Expelliarmus: The side Beyond the Flip-Side in Deathly Hallows

So, now begins the task of unpacking Deathly Hallows. This task will not be done for many years ... in fact I predict it will never be done. Some would say that literary theorists are still simply arguing endlessly about the works of Homer and the Greeks (like Aeschylus, quoted in the inscription page of DH), I would say they are still unpacking the multi-valences and nuances. It will take years to unpack the rich character that was Severus Snape, his hatred for Sirius and James and the malice in his obvious hope that Sirius will receive the dementor's kiss in book 3 and its impact on the reading of his character as exposed in book7. Personally a favorite of mine is Molly Weasley ... Molly against Bellatrix in the Great Hall ... that's says it all - a great scene (and, inlight of my statements about the XP as a disarming spell here in contrast to the AK, check out my reply comment to Andrjez on the homecoming for some materail on Molly using a killing curse). And I would say that it will take a while even to get to the "real unpacking," or rather the "official" unpacking. Right now most of it is still going on online, and for a while it will be on that online level where when the term "canon" is used of Harry Potter, it means primarily the works and interviews, as distinct from "fanon" etc. Even though I have seen an occassional article in the academic realm, at least at the lower levels (interdisciplinary popular culture level of journals), it will be a while to get to the point where, on the academic level, the use of the term "canon" refers to the "canon of Western literature" and the inclusion of the (Although, I know personally fromt he fact that I put in for the assignment, although did not get it, that the works are being included in something like the revised edition of the 6 volume work of the Magill's companion to World Literature, that the books are already being counted among the standard works of "literature" at least at a certain level of the academic arena, although a lower tier of that arena as of yet - Magill's being a sort of expanded actual multi-volume version of the old "Cliff Notes," aimed at the same general target audience. I myself will also be trying to write two articles soon, one on a Derrida them in the works, and one on a Heidegger theme, to shop at least to lower inter-disciplinary journals. I frimly believe that in the following centuries these books will be studied regularly in the arena of academic literary studies ... but, of course, as with all things, there is much work for many people to do. ) As far as material predictions go, I maintain that it can be a very healthy and good mode of working out certain aspects of literary theory on symbolism etc, but I also do not hold that just because certain material prediction did not "come true" does not mean that the themes and literary elements they on which they were built are not valid. But again, now that we are out of the material prediction stage (IE now that we have a closed corpus) the methodology for examining those elements in the works will be different. So that brings me to this one of mine that I am writing on here, which for the present, in this context, I am going call "the side beyond the flipside." When I write about it eventually in hopes of publishing in the official academic arena it will involve talking Derrida's concept of "differance" in relation to a concept of "multi-valence"and "potentiality" and "possibility" etc. (in this arena you have things like Heidegger's definition of death, which, in English, translates into something like "the possible impossibility of all possibilities" ... and the German of that is too convoluted for me, at my redumentary level of German at present, to even begin to get into very heavily lol). But for here, at this preliminary stage, I prefer to stick to the more informal language of the "side beyond the flipside" as pertains to material elements (what I have called before the "psychic physics" of the "Potterverse" and its relation to material plot elements in Deathly Hallows) in the works, and particular, for this post, in DH. So, in terms of Deathly Hallows, what do I mean by the "flipside?" For to get to the "side beyond the flipside" we first have to know what the "flipside" is. It would be good to go to this post and read the section on the Expelliarmus disarming spell, because that is what I'm focussing on here, and also trying to make a case that I "got that right" (this is obviously not a material plot prediction but it is something I said I thought would be important and I am trying to make a case that it turned out to important). So, haveing read that you can guess I am in favor of the Expelliarmus spell and was probably a little put out at Lupin when he started tearing into Harry for using the XP rather than a heavier spell. Lupin eventually comes around to a real reason not to have used it in that situation, beceause the whole point was disguise and the XP has been known as sort of a trademark for Harry that gave him away. But I maintain that the initial impulse on Harry's part is seen to be correct, not only that I agree with it but that I think Rowling does. Stan Shunpike is young and probably under the imperius. Now, I LOVE Lupin ... seriously I do. It brok my heart when he and Tonks are listed among the dead whom Harry sees in the great hall. But I also do think there is a latent "live by the sword, die by the sword" motif between Lupin's original criticism of more passive means and his final fate ... beyond that I won't press that one particularly because he was a great character and so much more than a simple irony device (for one, after Lupin has the fall out with Harry over going with them versus satying with Tonks, Lupin genuinely takes those words to heart ... when he bursts in at Bill and Fleur's he is genuinely excited about being a father and having a family with Tonks - that is a really beautiful scene and a great character [Lupin] Rowling has created and paints ... Lupin's death was a true tragedy [not to mention Tonks'], I'm just saying there is a small message piccy-backed onto it ... but that is spoken as one who feels not like somebody who could look down their nose at Lupin and chide him, but by one who feels like a brother werewolf ... I would note the same type of irony with Snape: Voldy does not kill him with an AK, he sends the snake and snape bleeds to death from the wound ... remember what Lupin said "Sectum Sempra was always a specialty of Snape's ... it was all I could do to keep George on the broom afte rhe was injured, he was losing so much blood." [DH 73] ... but again, I love and miss Snape too, problems though he had, and I love Harry's comment on Slytherin "Albus Severus ... you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew." [DH 758 ... this is a really nice ending turn-around from 2 points in the story, one is when DD tells Snape taht maybe they sort to soon because Snape is no coward like Karkaroff, and then in book 6 when Harry calls him a coward ... this is also possibly a nice little cacth credit gor John Granger, I'm not sure but I think it would connect up pretty well with his forecasts of Snape as the Green Lion, the Slytherin Gryffindor Androgyne]) I think I was proven right about the XP spell when we read "Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand" (DH 743) - The AK vs the XP, right there at the crucial moment, Harry's "best hope." But there is a flipside. For that XP spell that disarmed Dumbledore on top of the tower was what made the plan backfire, and had Voldemort killed Draco it would have made him the master of the Elder Wand. In that case, from a normal standpoint, it would have been better for the AK not only to go through as it did, but to accomplish what DD and Snape had intended, to cut off the power from passing (we don't know for sure if what Voldy says is true, that taking the wand after death, as long as it would have been against the master's wish in life, would do the trick though). That is the flipside - it would be possible for things to have turned out very badly precisely by the XP beat the AK, in this case on the tower by Draco winning the wand by XP before the AK could do what Snape and DD wanted it to do. But in the end it wound up actually giving Harry the one advantage in that last duel with Voldy - that was the side beyond the flipside. The 2 yetzers Everything has the possibility for both good and evil. Every coin always has tow sides. What I am saying is that I think that there is another side that transcends them. The title of the subsection uses a word from Hebrew - "yetzer." It means "helper." It is actually the word used in the deliberation before the creation of the woman in Genesis two, YHWH purposes to make for the Adam a "yetzer k'negdo" - a helper suit for him. In Jewish rabbinic Thought around the time of Christ, particularly in say St Paul where he says that if he does evil it is "sin" acting within him, there is an idea of the 2 "yetzers" - the 2 "helpers" - one to good and one to evil. St Paul's comments on sin acting in him are grounded in the belief in this concept of these 2 "impulses" or "helpers" that exist in the human person, one that encourages to do justice and one that encourages against it. These 2 are kind of the "flipside" of each other ... but I believe that St Paul sees a "side beyond the flipsides," Christ, just as Rowling has a side beyond the two flipsides of the XP - AK tension. Rowling's "side beyond the flipside" is the same as St Paul's (and notable that she uses a St Paul verse on resurrection verse on Harry's parents headstone) ... XP works in both Draco getting the wand, and thus Harry getting its masterhsip, and then in Harry defeating Voldy, but the key to it all, what opens up the side beyond those flipsides, is first, latently, Draco using XP rather than being willing to kill with AK, and then Harry, like Christ, willing laying down his life, even when attacked with a wand that is rightfully his. The Mechanics of Resurrection in Deathly Hallows: Particpation (Methexis) between "meaning" and physical mechanics and the mediatory role of Expelliarmus But this Reusrrection has a tight mechanics to it too ... it is not just that the symbolism/meaning is thrown in there and works through a Deus Ex Machina. The physical side working properly, Grace not violating nature but rather transcending it in a way that does not do it the violence of radical deconstruction (as I have said before, deconstruction is a part of it all, but if it is at the level of nature being abandoned it is an erroneous concept ... much of medieval theology was wrapped up in the statement that "Grace builds on nature," huiding it throught Scylla and Charybdis of, on the one side, this type of radical deconstructionism, and, on the other, a Pelagianism or Neo-Pelagianism in which Grace doesn't really need and fixing, maybe just a few minor repairs before Grace can build right on top of it without really doing much at all to it). I have spoken of this before but I am sure I have not done it justice, for, as with all truly profound thought in the Tradition, it is difficult to do it justice. In narrative I believe there has to be a "participation" between the "meaning" and the "mechanics" - a unity in them (even though, because differance is a true concept, there will also be a variance between them ... my project is to help as much as possible to help to see this differance as multi-valences, even when they exist more in the form of simple ambiguity and ambivalences, rather than radically "unifying" things to a point of denying differance, for when differance is denied it does not cease to exist but is merely then cloaked so that one side or the other can use it as a hidden, and deadly, weapon). Another way to say all this is that, as I read the works, the way the XP works in DH is not just the "side BEYOND the flipside"; it is alway WITHIN the flipside ... it is the "participation" when this structure is turned to the matter of Nature and Grace, physical and spiritual, muggle and magic. This is one of the things I was really impressed with in DH ... that the mechanical physical side tied out so well. Rowling I think worked very hard at this, and with a real respect for the "nature" side of the equation. Dudley and Draco: The Sins of the Fathers Redeemed in the Sons Obvioulsy the subtitle I just used plays on William Faulkner's famous line fomr Absalom Absalom: "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons." I bring this all in here because the first place I ever brought up this concept of "participation"/"methexis" is in this post on Draco and Dudley, and on the protection of muggle act ... the same respect of the muggle that Arthur, dumbledore and HArry fight for - the fact that "with great power comes great responsibility." wizard kind has an obligation to protect not only the wizard or witch from the muggle, but the muggle from themselves and the muggle from the wizard. This is the post in which I spoke of this matter long ago (nearly 2 years ago), noting particularly Dudley Dursely and Draco Malfoy standing on either side of Harry, the muggle and the wizard. I have spent a lot of time on this site recently talking about ancient literature stuctures such as chiasms, ring constructions and inclusios. In DH these 2 sons, muggle and wizard, are basically the ver important beginning and ending. It is very important that toward the beginning Dudley thanks Harry for saving his life and shakes his hand, and that That is one of the things I love so much in DH and in Rowling in general is her naturalness about it. Dudley is the same meat-head as ever - he does not make any melodramatic speeches that reveal some deep well of immense vocabularly and orational skills we know could never have come from the son of Vernon Dursely, but he does realize and express seomthing real and genuine in his own way. Draco does not "see the error of his ways" and all of a sudden become bosm buddies with Harry in a way that is a stretch for his nature (Percy Weasely's conversion flows from his childhood ... the sons and daughter of Arthur and Molly Weasely have always been valiant fighters for the truth and for familial love, even if they forget that fact for a bit), but in that epilogue chapter, in that curt nod that Draco gives Harry, we see, in his own unique way, that he is not Lucius concretely swearing allegiance to a dark lord - he is on the same side as Harry in general, trying to live at peace as best he can. It reminds me of one of those little things sage people say sometimes about tensions among peoples (and sometimes it is parroted by less sage people trying to sound more sage, usually somewhat less effectively but better to have it than not :) ) ... you're not obligated to like everyone but you are obligated to love everyone. Note at the end of this book the approach Ron and Harry take toward integration of muggle and wizard life - they both get muggle dirver's licenses (a nice throwback to book 2 and the Ford Anglia ... *man do I miss Fred*) - True to form (in other words consisetent with character, such that you don't wind up with this sort of Deus Ex Machina wherever turns out "super-rosey" in exactly the same over-done way), Harry, the one raised in the muggle house, does not mention any problem from when he did his, assumedly completely on muggle skill, but Ron, the wizard-raised, fudges a little bit with a confundus spell (harking back to book 6, when Hermione does the same for him in the keeper trials) But, there is a central son born very close to the middle of this 7th book: Ted Lupin. In fact Ted's Birth is announced at the outset of the final sequence of main plot points, the sequence that, after the sort of "wondering around middle days" (when Harry and Hermione are alone and kind of going about things aimlessly with not much of a clue where to go to find the Horcruxes, the days when, like with Frodo and Sam and Gollum with the ring in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the locket weighs heavier and heavier), Ron Returns and destroys the locket and then they are captured , the sequence that ushers in the run of events that lead right up to the final battle etc. And Ted Lupin is central in 2 ways. First, his father is on the other end of the same spectrum as Lucius and Vernon. The pure muggle and the pure wizard are in danger of visiting their sins on their sons through they're assumption that their vices are really virtues - whereas remus risks alienating his son by assuming that things that are circumstantial illness will be visited upon his son as sins. And the second way that Ted Lupin is central is that he is a second Harry, or rather still distinctly Harry but with a second chance at what Harry lost. Like Harry, Ted lost his parents to the cause of fighting Voldemort, but unlike Harry he did not lose his godfather. And he has his godfather in a much better situation than Harry had Sirius for the limited time that he did. So, what Harry averts through the actions he takes is 3 sons - of the muggle, the wizard and the one who bears the wounds of the battle between the two - avoid having the "sins" of the fathers visited upon them. He does this through basically using the XP to defeat the AK 9and picking up on where it had already done what the AK did not do on top of the tower in HBP), rather than assuming that all must be done through killing, or assuming that the XP can ONLY be the flipside to the AK, the "weakness"opposite to the "strength" of the AK. The centrality of the Lupin family and Ted can be seen in that Lupin is the good character, the Order member, who succumbs to this misconception at the beginning of the book (when he chides Harry for using Expelliarmus against Stan Shunpike). In short, Harry does all of this by accepting the principle that there can be a side beyond all the dualistic "flipsides." Of course he learns all of this first by learning the humility of accepting the meeker of the two in the flipside - accepting his own death rather than seeking power (a nice close out from book 1 and Quirrel-Mort's binary/dualisticstatement of "there is only power and those too week to seek it"). That is one of the reasons why, after reading book 7, I think it is part of the intrinsic logic that Harry lived - Resurrection is the "side beyond" the "flipside" relationship of life and death. This in and of itself is not the "flipside" of Voldy but rather the "right side" of which Voldy can never be a "flipside" but only a perversion: Voldy is "death in life" and this is "life through death."