be tied out so neatly to the specific 4 elements, but somebody could very well prove me wrong on both points by doing further conceptual work on those matters). But I do think that there is something to the first four Potter books being much more "who-done-it" material mystery in their particular style, just as the 4 cardinal virtues deal with the natural level, and the last 3 books being more mystical and psychological in their particular style (as in the piece I wrote on here once about Harry's psychological duress in the closer of book 5, speaking of it in the language of Bob Dylan's song "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"), like the three theological virtues.

Authorial Intent

Upon reading alot of what is above some might have trouble buying it (or maybe, like some of the guys I used to work construction with used to say about a measurement or degree of squareness that was acceptable but not ideal, some might say "I'll buy that ... I'm not sure how much I would be willing to pay for it, but I'll buy it if the price is low enough"). I'm sure people had trouble buying some of Granger's material before the Rowling interview quotes were dug out where she said the 4 houses were indeed based in the 4 elements and that she was not sure she would want to be a witch, but would love to be an alchemist. I am not expecting any such bold confirmations of my proposed chiastic reading here, but that does not change my adherence to it just as strongly, at least until I can examine book 7.

The main crux of this issue is authorial intent. I tend to be of the literary school of criticism known as "new criticism," whose war-cry is "don't commit the fallacy of authorial intent!" - meaning, don't assume that just because the author did not consciously intend it, or maybe even sub-consciously, that it is not there in the work. I think that with Rowling on this matter there is at least sub-conscious intent, although I accept the distinct possibility that she could come out and say that she in no way consciously intended a chiasm ... I would just have to disagree with her on whether or not it is there anyway :)

To support this contention, I offer two pieces of argumentation and one other example. The first piece of argumentation is Granger's comments in his newest book, on Rowling's mine-sweeper score on the expert level ... 99 seconds (that is insanely fast ... my own best is 169 seconds, and I think that was a fluke lol, although I have gotten under 200 seconds a number of times ... but my brother still has me beat with 159 seconds). Granger explains that Rowling has a brain that is SUPER wired for pattern thinking. My second argument piece is that Rowling was a classics major at Exeter and it would be HIGHLY unlikely that she would not have been familiar with chiastic structuring to some degree or other. I would contend that when a mind like Rowling's encounters structures such as chiasm it would be very hard for her not to get "chiasm on the brain" (cf my Hebrew professor's comment above), and once something structure-based like chiasm gets on such a pattern-based brain like hers, it would be a VERY hard thing to shake off such a brain. In other words, whether it was consciously intentional or not, I think Rowling's work in the first six books of the Harry Potter series shows STRONG signs of chiastic structuring. When book 7 comes out there may be no evidence of chiastic close-outs in it from books 1 and 4, but for me to change my view on the positive chiastic leanings of what has gone on so far in the first six books, that 7th would have to be not only devoid of chiasm elements, but downright anti-chiastic. In fact, if it was to change my interpretation of the first 6 books it would have to be even beyond anti-chiastic, it would have to contain elements that positively (meaning very clearly and concretely) redefined the material in the first 6 books in a way radically different from chiasm. If it just came out as anti-chiastic solely in itself I would have to say it was an anomolous, unexplained radical shift at the 11th hour, an inconsistency within the series (I say this fully realizing that it is entirely possible I'm going to have to eat crow on it ... I don't think it likely, but it wouldn't be the first time I was as woefully wrong as Horace Belcher, who thought the time was ripe for ... oops, already used that one in this piece lol).

The "other example" I offer is ... myself. In the comment conversation I had recently with Morganna, in the combox thread of my post of my response to Joe Woodard's piece at MercatorNet.com, I said I had written my 7 point response using a chiastic structure ... and that is 100 percent true. I just never said I did so consciously or with a specific plan of that before writing the piece. I originally just started using points to organize the material for the reader and then at a certain point I was around 7 points and I decided I wanted to keep it at 7 points because I liked the number, especially in relation to the Potter series, so I organized everything under the 7 points I had. It wasn't until I was getting ready to discuss my response in reply to Morganna's comment that I looked back at it and thought "did I ...? son of a gun, I do believe I did do a chiasm! ... cool." The thing is, once chiasm gets on a certain kind of brain, it is hard to keep it down, let alone remove it from the brain (even harder than it was for Peter Parker to get that venom spiderman suit off in the 3rd Spiderman movie lol). I suppose one could argue, and to be consistent (on my position on authorial intent) I would have to listen and take the argument seriously, that my original response does not in fact adhere to the chiastic elements I described in my response to Mogranna, and that I am simply eisogeting (means "reading into") a chiasm into my own work, but I looked over it pretty well and think that the chiasm elements and flow I described are indeed there.

So, to all that, in concluding the "theory" part of this essay, I will add only one final thing on structures and their use. Freedom and structure go hand in hand. The established structure is what provides for the situation where the structure is deviated from to be such a poignant place to drop meaning in. The goal of structure never was to get everything exactly even. A drum machine can play a technically perfect beat, but it can't play the beat with the feeling that a human drummer can when they hesitate just a fraction of a second on the beat and crack it like a whip (when Pauli and I played in a band there were nights when I didn't even have to look back at our drummer Jon to tell how into the music he was getting, in fact I couldn't avoid noticing how into it he was getting even if I wanted to, even though I usually set my keyboards up further forward on the stage, it was like it was beating up my back just with the way he played, and that was when I started really to get into it). The leading tone 7th on a violin can be given such emotion of aching to return up to the octave precisely because the 7th and the octave are what they are in the established scale (the midpoint between them, the "leading tone 7th," would sound cacaphonous just dropped in someplace randomly, but when hit and held and in passing between the 7th and octave, and edged up the neck ever so slightly until it is aching, that "note" can practically weep all on its own ... I got a D in freshman music theory but I do remember that from the class). I think the chiasm is a well established structure and being used by Rowling but I thoroughly expected to be blown away by the incredibly unique way she plays that beat at that melody and where she packs a wallop by adding her own distinctive breaks from it when I get my copy of book 7 at the midnight release party at Barnes and Noble in Union Square and read it on the 4 train back up to the Bronx.

The Chiasm Elements of Harry Potter.

So, this is the part where I dive into the sketchy hand-written observations and thoughts contained on yellow legal pad sheets, written with the pad braced on the steering wheel of my car driving interstate 80 across Pennsylvania at 3 in the morning (recent "note-taking" has gotten very ad-hoc, and downright eccentric for me as of late, such as sitting in the theater taking notes on the same style legal pad by the light of my cel phone during both Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - actually 2 sets of such notes from 2 viewings on the PotC movie ... gotta get me one of those pens with the little light on it lol).

I already listed above some support of the 2-6 connection that my chiasm reading and RH's proposed structure would share, so I will not encumber you with any further data on that one (except a few that I saved for here because of how they fit with the others). I have also said that no concrete arguments concerning the 1-7 connection can be made, for the same reason that concrete arguments cannot be made from text for a 3-7 connection ... July 21st, 2007 is taking entirely too long to get here (IE the very unfortunate fact of there being no book 7 text in our hands to argue from yet, but like I said, RH did make a nice proposition, via good reading of character, of a connection between Sirius in book 3 and how Snape is being set up for book 7). On this site however, Pauli once upon a time proposed a really good possible chiastic outcome in book 7, tying to book 1: Harry with Voldy on the front of his head as a horcrux in the scar (marking the bravery of a "face to face" confrontation) revealed in book 7, paired off against Quirrel in book 1 with Voldy on the back of his head. So, these proposed 1-7 and 3-7 connections can yield some pertinent elements for discussion in this regard, just not anything that can be used as conclusive evidence for argumentation until book 7 is out (to quote Granger's longing cry - "Accio July 21st!")

The real focus of an argument such as I am making here, thus, must rely more heavily on the 3-5 connection of the chiasm, which, in such a debate, squares off against the 1-5 correlation in the "tripping billies" proposed structure, for which, as I have said, at least in my cursory reading of RH's work, I have not seen RH put forth solid evidence.

Specific 3-4-5 chiasms

Actually, in fairness, I must relate here that my own stumbling upon the importance of the 3-4-5 "inner chiasms" began with my first reading of Red Hen's material. It was a piece of hers on a number of things, but in it she mentioned a belief that the dementors are more central to meaning and plot than we have yet suspected, and that particularly the foolish (at best) alliance of the Ministry with the dementors would be important. It was this that started me looking (as well as affected my thinking in ways that later made it easier for me to accept Voldy as something like Anti-Social Personality Disorder but still reconcile this with the moral character of the books as a battle of good versus evil).

The Dementor 3-4-5 chiasm

The 3-4-5 inner chiasm I saw at that time was actually the only one I really noticed until this recent review of the series while listening to book 4. I think there is a 3-4-5 chiasm that involves the dementors as an image vehicle for the theme of the proper relation between wizards and muggles. That proper relation is best described in Arthur Weaseley's "Protection of Muggles Act" introduced in book 4 (initially raised by Arthur in reaction to the antics of his sons Fred and George leaving the tongue-tun toffee for Dudley), but the progression begins with how wizards have failed to protect even their own kind from evil. The dementors and the tension between DD and the ministry on the subject of the soul-suckers are introduced in book 3. In book 4 as the crux we have a kiss actually performed in text, although just off screen, on a wizard - Barty Crouch Jr. Then in Book 5 the ultimate shadowy bureaucrat (Umbridge) lets one loose (meaning a dementor, not the afore-mentioned flatulence ... or maybe both, as a good symbolic/image connection?) looking for a wizard (Harry) and it winds up attacking a muggle (Dudley ... forecasted by Dudley humorously falling prey to the twins' joke candy, but in book 5 it is no laughing matter ... it's all fun and games until somebody gets their soul sucked out).

The "Protection" 3-4-5 Chiasm

So, one of the new 3-4-5 chiasms I lit on in this reading, the "protection" chiasm, is actually connected to the one that originally started me on the path, the dementor chiasm . In book 3 the dementors represent the need for protection from self (the wizarding world, and particularly its children in school at Hogwarts, need to be protected from their own lack of wisdom), localized in Dumbledore protecting his students from the ministry sanctioned dementors . In the 3-5 elements specifically noted the protection needed is against dementor activity initiated by the ministry, first against a wizard (Sirius in book 3) and putting wizard kids at great risk at Hogwarts, and then putting a muggle at risk (Dudley in book 5).

The book 4 crux of this particular inner chiasm has all kinds of protection imagery. Harry protects Cedric from being the only champion not to know what he is going into in the first task by telling him it is a dragon. And the muggles at the campground, the owners of the campground, are definitely in need of protection from the death eaters that night. Even Krum gets in on the act of being a protector in book 4: when Hermione shows up at the Yule ball with Krum not even Malfoy can think of an insult to hurl at her - it seems that the blow of seeing her with his guy from the "ultra-cool" "hyper-slytherin" school he thinks so praise-worthy, Durmstrang, leaves him flattened and Hermione protected. Karkaroff and DD get into the issue of "protection" of their schools secrets just a bit later at the ball, and this is actually where the room of requirement is introduced in the series ... it is in the context of DD saying he would never presume that he knows all the secrets of Hogwarts, and then describing finding the RoR full of chamber pots.

And Rowling SIMPLY RIDDLED this passage with other stuff - note dobby is the one to suggests the room to Harry as the meeting place for the DA in book 5, here at the ball in book 4, just after the convo between Karkaroff and DD, fake Moody can see through Harry's pants with the magical eye and says "nice socks potter" because Harry is wearing the Christmas presents from Dobby, a pair of socks Dobby made himself, which connects back up with the fact that Harry freed Dobby with a sock (right before Dobby ... you guessed it ... protects Harry from Lucius), which would work nicely with Travis Prinzi's comments on the possible role of house-elves in the end (although don't forget about Bagman's interaction with the Goblins in GOF and the fact that GOF is where Bins is going heavily through the Goblin rebellions in history of magic class - so they will be in on the deal too I imagine) ... however that is a 2-5 connection and not a 1-5 connection, so bad luck for the "tripping billies" theory again.

The "Hovering" 2-4-6 Chiasm

Speaking of the abuse of the muggle campground owners at the World Cup in GOF, there is a further specific 2-4-6 image chiasm, the image of "hovering" or rather "suspension" of somebody or something else, that involves at least book 5 and maybe book 3. In book 2 Dobby's hover charm humorously ended up in a muggle (Mrs Mason) covered in a large pudding. In book 6 we find levicorpus and the source that Harry learned it from Snape, and we also find out in book 5 why that spell was such a sore spot for Snape. But the most flagrantly wrong use of LC is with the muggle campground owners the night after the Quidditch World Cup in book 4 (in fact Hermione makes specific mention in HBP of the use of levicorpus by the DEs in GOF). If you doubt the heaviness of the issues involved, ask yourself, from the aspect of sexual privacy and insecurity, if you would yourself mind being held upside down with your underwear and body exposed to strangers the way the wife of the owner is described as trying to pull her dress up to cover herself as she dangles upside down in GOF (or having your tighty whities, or not so whities, ridiculed like James and Sirius do when they have Snape upside down) ... this is not light stuff, this is exponentially more sadistic than anything Snape has ever pulled on the grounds and in the halls of Hogwarts.

The "Time" 3-4-5 Chiasm

In my post on my "definition of narrative" that is linked to on the side bar, I define narrative by the intersection of two concepts of time (very akin to the intersection I was talking about above of chiasm as an intersection of linear and circular concepts of plot). There is a corresponding 3-4-5 inner chiasm on time. In book 3, the time turner is introduced and in book 5 the entire stock of time-turners are destroyed in the hall of time in the department of mysteries in the ministry of magic (as confirmed by Hermione in HBP). Both of these time elements deal with what I referred to in my narrative definition as "chronos" - clock time (I would say that while kairos should always rule chronos, and not vice-versa as in materialism, chronos still has its proper place and that the smashing of the time turners in book 5, thus ending English wizards' ability to tamper with chronos, is a sign of respect for the proper place of chronos).

Book 4 contains at least two distinct instances of a prevalence of "kairos" ("special time") over chronos. Leading up to the first task of the tournament, in the "Hungarian Horntail" chapter, there is ALOT on how time is behaving a lot less for Harry like chronos is supposed to be, and a lot more like kairos might function in a Kafke story. Then in the second task, chronos just poops out altogether ... Harry wears his watch (chronos symbol) into the lake and it just simply stops working soon afterwards. (In regards to the first instance here, the dragon task, we may have some strong possibilities of clues for a possible 1-4-7 chiasm movement, keeping in mind that I said that such are, by definition, impossible to prove at this point, and thus the word "possible" repeated and emphasized. At one point in the Hungarian Horntail chapter it says that Harry feels like his whole life has been leading up to this task and will end with it. This is a REALLY strong comment considering it involves a dragon, and that Hagrid informs him of the dragon, and that Hargid was involved with a dragon in book 1, Norbert, and that Hargid's name is Rubeus and the 7th book is pretty sure to be the Red stage of the 3 stage alchemical process).

Along the same lines as I have critiqued RH's proposed structure for being too flat and linear on concept of plot, there is, in her comments, as I read them, a distinct over-leaning towards a dominance of the chronos concept of time.
RH writes:
"One could wish that Rowling, who is remarkably good at plotting, were a little more dependable for timelines. Her shaky grasp of numbers erodes our confidence, even when there are no obvious contradictions." (WKAD, p. 155)

I am not saying I think Rowling is impeccable on her working of timing in the books, or that she has no genuine errors or inconsistencies, but there are a few important notes to make here. The first is the mention of a "shaky grasp of numbers." This one Rowling has actually addressed directly in text via the courses taught at Hogwarts. Arithmancy, which Hermione swaps in instead of divination in book 3 (which makes this a timely place in my own essay to address this because that is what is next, a divination chiasm), is all about numbers but at the other end of the spectrum from "scientific math." What is an adequate "grasp of numbers" depends on from what angle you are looking at the numbers. Scientific math (a muggle discipline ... and one my father was a genius at and really enjoyed robustly) is all about the quantity aspect of numbers - Arithmancy (a magic discipline) is all about the quality aspect of numbers (things such as numerology, like that used in Judaism in conjunction with the numerical values in the Hebrew alphabet etc).

This point on numbers is really about "form following content." It seems unrealistic to me to expect a story about these things to maintain its own distinct narrative logic, flowing from its qualitative content, while expecting the form to conform rigidly to the quantitative dictates of scientific logic (Again, here, just so as not to be misunderstood as being combative, which I have definitely been against others in other online venues. I am not saying "I can't believe she is saying this!" - simply saying, "this is what seems to me to be at the core of what she is saying, and I would disagree with it but I also think it a very productive thing to dialog with it ... I am actually finding dialog against her foil to be very productive in honing my own thoughts that I have had for a while in rougher form on these matters" .... just wanted to be totally clear on that one)

The second comment here on RH's statement on time-lines is what seems to me an unrealistic expectation of consistency. First of all, I don't think it is possible to get radically accurate chronos in a narrative ... every act of retelling is an act of interpretation that rubs against "accurate chronos" (in short, "true objectivity" was only ever a false myth created by radical Enlightenment science). If you want completely accurate chronology in a narrative the time required to tell the events of one day is at least ... one day (actually longer because you can never tell things as fast as they happened and there are things going on simultaneously that impact each other and explaining the connections takes more time ... not to mention the question of whether or not you actually ever could describe all the pertinent and connected factors, or whether the project is rather doomed from the start to be "ad infinitim") .

This "unavoidability" leads to what has actually been noted, in some post-modern literary theory, as a positive instance of the creation of "dissonance" or jarring experience in reading, including skewed timelines, as an actual way of creating and conveying meaning. What Robert Carrol (a respected, been around and in the game for ages, commentator on the book of Jeremiah in the Bible) notes in some instances is that the "dissonance" that makes the reading experience unsettling in literature can be a distinct carrier of meaning (you actually get this a lot in a number of post modern movies ... the most famous to mess around with time sequencing was Tarrantino's Pulp Fiction ... I'm not endorsing the film, just noting it as a prime example). In short, Kairos will always have that effect, to some degree or other, on chronos, and that very effect in and of itself can contribute to the meaning of the works. So the "screwy timelines" might actually be something other than merely dropping the ball.

The "Divination" 3-4-5 Chiasm

Books 3, 4 and 5 are the only places where Harry and Ron sit in Professor Trelawney's divination class. And that is all I will note there (surprised?) - because this segways into what is for me a pretty key chiasm in connection with the subject of divination ...

The Revelation Chiasm

What can one say about the issue of revelation in these works without having to encapsulate the whole series again, with just about every sentence in it? LOL. So, I will keep to some very specific examples ... starting with professor Trelawney. As for a 3-4-5 chiasm of revelation, the two outer elements involve the two legitimate prophecies she has ever spoken (and nicely, in regards to the issue of time discussed above, given in text in reverse chronological order). Book 3 contains the prophecy on Peter returning to Voldy and book 5 is where Harry sees, in the specter arising from the pensieve, the full (at least as far as we know at present) "prophecy that started it all." And in ancient literature revelation is all about prophecy (although I have noted before on this site that I think the nature of prophecy is a central tension in Rowling's HP series, with Trelawney's trite [conscious] methods on one end of the spectrum and true understanding of the inner logic of events and history on the other end of the spectrum. This concept of prophecy comes most notedly from Avraham Heschel, who is reported to have quoted Dumbledore on his deathbed: "Why should I fear to die? What have I to regret?" Heschel is famous for his clarifications on prophecy not primarily as fore-telling but as forth-telling.)

And speaking of the pensieve, take a closer look at it from the Judeo-Christian Tradition of revelation. Does a fire that does not consume what is put into it or what it contains or is located in sound familiar? (I am sure this has been noted a million times already, and I am sure John Granger has probably mentioned it in a multitude of places in his works I am forgetting at the present moment, but hopefully what I am adding here is placing it in the context of a chiasm of revelation in the works). The burning bush from which YHWH speaks to Moses is THE beginning, in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, OF the Judeo-Christian Tradition of Revelation itself.

And what does our burning chalice (a Eucharistic adaptation of the burning bush that I KNOW, Granger has mentioned) reveal? It reveals character, the character of champions (in regards to what I said above about oaths - there is a specific connection between oaths and champions, a specific thing called an oath contest, in which, rather than whole armies fighting each other, the war would be decided by a champion being chosen from each side to do battle, an oath Champion. Such is David against Goliath and Job against Behemoth, and such also is Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets ... squared off against diary-mort, aided by an oath beast of loyalty, Fawkes the phoenix, that squares off against the beast of Slytherin, the ancient serpent the Basilisk, and gouges out its oracular symbols, its eyes that only ever reveal death, before giving Harry the advantage of Arthurian revelation that John Granger has noted, in The Hidden Key, as the sword-in-hat that reveals him to be the true heir of Gryffindor who is able to fight the heir of Slytherin). The Goblet is connected to the other 3 cups in GOF (I have written here before on what I think is a 5th cup in the book, the inverted dome of phoenix song in the graveyard. There, when I wrote of it before, however, I called it a 4th cup, but here I will call it a 5th cup as a quintessence of the 4 concrete cups in the book). The 4 concrete cups in the book are: as an outer pair, the cups of recognition - the Quidditch World Cup and the Tri-Wizard cup that whisks Harry and Cedric away to the graveyard ceremony; and the inner two cups of revelation - the Goblet of fire and the pensieve (the latter is for revealing the hidden but more meaningful contents in human thoughts and memories).

Added to this central image of revelation (the cups of the Goblet of Fire and the penseive) is the standard ancient symbol of revelatory oracle ... the eye - Moody's magical eye. It is no mere "standard busywork of writing a book" that there is a chapter in GOF called "The Egg and the Eye." Rowling is at her densest here as far as how packed the text is with interwoven symbolism/images. Remember that Moody's eye can see through the invisibility cloak. So when, in this chapter, Harry is wandering around at night after his egg made such a racket, and Snape cannot see him through the invisibility cloak ... Barty Jr can (and this is the first place we get a hint dropped that it is indeed Barty and not Mad Eye who is teaching dark arts at the school this 4th year, when Harry sees him on the map in Snape's office stealing ingredients for polyjuice potion [another 2-4-6 chiasm: our trio in book 2, Crab and Goyle, and maybe, as some are suggesting, Malfoy, in book 6 and Barty Jr here] ... quite a revelation). This is one of the reasons I believe Barty JR is SO central to the meaning of the series as a whole.

(but please note: Sirius is not that good at prophecy. When he has his head in the Gryffindor fireplace in GOF he incorrectly states that whoever put Harry's name in the Goblet is probably not too happy that he survived the dragon task. In point of fact, Barty Jr is quite happy that Harry passed that one, and was indeed orchestrating it and feeding him what he needed, which was actually a much better suggestion, and playing to Harry's strengths and what he actually enjoys - flying - than would have been Sirius' suggestion of attacking the dragon's oracular locus, the eye, head on. Apparently Sirius forgot that there are things worse than death, like watching your mortal enemy, who killed your parents in cold blood to get to you, use your own blood, your own personal being, to return to evil power. Sirius should have at least remembered the principle of there being things worse than death, seeing as how accutely he was once aware of the danger of a dementor's kiss. I suspect that Barty Jr already realized, even if he did not let himself admit it consciously, that there are things worse than death, like his own history of neglect by father and being used by Voldy, and if not he certainly realized it by the end of the book, after the kiss. But, to be fair, Sirius, I think, dies with the recognition that death is not the worst that can happen to you if you live your life rightly ... as is, I think, the point of Nearly Headless Nick's speech to Harry on those who come back as ghosts and those who do not ... speaking of which, I disagree with RH on DD's return as a ghost being equally as likely as any other type of "continued presence in book 7" [of course the one positively ruled out by the August 06 statement at Radio City is that DD is still alive, but I think the regular ghost thing has the second most problems] - although I must admit that Ron's and Snape's HBP interchange on the solidity of ghosts as a litmus test for differentiating between them and inferi is an interesting little tidbit that would support the possibility of DD returning as a ghost ... the "solidity" issue has also been used much in 20th century art and literature, from both the perspective of seeking power and from the perspective of vulnerability: in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Sauron, as a maia, basically an angel, is basically trying to incarnate, to solidify in corporeal power, through his ring, rather than letting go of certain of his powers to incarnate in the form of an advisor in prudence and wisdom, like Gandalf did, who was once a maia as well; Sauron is trying to incarnate in power without accepting the humility of incarnation, of solidification, and the humility of solidification can be seen in the way that it makes one vulnerable, as noted by Sheryl Crow in the song "Solidify" on her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club - "Why should I solidify? [why should I] make things real, so you can see me?").

But what of that golden egg from the first GOF task that winds up in the hands of the closest thing to a muggle you will find at Hogwarts (Filch the squib), standing between two of the most skilled wizards at Hogwarts at the moment (aside from Dumbledore), Snape and Barty Jr, arguably also the two darkest characters in the school at the time? Just at the end of the previous chapter, "Rita Skeeter's Scoop," that egg has been a VERY important symbol of revelation of hope in a champion for probably the most important "other" character in the series. And it has been a symbol for that character precisely in the central themes of the prejudice against the "other." In his cabin at the end of that chapter Hagrid gives a very deep and moving testament about what it means to him that Harry passed the first task and got that egg. And when Harry lies (anti-revelation) to Hagrid about how he is progressing on the egg, it may well be the only time in the whole series (outside of the scene at the basin in the cave in HBP, with Dumbledore) that Harry feels really bad about fibbing, which reveals a lot about the role of Hagrid and that egg in Harry's self actualization.

The Seekers Revisited

I already mentioned the seekers progressions above but here is a specific 3-4-5 chiasm. Cedric in 3, Krum in 4, Cho in 5. Cedric beat Harry in book 3, but it was because of the dementors. It is not only actions chosen by will that have consequences, but all human events. In book 5, after Cedric beats Harry in book 3, Cho seeks Harry as friend in trying to understand Cedric's death, but it ends in alienation. This all passed through book 4, where Harry sees himself as competing with Cedric for Cho. This 3-4-5 chiasm is properly tragic.

Indeed I think all of the 3-4-5 inner chiasms are more tragic in tone, they have to move out and beyond their own scope to find further hope of healthier fulfillment. This one, however touches very deep human themes and insecurities. In the "The Four Champions" chapter of GOF Katie Bell makes a very unfortunate, even if innocent, statement. In the common room after they find out Harry is a champion, she tells Harry to win the tournament and pay Cedric back for beating them the previous year in Quidditch (GOF 285) ... by the end of the book Cedric is dead (which echoes very strongly Molly Weasley's tears of mixed worry and relief in seeing Fred and George again after the Quidditch World Cup, and her statements of how much she would have hated herself if they had died there and the last words she would have spoken to them were words of tension, anger or rebuke). In book 6 Katie herself nearly dies at the hands of the book 2 seeker, Draco Malfoy. Regardless of how we intend things, life is often pierced by unfortunate tragedies and near tragedies, the latter of which affect us equally as strongly even though they are not fully completed as tragedies ... we carry them with us.

Two final Bookend Chiasm

The First Potions Class chiasm: Bottling Fame, Brewing Glory and Stoppering Death

This is officially a 2-4-6 chiasm but I am putting it here in this final section because it comes from the first potions class with Snape (the famous quote from book 1, which many have noted is quoted 7 times in HBP ... another tidbit of support: in one of these chapters in GOF it notes that Harry got a bad mark in potions for forgetting a key ingredient ... a bezoar), which would place it at the beginning of the series, thus making it a neat bookend with the next and final chiasm I will note, which contains a hazarded prediction and, thus, concerns the closing of the series.

So, what are our elements? Well, this one is officially going to support the "stoppered death" theory of HBP, on which so many people have commented that it is difficult for me to pull right out off the top of me head (or even from the sea of posts online, or maybe even figure out at all) whose it was originally (although, here I think Felicity gives the answer, a commentor named Cathy who was a co-moderator with John Granger on a class on Barnes and Noble University online in 2005, I think that is reading Felicity's post rightly ... but it is a bit late right now and I am feeling a bit like the "part of the ship" Jack Sparrow in the brig of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 ... "Wait! nobody move! ... I dropped me brain!" - not trusting my noggin right now ... good thing I have saved editing this essay for tomorrow lol).

But here is the basic run-down. In book 2 Lockheart "bottles fame" in that he takes it by, shall we say, "bottling it away" from those who earned it - getting them to tell their stories to him and then obliviating their memories so they don't know it is complete bunk when they read his books about how he did the things, rather than them. Obviously the book 6 element is not yet confirmed but strongly suspected by all (including me ... I am happily bumping along on the bandwagon here in the Bronx), that one way or another Dumbledore was stoppering his own death all the way through HBP, either by the help of Snape or by elixir of life etc. So, that leaves book 4 with the middle term: brewing glory. Glory is a very central concern in GOF, especially after Harry has been chosen as a champion, and especially to the Hufflepuffs. The "Weighing of the Wands" chapter could almost be a precursor to the "long dark tea time of the soul" of book 5 (a title I have stolen unapologetically from Douglas Adams, that, in my usage here, employs the angst of the fiasco with Cho in Madame Puddyfoot's tea shop in book 5 as a symbol of the book being "the long dark night of the soul" of teenage, romantic coming-of-age emotions)
... "The next few days were some of Harry's worst at Hogwarts" (GOF 295), and the glory "brewed" by the tournament is a big part of that, especially with the house of Helga. "It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry had stolen their champions glory; a feeling exacerbated by the fact that Hufflepuff house very rarely got any glory ... " (GOF 293 ... Glory mentioned twice in one sentence, and the end of the sentence connects this passage and chapter to the chiasm of seekers I noted above: "and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any [glory], having beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch." [meaning the match the previous year, the same one Katie Bell mentioned in the common room just the night before this scene]).

The Chiasm of Harry's School: A Chiastic Prediction

Returning to Barty Crouch disguised as Mad Eye Moody, I have argued, even just in the most recent post, that the text of GOF reveals a tragic loss in Barty Jr, that he could have been a good teacher. Rowling's own history as a teacher, as well as DD's choice to remain as headmaster at Hogwart's rather than take the political path of the ministry, touched on directly in the conversation between DD and Voldy in the pensieve in HBP, would be a good indicator of exactly how important the teaching profession is to Rowling. In fact, there is a history to the fact that teachers are called "professor," a point that DD is continually reminding Harry of in regards to how Harry refers to Snape. In the ancient world a "professional" was one whose area of care was so vital to what really matters in this life that they took an oath of office ... they professed an oath. This was because their duties were regarded as so important that no mere promise, based in their own name, would do ... only the gaurantee of the name of the deity was good enough. Such were those responsible for the care of physical life [doctors], those responsible for the political well being of the state, through the creation of good laws [lawyers] ... and those responsible for the education and, more importantly, formation of the young - teachers.

Barty Jr is a squandered opportunity for a good teacher, squandered by his own father and the ministry, thrown like pearls before swine, or rather a single swine, Voldy, who picks him up and uses him till, at the hands of the ministry, the "spending" of his personhood is completed - tapped out, as it were - as a full-blown tragedy, in a kiss worse than death, the dementor's kiss. I believe this actually fits a possible chiasm that could be fulfilled in the final book (again, I will gladly eat crow if I am wrong on the material side of this prediction, at least on the prediction itself ... I will always maintain that the potential is there in the texts already publicly held as a positive meaning within those texts ... as my mother once related to me that my grandfather on my dad's side used to say "if it doesn't work I will always say it should have" ... actually, as I have said before, I will always maintain that it is there positively in what has gone before as an element that raised a certain tension in the work, a tension that Rowling used in a certain way to create meaning, either by having Hary wind up a teacheror a new school being created in his name, or, conversely in having the whole series be more properly a tragedy, or at least have a lingering tragic tone as a reminder of the ever-present danger of evil, by creating meaning by leaving the tension without fulfillment).

This particular chiasm is actually a 3-4-5 chiasm but, as I say, I think it could be fulfilled in the final book. At one point in time I argued for a prediction of Harry being the final DADA teacher who lasts. I based this in an instance in book 3 regarding the DADA teaching position and in Harry as an instructor in the DA (nice little "minoring" of the DADA acronym don't you think?) in book 5. So there is the 3-5 connection. But somebody pointed out that Rowling had already stated categorically in interview that, while one of Harry's year will return as a professor it will not be Harry.

So here is my new thought, and how I pull it out of GOF as the chiastic crux of the series. I think Rowling's statement applied only to Harry returning to Hogwart's as a professor; I think he will begin his own school at the end of book 7 (I know, I know ... this is assuming he lives and, as I pointed out so forcefully in my reply to Joe Woodard, that is not held knowledge one way or the other yet ... so I will be willing humbly to eat crow on this one if Harry dies ... but I still think it would be possible, even if he dies, for somebody else - maybe Neville and Hermione etc - to start a new school in Harry's name and memory).

So, here are the text specifics. When Lupin leaves at the end of book 3, he walks out of the DADA classroom office leaving Harry and DD there. Harry is noted to sit down in Lupin's empty chair, the chair of the DADA professor. The chair is a noted seat of authority in education, as in the "chair of the department" ... as well as in business in general, where there is a "chairman" and people often "chair" certain committees etc (I am the new Graduate School Association representative for my department next fall and have been fore-warned that sitting on a committee is not much work, but that is because most of the work falls on the person who volunteers to chair the committee, so don't volunteer if you don't want extra work ... but I think I am required to sit at least one committee, but no more than two). As mentioned, Book 5 has Harry already teaching in text (in the room of requirement teaching DADA to the DA ... beginning to sound like that old song by the Police here lol).

So what remains is the book 4 material. Some interesting comments are made in the "Hungarian Horntail" chapter. In regards to the first Rita Skeeter article, about Harry's eyes welling with tears and all that, a Slytherin student asks, "Since when have you been a top student in the school? or is this a school you and Longbottom set up together?" (And Neville, along with Luna, on the train in HBP, specifically note liking the DA meetings, and it is Neville who says "I learned loads with you"). In short, I know it might seem like a long shot, but the presence of material that can be fit so neatly into a 3-4-5 chiasm makes me think it is a strong possibility. Some might argue that the words of a slytherin student should not have too much stock put in them. But from the "pride and prejudice" school () it would makes sense (Ie narrative logic) if Rowling had the Slytherins learn something about their own agenda by learning that "loose lips sink ships" (but as far as Malfoy is concerned I am sure that Durmstrang's ship was sunk the moment he saw Krum with Hermione at the ball ... and that is just from the angle of the pride and prejudice school, there could be the school of Caiaphus the high priest who prophesied truly while in the midst of planning the murder of Christ, depending on your view of Slytherin house [and there is a comment below about Barty Jr as Caiaphus] ... of course, the "school of Merlin," even when "correct," is generally that of Balam's ass, but a happy "wild ass of a man" I am on most days lol).

It is not, however, just the words of a slytherin student that suggest "another school." In "The Four Champions" chapter of GOF it is Moody/Barty Jr who (tooting his own horn here, but accurately) notes that "It was a skilled witch or wizard who put the boy's name in that goblet ... It would have needed an exceptionally strong Confundus Charm to bamboozle that goblet into forgetting that only three schools compete in the tournament ... I'm guessing they submitted Potter's name under a fourth school, to make sure he was the only one in his category ..." (GOF 279, emphasis added). Perhaps Barty Jr here is a Caiaphus figure, speaking true prophecy (a text clue to the end of the series), but in the midst of conspiring murder and evil (and note, in regards to what I have been saying about Barty's potentials that have been squandered, he is right here, it would take a very powerful wizard to confund the goblet into forgetting the pararmeters and specifics of the tournament)

As the good book says (to quote Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof), "The Lord works in mysterious ways" (or to quote Bono from U2's "big change-up album" of 1990, Achtung Baby, "She moves in mysterious ways"). I think it is distinctly possible that Barty Jr here not only "dropped info/exposition" but that he actually materially effected something. By the fact that he is the one who actually did the bamboozling of the goblet, I think we can safely assume that he is here engaging in a little risky dare-devil bravado, and laughing up his sleeve at the irony of it, in actually telling them how he actually pulled it off ... by submitting Harry's name under a fourth school. The thing is, as is clearly noted, the goblet constitutes a validly binding magical contract. Therefore that fourth school, to a certain extent, concretely and objectively does exist now that it has has had a concretely historical champion compete in the tournament that is governed by a magical object that constitutes a vadidly binding magical contract. Things like this are known to go on on the objective "behind the scenes level" (as Granger puts it when talking about narrative misdirection) ... Harry objectively inherits number 12 Grimmauld Place from Sirius upon his death in book 5 but DD needs to have the objective validity of it demonstrated by the incident with Kreacher later, in the "Will And Won't" chapter of HBP. I think such a book 7 validation of the objective creation of a new school in book 4 may be forthcoming that correlates with Harry's discovery of Hogwarts as a school in book 1 - hence a 1-4-7 chiasm, but one that would have latent echoes is books 3 and 5: In book 3 it is pronounced that Uncle Vernon tells aunt Marge that Harry attends St Brutus' school, and Harry's teaching methods for DADA, developed in book 5, have been well contrasted with Snape's methods in HBP .

This difference in teaching methodology is an important one for this matter. In GOF and HBP combined we find that the identities of the schools, Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, are embodied in methodological differences. Draco is the GOF agent of exposition delivery for the information on Karkaroff's method of teaching the dark arts themselves as a way to teach defending against them, and in HBP we find Fleur talking about Beauxbaton's approach to testing after 6 years of classes, rather than 5. As just noted, Harry's own methods for teaching DADA have been contrasted with Snapes in HBP, but note also that teaching methodology is raised as an issue in the book 3 instance of St Brutus', just mentioned, when Aunt Marge asks Harry if they use the cane there and emphatically states she won't have any of this softness of not using strong corporal punishment when it is needed etc. (indeed Barty Jr's own methods of teaching, disguised as Moody, are a central issue in book 4: Minerva has to upbraid him on using transfiguration as a punishment for teaching and it is Barty/Moody himself who states what he is doing as "teaching," when he is bouncing Draco around the entrance hall, and there is no end of Hermione's worry about him actually showing the unforgivable curses themselves, echoing DD's criticism of Durmstrang's method of teaching DADA)

If Barty Jr did occasion the beginning of a new school with Harry as its first, and thus far only, constituent, this falls under a "structuralist" literary theory called "Speech-Act Theory," which concerns speech acts in which the content that is stated in the speech act is at the same time actually effected in/by the speech act (the prime example is the wedding vow, although I have myself used the theory in discussing Old Testament prophecy, another of the important themes I have touched on here, as involving the giving of a prophecy as somehow actually bringing into being or catalyzing the content of the prophecy. When I used to take classes from Dr Scott Hahn at Franciscan University of Steubenville he was fond of using speech-act theory to discuss the "creation by word" tenet of the Genesis 1 creation account in the Bible). In that little definition just given, as regards this instance and others in the Harry Potter series, I side with the "in the speech act" vs "by the speech act" for the same reason that I deliberately chose the language of Barty Jr "occasioning the beginning of" the new school, rather than him "creating" the new school. As with the material above on Bella and the Unbreakable Vow, I believe that what happens is that the "officiator" is only either a conduit, in Bella's case in HBP, or an occassioner, as in Barty's case in GOF, and not a "source" (cf my notes in my post of my response to Mr Woodard's piece for my opinion, and that of Pope Benedict XVI, on the language of "sources" in general). I believe it would be the goblet itself, as an agent of transcendent magic in a magically binding contract, that actually creates the new school by choosing Harry as a champion for it. Barty simply occasions that creation by putting Harry's name in the goblet (well, he also does set the parameters by which, if the goblet accepts the putting forth of the name and school, Harry is the only possible champion, but it is still the goblet that acts by accepting the putting forth and the 4th school), but I think it entirely possible that we will find out in DH that Barty Jr did indeed occasion the goblet creating a new school(this language of "occasion" is borrowed from the arena, actually, of pro-creation: parents do not create their children; rather their love is the occasion honored by God with His own act of creating a new human person).

Personally I would like to see Harry live and start another school that is in dialog with Hogwarts in the way Durmstrang and Beauxbatons are in the tri-wizard tournament (I'd also like to see him marry Ginny and occasion the creation and births of little Harries and Ginnies) ... but that is all I can say for the present, until book 7 is in my greedy little hands.

THE END

Accio July 21st, 2007,

Merlin the Meandering and the Moon-minded (oh brother Lupin), the Mad-eye and the Magpie ... and whatever others you can think of

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Merlin's Manifesto: Further Support of Chiasm in the Harry Potter series

posted by merlin at 2:47 PM