On Integrity and Transcendence-

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

This is going to be a whole lot shorter than that title would suggest. It's really just a question, brought about by Sunnyskywalker's post below on the meaning of the prophecy. Here goes--

Many of us were disturbed by the flayed child in Harry's visit to the afterlife--or whatever that train station was. You remember, he at first felt compassion for the child, and then ignored it. And didn't Dumbledore say the child was Voldemort? Or, to be precise, Voldemort's soul fragment?

But we know Dumbledore is not always truthful, and we know he is not truly wise. So who is the flayed child? Where did it come from?

Clearly, it is the part of Voldemort's soul that resided in Harry for seventeen years. That child is Harry, not Voldemort. Oh, I know: J.K. Rowling would like us to think the soul fragment has nothing to do with Harry. In her story world, everything about Harry that was at all like Voldemort--his vengeful feelings, his rages, his self-absorption, his parseltongue, heck, perhaps even his magical ability--came from the soul fragment and Harry is a completely separate individual. But I can't believe that.

I can't believe it because Harry is actually written as a fairly consistent character. He  IS vengeful and self-absorbed, understandably so at first, and he becomes more so as the series progresses. I am not going to give him a free pass on his behavior in books six and seven, for example, and just say: "Oh, that was Voldemort. It wasn't really Harry." That's not how emotion works. We all have negative feelings and impulses. We can deny them, but that's not healthy, is it? Rather than rejecting our worse impulses and negative feelings, we can try to turn that energy around. We can try to transcend the negative aspects and use them for good. But we can only do this if we first recognize and accept those feelings and impulses.

So what I think is that, in that train station, Dumbledore teaches Harry to reject a part of himself. It's a dreadful thing to do. It is bound to limit Harry's moral and spiritual development. What do you think?

Comments

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this! I think you expressed what I was aiming for better than I did. That baby is a METAPHOR! Yes! And the comparison with how the Dursleys treat Harry, and how that affects his development, is very apt, indeed.

And the rejection of the child is all wrong for other reasons. Do you know Lewis's Great Divorce? It's an odd and disturbing book about a group of souls visiting heaven from purgatory. At one point, the narrator (Lewis, himself one of the holiday makers) sees the soul of a man plagued by a lizard. The lizard represents lust. One of the blessed souls in heaven speaks to the man, urging him to give up his lust. The man wavers, but finally agrees. The blessed soul destroys the lizard, apparently--but he doesn't kill it. It is transformed into a horse, symbolizing desire rightly directed. The soul from purgatory mounts the horse and rides it deeper into heaven.

The point is that yes, you need to reject your sins, but you need to acknowledge them first. If you can't even admit they are yours, where are you? The energy that could be turned in a positive direction is instead turned against you. That's what I see happening to Harry, who exhibits no moral growth that I can see. As you say, he's still isolated, still sees hard work as punishment, still thinks people who don't like you right away are enemies, and so on. And it really is sad.

[sunnyskywalker]

I haven't read that, but it sounds like a good comparison! Like, it's hard to imagine the baby not transforming if Harry had picked it up and acknowledging its pain. That's how these metaphorical spaces are supposed to work, isn't it? You deal with problems metaphorically so you can learn to deal with them for real?

If you can't even admit they are yours, where are you? Good way of putting it!

I also still think it's super-dodgy that Dumbledore is even in this train station. It's apparently for not-quite-dead people, so why is he there, deliberately sabotaging the metaphorical catharsis scene?