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

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/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./

I think that's the problem with the Trio's character development in a nutshell. For example, many here have commented on the similarities that Hermione has with Umbridge. The problem is that none of the characters ever realize this. Hermione doesn't ever step back and wonder if she's going overboard with her self-righteousness. Heck, in the same book where Umbridge is introduced and forces Harry to scar himself, she permanently scars a classmate with no regrets.

Harry has multiple opportunities to reflect when he sees echoes of himself in Tom, Severus, and even James, but he never learns from them. He never thinks, "I'd better stop doing that so that I don't end up like him." All that those flashbacks really end up doing in the end is make Harry momentarily uncomfortable. They don't spur him to improve his behavior. If anything, they just prove how much better Harry is: "See, Harry could've wound up becoming a murderous psychopath due to his abusive background like Tom did, but he didn't!"

Even Ron, who's the mildest of the three, doesn't try to improve himself substantially. Granted, given his family background, he may feel that there's no point because he'll be mistreated either way. But that's the problem: he just gives up. He feels inferior to his brothers, but doesn't do anything to alleviate that inferiority. He doesn't try to find something that he's good at and they're not and try to excel at it. He doesn't try to be a great student and do the best he can, regardless of what his family may say. He just floats along on mediocrity and complacency instead of trying to break free from them.

In fact, I'm just thought of something: Neville's whole character arc could have been Ron's. They're both belittled at home, they both start out as average/incompetent in school, and they're constantly underestimated by people. But while Ron's skill at chess was showcased in PS/SS and then never used again, Neville at least had Herbology as his hidden skill set. True, he ended up having to become a warrior in DH anyway, but at least once the war's over, readers can see him as a Herbology professor. What does Ron have after the war's over? He steps into Fred's place by helping his brother run a joke shop. He doesn't have his own unique gift to build on.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! I remember a fan of the book who used to come here and insist that they were quite successful, because they were all about Harry's coming to learn and understand. But that's just what he doesn't do! Instead, he is given a pass on any sort of real moral and emotional growth. It's very frustrating.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh yes. I can easily see that soul fragment as a concrete representation of outside influences upon oneself (which fits very well with all the other literalized metaphors in the Potterverse). Originally, that fragment was something externally imposed on Harry, but over time, he incorporated it into himself and it affected the way he developed. It's like how the Dursleys externally imposed the "don't ask questions" rule on him, and over time, he internalized it and didn't ask questions even when he could, because that way of thinking and acting had become so normal to him. People can resist such influences, or react to them in different ways, but it affects them somehow.

That soul fragment was an influence (to some degree) on Harry for over 15 years. Taking it out won't change the way his reactions to it have affected him. I think facing that flayed baby could have been a form of facing all the terrible things that had been done to him, and figuring out how he was going to live with that. He could have thought about who he wanted to be, and what he needed to do to become that person, and how to compensate for wounds that might not fully heal, instead of just reacting.

It could have mirrored the non-embodied character development I was hoping he would have in Book 7. Like learning how to reach out to people (but nope, Neville did that character arc for him), something his years with the Dursleys didn't encourage and his time at Hogwarts didn't really help much either.

I was also fond of the original (pre-HBP) Changeling Hypothesis on Red Hen, which asked what hanging out in Harry's head might do to Voldemort's soul. However bad things got for Harry, it was better than Voldemort--so couldn't essentially being given a childhood do-over have given Voldemort a chance at redemption? (Maybe not a good chance, but more than he had the first time around.) Could that flayed fragment have been healed enough that it could feel remorse and pull the main fragment back to it? That still wouldn't leave Voldemort with a whole soul, but again, he'd at least be less damaged than before.

What we got was so much sadder. Harry is still isolated, barely able to connect with or trust people, lacks critical thinking skills, and is still locked into "either people believe you immediately or they're jerks who will never believe you and there is no possible use to explaining things with evidence and reasoning" mode. It makes "all was well" so hard to believe, even after a 19-year jump.

[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.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I was also fond of the original (pre-HBP) Changeling Hypothesis on Red Hen, which asked what hanging out in Harry's head might do to Voldemort's soul. However bad things got for Harry, it was better than Voldemort--so couldn't essentially being given a childhood do-over have given Voldemort a chance at redemption? (Maybe not a good chance, but more than he had the first time around.) Could that flayed fragment have been healed enough that it could feel remorse and pull the main fragment back to it? That still wouldn't leave Voldemort with a whole soul, but again, he'd at least be less damaged than before./

That's a very interesting idea! If the soul fragment in Harry had learned compassion through Harry, if Harry had influenced it positively all the while Voldemort was trying to corrupt him, that could've been an interesting dynamic.

But with the way that Harry has been characterized in canon, I'm not sure if the soul fragment would have much to learn from Harry. Like I commented in an earlier post about DH, Harry doesn't come across as the compassionate opposite of Voldemort, just somebody who's not as bad as him (which is really not a high bar). For all that love is touted as the force that Voldemort doesn't understand, Harry doesn't come across as especially loving, especially not to people that he dislikes. What, for example, would the soul fragment learn from Harry's hatred of Snape, from Harry's determination to think the worst of him and to blame him for everything that goes wrong?

/It makes "all was well" so hard to believe, even after a 19-year jump./

For all that people, including myself, are happy to forget and dismiss "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" as non-canon, Harry's characterization in that play really drives your point home. Because it's years later, Voldemort is gone, there are no more Horcruxes, Harry is surrounded by family and friends who love him, and yet Harry still behaves terribly to his son and acts like a child. Which makes it all the more convincing that the Horcrux excuse was just that: an excuse.

[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?

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, Rowling definitely didn't take Harry in a direction where that would work. Which would have been okay if the direction she did take weren't so depressing and unsatisfying.

Harry as a lousy father is one of the things that sounded most plausible about that play. Sad, but plausible. It's so weird how Rowling can show things that make sense and only later go back and try to explain it differently.

[sunnyskywalker]

Ron's disappearing chess skill is is disappointing! He had something he could shine at, and the books just dropped it. He could have built on it instead. Even if he dropped it for a few books first and only later buckled down for some more positive development.

Neville managed to reach out to people who weren't even friends, after years of being socially isolated at school. That took way more guts than the warrior part alone, I think. He could have just hidden in the RoR by himself if he'd wanted, but he invited other people who were in danger and went back out to protect others. That's the kind of growth I expected from our protagonists too.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

But Dumbledore is at least being consistent there: he's teaching Harry to use the exact same strategy that Albus did at that same age.

My ambition (and my love for Gellert) led me to destroy my baby sister.

NO MORE AMBITION! (And no more personal love for anyone.)

Excise a part of oneself. And then never have to think further about how one came to do such a thing, or to grow....

In fairness to Albus, he might actually have thought that this time it would work.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, all these years later, including almost a year of being dead, he should have had time to rethink that strategy...

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's interesting! Albus actually is being consistent, isn't he?

Also, welcome back.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

The flayed baby could represent the damaged, cut off parts of Dumbledore's soul. With no day or night, no hunger or thirst Dumbledore wouldn't have a mesure of how much time had passed between noticing the baby and seeing Harry. Until he is willing to try to help the flayed baby Dumbledore will remain stuck at the station.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like that idea. But I do have an uncomfortable feeling that (1) Rowling means us to see the child as Voldemort's soul fragment, and that (2) we are meant to think it okay that Harry ignores the child. It's all very disconcerting.

But I really like your interpretation. It makes so much sense!

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Didn't JKR say someplace that the baby represents, not the soul fragment in Harry's head, but Voldy's remaining soul, pulled into the afterlife along with Harry? As I understand it, the fragment in Harry's head was wiped out by the AK.

Of course, the text never explains what's going on, so we readers are free to interpret it as we please. Either way, Harry and Dumbles should not be ignoring a suffering baby. Albus will be in that train station until he picks up and comforts that baby. And when Harry dies, the crying baby will be waiting for him, right where he left it.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that's a possible interpretation, too. I can see that the baby might be meant to represent Voldemort's soul fragment. But here's the thing: nowhere in the books does it say that the AK destroys anyone's soul. What it does is to kill you by expelling your soul from your body. So I really think my interpretation makes as much sense as Rowling's.

And I love your final paragraph! I agree.