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

Umm....

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Throw open the gates, why don't you?


.... Waits in hiding to see what dares enter.

[oryx_leucoryx]

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.

I'll need help with name meanings. Is Severus, who died in the place where he once was once nearly eaten by a werewolf somehow Wulfric? Is Tom somehow Brian? What does the name 'Brian' mean?

The name Tom (or the full Helenic version, Thomas) is derived from the Hebrew T'om (there's supposed to be a very short vowel between the T and the o) which means 'twin'. And while younger, he is Albus' twin (though he presents himself as Harry's twin in COS).

[lissa2.livejournal.com]

"As those who know me know, I'm a devout Catholic. To me, God is nothing like Dumbledore."
To me, the biblical god is even worse:

"2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Sam. 15:2-3).

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

What does the name 'Brian' mean?

According to Wikipedia, probably "high" or "noble", which fits Tom's pretensions (and Albus').

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

To me, God is nothing like Dumbledore.

Yep, too true. Dumbledore would not sentance anyone to eternal torture.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Like you, Dumbledore does not resemble my personal understanding of God. Thinking about it, though, Dumbledore is something of a personification of a classical understanding of God.

The classical God is rather aloof and unapproachable. At times, he will seemingly abandon us without explanation, yet we are still expected to remain faithful to him. Everything that happens is all part of God's plan, even though some of it makes no sense to us. The experiences and events that cause us suffering only appear "bad" to us because we lack God's perspective to see how they are all part of a greater good. It is not our place to question what God is up to....

Many Christians do believe in such a God.

However, if JKR did mean for Dumbledore to represent the classical God, it's not clear to me if that's how she herself sees God or if she was attempting to highlight the problems with that kind of theology.

[600ants.livejournal.com]

Id say not to take these things too seriously. Most of the names were chosen for the first book, obviously, and by then, the dark, man, dark, and deep, man, deep masterplan simply didn't exist and most of them are just lame puns - Severus is Sverus simply because JK chose to go with Latin names, and needed one that would "fit Snape's personality". It sounds like "severe" and the meaning is "stern", which is IMO quite far from Wulfric (a combination of Wulf=wolf and ric=power).

Brian, if Im not mistaken, comes from old Celtic "bre" = "hill". By extention, you can say it means "high" and by even more extension "noble", though I doubt this was the original meaning of the name.

[600ants.livejournal.com]

Yep, too true. Dumbledore would not sentance anyone to eternal torture.

LOL! You sure about that? No seriously, I don't think Dumbles was ever meant to be read as God. He's your token mentor figure, no more, no less.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"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."

Snape's always seemed more like the repentant sinner to me, which I would argue still makes him the most Christian of the characters in the books. But that's one of the reasons why Dumbledore as God doesn't really work for me. There is, after all, more joy in Heaven at the repentence of one sinner than at ninety-nine good men who have no need to repent, and I for one find it hard to imagine God looking at such a sinner and saying "You disgust me."

(In general, though, JKR's ideas about Dumbledore are woefully confused. On the one hand, he's this omniscient mentor character who is always right, and who should therefore be obeyed without question. On the other hand, he's also fallible and mistake-prone like any other person, in which case blind trust in him is a sign of dangerous fanaticism, rather than commendable faith. JKR doesn't seem to be able to decide betweeen the two portrayals, leading to lots of inconsistencies in the way he's written about.)

Re: Umm....

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Um - yes. Probably not a good idea to bring up religion. ;)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

He may not sentence, but he'll happily condone it.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes - Thomas means twin, and it's been obvious to me for awhile that Dumbledore and Voldemort are spiritual twins. Whatever that indicates!

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. One might add the fact that - as of DH - it turned out the real point in being "good" WAS to be on the side of "god" (Dumbledore)and not of doing right things or omitting to do bad things. In other words, very much the god of the Old Testament as quoted above by lissa2.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

But only for the greater good!

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Well - probably better not to get into a theological debate here. I actually agree with you (and Helen Keller), that the Old Testament God, in particular, seems monstrous if you take him literally. I've read the Bible in its entirety twice, and it was pretty hard going.

Let's leave it at that. Whatever you think, or don't think, of God, the problem with Dumbledore is what Lynn outlines below. He's not God; he's just some guy, and yet blind obedience to him gets rewarded, while questioning is punished. He also never shows mercy to anyone, certainly not to a repentant sinner. And that is very unlike the God of the New Testament.

Getting back to Dumbledore, and my original post - what if we are not meant to like or admire him? What if we are meant to see that the entire wizarding world is acting out his psychic conflicts? That would be interesting, wouldn't it? But I am not sure it's possible to read the books this way. I'm wondering if it is, and, if so, what Rowling could have meant by it.

I also have a lot of sympathy for her if, in the figure of Dumbledore, she was expressing her anger at God. It's okay for a believer to be furious at God sometimes! What gets me is her insistence that he is "the epitome of goodness". I can't manage to follow her there.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment - I agree completely, actually.

But what do you think of the idea of Snape as the Fisher King? Harry as Percival? There are echoes of sense and humanity (to me, at least) in such a reading. I just can't figure out what to do with Dumbledore. My sisters and I just saw Lear, and he may be more like Lear than anyone else, perhaps. Maybe Arthur or Uther? Maybe Merlin? But T.H. White's Merlin has influenced my reading of that character, and I like him far better than Dumbledore, just as I like Wart far better than Harry.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes - I agree with you. If she does mean us to see Dumbledore as God, it's very unclear what she means by that comparison.

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

Percival and the Fisher King? Oh, wow. I hadn't thought of that.

As far as what JKR might have meant, I think that consciously, she was just fooling around with tropes and archetypes. But this discussion makes me wonder: Was JKR subconsciously expressing anger against God, Death, etc.? Not to suggest that JKR came to any profound conclusion on those topics, but unfocussed anger and pain might explain why, by the end, the whole thing had turned into a confused rant.

But like a surrealist painting, does it matter what the artist/writer actually meant? What's important may be the different things that we see can in it, depending how we look at it, and the fact that it makes us think. And that's why I love this comm: you folks show me new perspectives all the time (and thanks for that!).

You know, if whole HP series wasn't such a totally messy Rorschach blot, we'd probably get tired of it and drift off looking for new tales and new fandoms. Instead … *goes off to ponder possible meanings of Dumbledore, the Fisher King, and the Old Testament*

[sunnyskywalker]

He disapproves of Dementors, but is fine with Sirius rotting in Azkaban (about the closest thing they have to constant torture) on flimsy circumstantial evidence... so yeah.

[sunnyskywalker]

That sounds plausible - maybe she consciously set out to complicate the wise mentor archetype, with or without realizing the God parallels. But since the parallels were there, her subconscious got away with her and started confusedly ranting at God, even as consciously she was trying to do something else. If she was trying to do anything by the end but fill in the outline to be done with it all :D

[sunnyskywalker]

What I'm getting at is that I sometimes think that the 'lost boys' of Hogwarts are all facets of him.

The Potterverse as Dumbledore's hall of mirrors... makes a lot of sense, actually, especially given that all this stuff happened under his watch and so is at least partly his doing. Tom's the Dumbledore who went dark all the way when he didn't reign him in, Snape's the one who repented, Harry is... all the other people Dumbledore has hurt, maybe?

Did Dumbledore ask Grindlewald a question when he finally captured him and locked him up? Because supposedly he felt some remorse eventually, which is a kind of healing - and in the Potterverse might literally be so, if it mended some tears in his soul.

(Side note - if Durmstrang is such a Dark Arts school, then why did they expel Grindlewald for almost killing some students? Hogwarts just gives detention for that sort of thing. Or covers it up entirely.)

My rather simplistic view...

[starzangelus.livejournal.com]

This is all very interesting!

To me, though-- and in a sense, it was perhaps taken too literally, what with the events that occurred in the sixth book-- Dumbledore is Jesus. Snape is Pontius Pilate.

Harry, like you said, is everyman's man. He is a representation of man, forever under the sway of the serpent (TWO GUESSES AS TO WHO THAT IS) and God (but not God*-- Jesus).

But this is just how I saw it! I'm not very knowledgable in these things!



*I'm referencing the Trinity... I consider Jesus and God two complete different entities.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

I talked about this some in the other post. I never paid much attention to either Rowling's interviews or fandom discussions until recently, so I formed my interpretation of the story in a bit of a bubble.

I had thought that it was her intent to lull her readers into believing that Dumbledore was the prototypical benevolent older mentor with the long white beard... and then to catch us by surprise in DH by revealing his true colors. Why else, I thought, would she devote so much much of book 7 to Dumbledore's background story and his involvement with Grindelwald? I wrote in another essay (http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/254529.html) about how we could even interpret the evidence we have, including Snape's memories, in a way that suggests that Dumbledore intentionally leaked the prophecy to Voldemort.

As I said in the other post, I thought that Snape summarized Dumbledore's true character quite well.

I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter.

Harry, of course, is still faithful to Dumbledore at the end of the story, and even names his son after him. But I'm not entirely sure if we as the readers are supposed to agree with his feelings. Time and again we are shown that what Harry believes to be true turns out to be entirely wrong. And Harry certainly hasn't reached anything resembling enlightenment by the end of the story.

Why should we trust Harry's opinion that "All was well" at the end of the story?

But then, apparently what she has said in her interviews belies this interpretation. It's confusing to me that what she has said in her interviews about Dumbledore and Harry being the "good guys" and the "heroes" is not at all what she's actually shown in the text. It makes me wonder if she is doing some kind of performance art in her interviews, where she tries to stay "in character" as the narrator inside Harry's head when she answers questions.

I can't tell if she's truly that screwed up that she can't see the blatant moral problems in the story or if she's playing some kind of post-modern game with us.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

As I've suggested before, I see Dumbledore as JKR's misunderstanding of Gandalf, although there's definitely some God-analogue stuff in there, too.

Harry is therefore Frodo, and Voldemort is, er, the Dark Lord. Sauron. :-P Voldemort and Sauron were both once nicer-looking than in the time period of the books's settings.

The Potterverse Saruman is almost certainly Lucius, right down to his degraded state at the end, and his failure to successfully assist the Dark Lord.

I guess the Ministry in *general* is Denethor, although frankly, Dumbledore is Denethor-like, too.

As for Severus, I can't think of a good match. It wouldn't surprise me if *JKR* thought of him as a little like Wormtongue, or maybe Gollum, but neither actually works.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Then again, other aspects of her story are so sloppy that it makes it hard to believe that she was intentionally being so clever.