Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
By J.K. Rowling
Bloomsbury, 2007
607 pages,49.95
The Harry Potter series can be read simply as a guide to growing up. It tracks the years between ages 11 and 17 — the angst, dating experiences, family conflicts and educational experiences that characterise this period of growth and self-discovery. However, the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shows that the underlying theme of the series is death and different approaches to dealing with death.
Harry and his arch-enemy Voldemort occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of attitudes to death. Harry is not scared of death. He is an orphan — virtually everyone he has loved or been close to has died (his mother, father, Sirius, Dumbledore). Furthermore, Harry has been forced to confront his own mortality in numerous tests and battles throughout the seven Harry Potter books.
Serving in the frontline of the battle against Voldemort, Harry has come to terms with the idea of dying. Harry's acceptance, nobility and dignity in facing the prospect of death is well spelled out in Deathly Hallows, and as a theme comes to a pinnacle toward the end of the book, when Harry learns his true destiny and Dumbledore's intentions. By contrast, Voldemort is motivated by his complete fear of death and his quest for immortality.
Harry and Voldemort's characterisation as good and evil respectively is not arbitrary. Their incompatible approaches to death make them that way.
Their attitudes to death also inform their attitudes to life. Voldemort's obsession with evading death and achieving complete control over both the wizard and Muggle (non-magical) worlds leads to a complete disregard for the life of others. By contrast, Harry, Dumbledore and their allies believe in equality between the wizard and Muggle worlds and respect for Muggle-born wizards and other magical creatures like giants and house-elves (for instance, Hermione's creation of S.P.E.W. — Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). The creation of Dumbledore's Army (an organisation of self-defence and resistance against Voldemort formed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is another example of this.
The Harry Potter books encapsulate many of the contradictions and beliefs of popular culture and contemporary capitalism. Thus, the Ministry of Magic and the bureaucrats who staff it are repeatedly shown to be corrupt, bureaucratic and inept, even while under the control of the "good" wizards. The Ministry stifles attempts by Harry to tell the truth about Voldemort's return in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, fearing an explosion of social unrest.
The Daily Prophet tabloid newspaper is shown to be an instrument of manipulation and control over the wizard population that deliberately censors the real news (that is, Voldemort's return). Its journalists are characterised as gossip-hungry and more interested in creating controversy and writing best-selling, unauthorised biographies of well-known wizards than reporting the facts. The audience recognises and relates to these aspects of real life, and our emotional investment in the novels' fantasy world is reinforced.
Similarly, J.K. Rowling's use of familiar political ideas and terms is merely a means to express the novels' thematic concerns (that is, acceptance versus fear of death and dying), and by incorporating aspects of real life political conflict, she imbues the story with a sense of realism.
There's a lot of dramatic power in the kind of defiant language and political action that Rowling depicts. Rowling repeatedly uses strong, political language and imagery that has plenty of inherited power from previous, recognised social use, which makes it effective in a literary sense.
Things happen in the world of Harry Potter that we all recognise — a repressive, authoritarian government takes control, curfews are enforced on citizens, squads of organised thugs patrol the streets, torture is used as a legitimate tool of repression, "Mudbloods" (wizards with non-magical parentage) are forced to register themselves with the Ministry and are systematically discriminated against. Students and other citizens begin to organise against the repression. Leaders of the resistance (and their families) disappear or are imprisoned in a last-bid attempt at demoralisation and extermination, and a tide of resentment rises within the population.
At the climax of Deathly Hallows, political language and battle imagery combine with magical ideas. The war between fear and love, good and evil, and left and right comes to its terrible, inescapable culmination. The entire wizard community is forced to re-evaluate its loyalties and beliefs. The statues and suits of armour of Hogwarts march in formation, the giants, massive spiders and centaurs of the Forbidden Forest are stirred from their placid isolation and the result is breathtaking.
When, in the face of the Dark Lord himself, famously timid Neville defiantly screams "Dumbledore's Army!" to the triumphant cheers of his loyal, militant wizard-troops, and when Professor McGonagall cries, "If any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance, or take up arms against us within this castle, then we duel to kill", we, the audience, respond with an inflamed sense of justice and defiance.
The use of left-wing imagery and language is not unique to the Harry Potter series. Look at the tagline for the June 2007 film Transformers — "Their war, our world". The capitalist media often co-opt the language of the left in order to capitalise on the genuine, progressive sentiments of the public, and the realm of culture (for example, novels and film) is no exception to this.
By necessity, Deathly Hallows is the most moral book of the Harry Potter series. Harry completes his internal journey from boy to man, from mere mortal to honoured and glorious leader. In this depiction however, Rowling undermines her own left rhetoric by characterising Potter as the one true leader, upon whom the destiny and harmony of the wizarding world rests.
Harry learns many moral lessons about right and wrong, and is both damaged and fortified by his experiences and losses in battle in Deathly Hallows. Perhaps the moral message of the book, of life beyond death, of meaning beyond the embodied, and Harry's ultimate lesson is encapsulated in Professor McGonagall's response to the question, where do all the vanished objects go? "Into non-being, which is to say everything", he says. The political content of Rowling's works, though still powerful, is secondary to this message.