The 3-4-5 Insanity Chiasm in the Harry Potter Series

Introduction (Warning: It's another long one [But only about 20 pages at college rule this time, so actually less than half as long as the last one :) - EDITORIAL NOTE: Oops, scratch that last size detail, that Merlin was looking at the post in single spaced, so this piece actually probably weighs in more at 35-40 pp college-rule, which is double spaced. He has summarily been dubbed "Merlin the Miscalculating" and been shuffled off to the Brig, as was the last one, even though I said he was sent to bed, which was also true ... you see, our Brig here aboard the pirate ship known as the "Flying Brettman" is actually a bit more like the Knight Bus, with beds and all for the various Merlin's to catch up on sleep when they get too sleep-deprived]- so copy and paste and print if that works better ... but please don't steal ... although, to be honest there is not much I could do about it if you did lol - after all, writing online from the Bronx ain't exactly Fort Knox, let alone Gringott's :) lol but such is life I guess ... of course that is assuming you even WANT to steal this content lol) Building on the work I did in my "manifesto" on my chiasm reading of the Harry Potter series (ht epost just before this one), I wish now to examine a 3-4-5 chiasm that I think may be one of the most central of the series ... Insanity. In what follows the material does not refer only to what we usually think of as "full blown insanity" ... but I use the term simply because it is the primary image and language used in this particular chiasm (as will be discussed, Dumbledore uses precisely the word "insane" in the book 4 crux that ties the chiasm together, and he uses it in a very pointed way). I use the comments of Kim Decina and Josella Vanderhooft in their joint paper on clinical disorder types in the Potter series, which can be found on the PDF collection of papers contained on the CD that accompanied the conference materials of the Lumos symposium in 2006, held in Las Vegas, NV: "As much of Rowling's work concerns itself with themes of choice and personal responsibility, the inclusion of several main characters with mood and personality disorders also presents the reader with a dilemma: to ask herself how these conditions can impact personal agency and to what degree the negative behavior of mentally ill individuals can or should be excused." (Decina and Vanderhooft, p. 2). In following this line I am not saying that mental disorder can be used in every case to dismiss personal culpability altogether, especially to the degree that would make all language of personal culpability nonsensical, but, if one reads Decina and Vanderhooft fairly, they are not saying this either (the first sentence cited clearly agrees that the works directly and centrally concern themes of choice and responsibility). They simply maintain, as do I, that one of the concrete questions of the Harry Potter works is the inter-relation between psychological/psychiatric disorder and personal moral culpability. After all, how many times have we heard about death eaters who later claimed they were dominated by something, in this case a witch or wizard via the imperius curse, to the level that they were not culpable. And just as discerning between those who legitimately make this claim and those who are trying to cover up a choice to serve voldy is a central material question for the wizarding world, so the question of where and to what degree psychological factors impact validly full choice in our muggle world, symbolized by Rowling's wizarding world, is a central theme question of the series. I believe that, just as there are some who were legitimately imperiused in the books and some who were not, there are some places in the real world that psychological concerns seriously mitigate moral culpability, and some places where they are used only as excuses and moral culpability remains in tact. I do not assume that every choice can be explained away - some people may advocate such reductionism, but our denying the question as a question at all will do nowhere nearly as much good in counter-acting those who erroneously do such "reductionism" as will an honest exposition of the matter. Those who say the world is so dominated by the "excuse-makers" that even to concede the valid existence of question is to go beyond the realm of "risk" into the realm of "sure loss of argument" should ask themselves who the real conspiracy theorists are (meaning that the "moralist" side often accuse the "reductionist side" of seeing anything and everything done by the "normal" people in society as the key moral problem, IE the "moralists" often accuse the "reductionists" of seeing a bogey and conspiracy behind every "normal" tree in a way that would make even Mad-Eye seem well-balanced and not paranoid). In researching this and getting into the source material that Decina and Vanderhooft offer in their notes, a chiastic conspiracy theorist like me (who probably sees more chiasms hiding around more corners than Mad-Eye Moody sees death eaters lurking in the shadows lol) could obviously get really excited about a statement about Goblet Of Fire like "It's the central book. It's pivotal in every sense. I had to get it right" (London Times interview with Ann Treneman, July 30, 2000), and believe me I was excited to find that line. But for here, in light of what I was just saying about morality and evil and factors that impact moral culpability, the more important quote from the same interview is "I have said from the beginning that if you are honestly going to examine evil actions then you have a moral obligation not to fudge the issue." It is obviously interesting that the actual handling of the issue of morality is itself, for Rowling (and I agree), a morally charged event. But even more than that, I think that what she speaks of as "not fudging the issue" (IE not pulling a Cornelius? - fudge and moral culpability raised in the same sentence is VERY interesting, and not just for issues of gluttony lol), involves NOT ONLY admitting that moral culpability is truly and concretely possible BUT ALSO that it is possible for it (moral culpability) to be impacted by mitigating factors (false binary thinking tends to see these two statements as mutually exclusive). In a separate section toward the end of this post I will address a personal theory of my own on one particularly strong place I see this whole thing going in the works on a level of where exactly the meaning of the works hook onto real life, but I will save that for last. For here though, I will note that Decina's and Vanderhooft's work is pretty thorough as far as detailing, in the HP texts, concrete instances of specific mood and personality disorder traits (Snape as dysthymic depression, Lockheart as clinical narcissism, Harry's reaction to the dementors as full clinical depression episode etc ... to which I would add Lupin as maybe not a discrete clinical disorder category, but a definite tenet shared by most persons with disorders such as GAD, SAD, OCD etc, a view of the self as "broken beyond repair" or at least no longer capable of ever fulfilling certain levels of interpersonal relationship, recalling Lupin's words to Tonks at the end of HBP [although when I mentioned that on the site after the Lumos conference, either Decina or Vanderhooft said she did not see Lupin as any specific clinical disorder, but upon my clarifying as I did just now she replied something like "ok, hmmmm ... will have to think about it more"]). The 3-4-5 Insanity chiasm So, here are the series/text specifics of the 3-4-5 chiasm I am calling the "Insanity Chiasm." In book 3 you have the introduction of the dementors, beings who induce specifically depression (here there is the quote that Granger has used several times in his work, from the 6/30/2000 London Times interview, that the dementors specifically embody depression as something beyond simple sadness). Not only is the dementor's kiss pretty much full-blown and un-reversable (as far as we know) vegetative depression, a state of lack of capability to function sanely, but Snape's classroom discussion in HBP specifically classes it (the kiss) with the effects of the cruciatus curse - and the book 5 element of the insanity chiasm shows us exactly that: we actually meet the Longbottoms who have been tortured into insanity. Insanity seems a strong word because we often use it with pejorative tones, or at least switch too facilely back and forth between a technical designation and a more moralistic tone in using the word (we often will use it to describe particularly evil behavior by a person, especially when it is evidently pathological and a continuing habit, rather than a one time incident etc). But this is particularly the term Dumbledore uses in the conversation with Harry, just after his first excursion into the penseive, in which DD reveals the fate of the Longbottoms (confirmed, as noted, in book 5) - and here the language is VERY pointed on EXACTLY how Dumbledore feels about the matter of insanity forced on a person. Harry asks if Neville's parents are dead - "'No,' said Dumbledore, his voice full of a bitterness Harry had never heard before. 'They are insane.'" (GOF 603). (A Style Point) The way I have rendered that statement here the word "insane" is in the "emphatic end position" (both Hebrew and Latin use this technique occasionally). Although in Rowling's text there is further clarification that follows, I think the word "insane" does occupy an end position in the flow of the question and answer formula .... as such a blunt response ending that interchange it is meant to sort of take your breath away, I think. The emphatic end position is usually an effective device. I would note two cases where the word "dead" is especially meant to be powerful in the end position. One is that I have even tried to use it in my original recent chiasm post: In trying to drive home what I think is a powerful tenet in Rowling's style, that thing of innocent (and I do mean entirely innocent) off-handed comments having a sting to the speaker themselves when something changes or happens. I spoke of Katie Bell, in GOF, telling Harry to pay Cedric back for beating them in Quidditch the year before ... "and by the end of the book, Cedric is dead." The possibility of using such a style of sentence, which I refer to as a "heart punch" (when I was a kid we foolishly used to trade "heart punches," a single straight punch direct to the sternum that we had heard was supposed to make the heart stop for one beat), probably stuck in my mind most from my second example I offer of it, Tolkien's use of it at the end of one of the chapters in the Return of the King. Frodo and Sam are going through Mordor and have just escaped the band of orcs and Sam pushes them just a little further off the road to avoid detection, and then there is a shallow crater and Frodo simply falls into it ... nad the final sentence of the chapter reads "and there he lay, like a dead thing." In this one the only thing that has trumped the word "dead" in end position is the word "thing" .... a person is not a thing, a corpse is (Frodo has obviously not died, but the point being driven home by the emphasis is exactly how deadening Mordor and the weight of the ring are for him). That was a bit of an aside, but just to say that I think "insane" is in the end position in the GOF passage I just cited and that it is there for emphasis on the word itself. Book 4 - The Pensieve: Revelation, Dream Therapy, Social Conscience and The Self-Examined Life ("Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" - Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17) In recently reading through the chapter on the pensieve, the thing that struck me is, as a revelatory device, the closeness it has with a specific methodology of psychological "talk therapy." There is a practice of writing one's dreams down as soon as one wakes in as much detail as one can and taking the material in to talk-therapy sessions and going over the details, pretty much examining them in a new light and more removed context, much as the pensieve allows one to do with thoughts and memories. The point is to find out what is going on in your own head with a new level of clarity, in other words to work towards a helpful revelation of what your "issues" are and what their exact shape is. Often in dreams your mind addresses or expresses the things and issues you have trouble coping with head on in your waking, conscious life. The point in such a therapeutic practice as examining your dreams is to pay attention to the way things work in your dreams: details such as colors and shapes with certain emotional qualities or personal history and narrative elements such as what people, in your dreams, morph into what other people (like Harry's face morphing into Snape's in the pensieve and Snape talking specifically about the dark mark growing stronger - pretty interesting in connection with the "dark mark" Voldy gave Harry on his forehead, the scar, and the fact that the second major pain incident in GOF is after "the drea" ... cf below) and what scenes morph into what other scenes. In trying for immediate recall of your dreams upon waking another helpful thing to catalog is your own emotional responses to different elements ... a lot of times you might think, "this element sort of reminded me of this or that person or element in my life, it was sort of like this thing ... no, wait, the shape of it wasn't quite that, must have been a red herring" ... but a lot of times those initial gut impressions are very helpful precisely because they come from your own head in the immediate wake of having the dream (an intentional double entendre with the word "wake" ... the wake of a boat is also an image that can be used for what Emmanuel Levinas spoke of as the "trace" that evidences human being, expecially in the face, and the face being a theme echoed strongly by the current head of philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, Jean Luc Marion, a student, back in the day, of Levinas, Derrida and Paul Ricouer, and who I got to hear speak this weekend on Augustine's use of the Divine Names, influenced by Pseudo Dyonisius/Dennis' concept of "participation" in his work on the Divine Names, and I got to shake Marion's hand and say hello afterwards, being introduced by a friend working the conferene her e at Fordham ... thus, Harry's scar on his face as a "trace"?). In a moment I will get more into some of the nitty-gritty of the dream methodology but, for right now I would simply offer the context of the introduction of the pensieve as what seems to me to be a pretty strong piece of evidence in support of therapeutic dream examination as a background source that contributes to the meaning of the pensieve. Notice when the pensieve is introduced - Harry is on his way to tell Dumbledore about ... the dream he had in divination class. As for social consciousness ... what is it that intervenes between the dream and the pensieve? The conversation that Harry hears between Fudge, Dumbledore and MadEye about Madame Maxime and Hagrid as half giants, IE the WW prejudices (remember that "inclusio" device I talked about in the last post on chiasm? - An opening and closing element, like the dream and the "dream sifter," the pensieve, with what falls between them related in a special way to the common theme/element of the "bookends"). Although in the comment on last post where I talked about making this a separate post I said that I would not be going into specific details of where this all hooks up for me personally, I now think that, in fairness, I should touch on that briefly here. The first reason is as a way better to explain what I am talking about. But is is also, as I said, to be fair: if I am implying that Rowling might have made the pensieve image up based in this very concrete methodology of talk therapy, I am at least implying that I think it is from personal experience, that she has done some "time in the chair," the chair of therapy. Thus, it is only fair of me to reveal that I am tuned into this image for the same reasons - I have about 15 single spaced pages of dream recollections from this past semester. At a certain point during the semester, under the care of an MD, I "ramped up" on an SSRI medication (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, commonly referred to as "anti-depressants" - such medications standardly take about 2-6 weeks of use, depending, for one to "ramp up" to full potency). I am no longer taking that medication (again, under the care of my physician and on his guidance), but while I was on it, one of the noted possible effects of such "meds," one that I concretely and clearly experienced, is much greater retention and clarity of detail in dreams, which provided a lot of fodder in therapy. Note: As an example of the type of things I was saying that are beneficial to notice in such "revelatory" dream analyses, akin to the type of imagery analysis I am doing here, an element that I noticed in my dreams was occassional situational/phyiscal "phrasing" from a video game I used to play - Half Life 2. HL2 is a game that pretty much has one straight throgh "plot" in which you have to to all the basic actions to get through the plot, and what dialogue there is is one-sided and strictly scripted on the part of other "characters." In this it differs from anohter game that I played, or rather two games in a series, the Knights of the Old Republic (KOTR) Star Wars games. Those games have a central plot but not a single pre-determined ending - you can go full bore light side or full bore dark side and what opportunites pop up along the way is affected by that ... like a cerain number of "side missions" in the game (mission plots not crucial to the overall arc). More importantly, in the KOTR games there are dialog options with different characters and these will change with . Also, certain choices of dialog options earlier can affect your "influence" level with different characters and this influences what dialog options open up with different characters (the HK 47 assassin droid has been voted one of the top 5 video game sidekicks, and when you get influence with him and build up your repair skills parameter of your character and can make repairs to him and restore certain memories that are buried in his computer core, there are some downright HILARIOUS dialog options in his take on those matters ... I wish SO BAD George Lucas had had those guys write the dialog for the star Wars prequels). Half Life is more based in "first person shooter" reflex playing action and has a pretty mechanically rigid plot by comparison to the KOTR games. My take on the HL2 phrasing in my dreams is that, having played both games extensively, I subconsciously chose the rigid definition of HL2 (in such dream elements as one time having to solve a "physical puzzle" in my dream of, being "on my way home," crossing the top of a large heating and cooling unit and having to time the rotations of 3 large fans on top of th unit, in order not to get chopped up by any of them ... a very common HL scenario) ... I chose the HL2 imagery (including sharper lines and colors, vs the more muted earth-tone palate used in KOTR) because of the rigidity, basically the feeling of not having as many "options." When certain things pop up in your dreams one tendency is to supsect red herrings, based in an overly objectivist reading of reality. If a Jungian archetype pops up and you think "ok, according to Jung this image means this ..." the tendency one might haveas a second wave reaction is "what if Jung is wrong?" But giving in to the "anti-Jung" without stronger reflection is really just the flipside of accepting the Jungian without stronger reflection (both are what I called "overly objectivistic"). For instance, in one dream I had an element surface that is an image in William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom. that image has a particular meaning in AA and my gut reaction was to call that meaning to mind, and then I had a slight reaction of "but what if Faulkner is wrong in his use of that image?" The thing is, the whole way I knew that this image means that thing in Faulkner is from having studied Faulkner. In other words, the precise place of that connection of meaning is the precise place as is in question regarding the meaning of the dream element ... namely my mind. Thus it is a valid connection of meaning. When Granger does his alchemy thing or the Rennaisance thing (as in his latest post on the possibility of "Evil Snape"), or I do this kind of thing here, we are practicing what is sometimes refered to as "reception criticism," which was developed heavily by Gadamer (Pope John Paul II, may he rest in eternal peace, was known to be a big fan of Gadamer). We posit that these things are in Rowling's work and mean these things because they are in the tradition she is a recipient of and have these meanings in specific elements in that tradition. This is not the same thing as radical reader-response criticism (3R) because 3R says the things and the meaning are not there until the reader fills them in to the text. Reception criticism is about the fact that they are there in the text, although maybe not "fully consciously," and we as readers, sharing that tradition with Rowling herself, do not insert them in the text (which would be called eisogesis) but rather draw them out in more concrete detail and color and lines etc. End Note The final thing I would note here is one of clarification: this (dream recollection therapy) is in no way related directly to hypnosis. Hypnosis is a specific method involving an outsider entering the mind and trolling through "static" material that has been buried, whereas as dream recollection is undertaken voluntarily, with the actual work done by the person themselves (sounds rather reminiscent, does it not, of Dumbledore's words to Harry about trying to get Slughorn to divulge the memory willingly, vs trying something like legilimency), and involves material that the mind brings up itself in its normal rest cycles (REM, "rapid eye movement" sleep) in the regular course of life (thus one of the things one might want to take note of in dream examination therapy is what events in waking life surrounded the occurrence of certain images or elements in dreams ... such as, say, the fact that it is in a divination class where Trelawney is recapping astrology that Harry has "the dream"). Hypnosis, as I understand it, also involves no direct volitional participation of the person with the content, and indeed has the person very removed from the level of conscious volitional control. I have never undergone hypnosis but I think I would have to have a VERY strong relationship of trust built with a therapist before I would let them poke around in my mind like that without direct conscious control by myself (although I can speculate certain situations where it might be helpful due to extreme emotional difficulty in coping with certain issues, to the level that even working consciously with the material details of dreams is not feasible, to the point where the aversion impacts the ability to have any cogent recall of details, but I would still approach the matter with the UTMOST CAUTION, or shall we say "constant vigilance," to quote Moody). (Although, in support of this reading of the elements in GOF, notice the exact way that Rowling describes Barty Jr's/Moody's use of the imperius curse ... VERY much styled on the typical portrayal of hypnosis sessions [on TV or in movies and the like] in which, in front of a group, to demonstrate the hypnosis, a hypnotist might have the person, say, hop around the room singing the national anthem, as "Moody" has Dean Thomas do, or imitate a squirrel, as he has Lavender Brown do [GOF 231]). I would always say that if at all possible, stick to the most volitional (based in free will choices and activity) method possible. This is, indeed, as I read it, the underlying theme of resisting the Imperius curse ... that self control and making free choices is possible even under something like the Imperius. Any therapist worth his or her salt will tell you that there are these emotional factors, and even those that sometimes reach the level of specific disorders such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD - technically GAD flavored with a social phobia), but that there is also the capacity for choice, at least for those not at a level of psychosis or a radically strong personality disorder. The "end goal" of therapy is not just the alleviation of the disorder (which is not the same as the alleviation of the element altogether - anxiety is a natural and healthy thing at its proper level, where it operates as a natural impetus for action ... if we were not anxious about some things, at a proper level, we would probably not get some things accomplished ... my MD physician related to me an oft-suggested technique adapted from far eastern meditation practices: to take a deep breath and hold it, and NOT to try to dispel the anxiety, but simply to "be" with it ... even try to increase it, and one usually finds that it is just as difficult to increase it as it is to decrease it, and this can be a freeing realization that helps one to cope properly with anxiety). The end result is to have the emotional in a proper relation to the volitional, to be able to make choices without being inordinately encumbered on the emotional side. Social Consciousness and the Self-Examined Life Finally, using my parenthetical aside, about the divination class in which Harry's dream occurred being specifically on recapping astrology, note that the pensieve is an objective revealer and not, technically in text, a subjective revealer (as dream therapy is). But I think that as social commentary type lit (in what Granger has talked about as post structuralism and decon of meta-narratives, Lyotard and all), as a specific set of "symbolist literature" the objective revelation is precisely about the subjective; it is about ... us (in the Pride and Prejudice vein). What the objective revelation of the pensieve symbolizes, acts as an analogy of, is self-examination as a culture and people. In this arena Rowling is very Socratic - I think she believes, as I do and as Socrates loved to state, that the un-examined life is not worth living ... either on the personal level or the level of a society. This last point really connects to the relationship between such a psychological reading as I am expounding here and John Granger's work on alchemy, for the ancient art really does share the same subject matter as modern psychology - the human soul (I am not saying that all modern psychology does this well, for there are definite "reductionist" camps within that field, but that is the original literal meaning of the term "psychology" - the logos of the psyche, the logic of the soul - the same soul whose formation and transformation is studied by alchemy). Just as modern psychology examines social and familial factors in their impact on the operations of the soul, so alchemy concerns the external elements that impact the formation of the soul - like the sulfur and quicksilver on the sides and the white spirit (a distinct word and concept from "soul" in the ancient languages), that effect the change of the bottom black matter (lead) into the golden soul within the crucible. Both modern psychology and alchemy always have an essential social or communal aspect. Narrative Misdirection (NM) John Granger, on his Howarts Professor blog, is all about narrative misdirection. Travis Prinzi has criticized something like Granger's "scar-0-scope" theory as being "narrative misdirection on steroids" - I agree with Prinzi on the full blown scar-o-scope theory, but that is a whole new kettle of fish and I have my my plate full enough as it is lol. Here, though, I want to appeal to narrative mis-direction as regards this whole thing of mental disorders and moral culpability. After Harry learns of the fate of Neville's parents in the pensieve, at night he listens to Neville breathe/snore in bed and contemplates "how it must feel to have parents still living but unable to recognize you" (GOF 607) and concludes "It was Voldemort ... it all came back to Voldemort ... he was the one who had torn these families apart" (ibid.). If I am right in following Red Hen's lead on the role of the dementors and the ministry (cf just below), then this is a prime instance of real narrative misdirection. In my opinion this use actually would fit the primary models of NM Rowling is following: in Austen's Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennett is indeed mistaken about concrete facts of what happened, but she is primarily interested in them in regards to her own misdirected read of Mr. Darcy's character. But I do not think that the point of such instances of NM are to say Harry or his friends or family are bad people, or even that they are distinctly acting "really bad" in these instances. This is an effect of the dark arts of sadism and manipulation. Harry's hasty conclusion of "singularity" is a natural result of justified anger at the situation: "Lying and darkness, Harry felt a rush anger toward the people who had tortured Mr and Mrs Longbottom ... he remembered the jeers of the crowd as Crouch's son and his companions bad been dragged from the court by the dementors ... he understood how they felt" (GOF 607). Such anger is righteous anger, but allowing it to swell to the level of hatred is always a dangerous game. That is one of the trickiest parts of such dark arts and defense against them, that part of exactly how dark their art is is that they carry such a temptation to respond in kind ... remember the tact Emperor Palpetine pulls with Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi?(before Lucas went and butchered the truly good myth he had been entrusted with by making those prequels) - "gooooooood! I can feel your anger and your hatred swelling within you! Now take your jedi weapon and strike me down and your journey to the dark side will be complete!" (general paraphrase of the line). As I quipped in a comment on Granger's site, I know I am going to sound like Oliver Stone directing Costner in the rehashing of the Zapruder film here, but I simply can't buy the "Single Villian Theory" anymore. This is not to say I do not think that Voldy has his villian side (although, Decina and Vanderhooft did a pretty good job in including one of the key details of personality disorders, that they usually are based in a MUCH younger age than other disorders and neuroses etc ... and when you read that chapter in HBP where Harry meets the 11 yr old Tom Riddle in the pensieve, and consider Decina and Vanderhooft's note that personality disorders develop at a much younger age , it is noticeable that Dumbledore makes specific note of how developed certain tendencies were in Voldy even at the early age of 11. Here is where I see Red Hen's speculation on the WW's alliance with dementors as helpful, that the alliance is particularly foolish, at best, precisely because it would afford the dementors opportunity to hang around cribs and cradles in the dark of night in particular, especially if, like Tom Riddle, an infant were being raised by muggles who could not see dementors). My point is not that Voldemort is not evil or that he is definitively not responsible for these things (although, as I am making the case, it is entirely possible that there are strong mitigating factors, but as Rowling paints the scene over all, I don't think we can remove him entirely 100 percent from the realm of moral culpability, at least not conclusively based in the text) ... my point is that, however "unwitting," he had help in both becoming the monster he is (monster-mort) and in effectively ruining those families (look below at my section on Barty Jr). My point is that Voldy is, at the very least, not solely subjectively evil, and that where he is objectively evil (this is a technical classification meaning the objective evil of psychological disorder, distinct from the more properly subjective evil of morally evil but fully culpable choices), where he is objectively evil he has had help in becoming so, and thus, at the very least, is not the sole subjectively evil character (speaking here of the evil of his creation and meaning that his accomplices were wearing white hats, not concerned here with the black hats of those who became death eaters following him) ... his is not the "Single Villain." As a converse example, maybe of where we can be tempted to hop on the steroid misdirection train, maybe we could say narrative misdirection AS a narrative misdirection, just as an aside, an example that not all of Harry's thoughts and perceptions are narrative misdirection, I would offer the fact that when the families of the champions come to visit the champions on the day of the third task, and Bill and Molly Weasely surprise Harry as his "family" (and I hope that at the end of book 7 they are literally family, as in "in-laws" - as in Harry and Ginny marrying), Harry distinctly notices Fleur eyeing Bill over her mother's shoulder (GOF 616). Harry was dead on in that observation. And this is fulfilled in a great way in HBP: Fleur is only part veela, who, according to Arthur "marry for looks," ... she is mostly human ... she has the capacity for free choices. Not only that, but she has proven herself to a certain degree as a free human person ... the goblet revealed her as a champion and she performed as a champion. If you want textual details supporting Fleur's character ... note that in book 4, after the lake task, she has many cuts and bruises but refuses to allow Madame Pomfrey to attend to them until she has thanked Harry for saving Gabriella, and this is echoed in HBP by her stepping up to the plate of loving Bill on grounds of things other than looks and taking the ointment from Molly to attend to Bills wounds, ointment provided by Madame Pomfrey (but notice here too, in regards to her getting stopped by the grindylows in the lake task, the difference in approach and philosophy of the 3 schools really does seem to lie along the lines of DADA [and this plays in especially for my prediction for DADA being a central tenet in the founding of a new school, see my chiasm post and the last addendum comment on it, the magically powerful comment number 21 :) ] in that this is precisely Fleur's weakness in the tasks - dealing with things like grindylows and with the "less than beautiful" animals Hagrid has in the maze - dark arts and dark creatures [like the sleek black armored skrewt and the big black spider]) Diachronic and Syncrhonic As a sort of "literary studies" clarification on my shifting back and forth in this piece between the use of something like the London Times interview and text specific details, I'll provide here a little bit of literary theory methodology (as sort of a breather from such heavy dark arts material, like maybe a little bit of chocolate proffered by Lupin after a lesson in defending against dementors). There are two approaches, the diachronic and the synchronic. The latter is a straight, self contained, literary read of a piece as it stands in the text itself. The former term means "through time" and refers to the practice of bringing in things from the time period, cultural setting etc of the author to aid in interpreting the work. An interview like the one in the London Times is sort of a cross-breed between the two approaches and holds a unique place as a direct statement by the author, even though it is technically outside the text itself. A more proper use of diachronic method would be something like Granger's work on alchemy (arguing that this method of literature is used heavily in the material Rowling would have studied as a classics major at Exeter U.) or Travi's Prinzi's exposition, over on Sword of Gryffindor, of the Fabian society as a model for Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix (the Fabian society was most heavily active within the past few hundred years before Rowling and an educated woman such as herself would be aware of such a proposed model for social change, as distinct from the Marxist approach, the latter of which is basically Voldy's tack with the werewolf community as described by Lupin in HBP in "A Very Frosty Christmas," and Travis did a great job of even tracking down in text clues such as the presence of the names of actual Fabian society members in the names of the members of the first Order of the Phoenix). Barty Crouch Jr: "Insanity it seems, has got me by my soul to squeeze" (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) This all bears directly on what I have discussed recently here about Barty Jr's character, as a potential for a good teacher squandered and perverted. The question of this section in my piece here, in this context, is basically "who dunnit?" - who is to blame. Let me be totally clear on this ... if you read the storyline correctly, none of that trial would have happened, the one in the pensive where Barty Jr is sent to Azkaban and his corruption completed, had not the Lestranges et all sought out the Longbottoms and tortured ... the primary guilt, even considering what I am about to discuss, belongs there - with the death eaters. In fact it is specifically Dumbledore's, at least STRONGLY implied, opinion, that the "evidence" against Barty came from the Longbottoms after they had been driven into insanity by the death eaters - so they are primarily to blame for the presence of the faulty info that led to Barty Jr's sentence with the dementors. But that is not to say they are responsible for the handling of such faulty information once it was present. The information should not have been trusted - that information COULD have been handled much more sanely by Barty Sr and the ministry. Dumbledore states clearly that, owing [solely - as I read it] to their present condition (IE, in their right minds not only would they not have lied, but they were probably pretty reliable on details, being as they passed the rigorous qualifiers to become aurors in the first place) the Longbottom's evidence was not reliable. As bad as Barty Jr has since become, it would be a great crime to overlook when and how he became that way. Barty Sr's foolish reliance on information he should have been able to process more soundly, taking into account the condition of the Longbottom's minds at the time, is, I think, A HUGE factor in his son's slip to the dark side. Voldy and the DE's, especially following the rebirthing scene in GOF, owe Barty SR a HUMUNGOUS thank you and a big credit listing for the assist that gave them the man to get that job done - Barty Crouch Jr. The in text evidence is FAR too clear to deny: "'Then Mr Crouch's son might not have been involved?" said Harry. Dumbledore shook his head. " (GOF 603). This adds a STRONG note of irony to Harry's comments on parents who do not know you, the child ... Barty Sr, consumed with his almighty obsession with his ministry career (as per Sirius' read of him ... and here is another note of heavy irony, this is the thing that Sirius gets right, but precisely because of his own history in such a world) did not take the time to know his son, and in the end disowns him, makes a definitive choice to know him no longer as parent to child. (Note: The "philosopher's connection," or maybe "the philosopher's touchstone" for this stuff on Barty Jr and insanity is the Frenchman named Jacques Lacan [1901-1981], who was pretty into Freud and worked substantially in the field of clinical psychology and psycho-analysis. Lacan is most noted for, far from dismissing the "lunatic" as a valid area/resource for philosophy, trying to develop a philosophy that strongly takes into account patterns of thought in mental disorder as a valid avenue of insight ... for him, in the language that Granger notes as fairly common to all PoMo thought, for Lacan the "lunatic" is the "other" whose voice should be listened to rather tan excluded from dialog [in PoMo philosophy the standard name for the theme of "the other" is the issue of "alterity." If one would prefer some support from "a little bit closer to home," like the Inklings and detective stories, there is Dorothy Sayers' "everyman" play "The Just Vengeance." Rowling herself has stated Sayers as the queen of the detective genre [cf Granger's intro piece of the WKAD book, p. 11, for the Rowling interview quote on Sayers the day after the release of HBP], so this should be an apt quote. The "Recorder" has just asked, "Who will carry the cross and share the burden of God Now, in the moment of choice when the act and image are one?" Various voices respond individually from the chorus and represent different character types in "everyman" life. The Lunatic says: "I will carry the fear that shatters the heart and brain." This passage is so great I have to quote more, including other "other" characters, like the Harlot who says: "I will carry the shame." The Wife says "I will carry the bitterness of betrayal." The Unemployed [a newly divorced mother of an infant daughter on the dole in England?] says "I'll take the poverty." The mother [Mrs. Crouch to Barty Sr.?] says "I will bear man's ingratitude." The Child [young Barty to old Barty?] says "[and I] The ignorance, that suffer and knows not why." Myself having "humped" [as we used to say] more shingles and lumber through more tar-mired heat and ankle-sometimes-knee-deep-muddy house construction sites than I care to remember [and as an academic I suspect there might be more in store during summers], I especially connect when the Labourer says "I'll give a hand with the toil."). End Note The Unrbeakable Vow. So, I have made statements on here before about what I believe about the unbreakable vow (UBV) concerning the closeness to "till death do us part" in the specific language/name of a vow. I have spoken of the image of the performance of the UBV as actually very helpful to me in clarifying my thinking on the difference in thinking on the sacrament of marriage, between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism on the "minister" of the sacrament. In the East the thought is that the officiating priest at a wedding is the minister necessary for sacramental validity (thus, by EO teaching a validly sacramental marriage, as far as I can discern, would not be possible between, say, two Protestants, because there is not a duly ordained priest to administer the Sacrament, whereas in Western Catholic teaching this is, at least in definition, possible. The terms "valid" and "licit" are standard terms in sacramental theology, the former referring to the necessary parameters for the sacrament to really happen and the specific sacramental grace to be actually present, and the latter referring to the parameters of what is "allowable" as far as by the jurisdictional dictates of he Church at large and also within specific diocese etc. A baptism by somebody other than a priest or deacon is, within Catholicism, believed to be possibly technically valid, but not licit [cases of emergency mitigate the parameters of licitness, though, and thus nurses used to be trained to baptize in cases of emergency in Catholic hospitals, including the necessary parameters for licitness that the sacrament be consciously desired if possible, or the parents request it in the case of, say, a newborn in immediate danger of death ... but an intentional baptism by any person is valid, but never to be taken lightly or in jest - something like, say, a "baptism" in a movie is licit but not valid because the person doing it does not understand themselves to be doing what the Church does in baptism, but only representing such in an artistic work ... but it is totally licit because it is done, at least can be assumed to be done, respectfully and consciously within the bounds of artistic representation]). In the West the teaching on sacramental marriage is that the two spouses are, throughout the life of their marriage, throughout the marital gift of self, the actual ministers of the sacramental grace to each other. The grace of a Sacrament always comes through the Church no matter who the proper minister of the sacrament is (IE in both Eastern and Western teaching), but the West sees the officiating priest at a wedding as primarily representing solely the authority of the Church in this regard and also the believing faith community in which the married life will be lived out as part of the communal life of the Church, but the actual ministers of the sacramental grace to each other are the spouses (in both East and Western teaching, Protestant Christians are true members of the Church through valid baptism, and thus, combined with the teaching on marriage, the West would see Protestants as capable of participating in marriage as a sacrament, and not just civilly or "within their own immanent religious tradition"). Thus (as I read the UVB scene as supporting the Western teaching but also witnessing to how complex and rich the issue is) it is the vows enacted by the two participants that actually occasions the magical binding, but that magic is from a transcendent source (see below on transcendence and trascendentals), represented by the 3rd party bonder whose wand is the conduit for the binding magic (but, as I have said, I think the way Rowling works the image here wonderfully reveals the complexity of the issue, for the present situation it makes it a "sticky one" - but the way the basics of the image work shows that in the more beautiful and natural instances, like a wedding and marriage, it is not simply a chorus singing the same note in unison - it is a beautiful symphony with sublime harmonies and counter-points/counter-melodies etc) Some have disagreed with me in comments here and in other places. The best and most cogently stated disagreeing I have seen is from Pat/Eyeore (and below under the section on analogies I will get to some of what I think was the content of her critique, which it really helps in clarifying my thoughts to have to dialog with), in a comment thread over on John Granger's HogPro site (An interesting place for it ... John is Eastern Orthodox and I am Catholic. Red Hen, in her piece in the WKAD book, takes a radically different standpoint on the UBV that seems to me to reveal some lacunae in, as I have said here before, strong understanding of the nature and role of vows in the ancient world on which Rowling would be drawing as a classics major. RH thinks that the vow is no longer an issue as far as Snape's obligation to protect Draco, and that, even if it has not already ceased to be binding, Bella should have no problem in releasing Snape and Narcissa from the bond ... which I strongly disagree with because Bella is not the "source" of the magic, as if she were some demigoguess. The name is extremely important - no other magic has been noted specifically as "unbreakable" - like "the unbreakable jelly legs jinx" etc ... only something like the goblet has been noted as "binding" to this type of level ... and Dumbledore and the others could not let Harry out of the Triwizard tournament once the deed had been done with the goblet, although was are given no in text clues as to the results of failure to comply, as we are given death as a result of failing to comply with the UBV ... my guess is that were Harry not to participate he would simply be marked down as failing in the tasks, although it would have to be a "matter of official record" because of the goblet as a magically binding contract) . Dignitatis Connubii The place where the UVB as "till death do us part" hooks up with the sacramental stuff I have just been discussing is in the area of anullments ... and this is precisely where the psychological aspects enter the UBV discussion. Dignitatis Connubii (DC) is a more "in house" document issued by the Roman Curia in 2005 regarding the process of the annulment of marriages. The teaching of the Church is that once a sacramentally valid marriage has been entered the union CANNOT be broken (not just SHOULD not, but CAN not) while both parties live ... no power, even the ecclesial authority of the Church, trumps the power of a valid sacrament. Thus, an annulment tribunal cannot break an existing bond, or make a sacrementally valid marriage "null," but rather an "annulment" is technically a declaration of a discernment that, as best as can be discovered, the parameters for sacramental validity were not met at the time of the wedding vows being taken, and thus there were "impediments" to the sacramental union from the very start. Such impediments fall under the categories of lack of sufficient intention or lack of sufficient understanding (which would then yield lack of intention, because, by definition, you cannot be intending to do something if you do not fully understand the thing). The standard is that if two baptized persons took wedding vows in the ecclesial (Church) context of human and divine witnesses, represented by at least a priest (or in the case of baptized Protestants a minister the two conceive of as representing the ecclesial community as not only a human institution but an institution constituted and defined by the Grace of God) ... this is sufficient evidence for viewing the marriage as sacramental unless or until sufficient evidence be provided to a tribunal that there was serious lack of understanding or intent on the part of either or both parties, serious enough to impact their ability to enter into a sacramental marriage at that point. DC did not really change anything in this basic teaching, but it did clarify some guidelines for interaction with "scientific tools" and disciplines that could, and SHOULD, be utilized in the discernment process of annulments. Basically the Roman Curia gave the tribunals throughout the world a clarification on the licitness of drawing on recent valid findings from fields such clinical psychology. Particularly of interest are personality disorders. DC basically instructs that tribunals are licit in making use of scientific psychological method and findings, and that, in short, personality disorders radically impair a persons capability to give themselves in such a sacramental union (again, this pertains primarily in the West where the the teaching is that the minister of the sacrament are the spouses themselves, who minister the sacramental Grace to each other in and through marital giving of self), and thus the capability for the necessary "intention." This is a much more nuanced understanding of the old categories of "understanding" and "intent" in that it means that it is not enough to have a "normally adequate" grasp of what sacramental marriage is (which, again, the Western Church sees Protestants as, at least potentially, capable of doing ... although they would not refer to as "sacramental" and they may even have a conscious aversion to applying the term "sacrament" to marriage ... this is where one must be careful not to commit the "word - thing fallacy" of assuming that just because the word is not there, or even when there is an aversion to the specific word itself, that the thing is not there), and to consciously assent to entering into such a union - it admits that there are disorders that can render a person, on the level of their personhood as a whole, fundamentally incapable of such gift of self (although not necessarily irreparably so ... Voldy's mutilation would be a different case maybe), even when they are within what has been before understood as the normal conscious level of "sanity" and "culpability" requisite for "understanding" and "intention." (As a "flipside" of the "word - thing fallacy" one should not assume that the thing IS present just because the term "sacrament" is used - there is plenty of room for Catholics talking of entering the sacrament of marriage without really understanding what that means, just as there is the possibility of Protestants having what is basically a sacramental understanding of marriage without using the word, or even with a conscious aversion to the word "sacrament" being used in that context of marriage. I would define such a "basically sacramental understanding of marriage" as a concept of: marriage as a specific and distinct path of monogamous sexual fidelity and life/practice between a man and a woman that is a God given pathway to fulfillment of the persons by God [thus a unique channel of grace, even when the term "sacramental grace" is avoided] through a communal life that is the locus of that fulfillment, such communal life being present under two primary and concrete aspects of the marriage itself - the communal life of the Church as the setting of the community of the spouses and the family, and openness to the gift of the life of new persons, children, directly from the marriage, fulfilling marriage in a community of persons called the family, in which the parents and children are intimately united to each other's formation and growth as persons in relation to God and the Church, spousal intimacy fulfilled in and connect to the personal intimacy unique to the relation of parents to child and of the family as a distinct unit). If the deeper magic in Rowling's world is love, it stands to reason that marital love is a unique and special instance of the deeper magic. What is going on here is that psychological factors are seen, at least by the Roman Curia in DC, to impact arenas (such as romantic love and marriage) that certain images in Rowling's work demonstrably, I think, hook onto ... and it has also been demonstrated, I think, rather well that the psychological factors themselves are present in Rowling's works. It is this that leads me to say that Rowling's works have something to say about these "hard corners"of real life, such as the issues involved in annulments. (Please note that I am avoiding the language of "Rowling has something to say," and sticking to my language of "the text having something to say" ... like I said, I am a die-hard "new critic" and practice "constant vigilance" against "the fallacy of authorial intent" lol. My note of a "flipside" of the "word-thing fallacy" relates here particularly to "authorial intent" because Dei Verbum, the Vatican Council II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, uses the language of "authorial intent" in speaking of Biblical "authors," and I subscribe to the authority of that council and that Dogmatic Constitution, but I am a million miles away from believing that most of us even begin to grasp the nuances of a term like "author" as used therein. For instance we keep it pretty much on the level of "author" as defined by Enlightenment radical individualism, as the conscious intent of a singular human consciousness radically independent of community etc and then and only then allow any concept of "authority" in the sense of Tradition to be built on top of that, and only in a rather mechanical way. The shape of pre-Enlightenment concepts of what I will call "authorial authority," out of which the conciliar Magisterium of the Second Vatican council is speaking authoritatively, is, I believe, a much different shape than that Enlightenment radical individualism shape we moderns tend to think in so often. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I think the Church is pretty much the Borg collective of Star Trek fame, but I do find it terribly interesting and find it rather telling that the word "individual" comes from the same root as such words as "division" and "divisive." ... but I will cover, in a moment, in the next subsection, what can be drawn from Rowling herself in the London Times interview. For the present, however, for a Rowling/Potter specific example of the issue of the issue of "authorial authority" recall the extra sentences that were inserted, in the Scholastic American hardback edition, in the Dumbledore dialog atop the astronomy tower in HBP - Rowling did not pen those lines, but she did, at the time authorize them - of course, as related by Red Hen in one of her pieces in the WKAD book, the lines have been removed from the scholastic trade paperback edition [WKAD 147], but this then means that even within a work so well within the lines of our times of "individual authorship" where composition is definitively in the written forum/stage, we still have an instance, indeed in the very work we are discussing, of "variance" among "textual traditions," not all flowing from a single pen but all flowing from a singular authority, JK Rowling). (Note: My information on Dignitatis Connubii comes largely from copy-editing a piece on annulments by Msgr George Graham, a retired priest canon lawyer from Levitstown NY, out on Long Island, in the upcoming [June 28th, 2007 - Scarecrow Press] Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy.) VERY IMPORTANT CLARIFICATIONS: PoMo Literary Theory 101 I will cover the specifics more in the following points and comments but for here I just want to clarify. I am not saying I think Rowling sat down and said "I really agree with the Catholic Church on marriage as a sacrament and on the impact of psychological factors on that, like they say in Dignitatis Connubii, which I was reading just the other day for some light reading to take a bit of a breather, and I think I want to write a story dealing with that in a symbolic medium" - I would not be at all surprised, were she to read this piece, say that she neither was intending issues of annulment of marriages nor has ever even heard of a document like DC, or is at all into thinking about such issues as marriage on the religious/theological level (although sh has reportedly said that the works relate very closely to her own grappling with her issues of the Christian faith, and in the times interview she obviously talks about her own psychological history informing the meanings of an image like the dementors ... so, when you put those two factors together, the last would not be that far of a stretch). Thus it becomes necessary for me briefly to describe how I think such things work in literature, to convey more adequately what I AM saying. I do not have these specifics of my literary theory worked out fully in regards to my sources, but I am pretty sure the language I will use of "the world behind the text" and "the world in front of the text" come from the French philosopher of literature Paul Ricouer (a New Testament exegete named Rudolff Bultmann famously took Ricouer's work to the level of saying that any reception of what I call "the world OF the text" by the world "in front of the text," IE the audience or recipients of the text, requires a complete effacement of the "world behind the text," the thought and meaning of the author - a complete deconstruction and rebuilding in a radically different shape). I think there are 3 worlds: "behind," "in/of" and "in front of" the text - the author, the text itself, and the audience, respectively. I think that certain things exist in the world behind that, whether fully intentionally or not, make it into the text, at the very least in latent forms. When the text is then taken up by the audience, in the world "in front of the text," certain of these themes can float to the top, like thoughts do in the pensieve when it is swirled like the gold-miner's pan or prodded with a wand (note that Dumbledore's "authorial intent" is nowhere near the scene when Harry does this for the first time in GOF, although his explanation is afterwards heavily present afterwards - but this is on the level of "interpretation" and not "composition" - I forget who the famous contemporary philosopher was who said it [Dom always quotes it to me in such discussions] but the author is always only the first interpreter of their own work, even composition is only an interpretation of more basic level sensation and experience by the author ... even "thought" and "intention" are, by their very nature, interpretational and rhetorical) , and the author's tone and disposition towards those elements (which is deliberately chosen language on my part, and very different from saying "the authors aims, or intentions, or thoughts, or propositions, or 'what they are trying to say'") can impact the audience. This is then what I think is a very positive role for Rowling's works in these matters (whther consciously intentional or not, elements from her "world behind the text" make it into the "world of the text," even if only in latent forms, and are there picked up by the readers in the "world in front of the text" and speak real and true things to them about those matters). As far as the world behind the text - the London Times interview references very specific information from Rowling's life, that she herself discusses. The important one is that Rowling herself underwent specific depression episode in the immediate wake of her divorce from her first husband. (In regards to the conceptual frame I have of this specific thing, it is very important that, if the reader has read this far, they carry on through the "final considerations" section below, paying special intention to the clarifications on analogies). The effects of this depression, as related in the interview, were serious enough that when, years later, and consequent to her rise in popularity and celebrity after the first few Potter books began hitting larger sales, the discovery and exploitation of the story by a magazine or newspaper actually resulted in temporary writer's block for her (one can see here that when Rowling has Hermione open an envelope of undiluted bubotubor pus as a result of Rita Skeeter's libel, she is putting into concrete image what was for her a very real experience ... Hermione unable to attend classes and coming later on with heavily bandaged hands is like Rowling being unable to write). This is an area that I previously had been very cautious to write on because of a belief I have in certain rights of privacy for somebody like Rowling and that the fact that we all enjoy her books and all does not justify us (or magazines that court our spending dollars) poking around all over her personal past. As she says in the London Times interview, however, she knew that someday it would come up - that she was divorced after a year of marriage and that she went through depression episode following the divorce (and I take this as meeting my own personal requirements for myself of not discussing these matters publicly unless I saw in her own words in public forum that it is all right by her). My main goal here is to avoid being a Rita Skeeter. I think that there are some very real issues here that have potential for fruitful and informative discussion, and for this very reason, combined with what I think would be a natural right to privacy for Rowling, I really admire her for writing these works that have potential for touching on these sensitive areas and for making her private life public discussion material. That is my intention, to discuss these things constructively, and I am very aware of the need for respect in doing so, and very desirous to treat of these issues with that utmost respect. As Rowling says in the interview, people were bound to dredge this up no matter what, once she reached a certain level of popularity but that would be no excuse for saying "well, too late now, and it wasn't me who let that cat out of the bag, but I might as well jump on the scandal band wagon" etc. Not only do I find the Potter works immensely enjoyable and thoroughly, even addictively, engaging, but I furthermore admire Rowling for writing these works and accepting the risk of the Rita Skeeter's invading her privacy for personal gain, for the sake that also "those who have ears to hear" might be able to hear, in the texts, something true that rises out of her own personal life. That to me is the single biggest factor that places Rowling solidly in house Gryffindor, for extreme courage. Some Final Thoughts One does not have to read the works on this level in order to get something very rich out of them, but it seems to me that there are certain things that should be at least touched on if one does choose to address the books on this level. Transcendtals and Transcendence. The first thing to note is a pretty complex philosophical point, and this maybe only for the theologians/philosophers in the audience, and if you find yourself swimming, feel more than free to skip down to the section on analogies (but, by all means, feel free to try this stuff on for size too). When I was talking recently with my good friend Dom, who is working on his PhD at Duquesne U in Pittsburgh, about the shift from modern to postmodern philosophy, and I said "well I know when they are talking about 'transcendental' they are meaning something different than 'transcendence' or 'transcendant'" Dom said "good, because I didn't really get that until my last year of my BA degree actually in philosophy." Where this relates here is in what I have been saying about magic and vows and the types of things that make some magical contracts so "binding," as well as the area where, while the psychological can impact the magical, the magical can also transcend the psychological, which is, in turn, not the same as leaving the psychological behind altogether (I think the best description of St Mungo's is "holistic healing" ... the transcendent magic going beyond the merely psychological, but healing that psychological also as well ... I have a post somewhere WAAAAAAY back on this site about Tolkien's use of 3 instances of courtly love in the LOTR as images of grace as supporting a certain reading of the Traditional Catholic theological statement that "Grace builds on nature" - a reading by Dr Scott Han in which thee are tenets to the "building" process: Grace heals, perfects and finally elevates nature - this encapsulates pretty well my thinking on the properly "transcendent" ... but read on for the more "technical" and less image based definition) . In brief, in modern and post-modern philosophy, "transcendent" refers to elements that are truly outside and above the human person but reach into and inform that person (that is to say the relationship of specifically "transcendent" is defined in part by a real relation and connection, otherwise it would not be transcendent, but merely other and alien ... but this thing is still above and outside the person - cf the comments in the end of the last paragrpah on Grace and nature ... and in this regard both pre-modern, modern and post-modern would agree on the technical basics of the transcendent, although the modern tends to dirft towards making the transcendent wholely other, a in Kant's thought on the external "noumenal" world in relation to the internal "phenomenal" world of the knowing subject, in epistemology [the study of sunjective knowledge and belief/opinion]). "Transcendentals" on the other hand are traits and elements within the human person that are seen as distinctly pointing towards that which is technically transcendent (like say, as per arguments for the existence of God, unfulfilled "desire," like that noted in Augustine's "our hearts are restless till they rest in thee" - and other such arguments for the existence of God found in Aquinas and Anslem et al, which is the basic argument path taken by the school known as "Transcendental Thomism," such as thinkers like Joseph Marechal and Pierre Rouselot, a school that works to bring the actual thought of Thomas Aquinas, NOT the "Thomism" of later "scholasticism" or "neo-scholasticism" of thinkers like Saurez, into dialog with the developments in philosophy since the rise of modern and PoMo thought). The confusion that can enter in here is that this is a specific usage and distinction that enters in with the modern era of philosophy, but the term "transcendental" had a specific usage in Thomas and other medievals. That older usage was still concerned with the "immanent," but more related to the "transcendant." In particular the "transcendentals" was the name given to: Truth, Beauty and Goodness. In this section I am using the term in the modern/pomo usage. I would submit that magic in Rowling's Potterverse is truly transcendent, but based in, or channeled through transcendental qualities in the magically gifted person (and further channeled through the symbolist element of the wand). It is this connection that makes Rowling's use of magic so conducive to presenting themes of where the psychological (transcendental) and the spiritual (transcendent) of moral culpability intersect (where I do not think that the works go is in pinning down the transcendant itself into concrete personal form, which would, as Granger notes in the Looking for God... book, move into the dangerous realm of invocational magic, vs merely incantational magic - if it made this move the only way to avoid dark invocational magic would be to go concretely into a specific Christian metaphysics and book with God actually as an, at least, conretely off-screen character, if not an onscreen one ... a realm into which Tolkien went only in the Silmarillion, and not in the Lord of the Rings, even though the latter work is extremely Christian ... this move would actually be a move away from being technically a "morality tale" - towards being a book of concrete discursive propositional faith statements, necessitating more of a specific "credal/confessional" stance, such as Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed etc ... I only really ever try to argue that Rowling's images are more consistent with my confessional stance of Western, Latin Rite Catholicism, not concrete instantiations of it, which would tend to get into the realm of allegory of the kind that Tolkien notoriously disliked [ the "not being concrete instantiations of Western, Latin rite Catholocism, but rather, more properly, consonance with it" thing is outside of the obvious where she uses specific concrete images from the Christian Tradition of the West, such as, as noted by Granger, the hippogryff as a christ symbol, but even here I think that it is only on the level of image source, and not on the level of "thing symbolized" ... cf the material below, under point 1 of "analogies section" on the distinction between the thing symbolized and the image used to symbolize it]) Analogies As I have said before - analogies break down. If they did not they would at least logical or material equivalences, if not strict identities, that get one no further than "by definition," which is not often very far (although Kant's thought seems to be based in an idea that one can indeed get somehwere new precisely by the realm of "definition," as in his use of "7+5=12" and "the shortest distance bwteen two points is a straight line" as exampls of "synthetic a-priori knowledge" ... but that one in particular is a REALLY deep rabbit hole). It usually does not even get to the level of "logical deduction," let alone the way that literature advances through such things as images, metaphors and plot development. Two points of "analogical break-down" need to be clearly noted, regarding my reading of the UBV and the comments Pat/Eyeore has had on it before (as I promised above) 1. The UBV is NOT an actual marriage. Snape is not marrying Narcissa Malfoy and turning her into a polygamist. My point in this reading is not such a 1-1 correlation of specific components among the elements of the analogy. My point is that certain tenets and deep questions are evident in the "world of the text" through the various components of the tone of the images used. This is a fairly complex issue at points. I think that what is being examined is the nature of vows as such, but not the marriage vow directly. However, where it gets tricky is that in the examination of vows in general, in the flow of those issues that flow from the author's world behind the text to the reader's world in front of the text by way of bubbling up in the world of the text itself in the tones of the various images that hook on for the reader, in that examination certain tenets are emphasized that DO have ramifications for disposition towards marriage as a "magically binding contract" (what is generally referred to as a "covenant," as distinct from every other type of "contract"). What makes it so tricky, or so easily confusing, is that the primary image used to do this has such strong affinities to the "til death do us part" of the Christian marriage vow (and this is actually part of what makes the whole thing work, but it remains on the level of image, and not allegory). My standard example from Tolkien may (or may not) help (I have covered this material here long ago in a smaller single post). In the Return of the King Lembas bread is described in phrasing that is distinctly Catholic Eucharistic. But I do not think that what is being symbolized by Lembas bread (IE the "thing symbolized") is particularly the Eucharist, but rather "sacramentality as such": a material entity (be it physical object or physical action) that carries moral strength/help/quality. This is what the language focuses on in the book (LOTR) itself, that a single bite can give a grown man strength to go for days, and to master sinew and limb beyond normal human capacity for stamina and self control etc - which is all "sacramentality as such" language (they screwed this one up in the Jackson movies and I am glad that, as long as that scene happened, it got cut for the theater run - I call it the "farting pippin doll" scene, where Merry and Pippin ate too much before realizing it, before Legolas/Bloom tells them a few bites is enough to"fill the stoumach" of a grwon man," and the hobbit pair are feeling bloated and gassy ... lame - very "res extnsia"/materialist language, but oh well, I am in general a huge fan of most of what Jackson did in the films). I think that if Lembas were meant to symbolize the Eucharist directly there would be more imagery or language of a sacrificial system or of some type of personal sacrifice tied directly to Lembas bread. The confusing thing is that it is a Eucharistic image (bread) that is particularly used in the symbolizing of "sacramentality as such." So, to recap all that, in these instances of analogy you have 3 things: The Symbol itself (Lembas bread) The thing symbolized (Sacramentality as such) and The image source that makes the connection work (the Eucharist) 2. The Direction of Flow. In the question of annulments it is a question of psychological factors (such as personality disorders) affecting sarcamental validity ... and so, on the analogy I am using, it would be psychological malady affecting the conduits of magic, which you do have some in an image like psychological state impacting Tonks' magical abilities (as well as Lupin functioning as a symbol of the general state of the "wounded" and the impact of such wounds on belief about self etc, his state of person affects his reception in the magical world), but for the most part in Harry Potter, on the level of strict magical capability, you have, rather, magical activity affecting psychological disposition (the Longbottom's being tortured into insanity, Lupin being put in his state of "woundedness" by being bitten by a werewolf etc). The flow of the connection is exactly opposite - but I do not think this changes the validity of the observations of a connection. Often times a "reciprocal" or "inverted" flow is precisely the methodology by which such things work in literature (and such inversion can have positive meanings of their own, as I have discussed here somehwere in these recent posts - like that golden mist in the maze of the third GOF task, the one that effects a "sudden reversal of ground and sky" [GOF 624], but I don't have the time or space to delve into this one at that depth ... I just wanted to note it as a possible objection and state that I think that the "discrepancy" is not a random disjunction that nullifies the /connectionobservation, but rather a precise inversion that would, at most, qualify the connection of the image [the inversion itself also may also NOT have a specific meaning, it may simply be that the only way to get the thing to work in a textual narrative at all is to invert it]). Numerological Post-Script By the blogger count for this blog, this post is number 325 (man, I have run my mouth a lot in the past few years lol .. although I think the way blogger counts not all 325 are publicly available ... I think some of them are draft "floaters" Pauli has had in the system undeveloped for a while - but I am not positive whether they are in the count or not, Iam going here merely on the phenomenon of observing the number in the "manage posts" interface for this blog in my blogger dashboard). Interestingly, in a very Douglas Adams/Hitchhiker's Guide/Improbability drive sort of way (and I swear I didn't plan this when writing these recent posts), the first fully ecumenical council of the Church, at which the basics of THE Traditional Creed were first formulated and entered into the Tradition, the council that began the conciliar age of the Church, was held in Nicea in .... 325 AD (intersting as, owing to other constraints on time and energy, this will probably be my last major post before book 7 comes out in just over a month, at which point we will be ushered into another new era, but in the realm of Potterdom: the age of the series as an official "closed corpus"). Reality really is stranger than fiction sometimes (again, I swear I didn't plan that one ... I am simply not clever enough to do that anyway, lol ... it has taken me all I have just to work my final picks comment on the big chiasm post, the last one before this, out to be comment number 21, the magical/numerological number of 7 x 3 ... and that is only 21 posts over several days, not 325 over several years lol). Farewell, For Now I am not saying I will not be commenting on the site anymore, but as I said in the final comment on my own thread for the last post, the big one on chiasm, I have reached a point in book 4 where I am into material I have already seriously processed and written lengthily on and I do not expect to find as much new material in this reading of it as I have found of the rest of the book 9not saying it is not there, just that I will need book 7 in my hands to draw any of it out more concretely). In addition, I have a fair bit on my plate right now as far as writing projects I am working on trying to get ready to shop for academic peer-reviewed paper journal publishing, as well as work and other "projects" (less tangible but more important things like bugging people for departmental funding for the fall and "getting connected" with various profs and people in my department, working my way into the setting and having a presence there that will behoove me as I go along working on my PhD and writing my dissertation and looking for a teaching job etc ... in short, networking - which seems to me to be one of Dumbledore's honorable aims in hosting the tri-wizard tournament, for students to be able to network internationally). I will still be popping up on the site regularly, but probably not as frequently as the last couple weeks and not with as heavy content until after book 7 is out (PS, if you have not done so, take a gander down through my comments on last post to my final daring [lol] predictions for book 7 and the series, the notorious "comment 21," - some fun stuff, and some, albeit, sad stuff). For Now ... So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, Mad-Eye Merlin (Bootstrap Brett) (Brother Lupin, the precariously poor potential pedagogue ... the lunarly alliterative marauding madcap) (Merlin the MugMat Rugrat - still a kiddo at heart ... and ever the nutter up in the hills)