Harry Potter's Bookshelf (11 page)

Note his proud scientific language: He is a pioneer in the “experiments” to “conquer death.” Like Dr. Frankenstein, though, the creature Voldemort fashions from infamous acts of murder and idolatry is something subhuman.

Frankenstein’s creature, an embodiment of the passions and reason of science, lacked conscience, as did Jekyll’s Hyde. The spiritual faculty of the human person is uncreated; call it conscience, the active intellect, the eye of the heart, or what you will, it is the divine aspect of the human person. J. K. Rowling calls it love, and Voldemort knows nothing of love.

Love burns the unworthy or polluted in gothic horror. Remember the scar left on Mina Harker when the Eucharist, representing the God who died in loving sacrifice for his sheep, was placed on her forehead? Voldemort/Quirrell burns in agony when he touches Harry at the end of
Sorcerer’s Stone
, Dumbledore explains, because:

Voldemort leaps this magical barrier by using Harry’s blood to reconstitute himself in
Goblet of Fire.
The admixture creates the “bond of blood” that joins them. When he possesses Harry at the Ministry in
Order of the Phoenix
, however, he is driven away and guards himself against Harry by Occlumency thereafter because of the pain he experiences when Harry remembers Sirius. The love and remorse Harry feels almost destroys the Dark Lord.

Voldemort has become undead and all but immortal, like Stoker’s Dracula, through the dark magic of Horcruxes. By committing “the supreme act of evil”—a murder—the soul is torn.

Incredibly, Riddle, Jr., creates one unintentional and six intentional Horcruxes. The Dark Lord’s exterior transformation into a person “whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils” (
Goblet of Fire
, chapter thirty-two) seemed to Dumbledore “only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call ‘usual evil . . .’ ” (
Half-Blood Prince
, chapter twenty-three).

Dracula survives by drinking the life’s blood of others and making them undead creatures of darkness like himself. Voldemort, too, must murder to achieve immortality, but, while perhaps not as gruesome as vampirism, Horcrux creation is at least as horrible. The Dark Lord is the satanic cartoon of a materialist who infuses objects with pieces of his own soul, pieces he has acquired via destruction of his neighbor. His “life,” such as it is, is entirely
exterior
and material, rather than interior and spiritual. As an allegorical figure, he is the embodiment of our fragmentation, self-estrangement, and alienation—the postmodern, fallen condition gothic literature presents in imaginative form. Voldemort is Rowling’s gothic masterpiece.

The
Harry Potter
novels are not only full of gothic touches, but every one of them also has a gothic story inside the story.

First let’s look at the gothic touches.

 

HOGWARTS CASTLE:
A gothic novel is set in a castle, manor, or monastery for the most part, preferably far removed from city life. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry exists in its own castle, unplottable to mapmakers. Even if Muggle tourists were to stumble upon it, enchantments prevent them from seeing more than charming ruins. The classrooms and house common rooms are set in towers and dungeons and the castle’s grounds and hallways with their huts, suits of armor, torches, and absence of technology are thoroughly medieval.

 

SUPERNATURAL ATMOSPHERE:
With few exceptions, the major players are all magical creatures, which is to say, witches and wizards. Hogwarts has a resident population of ghosts, too, featuring a monk, a poltergeist, and a bathroom spectre. Not enough like Halloween? Harry has a werewolf as a trusted mentor; meets an honest-to-God vampire, Count Sanguini; and even trolls turn up here and there.

 

HORROR:
The supernatural at Hogwarts, it could be argued, isn’t any scarier than the old
Addams Family
gothic camp television series. But there’s plenty of fright: dementors that suck the souls and joy from a person in a fate worse than death; Voldemort’s head under Quirrell’s turban; Fenrir Greyback the werewolf eating human beings; not to mention the inconsolable, raw-fleshed baby soul fragment at King’s Cross in
Deathly Hallows
.

 

SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGES:
Harry goes underground every year for his annual confrontation with the black hats (except for
Goblet of Fire
when he Portkeys to a graveyard . . . ). In
Deathly Hallows
, he goes underground seven times. As a gothic “heroine,” Harry is almost defined by his heroic deeds performed in tight spaces underground.

 

ISOLATION:
Every year, sometimes for most of the year, Harry is despised by most of his classmates for something he has done or for things he hasn’t done. In
Sorcerer’s Stone
, it was losing house points for being out after curfew. In
Chamber of Secrets
, the rumor is that he is the Heir of Slytherin petrifying Muggle-borns. In
Prisoner of Azkaban
, the need to protect him from Sirius Black is the reason dementors surround the school. In
Goblet of Fire,
he is chosen as the second Gryffindor champion for the Triwizard Tournament even though he is not old enough to have applied. In
Order of the Phoenix
, no one wants to believe Voldemort is back—but Harry tells everyone he has witnessed his return. And, in
Deathly Hallows
, Harry is a hunted man on the run from the Ministry, their Snatchers, and the Death Eaters. For a popular guy, Harry spends a lot of time despised or feared by his peers.

 

FRAGMENTATION AND REUNION:
The most painful chapters of the books are the several times either Harry, Ron, or Hermione decides to exclude a member (for example, Hermione’s agony in
Prisoner of Azkaban
) or takes leave voluntarily, spitefully (such as Ron in
Goblet of Fire
and
Deatlhy Hallows
). Their eventual and usually dramatic reconciliations and reunions, in keeping with the gothic formula, are the highs of the whole series. Harry’s life as an orphan is highlighted by his always-surprising meeting with shades of his parents: in the mirror in
Sorcerer’s Stone
, in the golden web while dueling with Voldemort in
Goblet of Fire
, and on his walk to certain death in
Deathly Hallows.

 

PROPHECY, ANCESTRAL CURSE:
The Harry/Voldemort relationship and conflict turns on a prophecy about
The One with the Power to Vanquish the Dark Lord
. Hogwarts struggles with its founder’s myth and the cross-generational hatred between Slytherin and Gryffindor. The Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position is clearly cursed. And Professor Trelawney predicts Harry’s death at a young age in almost every Divina tions class.

 

TAINTED BLOOD, BOND OF BLOOD:
The great divide in the Wizarding world at large is an extension of the Gryffindor/ Slytherin feud. The Pure Bloods of Slytherin maintain that those witches and wizards who are Muggle-born or who have Muggle ancestry in any way are inherently inferior to those who aren’t and don’t. Issues of “blood purity” and tolerance of Mudbloods define social grouping and standing. It’s no accident that Harry ultimately defeats the Dark Lord because of the sacrificial love of his Muggle-born mother.

 

GRAVEYARD, CORPSES:
The pivotal scene for the seven-book series occurs in
Goblet of Fire
in the Little Hangleton graveyard, where Lord Voldemort throws his rebirthing party. Some of the Dark Lord’s most horrific weapons are the Inferi, animated corpses that almost pull Harry into the lake and to his death.

 

DECAY OF ARISTOCRATIC PRIVILEGE, RISE OF BOURGEOISIE:
Gothic romance celebrates the minor gentry and simple landowner, whose virtues and ambitions for individual rights in inheritance and marriage are in conflict with old money, landed estates, and an aristocracy in decline.
⁹
Can you say “Malfoys and Weasleys?” The Malfoys have one child because of their caste belief in primogeniture and unwillingness to divide their holdings; they are corrupt, bigoted, and unfailingly patronizing to their social inferiors. The Weasleys are the opposite on all counts. Draco Malfoy, when Hermione points out that he has only been made the Slytherin Seeker because of his father’s money, not talent, enrages the Weasleys by calling her “Mudblood.” The gothic social argument in a snapshot!

 

FOREST:
The Forbidden Forest that all but surrounds Hogwarts is populated with angry centaurs, a giant, ferocious Acromantulas, and a host of magical creatures running the spectrum from Bowtruckles, Triwizard dragons, and Nif flers to unicorns, Hippogriffs, and Thestrals. It is off-limits because it is a wild place and dangerous to students; Harry, consequently, visits almost every year on detentions, classroom trips, outings with Hagrid, and, finally, to meet his death.

 

SACRIFICIAL BRAVERY:
Hermione says Harry has a “saving people thing” and she has a point; Harry ends every book, it seems, by putting his life on the line to save a friend or keep the Dark Lord from taking over the world. But Harry isn’t the only one. Lily dies to save Harry. Ron jumps in the Forest of Dean pool to save Harry’s life, and Snape risks his life daily in the last three books as a Death Eater double agent within the Order of the Phoenix. Sacrificial love, loyalty, and bravery are the stock responses
Potter
readers are trained in, beginning to end.

 

MEMORIES AND DREAMS:
Several of the books’ mysteries turn on information gained from memories in a Pensieve, and one features a living memory as a principal character (young Riddle in
Chamber of Secrets
). Harry dreams prophetic dreams or has visions through Lord Voldemort’s soul fragment when he rests.

 

FOUND BOOK:
In
Chamber of Secrets
, Lucius Malfoy plants Tom Riddle’s diary inside one of Ginny Weasley’s textbooks. The living memory in it possesses her and frees the basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets. Harry is given a Potions textbook in
Half-Blood Prince
that is brilliantly annotated by the book’s mysterious namesake. Harry becomes a Potions whiz kid, learns a spell with which he almost kills Draco, and saves Ron from a death by poisoning.

 

DOPPELGÄNGERS:
The Hogwarts cast of characters is a double-natured bunch. There is a werewolf, a half-giant, a Muggle-born, a double agent, and a “Dumbledore Man” with a Voldemort soul fragment tattooed to his forehead. Besides these Jekyll/Hyde interior doppelgängers, there are also pairs; Dumbledore/Voldemort are a light and darkness set, for example, akin to Van Helsing/Dracula, and Harry’s gothic heroine role is complementary both to Snape’s Byronic antihero part and Voldemort as the gothic overreaching scientist.

 

SCAR OR TELLTALE MARK:
Harry’s scar is his connection with the soul of Lord Voldemort. It is also the identifying mark by which every magical person recognizes him.

 

MYSTERIOUS STRANGER:
Consider Black, Lupin, Moody, even Snape as figures who are not what they seem to be at first sight or until known very well.

 

CONFUSED ORIGIN:
Harry is not only an orphan, but also a living mystery. How did he survive the Death Curse as an infant? Harry’s life as a survivor leaves everyone scratching their heads.

 

NIGHT:
Rowling has said that Hogwarts had to be a boarding school so the children could have nighttime adventures.
¹⁰
Given the number of nights Harry is out in the halls under the Invisibility Cloak, I often wonder how he passed any classes or stayed awake. The naps during Professor Binns’s lectures must have helped.

 

MIST AND FOG:
Half-Blood Prince
opens with the U.K. Prime Minister upset by the chaos erupting all around him inexplicably, not to mention “all this chilly mist in the middle of July . . . It wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal.” He isn’t cheered to learn from Cornelius Fudge that the cause of the mist everywhere is breeding dementors, “the creatures that drain hope and happiness out of people” (
Half-Blood Prince
, chapter one).

 

DISTANT PAST:
There isn’t time travel into the distant past, but Hogwarts and the Wizarding world have a medieval or Renaissance flavor nonetheless because of the castle and its antiquities and defining characteristics (suits of armor, paintings, the Great Hall, etc.). The robes and absence of technology, too, give everything about the school a nineteenth-century feel, at best.

 

DEATH:
Lupin, Tonks, Sirius, James, Lily, Colin, Fred, Albus, Peter, Alastor, Barty, and Severus, for starters. The books are about death, and characters drop right and left as you’d expect in a series beginning with a double murder . . .