deathtocapslock | Gollum not Gandalf: Meditations on Albus (Reply)

Another spark struck from Condwiramurs’ “Indestructable” series. I started this, then got distracted by fresh posts and had to address them first. This was sparked by Part II, in which she meditated on Galadriel’s gift to Frodo: a light in dark places. And on the fact that only Gollum’s inner struggle, his better self against his worst, had him placed to step in when Frodo’s will finally failed.

Merciful goddess, Condwiramurs, you are right. We all thought that Jo had modeled Albus on Gandalf, but he’s really a second Gollum. (With a dollop of that silver-tongued wizard who had the hubris to call himself “The White” and to set himself up as an advisor to temporal rulers.)

Gollum. At once the protagonists’ guide and their betrayer.

Gollum. Slinker and Stinker. Fundamentally lacking integrity. A creature who IS an internal war playing out, indecently, for all to see. (And who eventually loses that war…)

Gollum. Possessor of, possessed by, obsessed with, a mythic magical object.

Start with that, with Gollum’s magical possession. His obsession.

Which (its least, and least worrisome, property) turns its possessor invisible. Which separates him (eventually permanently) from his fellows.   Which confers longevity, (temporary) immortality—that is, it may justly be said to “hide the user from death.”

All this without requiring much of the user’s understanding or intention.

Which, used at a higher level of understanding and power, allows one to summon and control certain of the dead. Higher yet, can make one supremely powerful—allegedly invincible. At the highest, can make one Master. The master of death.

Jo just split the One Ring and its powers into three items, which must be re-united, she claims, to be fully empowered.

Back to Gollum. Obsessed with the idea of that artifact, possessed by it, consumed by it. Gollum, the guide trusted to lead the protagonist where he needs to (not wants to) go. Who in fact does so, but in pursuit of his own agenda all along.

The path to “the back gate into Mordor” was the path to Shelob’s lair. Gollum’s betrayal was implicit in the first step towards Cirith Ungol.

Yet Frodo still had to follow him to get there, or fail in his quest. Even though he was untrustworthy, Frodo still was right to trust him. Sometimes it’s better to have a faithless guide than none.

Without Gollum’s guidance, however faulty and self-serving, Frodo would have stuck and sunk in the Dead Marshes (Severus) or been killed trying to storm Mordor’s front gate (oh, god, how Harry that would be).

Gollum. Slinker and Stinker. The divided self, the broken one. Lacking wholeness. Lacking integrity. His internal conflict made external for all to see.

“DUBBLEDORE!” cried Neville in the Department of Mysteries.

Doubledore.

The headmaster whose internal war, Swythyv suggested, was won—or rather, not won—on the playing fields and in the classrooms of Hogwarts.

“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. ...

“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. Subordinates always do the knife work unsolicited, and it always manifests in the same way, too: Dirty tricks. Dirty tricks that hamstring the victimized person or department, but that make them look like fools if reported. And when the emboldened aggressors do cross the line, there's always some reason why no action can be taken - usually re when or how the victim reported it - delivered with a gentle sigh.

“If children were simply little sets of dishes to Albus Dumbledore, the Slyths were dirty dishes.”
Swythyv, “Dumbledore,” http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/243418.html

Doubledore. Who is also the protagonist’s Shadow. His other self. The image of what the hero will fall to if he lets his fear and greed rule him.

Or even just isn’t quite strong enough: “I picked it up, and I put it on—”

Record of a catastrophic failure in both sagas.

Only Albus WAS the shadow-self; he didn’t have a deeper Shadow to seize the burden from him and complete the quest immediately despite his weakness.

That’s why the quest could not be completed while Albus was alive: Because Albus could not tolerate that the quest actually be completed.

Why didn’t Albus just destroy the Elder Wand to keep it from Tom? As well ask, why didn’t Gollum ever just throw away the Ring? “It is precious to me, though I purchase it with great pain.” (Okay, that was Isildur. But still.)

Only, what was the real quest then? The Riddle posed by Tom was just the most recent, very localized manifestation of it. Tom was a problem, a very serious one, to those who had to deal with him or his effects, but he was not The Problem, just one of its symptoms.

Condwiramurs, your suggestion that the Flamels had Severus destroy the Stone suggests what the quest is: not to conquer or cheat or deny death. The opposite.

To love and honor life.

Except, the most powerful wizards, for millennia, have not registered that that honoring life is NOT best done by denying death. They have consistently tried to cheat or conquer Death. Which misses the point.

But, see, Albus is among those powerful wizards who did miss the point. Or rather, I think he knew intellectually that death is less important than life. He paid lip service to this (parroting the Flamels?), and no doubt thought himself both clever and wise to do so. He even was able to accept the idea of his own death—“accept” it, that is, after he had no choice, having mortally injured himself by his own folly, and after arranging for his actual decease to be instantaneous, painless, on his own terms, and both at another person’s grievous cost and by that other’s iron will.

(“only the arrogant invent a quick and meaningful end for themselves, of their own choosing.” Judy Grahn, A Woman is Talking to Death. That’s our Albus!)

But when it came to the Hallows… Well. Albus held onto the Deathstick until his death—and was scheming to hold it past his death, to be its master, to stay its master, unmastered himself, eternally.

No one (that I know) has ever quite acknowledged that that was the trick that our Doubledore was trying his very hardest to pull off. To hold onto that Wand’s mastery forever. “I had learned that I could not be trusted with power,” indeed!

When he spotted the Cloak, Doubledore immediately stole it, putting its rightful owner, his own loyal liegeman (and the liegeman’s wife and baby), at increased risk.

When Doubledore found the Stone, he promptly trying to claim it by donning the ring (shades, of course, of LotR).

(Hmm. I’d earlier speculated that Albus was willing to pass the cloak to Harry simply because he’d found it wouldn’t work for him—except as just a cloak, as the Deathstick was just another wand to Tom. And that he’d perhaps hypothesized that Harry could eventually give it back to him, that only as a free gift could it “reveal the wonders it has promised.” But now another possibility occurs to me: if the Flamels had discovered that Albus had stolen it, could they have made returning it to James Potter’s heir a condition of lending him the Philospher’s Stone?)

But back to Gollum. Gollum wanted the Ring for himself, yes. Strongly. But not actually overpoweringly—he could, or his better self, Slinker, could, accept Frodo as its (and his) master. What he absolutely could not endure was that the Ring should be utterly destroyed. That threat is what brought into final ascendance Stinker, Gollum’s worst self.

Albus didn’t want Tom Riddle to win the prize of being Death’s Master, no—via either Hallows or Horcruxes. Give Doubledore his due credit: he was motivated, at least in part, by how horrific it would be for the survivors if Tom truly became immortal and held the world as his toy. And Albus was gripped by his guilt for letting the boy Tom become Lord Voldemort, potential Master of Death. Doubledore would do almost anything to prevent that.

Almost anything.

But, like Gollum, he could not tolerate the idea of his ultimate prize not being there to be won. By him, preferably, but at least still out there glimmering*.

*Still out there glimmering…. this ties Albus back to Severus, at the very point where Severus first turned, first began his spiritual journey. Obviously Severus initially wanted Lily for himself. Even at his worst, he was never a stalker; he was never the traditional jealous “lover,” who’d rather the beloved be dead—preferably at his hands—than happy with a hated rival.   But then it seemed to come down to that. And when it did, when it seemed that Lily might be killed—and by Severus’s agency!—for bearing Potter’s son, Severus chose the world in which Lily was alive and never his, over a world in which the “faithless” Lily was dead. Severus offered his own life—and all his ambitions and other desires, and I do think he was hotly ambitious—to create a possible world in which Lily still existed, still glimmered, even though not possessed by him.

Except then Severus went on to place Lily’s greater good, her desire to protect her son, ahead of his desire to save her. And then he was forced to sacrifice even that goal, of keeping alive the boy Lily had died to save, to their joint (mutual?) goal of protecting the rest of the world from Tom’s dominion.

So not once, not twice, but three times, was it demanded of Severus that he renounce—sacrifice—not just his life, but the very goal to which he had already sacrificed his life, all his worldly ambitions, and his sacred honor. (Or at least his reputation.)

Albus maybe managed it once. Well, okay, give him credit, not maybe. Doubledore made no effort to “borrow” back the Cloak from Harry—we would have seen it if he had. So, once he did manage.

But Doubledore didn’t snap the Deathstick, though he knew perfectly well that Tom would eventually pursue it, and would probably end by physically possessing it. And Doubledore clove the Suicide Stone in two, which destroyed it as a Horcrux, but not its property as a Hallow, its ability to summon the dead.

So. Doubledore would give almost anything to stop Tom. His own life even.   Almost anything.

Anything. Except the dream itself of ultimate power over death.

But the whole problem with Tom WAS his insane pursuit of that same dream, at any cost. Tom was Doubledore’s Stinker, which Albus himself had set loose upon the world. He was Albus’s darkest self, with the brakes off and no need to present himself (to others or to himself) as Good™.

And Albus would do anything to stop him.

Except give up their mutual deepest dream.

In fact, Albus ended by setting Harry up to be killed by the Deathstick at Tom’s hands—bearing both Stone and Cloak. To Tom. Had Tom followed Albus’s clues about the Hallows, had he been smart enough to check Harry’s body and surroundings, Lord Voldemort could have united the three Hallows perfectly legitimately. (Had Tom checked the body and killed it again, he would have defeated Harry. By bringing the Cloak to his death scene, Harry might be said to have “given” it voluntarily into his killer’s hands.   Certainly Harry couldn’t have expected it to have gone to anyone else! All that remained was for Tom to run his hands randomly through the grass near where the boy had stood, just in case…. Or maybe, since he’d already once acquired the Stone by accident, he could have Accio’ed it this time.)

So Tom was within a breath of taking all. Was Doubledore subconsciously trying to set it up so that one at least of his two most devout disciples would become the Master of Death? The Dark or the Light, no real matter which?

May the best man win? The best at deciphering Albus’s dark hints, that is….

Or was Slinker really trying, subconsciously, to make his alternate self, Stinker, the ultimate Master?

I mean, look again at what a good situation Doubledore had set up for his old student at his death. Tom was within weeks of being able to take over the temporal power (which he’d not been positioned to do before—and Swythyv argued that this was so because the Ministry had been sapped over the intervening years by Albus).

All but one of Doubledore’s adult followers were told to do nothing against Tom, just to “put their trust in Harry.”

The one exception, the most effective of Albus’s loyalists, now attainted as a traitor, was bound by Albus to “play his part convincingly” and again, to wait for Harry—but to wait in order to tell the boy, if he was successful, that he must surrender himself and die. With the children of Hogwarts set up as hostages for Snape’s continued inaction against the Dark Lord. (Oh, Doubledore does know the right strings to pull. I’ll give him that.)

The boy himself was set to the task of finding and destroying the Horcruxes, with no actual information on how to do either.

The hints about the Hallows were left dangling where either Harry or Tom might pull on the thread.   (What, you thought that Tom’s contacts in the Ministry wouldn’t get a full account of the only personal bequests in Doubledore’s will? Tom had previously scorned those Quester babblings about a Wand to end all wands, but if Albus was dropping such heavy hints to the brain of Potter’s outfit, there must be something to the rumors….)

Finally, Snape was programmed to tell Harry to go offer himself to Tom to be killed at the exact point when it was certain that Tom had realized his Horcruxes were in danger, but while it was guaranteed that at least one was still intact.

Now that’s timing.

So, no. The quest to destroy the mirage of “mastering death” could never have been completed while Albus was alive. Because Albus clearly could not tolerate that the quest actually be completed.

But then, it wasn’t.

Ever.

Just, Tom was finally killed.

And even that, Jo tells us proudly, was all due, really and truly, to a chance unforeseeable by either Stinker or Slinker—the encounter at Malfoy Manor that gave Harry Draco’s wand, and with it, the Deathstick’s fealty.

Which means that the predictable result of Doubledore’s great plan had been Tom’s triumph.

Which would actually have happened anyway, despite Draco and the Deathstick, had Tom had the elementary good sense either to check Harry’s body himself or to keep the protective cage around Nagini until he’d made certain of a backup Horcrux. By Hallows or by Horcruxes, Tom should indeed have won. Had Tom himself not messed up royally, not once but repeatedly.

Um.

Now look again at the situation afterwards. In King’s Cross, Doubledore had blithely informed his disciple that he, Harry, was the one worthy to unite the Hallows. A little later, Portrait!Doubledore, informed by Harry that he intended to keep the Cloak “forever,” beamed his fond approval. Harry further received Doubledore’s benign sanction for his clever plan just to leave the Stone where he had dropped it. (Where Harry, or anyone else who worked out the story afterward, could retrieve it with a little work…. )

Movie!Harry snapped the Deathstick after using it to restore his wand—good instincts on the moviemakers’ part!

Jo’s Harry, though, couldn’t bring himself to do that. He couldn’t even think of it. He proclaimed instead his intention to follow his mentor’s ingenious scheme of trying to hold onto the Deathstick’s mastery until, and after, his own death. He planned to keep the thing itself meantime, unused, in his mentor’s tomb. And again, Harry received Portrait!Doubledore’s august approbation of this course of action.

Even assuming that Harry actually was able to make himself follow through on his promise, at the best the boy was giving a potent talisman into his (dead) mentor’s keeping, its powers all intact. Just begging to be used.

Just like Frodo before beginning the quest. Frodo couldn’t bring himself quite to cast the ring into the hearthfire at Gandalf’s urging, but he did offer it to Gandalf. To be kept safe.

What did Tolkien call the chapter in which Frodo did this? Oh, yeah: The Shadow of the Past.

So Jo ends her saga where Tolkien began his: with the should-be hero ensconced in his cozy domesticity, clinging to a powerful talisman of invisibility though it carry his own corruption and the destruction of the world.

And again, the only possible comment seems to be:

Um.