Death Within and Without: Being Towards Death

I was taking a break from research and reading for papers and since I had recently, on the drive from the Bronx to PA and OH and back again, listened a good deal of the way through Deathly Hallows (Scholastic Version with Jim Dale), I decided to pick up DH and read the King's Cross chapter again (a few nights ago I did the same, reading the escape on the dragon, which was where I had been in the CD set when I hit the George Washington bridge on my way back into town, and selections up through the story told by the ghost of Ravenclaw's tale). As I was reading I was thinking about the specifics of the way the cloaked scene works as Harry walks down with his parents and Lupin and Sirius to face death by Voldemort's hand. Harry walks down protected from death by the cloak, as the cloak is specifically known to do. This is the part where, in DD's words, the legend breaks down and facts become a little more relevant. The cloak may make the wearer truly invisible to the 'death' character in the tale, but, as Harry notes, it is not a protection from curses, and thus not a fail-safe protection from death (and interestingly - and I am not sure if this is a glitch/mistake or not - the cloak does not make Harry invisible to magical eyes like Moody's, which I think is somewhere in GOF, sometime when they are in the 3 broomsticks, Harry under the cloak). BUT, the thing is that while Harry is invisible in the cloak he still has the opportunity to evade death at Voldy's hand. It is his choice that decides. What stood out to me in this reading is the image of the loved ones "inside" the cloak with Harry. They disappear when he takes the cloak off and reveals himself in the moment of choice. And they are visible to none but him. Somehow, it is accepting the company of the dead, of the dearly departed - not as ghosts or in the way of the stone and trying to "fetch them back", but specifically AS dead, as having passed through the veil ("He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.") - is what is necessary for facing death well - and for the possibility of resurrection, and for the possibility of living well even on earth (for Harry to live on and have a family with Ginny etc). While carrying the dead with him while in the cloak, he is protected from death by invisibility if he chooses so to continue. But to make that choice would go against the whole reason for calling them with the stone in the first place, and then it would become what it was for the Peverell brother who made the stone - bringing the dead back into a wretched half-life. Two points from past posts are relevant here. One is the "technical detail" of the missing 14 feet in the graveyard scene in GOF (Harry is six feet from the tombstone when Cedric dies, then Wormtail has to walk "some twenty feet" to retrieve Harry's wand laying by the body), on which I noted that I think it results partially from the text detail of the wand dropping near Cedric's body and then the need for the death eater symbolism that the body be outside their circle (the discrepancy comes from the conflicting material requirements of 2 "meaning" right in a row ... Voldy is cold and heartless and the "killing of the spare" could hardly warrant from him more than a passing whisper, so Harry and Ced must be no more than about 6 feet to hear it, but a circle of close to 30 death eaters is going to be more than that in diameter, and if you are going to get that body outside that circle for symbolic effect, right after the whisper scene, you're going to have to move it without explanation in the text), the departed excluded from the death eaters' considerations. The second point is related in that in the cage of phoenix song just after this, it is the death eaters who are outside while the shades of the martyrs are inside the central arena of action. Whether by conscious choice or subconsciously, Rowling's brain really goes for the "inside-outside" pairings, oppositions and reversals, especially in regards to the issues of death and the departed. PS That thing just now of meeting death "by Voldemort's hand" ... Really interesting phrase. Actually I have used it in Hebrew but was not aware of its existence in the Hebrew Scriptures and thus had to sort of guess at the morphology on my own (in Hebrew "by his hand" is one word: the preposition "in/with/by" is a single letter, "b", which can attach itself to the beginning of a word [a prefix] and Hebrew has a system of what are called "pronomial suffixes" - endings that can attach to nouns to show possession according to number and gender, so you attach the suffix for masculine singular ["his"] for a singular noun [there are different suffixes for singular and plural nouns, such that "his horse" and "his horses" would be different not only in the original noun, but in the suffix used - and their is yet another for "their horses" when you are speaking of masculine plural owners and another for when you are speaking of feminine plural owners, and different endings and rules for if you are dealing with a masculine or feminine possessed noun - since, as in German, French, Greek and Latin, nouns have gender - for masculine plural possessed noun, feminine plural possessed noun, basically every variation, you get the picture ... takes a while to learn ... but you get the picture: attach the prefix for "in/with/by" to the front of the word for hand, and the suffix for "his" on the end). Anyway, I had done this for a series of handmade wedding gifts with the "Poetic Benediction" from Numbers ("The Lord Bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace") in Hebrew (Masoretic Text), Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate) and English (Revised Standard Version). The inscription below had the dedication to the couple and then the Hebrew of Genesis 12:3b ("In you shall all the families of the earth bless themselves"), and then my signature, and below it that Hebrew word for "by his hand" - meaning that it was handmade (at least hand-inked, not my actual full caligraphy because I made a guide to use on a lightbox because my penmanship is even worse in Hebrew and Greek alphabet than it is with English alphabet). But the further meaning of the word was that of an oath, to put one's hand to something like putting your hand on the Bible to take an oath in court ... to pledge yourself, your very being, to good will for true well being ( I also had them blessed by a priest when I was done with them). Well, recently in a class I am taking on the history of the interpretation of the "Akedah," the "binding" of Isaac in Genesis 22, I discovered an actual use of that Hebrew word: "in/by his hand." When they reach the mountain after a 3 day journey, In Genesis 22:6, Abraham places the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac's back and takes the fire and knife "in his hand" (meaning his own) - and "so the two of them walked on together." I am making no claims that I think Rowling had this passage in mind when she wrote "The Forest Again" chapter - I think these things travel in our collective subconscious (more commonly referred to as "tradition") and just sort of bubble out. But take a look at the groups of images used. Harry walks to his death ("and the two of them walked on together") with his "beloved" ones ("take now your son, your only son, whom you love ..."). We have had much research and many authorial statements about the role of different types of wood ("And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son") in wands ... and in this book especially the wand made of elder. Now, as with all analogies, the analogy breaks down (I would say it has to break down, by definition, otherwise it would be an identity and not an analogy) - so it is best not to look to tie things out so nice and neat; real literature, like real life, is a little bit messier ... and richer. And that is not really my methodology anyway - I look for clusters of images traveling together, resonating organically off of each other, and resonating also with traditions. But, if one does want to look for tighter connections (and if one has thrown up one's hands at the whole thing of the wood on Isaac and the wand in Voldy's hand and asked "so Voldy is Harry's father like Abe is Isaac's? What are you smoking?"). Dumbledore knew a lot of things, he probably knew Voldy would wind up seeking and finding that wand of elder wood, and from his own hands, even if they were dead when he took it, and we know from Snape's memory that DD sent Harry to receive Voldy's AK from that wand, to have that wood of his own death "laid across his back" as it were (meaning there also the image of a whip on the back, a scourging). Dumbledore has been very much a father figure to Harry, and in effect laid that wood on his back. Of course it was Voldy who applied it ... but look at Dumbledore's comments in "King's Cross" - his grief and heaviness when asking the question of the similarities in his own mission for the hallows and Voldy's mission. Other things that are added in the history of interpreting the Akedah/Genesis 22 also ring in Rowling's tale here. In some later sources the element of a stone of sacrifice is added - like Harry walking with the resurrection stone. This seems to me a particularly strong resonance, especially in the context of this present post, since it is the resurrection stone that creates the situation of which I spoke in this post, of the communion of saints within the cloak ... want another nice little connection? In the Targums [Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures], the connection of the mountain of "Moriah" with the mount of the Jerusalem Temple is drawn out more, including the cloud and fire of the Shekinah of the later Temple AND Abraham is looking into Isaac's eyes and does not see what Isaac sees looking up - angels, connected with the angels believed to guard the Temple sanctuary ... just as only Harry can see his parents and Lupin and Sirius, the protectors. Now, lest I seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill - This passage, the Akedah/Genesis 22 is a very important passage for the three largest religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is especially relevant in the issue of religious identity. Muslims believe it was Ishmael who ascended the mount with Abraham. Jews believe the merits won in the Akedah obedience provided a guarantee of mercy for all of Isaac's descendants (this is worked in in the Targums in a prayer on the part of Abraham). The author of 2nd Maccabees saw in the story of Isaac a model with which to connect the martyrdom of those who would not defile the name of the Holy One, Blessed be He, under pressure from Antiochus Epiphanes (pressure to eat pork, defiling the dietary laws etc). Christian Patristic writers and others emphasized that Abraham's obedience lay in the fact that it was identity itself that he was willing to sacrifice (the continuance of his name in legitimate descendants through Isaac ... and for an echo of the role of names and descendants, male and female, in identity cf the comments of Ron/Hermione on certain wizarding lines being "extinct in the male line" ... this is standard "boiler-plate" language of geneological identity matters and it feeds directly into the mystery of Riddle as a descendant of Slytherin through the Gaunt line). Even down to modernity ... the book I was taking a break from reading was Soren Kierkegaard's (19th century) Fear and Trembling, a classic of contemporary existentialist philosophy - all about Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac. And as for the present day, I'll just close with the lines from Bob Dylan (my old fall-back) with which the translator of Kierkegaard's FnT opened his forward to the work (from "Highway 61 Revisited" - and also current, the movie "The Hunted" with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro featured a page torn from a Bible with Genesis 22 on it and a Johnny Cash cover of the Dylan song): "God said to Abraham, 'kill me a son,' Abe said, 'Man, you must be puttin me on' God said, 'you can do what you want , Abe, but next time you see me comin' you better run' Abe said, 'Where you want this killin' done?' God said, 'Do it out on Highway 61'" (I was walking through the reference section of the library with an armful of several volumes of Kittel's Dictionary of the New Testament, on my way to the copy room, and out of the corner of my eye, on a shelf I see "the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" - so I look up Highway 61 because I had just learned from a girl in our program who is from Minnesota, that Highway 61 in MN runs right past Duluth, Dylan's [or I should say Zimmerman's] home town - but this guy also noted the symbolic nature of Highway 61 - It runs north-south from Canadian Border to Mississippi River Delta by way of Memphis and is standardly seen as symbolic of African American musical/cultural migration, as opposed to Route 66, which is standardly viewed as the east-west symbol of white migration in different periods of US history) Wood, Knives, Stones, Angels seen and unseen, Fathers and Sons, Death "in/by his hand," Promises of Identity, a Via Dolorosa ("way of the rose" = "way/walk of sorrow/to death"), A Son willingly dying (in the Targums Isaac asks Abraham to bind him tightly and well, lest in a moment of panic he kick out and make Abraham's sacrifice profane and he himself be sent down into the pit of destruction ... the pleasant feeling and how everything automatically appears to meet Harry's needs in the King's Cross chapter suggests he has definitely not "gone down into Sheol" as it were) ... All just some food for thought.