Hogwarts's Ghosts

This summer while our family was on vacation in Maine, I received this email from a wise Catholic friend concerned about some of the themes in Harry Potter. I have a question. We read Sorcerer's Stone as a family we are half way through Chamber of Secrets as a family. I see that there is good, but it is hard to get around some of the dark stuff. Like last night we attended a Deathday Party. It seemed a bit creepy for creepy's sake. I am still pro-Potter but how do I get a Christian message out of it? That's a really good question. The following was my initial response: Note that the ghosts are Wizards who refused to move on from this earth. Later in the series they are described as "imprints". Their entire existence as it remains is suffused with vanity in all senses of the word: note Nick's desire to be a real "decapitee" and the vain attempt to derive pleasure from rotten food without a physical body. The headless hunt is nothing more than a moribund fraternity of wannabes and braggarts at having their heads lopped off. Some achievement. Also there is undue attachment to the things of this earth, e.g., the Fat Friar is a good enough fellow, but he's fat, symbolizing an attachment to food. The ghosts play a bigger role later in the books. Ron is always shown as being "impolite" whenever he mentions the fact that Nick is dead. But he's correct in this bluntness and candor! Nick is the one who is rudely invading the world of the living. Harry condescends to Nick's level out of respect for him and attends the party, but doesn't really enjoy it beyond an amused bewilderment. In book 5, Nick tells Harry, "I am neither here nor there," admitting that he probably made a mistake in his vain attachment. I agree with you that it is creepy, but the question is why so. The creepiness is due to the moribund vanity of en-souled creatures who refuse to move on to the next life. I believe this can be one way of seeing the ghosts at Hogwarts. I had meant to post on this earlier; I just thought of the email again today in reference to an idea Merlin mentioned to me once. He stated that the Potter series has an existential dimension, i.e., how the good characters become good as a result of their actions, and likewise for evil characters and those somewhere in between, that is not found so much in other mythopoeic literature (e.g., Lord of the Rings, etc.). The ghosts seem to be living out the essence of their decision to remain on this plane of existence although it is no longer their proper mode of existence.

Biblical Chiasm

I should start off by noting the long break between my last post and this one. Things are busy and hectic and stressful and all the things that attend trying to do a PhD program here in the Bronx, and so I am not going to be so nearly a regular writer on here, mainly because of time restraints and responsibilities ... not to mention that until book 7 comes out we get further afield with some writing ... although I am sure there is still plenty of good stuff in the 6 books so far to be discussed - it is mainly that I must spend most of my time reading from right to left rather than vice-versa ... Ie studying Hebrew. But I did have an idea today for something on here, but it is not directly on the HP works, but rather just a little fun giving an example from the Old Testament of the literary device I have talked about on here of the chiasm (see link on left side bar), sort of just to kind of fill in more of a picture for those who find such things interesting. Actually I also sort of got a view on this one, today in Hebrew prose class, of another facet that you sometimes find in chiastic structurings. To recap what I have discussed before on it, a chiasm is a literary structure that can be found in prose, narrative, poetry etc. It takes its name from the Greek letter chi, which is roughly equivalent to the English x, the left half of which functions as a sort of visual representation of the movement in a chiasm, with the movement going down the top leg, into the cruxt, and back out along the lower leg. The two legs are composed of matching elements (A-A1, B-B1, C-C1 etc)and there may be any number of them (for one course in Genesis 1 through 11 the professor had us look at a HUGE, many paired chiasm that Gordham Wenham suggested as the structure of the whole flood narrative) and the cruxt can be one of two things. In a chiasm with an odd number of elements it will be the center element, and in a chiasm of even number elements it will be the common connection/commonality between the two inner most elements. Not only are all of the corresponding elements paired but there is a development between the first and second elements of a particular pair (ie there is correspondence, for example, between A and A1, but A1 is a development of the element in A), and the development is by way of the cruxt or center of the chiasm. So, a five part chiasm (as I will describe "Judah's Song" below, looks something like this: A ...B ......C ...B1 A1 Harry Potter As I have talked about, I believe the Harry Potter series to be a 7 part chiasm with book # 4, so I'll just recap there as an example. Book 4 is the center, so one of the keys to getting the meaning in Rowling's work is finding the element in the corresponding pairs, for example the introduction of the dementors in book 3 and Umbridge sending one after Harry in book 5, should can be understood by finding the same element in book 4 and testing out how X1 is a development of X by way of what is found in the cruxt. So (and here is a little defense of the PoMo position), to use our example of the dementors in books 3 and 5 ... where do we see the dementor in book 4? Actually in book 4 we get the fullest objective experience of a dementor, we have a dementor actually perform the kiss. On who? On the son of a ministry official who advocates the wizarding world's use of dementors as guardians. But the dementor's kiss is just the culmination ... Barty senior set that path in motion by paying more attention to his ministry career than to his son, long before Barty Jr ever became a death eater. Barty Jr. may be culpable for his choices to join Voldy, but Barty Sr. is no innocent man either. but for the point of chiasm, look at the common element in all 3 books: not just the dementors but the issue of the dementors in relationship to guilt. In book 3 we have the dementors introduced at the school because of an innocent man who is assumed guilty of being a Death Eater and killing. I personally have my doubts about Barty Jr's full culpability (due to factors of childhood psychology of how Barty Sr. raised him) but for here the important fact is that in book 4, Barty Jr. actually was a Death Eater and not simply presumed to be one, and he actually did kill his father, not just get framed by Peter Pettigrew like Sirius did. Finally in book 5 we have an innocent who committed no crime excpet being inconvenient to the ministry ... for which toad-woman sets not just one but two dementors on him. The progression is from an innocent presumed guilty in book 3 to a person who is not even presumed guilty of a serious crime in book 5 (simply "politically" inconvenient). This is the progression, but how is it arrived at by way of book 4 ... ask Dumbledore, he has known all along that it is a crock to be allying yourself with dementors, even against the guilty such as the death eaters, or allowing the kiss even for death eaters and murderers. That is how it all began and that is what yields the progression from employing dementors against the guilty (whether or not they should have been fooled by a ruse by the likes of Wormtail concerning Sirius is another story ... but we can give them the benefit of the doubt for our purposes here) to using them as weapons against the innocent. In short, in this particular chiastic pairing we learn that Barty Sr really was the one who begot Dolores Umbridge. Judah's Song and another element in chiasm "We said to my lord, 'We have an old father and a little child of his old age. Now his brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him." -Genesis 44:20 ("Judah's Song") Anyway, today I saw a chiasm in Genesis 44:20 ("Judah's Song"), and asked the professor if she thought it might be chiastic. She said she hadn't looked at it that way but, yes, seeing the chiasm in . What I noticed was that in the Hebrew there are also pairings within the separate legs that kind of differentiate the legs (the top leg and bottom leg) from each other. So, in this particular chiasm you have Judah beginning his answer with the father (Jacob - [A]) moving to the remaining son (Benjamin - [B]). The cruxt (C) is the non-remaining son (the "cover story" that Joseph was eaten by a wild animal) which begins the explanation of the unique situation described in the return leg of the chiasm, that Benjamin is the only son remaining to Rachel (B1) and the strong attachment that Jacob has for Benjamin (A1). What I noticed is that there is a commonality among the markers within each leg that differentiate the legs. So, the first leg (A and B) are marked by age description, "old man" and "young" brother. the second leg (B1 and A1) are marked by an almost sing-songy use of the 3rd masculine singular pronomial suffix, which sounds like a long "0" and means "his" (so adding it turns the word "horse" into "his horse" ... there are pronomial suffixes for 2 and 3rd person masculine singular, 1 person common [same form for both suffixes] and different ways they attach to singular nouns vs plural nouns ... and then they also get used as direct object suffixes when attached to verbs and different connecting letters pop up ... actually when you get into it Hebrew is a really cool language, but I know I may be marking myself as a nerd). Anyway, it was just sort of a new discovery for me to find a chiasm in which there were also distinctive markers or characteristics in the legs as wholes (not just the individual elements). Meaning The reason I asked the professor if she thought it to be chiastic is because chiasm is very structured thing ... but she had been talking about how rushed and hurried and nervous and "not put together" Judah's song seems, which is how the author is painting him now that he is in this situation where they need food, Joseph, who Judah (who maybe tried but was impotent in helping Joseph earlier when he was sold into slavery in Egypt in the first place) thinks to be just a harsh Egyptian ruler, has their backs up against the wall: they need bread and this guys is pushing them with questions about their father and brother and demanding that the younger brother be brought down if they are to be able to buy any food, and Judah finally convinces Jacob to let Benjamin go down to Egypt with him and then Joseph pulls the thing of putting the cup in the grain sack and has them arrested and is going to keep Benjamin as a slave for it and Judah is really up against it and so he basically does what he should have done all the way back in chapter and offers to stand himself in place of the younger son, in this case by suffering what happened to Joseph originally, being taken into slavery in Egypt. So he is finally really doing the right thing (rather than trying to settle for pulling a fast one on the other brothers, like in 37) ... but the guy is understandably very harried (How is that for an HP pun?) I think the narrator is doing "both ... and." There is this really hectic, worried, "come-undone" quality to Judah's speech, and at the same time there is the structure of the chiasm, that is ordered. I think it is delivered in a highly ordered chiasm because that is the message: the order implies meaning and getting to the real cruxt of the issue ... and Judah has to be pushed to this place where his back is totally slammed to the wall, and he is frantic and desperate (as evidenced in the rapid and sometimes overly repetitive quality in his speech), and he has to choose between being a life-long slave himself in Egypt or "sending his father's hoary head down to sheol in misery" by allowing Benjamin, and this time round he does the right thing by being willing to sacrifice himself in the stead of a the younger brother (Benjamin - but in a nice little twist, he also would be willing submitting himself to the same fate as the first younger brother, Joseph, by abandoned to slavery in Egypt) ... and this is what finally completely undoes Joseph and brings him to tears. Post-Script Anyway, like I said, I personally will only be able to write on here very limitedly for the indefinite future, but I just thought I would share that one since it was from my studies and we have talked a decent bit on here about chiastic structure.

Elendil's sword & Isildur's bane

I was just listening to my recording of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" and an observation hit me regarding the re-forging of the "sword which was broken", Narsil. The elves reforged it for Aragorn, the heir of Elendil, it's previous owner, but only after it had been handed down broken for generations. It would seem that Isildur's failure to have the sword reforged earlier is part of his fall into evil ways due to the One Ring - it's as if the sword and the ring are enemies. To take up one is to forsake the other; the opposite being seen in Aragorn who takes up the reforged sword, renamed "Anduril" in "Fellowship of the Ring", and forsakes his claim to the evil One Ring. The sword and the ring are opposite symbols much in the way the circle and the cross are opposites to G. K. Chesterton in "The Everlasting Man": ....And though the symbol is of course only a coincidence, it is a coincidence that really does coincide. The mind of Asia can really be represented by a round 0, if not in the sense of a cypher at least of a circle.... It really is a curve that in one sense includes everything, and in another sense comes to nothing. In that sense it does confess, or rather boast, that all argument is an argument in a circle. And though the figure is but a symbol, we can see how sound is the symbolic sense that produces it, the parallel symbol of the Wheel of Buddha generally called the Swastika. The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel. Before we dismiss even these symbols as if they were arbitrary symbols, we must remember how intense was the imaginative instinct that produced them or selected them both in the east and the west. The cross has become something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity. It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter. In other words the cross, in fact as well as figure, does really stand for the idea of breaking out of the circle that is everything and nothing. It does escape from the circular argument by which everything begins and ends in the mind.... (G. K. Chesterton, "The Everlasting Man") His point and mine is that the shapes tell a lot about the function and nature of the objects: the cross or sword "boldly pointing in opposite directions", the circle or ring constrains and seeks to bind and trap. There is even a directional element in the name "Anduril" which means "flame of the West". Sauron's domain is in the East of Middle-earth. Is the fact that to GKC the cross symbolizes Western civilization and the circle represents the East somehow represented in Tolkien's devices of the Sword (West) and the Ring (East)? Who knows...but the sword really angers and scares Sauron when Aragorn shows it to him in the Palantir.