More on Albus Dumbledore_

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone. This will be quite short, but something sunnyskywalker said in a previous discussion rang bells with me. What if these books aren't quite what we think they are?


I am thinking of an interview with Rowling some years back, when she answered a question about her faith with words to this effect: "I struggle to keep believing". If anyone has the exact quote, I'd be grateful!

Because, you see, that is quite moving to me. It is hard to keep believing in God when you witness truly evil things happening to people you love. At least, you can't go on believing, like a child, in the wise old man with a beard who will make everything all right. That's so obviously not what God is.*

But, in these books, we have a wise old man with a beard. And he is very, very imperfect. Rowling's depiction of Dumbledore does, indeed, seem like an indictment of sorts.

But Dumbledore is obviously not God. He is just the headmaster of a wizarding school. Harry, despite some of the imagery surrounding him, is just as obviously not Jesus. Who is he? As I said on my blog some time back, he is an everyman character - specifically, he's Percival, the fool.

And - I think there is some kind of sense there, lurking deep down. I can't quite put my finger on it, but sometimes I think it's there.

Because, if there is a Christ figure at all in these books (but I don't think there is), that is definitely Severus Snape, in spite of his obvious imperfections. If Harry is Percival, Snape is the Fisher King; the wounded king of a wounded land. And what heals the Fisher King? Compassion and curiosity. Percival is supposed to ask a question. We all know that Harry never does that, don't we?

But, if Snape is the Fisher King and Harry Percival, who on earth is Dumbledore? Because he's not God. Not consciously, anyway. And - it's interesting that one of his names is Percival. What I'm getting at is that I sometimes think that the 'lost boys' of Hogwarts are all facets of him.

Rowling is playing with some very powerful archetypes in these stories, I think, and that's why we are still struggling to find meaning in them.

My two cents!

* As those who know me know, I'm a devout Catholic. To me, God is nothing like Dumbledore.

Comments

The Psychodrama of Albus Dumbledore

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

More thoughts this morning....

I know very little about Arthurian legend, so I can't compare HP to it.

However, I think I see what you're saying about Albus using other characters to carry out his own personal psychodrama. Albus suppresses and splits off the aspects of his psyche that he dislikes and ends up projecting them onto other boys that remind him of himself.

Tom is Albus's shadow self; the parts of Albus that desire power and immortality; the parts that are angry and want vengeance; the parts that believe that he is superior to everyone else and deserves to be worshiped. Tom represents all the aspects of Albus's personality that Albus sees as "evil."

Filch is another kind of shadow self for Albus. Filch represents aspects of Albus's psyche--impatience, grumpiness, a dislike of children, feelings of helplessness--that Albus sees as "weak," and which Albus therefore despises about himself.

Severus is basically Albus's wounded child. Severus represents the feelings of grief, pain, betrayal, extreme guilt, and regret for which Albus has never allowed himself healing and forgiveness.

In Sirius, Albus sees feelings of wildness and impetuousness that he feels bubbling within himself and longs to express, but which he believes must be contained at any cost for fear of the consequences of unleashing them.

Remus may represent, for Albus, inherent limitations that Albus is unwilling to accept in himself.

Hagrid may play out Albus's ambivalent feelings about having to be responsible for the welfare of others.

Swythyv wrote an essay on Dumbledore (http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/243418.html) a few years ago that might be relevant to this discussion. Among other things, she suggested that Albus may have been sorted into Slytherin. She wrote:

After Ariana's death, when Albus decided to curtail his dangerous ambitions by merely teaching at Hogwarts where he'd be "safer," he set out to throttle that internal Slytherin.

This is a hideous development in a Headmaster.

When the Hat sang of unity, it was not singing to bad little children, or even about their bad little parents' bad little upbringing of them. It was singing to Albus Dumbledore, and he was not listening.

An organization whose parts are at war with each other is acting out the internal conflicts of its executive: this is a fish that rots from the head down. I've seen it in real life, and it is creepy beyond my powers to describe.

Re: The Psychodrama of Albus Dumbledore

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes! I thought Swythyv's essay brilliant, and agree with it - and also with what you're saying here. To give just one example, Albus's unconscionable cruelty to Severus in the hilltop scene, and also later in the office, are almost understandable if he's rejecting parts of himself and not even seeing the suffering boy in front of him.

The one thing that's clear is that there is something very, very wrong with Albus Dumbledore.

Re: The Psychodrama of Albus Dumbledore

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

The one thing that's clear is that there is something very, very wrong with Albus Dumbledore.

Indeed! But it's still not clear if the author sees it. >:|