Always looking for material for this column, I thought, why not go to one of the big bookstore events on Friday, July 20 for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J. K. Rowling’s series? The biggest bash in New York City was the one at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square, where Jim Dale, who performs the audio book versions of the Harry Potter series, would start doing readings at 10:30 PM. There would even be live owls in the store!

When the previous book in the series was released, I was in San Diego for the 2005 Comic-Con International. Despite the fact that I was at a Borders bookstore within easy walking distance of the Convention Center, I had no trouble getting into the store, and only a reasonable wait in line to pick up a copy of the book (see “Comics in Context” #97). This wasn’t bad, considering that among the hundred thousand people attending the Con, there was surely a huge number of Potter fans.

So I got to Union Square’s Barnes & Noble at 10:30 on Friday night and saw a long line stretching out the doors, which I followed to the end of the block, around the corner, down the block, around another corner, and midway down that side of the block, reaching the bookstore’s delivery entrance. It was obvious that these people weren’t being let in because the store was filled to legal capacity. That meant that none of these people would probably get in until the pre-release festivities were over at midnight, and a woman in line told me that everyone in line had already reserved a copy of the book. (I dfon’t recall seeing any small children in line. The people in line were mostly twentysomethings, who had presumably grown up reading the series and remained loyal to these “children’s books” which appeal to all ages.)

I had decided not to go to this year’s San Diego Con and had felt relieved that I would not be braving the lines to the dreaded Hall H, site of the con’s movie panels. Now, I realized, the Hall H experience had come to New York. Would I wait outside for at last 90 minutes, probably longer, not to get in until the show was over? Not this time. I headed home.

Besides, I had already had an experience appropriate for the release of Deathly Hallows. On the website of the book’s British publisher, Bloomsbury, there had been a webcast from the Natural History Museum in London, which is my favorite building in the city and whose Romanesque architecture makes it a good substitute for Harry’s school Hogwarts.
The audience counted down to midnight (London time), and then Rowling read the first chapter of the new book aloud. She did it rather well, too, much better than the reading I heard her do at Radio City Music Hall last year (see “Comics in Context” #148). You can hear her Natural History Museum reading, too. She did it in the Museum’s Great Hall; I wonder what it would’ve been like seeing the Museum’s famous Diplodocus statue looming in the background, as if playing the role of one of the Potter series’ mythical beasts.

The first chapter made for a suspenseful set piece, and made me thankful that I had refused to read any spoilers or reviews that had come out before the book’s official release. I realized that I was glad I hadn’t even known what the first chapter was about before hearing Rowling read it aloud. I wanted to be completely surprised about the direction the book would take from each chapter to the next. (And those of you who have not yet read Deathly Hallows and want to be similarly surprised should stop reading this week’s column now. In another paragraph I’m going to start discussing the plot, including the ending.)

The New York Times, including its Public Editor, has been defending its decision to run Michiko Kakutani’s review of Hallows on Thursday, two days before the official release. The Times claims that the review did not give anything important away; I read the review after finishing the book, and it’s true that Kakutani concentrates on Rowling’s style rather than the specific contents. But, as film critic Nathan Lee observed in a Times Op-Ed about the controversy, every review by necessity gives away something, and Kakutani did state in her review that “at least half a dozen characters we have come to know die in these pages, and many others are wounded or tortured.” (Rowling had publicly stated that two major characters would die, but I immediately realized that that quota would be filled and exceeded just by killing off the principal villains, including Voldemort. In fact, I’m rather surprised that Lucius Malfoy survives in the book. Perhaps since he had fallen from Voldemort’s favor, Rowling didn’t want to kick him when he was down.)

Moreover, it seems to me that by printing its review two days early, the Times was effectively giving its approval to the booksellers and Internet posters who had violated the official release date. The Times’ tin ear as to the repercussions of its decision is demonstrated by the responses to the Public Editor’s defense, as you can read online.

Journeying into Manhattan on Saturday, I sighted a fellow subway passenger holding a copy of Deathly Hallows. At a midtown Barnes & Noble, I simply walked up to the sales counter, where the cashier handed me a copy of Hallows from what must have been a considerable stack. It was a beautifully sunny day, so I headed over to Central Park, where I found two appropriate locations to start reading the book: first by the statue of Hans Christian Andersen, and then by the statue of Alice in Wonderland. Yes, this was far better than waiting outside Barnes & Noble past midnight and then taking the subway home around 1 or 2 A.M Saturday morning.

Why should I write about Deathly Hallows in a column titled “Comics in Context”? First, I suspect that many, perhaps most of you are Potter readers and don’t mind. Second, one of my primary subjects in “Comics in Context” is the superhero genre, which is a form of the larger genre which the literary critic Northrop Frye called “romance,” meaning an adventure story involving heroes and villains who are larger than life. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga appears to have succeeded Star Wars as the dominant, most influential “romance” in popular culture.

Where should I start in tackling a critique of Deathly Hallows? I decided to focus on the declaration by Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman (Thurs., July 12, 2007) that “If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God.” He continued, “Harry Potter lives in a world free of any religion or spirituality of any kind. He lives surrounded by ghosts but has no one to pray to, even if he were so inclined, which he isn’t. Rowling has more in common with celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens than she has with [J.R.R.] Tolkien and [C.S.] Lewis”.

I couldn’t recall any examples of prayer or religious services in the Harry Potter books, but I didn’t find Grossman’s pronouncement entirely convincing. Does the absence of references to religion on the printed page necessarily mean that the author and her hero don’t believe in God? What if Rowling thought that religious faith was too private a matter to insert openly into a children’s adventure saga? What if she thought it unwise to enunciate specific religious beliefs in her books when her audience consists of children and adults of many faiths, as well as agnostics and atheists? Besides, to be vulgar about it, although Rowling establishes the existence of lavatories in her fictional world (notably Moaning Myrtle’s hangout, the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets), she doesn’t depict her characters relieving themselves, though we may assume that they do. The Beat points out “the pervasiveness of Christian holidays” like Christmas and Easter in the Potter books; so maybe many of Rowling’s characters are praying and attending church when we’re not looking.

In this same piece, the Beat includes a quotation from Rowling, who was asked by the Vancouver Sun (Oct. 26, 2000) whether she was a Christian. “’Yes, I am,’ she says. ‘. . .Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.’” Rowling told another interviewer (CBCNewsWorld: Hot Type, July 13, 2000), “I do believe in God.” but “Magic in the sense in which it happens in my books. . . .I don’t believe in that. . .. This is so frustrating. Again, there is so much I would like to say, and come back when I’ve written book seven. But then maybe you won’t need to even say it ’cause you’ll have found it out anyway. You’ll have read it.” Grossman even reported in a previous article, “Interestingly, although Rowling is a member of the Church of Scotland, the books are free of references to God. On this point, Rowling is cagey. ‘Um. I don’t think they’re that secular,’ she says, choosing her words slowly” (Time, July 17, 2005). (For all three quotations, see here.)

Intrigued, I did further research and discovered that there has been considerable analysis of Christian imagery and themes in the Harry Potter books, notably the work of scholar John Granger, the author of several books on the series. (Granger maintains his own website, and is interviewed here.)

In her aforementioned blog entry, the Beat, who describes herself as “some kind of Zen Buddhist agnostic,” raises the question as to whether she would be “clubbed over the head” with Christianity in Deathly Hallows, but predicts that Rowling will take a more subtle approach.

That proved to be correct. In the previous books the subtext of Christian imagery and themes that Granger has found completely escaped Grossman’s notice, and, it seems, that of most reviewers. Why would Rowling change her approach in the final book?

Furthermore, the Beat makes a fine point in asserting that Rowling “understands that what many take as Christian symbols — blood, chalices, trees, etc etc — are actually universal symbols, many of them adopted from pagan faiths by the early Christian missionaries. ” I don’t know if Rowling has actually said so. But the Beat is right that many of these symbols are not restricted to Christianity.

For example, one of the Christian symbols that Granger finds is Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix. Due to its ability to die and resurrect itself, early Christian writers used the phoenix as a symbol of Christ. But the phoenix dates back to ancient Egyptian mythology, and also appears in ancient Greek mythology, Chinese mythology, and Russian folklore. The idea of a bird, a creature of the air, that can thus transcend death, appears to be an archetype that turns up in various cultures.

(And is Jean Grey, the Phoenix of the superhero genre, a Christ figure? Well, she is well known for returning from the dead. And she did give her life to save the universe in Uncanny X-Men #137, although, significantly, that was not the ending that Chris Claremont and John Byrne intended for the “Dark Phoenix Saga.” I should ask them if their Phoenix was a Christ figure, but I expect they will look at me as if I have three heads and say no. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t be interpreted as such.)

C. S. Lewis intended his book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (see “Comics in Context” #99) to embody Christian themes. In it, Aslan the lion is the Christ figure who undergoes literal death and resurrection. So if the Harry Potter series has Christian themes, then one might expect Harry to die and return to life in the final, climactic book. And indeed he does, although Rowling carefully leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Harry’s death and resurrection are literal or figurative, as we shall see.

But death and resurrection is not uniquely a Christian motif. Osiris died and returned to life So did Dionysus. It is part of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” monomyth. Symbolic deaths and resurrections are everywhere in the romance (adventure) genre. Batman is left to die in an inescapable death trap; Batman escapes and triumphs over the villain. Virtually every two-part episode of the 1960s Batman TV show thus included symbolic death and resurrection.

So if we are to detect Rowling’s Christianity in Deathly Hallows, we must look carefully. Is there a particular interpretation that she puts on archetypal symbols and the phases of Campbell’s monomyth that may specifically reflect her religious views?

In Deathly Hallows we meet Xenophilius Lovegood, the father of Harry’s friend Luna. Both Lovegoods believe in all manner of things that are unlikely to be real. But on important matters, they tend to be correct.

Xenophilius inevitably clashes with Hermione, who takes a wholly rational approach to the world, even to magic, and, it would seem, to literature as well.

In his will Professor Dumbledore left Hermione his copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of children’s stories–the counterpart of Grimm’s fairy tales for the wizards’ community, it seems–for young wizards and witches, “in the hope that she will find it entertaining and instructive” (p. 126). Significantly, rationalist Hermione had never heard of these fantasy tales (pp. 134-135).

Later, Xenophilius instructs Hermione to read one of the book’s stories, “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” aloud. Xenophilius then informs Hermione, Harry and Ron that the three magical objects in the story–the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak–are real, and that they are known as the Deathly Hallows.

“‘But there’s no mention of the words “Deathly Hallows” in the story,’ said Hermione.

“‘Well, of course not,’ said Xenophilius. . . . ‘That is a children’s tale, told to amuse rather than to instruct. Those of us who understand these matters, however, recognize that the ancient story refers to three objects, or Hallows, which, if united, will make the possessor master of Death’” (pp. 409-410).

I suspect that here Rowling may be stating that though her Harry Potter books are “children’s tales,” primarily “told to amuse rather than to instruct,” that “those of us who understand these matters” recognize that they have deeper meanings, beneath the surface. Remember that Dumbledore wanted Hermione to regard Beedle’s book as simultaneously “entertaining” and “instructive.” Dumbledore wanted Hermione to discover those deeper meanings, and Rowling is thus encouraging those of her readers who are capable of literary analysis to do the same. And “The Tale of the Three Brothers” is about how to become “vanquisher” of death.

Notice that Xenophilius is also saying that “The Tale of the Three Brothers” is about the Deathly Hallows even though it never uses that name. Grossman contends that the Potter books are atheistic works because Rowling never mentions God in them. Through Xenophilius, Rowling indicates that her books can deal with subjects without explicitly mentioning them by name.

Hermione objects to the idea that there can be any truth within this children’s fable, whereupon Xenophilius scolds her, “You are, I gather, not unintelligent, but painfully limited. Narrow. Close-minded” (p. 410). That is because Hermione only believes in what can be proved by scientific methods.

Soon afterwards, Hermione and Xenophilius get into an argument about the existence of the Resurrection Stone. She refuses to believe that any magic object exists that can raise the dead. “Well, how can that be real?” she demands.

Xenophilius replies, “Prove that it is not.”

This infuriates Hermione, who explodes, “you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!”

“‘Yes, you could,’ said Xenophilius. ‘I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a little’” (pgs. 411-412). And as it turns out, the Resurrection Stone–and resurrection–do exist in the world of Deathly Hallows.

However comedic this quarrel between Hermione and Xenophilius may be, it also makes a serious point. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard acknowledged that there was no proof that there is a God, but took a “leap of faith” to believe that God exists. I am also reminded of the philosopher Blaise Pascal’s “wager”: not knowing whether or not God exists, Pascal chose to act as if God does exist, since if he’s right, he’d go to heaven.

At least in his or her work, the fantasy writer is open to the idea that there may be a reality that cannot be detected by scientific means. The religious person believes in beings and things whose existence science cannot prove, such as God, heaven, and an afterlife. Xenophilius’s position–if you can’t prove something doesn’t exist, then it’s real–is a comic justification of faith.

Is there a hereafter in the Potter books? There are ghosts, such as Nearly Headless Nick. Though ghosts in fiction traditionally frighten the living, the notion of ghosts is actually reassuring, since their existence indicates there is a life after death. So it makes sense that the ghosts at Hogwarts are friendly spirits.

Just because an author uses ghosts in her stories doesn’t mean that she believes that ghosts exist or that there is an afterlife: the author may simply be working within a long literary tradition of the ghost story.

Rowling has an unusual take on ghosts in the Potter books: their existence (and that of souls) proves nothing about whether or not there is a hereafter. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the book, but not the movie), following the death of his godfather Sirius Black, Harry seeks out Nearly Headless Nick to find out if it’s possible for Sirius to return from the grave. Nick informs Harry that only wizards can return as ghosts, but that Sirius will not, because he “will have. . . gone on.” Nick does not explain what that means because he does not know. “I was afraid of death,” he tells Harry; “I chose to remain behind. . . .I know nothing of the secrets of death” (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, p. 861). Rowling has said, significantly, that “there are some people who would not come back as ghosts because they are unafraid, or less afraid, of death”. This may suggest that Rowling considers it important to overcome a fear of death. Voldemort is driven by a fear of death, leading to his vain attempt at immortality by concealing portions of his soul in the various “horcruxes” which figure so prominently in Deathly Hallows’ plot. (So would this make suicide bombers even more cold-blooded than the Harry Potter saga’s master villain?)

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, what appear to be the souls of Voldemort’s victims, including Harry’s parents James and Lily, emerge from Voldemort’s wand. But the book informs us that these are “spirit echoes,” not the actual spirits of the deceased.

The deceased headmasters of Hogwarts, including Dumbledore following his demise, appear in portraits in the headmaster’s office and can converse with the living. But Rowling has stated that “they are not as fully realized as ghosts. . . .the idea is that the previous headmasters and headmistresses leave behind a faint imprint of themselves. They leave their aura, almost, in the office and they can give some counsel to the present occupant, but it is not like being a ghost”. In a flashback via the Pensieve, the portrait of the deceased Dumbledore seems to me very much like the real Dumbledore as he discusses strategy with Snape, and not like a “faint imprint,” but I will bow to the author’s interpretation.

Thus through most of the saga, Rowling emphasizes the finality of death. Even so, there are hints in the books before Hallows that there is indeed a hereafter.

In Phoenix, Luna Lovegood tells Harry that she is confident she will “see” her deceased mother again (Phoenix p. 863). When Harry voices doubt, Luna reminds him that they heard voices behind a mysterious veil in an archway in the Ministry of Magic, a veil that seemingly separates the world of the living from the realm of the dead. The implication is that they heard the voices of the dead. At the time (Phoenix, p. 774) Hermione declared vehemently that she didn’t hear any voices from behind the veil. Here may be another case of a Lovegood, as a visionary, being aware of a reality that the rational Hermione denies.

Moreover, as early as the first book in the series, Dumbledore, that font of wisdom, declared, “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, p. 297).

In “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” one of the brothers used the Resurrection Stone to resurrect the woman he loved. According to the tale, “Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil” (Hallows p. 409); Rowling may well have chosen that last word as an allusion to the mysterious veil in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The tale continues, “Though she had returned to the material world, she did not truly belong there and suffered” (Hallows, p. 409). Shortly afterwards, Harry speculates about using the Resurrection Stone to resurrect his parents and others, but then realizes, “But according to Beedle the Bard, they wouldn’t want to come back, would they?” (Hallows, p. 416).

This reminds me of another hero of the “romance” genre, who has undergone literal death and resurrection not once but twice: Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the end of the fifth season, Buffy heroically sacrificed her life to save her sister and the world, and in the sixth season Buffy’s friends performed a spell that brought her back to life. But it turned out that initially Buffy did not want to be back in “the material world”: by resurrecting her, her friends had forcibly torn her soul out of a spiritual realm that Buffy called “heaven,” where she had achieved a transcendent bliss; it was actually painful for her to readjust to life on Earth. Whedon is known to be a Harry Potter fan (see “Comics in Context” #97-98); in this instance we find him and Rowling thinking alike, although Whedon is an atheist who only uses the afterlife as a fictional device.

Not only does the Resurrection Stone prove to be real, but it causes Harry’s parents, his godfather Sirius Black, and his ally Remus Lupin, all deceased, to appear and accompany him as he goes to what Joseph Campbell would call Harry’s “supreme ordeal”: his death at the hands of Voldemort. The omniscient narrator observes, “he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him” (p. 698). The narrator says that these figures “resembled most closely” the Tom Riddle (the young Voldemort) who manifested in the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and who “had been memory made nearly solid” (p. 699). But the books have established that that version of Riddle was actually a portion of the real Voldemort’s soul, placed into his younger self’s diary. The narrator states that these figures were “Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts” (p. 699): I read this as indicating that these are the actual spirits of James and Lily Potter, Sirius and Lupin, though they have not taken on new physical bodies.

Here I am reminded of how the spirits of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and the redeemed Anakin Skywalker appear to the triumphant Luke at the close of Return of the Jedi. In Luke’s case the danger has passed. It’s a comforting idea that one’s parental figures would appear to him to ease his passage into death.

Though Rowling’s narrator treats these four spirits as real, I wonder if Rowling is providing an alternate way of reading this sequence for the agnostics in her audience. Sirius’s spirit informs Harry, “We are part of you. . .Invisible to anyone else” (p. 700). That could suggest that the four spirits are actually figments of Harry’s imagination, or “memories made nearly solid.” Or Sirius could just be speaking metaphorically of the spirits’ personal connection to Harry as being “part of you,” and assuring him that his enemies will not see them. The passage can be read either way.

Shortly thereafter Voldemort unleashes a Killing Curse at Harry, seemingly murdering him. Then, in chapter 35, Harry awakens within “unformed nothingness” (p. 706) that takes the form of an idealized version of King’s Cross, the real life London train station from which Harry travels to Hogwarts. If Rowling is intentionally putting Christian symbols into her work, then the name “King’s Cross” is blatantly one of them. As a train station, it is a place of transition; Joseph Campbell would call it one of the thresholds of his monomyth.

In this seemingly astral version of King’s Cross, Harry encounters Dumbledore, who readily admits to being dead, but who repeatedly states that Harry is not dead. Dumbledore also explains why, by the rules of magic, Voldemort’s attempt to murder Harry failed.

So Harry is not literally dead, but he is figuratively dead. Perhaps it is more precise to say that he is in a state between life and death, and that may be literally true, since Dumbledore says that Harry has the choice of whether to “go back” or to go “on.” (Again, Rowling is not defining what the hereafter is like.) Harry is in a place in which the living (himself) may interact with the dead (Dumbledore).

It is part of the pattern of the Harry Potter novels that Harry has an conversation with Dumbledore, reflecting on that book’s adventure, at the end of each (except for the sixth, in which Dumbledore dies). In Chapter 35 of Hallows this part of the pattern reasserts itself, even though this time Dumbledore is dead. In Hallows this encounter is what Campbell called “atonement with the father,” a reconciliation between the protagonist and a father figure. This may be especially necessary in Hallows since in this book Harry has learned disturbing things about Dumbledore’s past and even come to have doubts about Dumbledore’s true intentions towards him; in Chapter 35 Dumbledore confesses to his failings but reassures Harry about his good intentions towards him.

According to the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction’s description of Campbell’s monomyth, for the hero to undergo a transformation in this phase, “the person as he or she has been must be ‘killed’ so that the new self can come into being. Sometime this killing is literal. . . ”. Scholar Lynne Milum, in describing Campbell’s Atonement, notes that “While he assists the hero through his journey, the father figure is mindful that the budding hero is destined to replace him.”. In their encounter in Chapter 35, Dumbledore acknowledges to Harry that “I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man” (p. 713) and that Harry has succeeded where Dumbledore failed, in becoming the “true master of death” (p. 720).

The next step in Campbell’s monomyth is the hero’s “Apotheosis.” The Maricopa Center website explains that “When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. . . .the person is in heaven and beyond all strife. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.” This fits Chapter 35, in which Harry receives considerable knowledge from the now rather godlike Dumbledore about what has been happening.

At this point in the monomyth, the hero receives the “Ultimate Boon.” With regard to this, Milum states that “Most prevalent is the recurring theme of Immortality. The hero achieves illumination that there is an indestructible life beyond the physical body. This Immortality is timeless and experienced in the here and now.” Well, certainly Harry has learned by meeting Dumbledore’s spirit that there is life beyond physical death.

Moreover, the “Ultimate Boon” is that, in Dumbledore’s words, Harry has become “the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die,” which Voldemort does not (pp. 720-721).

In Chapter 35 Rowling returns to the theme of the deeper meanings of children’s stories, or, perhaps, of fiction in general. Dumbledore exclaims that Voldemort’s “knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry!. . .Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing!” (p. 709).

In some cases, the next phase of the monomyth is the “Refusal of the Return.” Dumbledore tells Harry that the latter has a “choice” whether to “go back” or not. Since Harry has pictured this transitional realm as King’s Cross, he could “board a train” to go to the true hereafter. This is a nice parallel: Harry crossed a threshold in the first book by taking the train from King’s cross to Hogwarts, starting a new phase of his life, and he can make the transition to the next world by taking another train from this other King’s Cross. Harry is tempted: “it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss” (p. 722). But, as Dumbledore puts it, it is “a worthy goal” to save others from Voldemort, and Harry decides to cross the threshold back to the land of the living.

The chapter concludes with my favorite passage in the entire book. Harry asks Dumbledore, “Is this real? Or has this been happening in my head?” Dumbledore replies, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” (p. 723).

Here Rowling offers different ways of interpreting chapter 35. It may be that Harry has imagined this conversation with Dumbledore. This reminds me of Ratatouille (see last week’s column), in which the protagonist, Remy, imagines that the ghost of Auguste Gusteau, the deceased master chef whom he idolizes, appears to him and gives him advice. Thus the archetypal mentor figure of Campbell’s monomyth is presented as an aspect of the protagonist’s own psyche. Gusteau’s “ghost” is actually Remy’s own wisdom, emerging from his subconscious to provide him with counsel. It may be that in Chapter 35 that Harry is dreaming, and that he imagines Dumbledore providing him with answers that Harry’s subconscious mind has worked out on its own. Dumbledore’s final words therefore mean that even though Harry is imagining all this, the information that he has gained in this “dream” is still true.

On the other hand, one could also read this final exchange in Chapter 35 quite differently. Dumbledore is pointing out that of course Harry is having this vision inside his head, but that Dumbledore’s spirit, and their conversation, and the knowledge Dumbledore imparts in their talk, are all real. (Of course, you could say that we all experience reality “in our heads” since we rely on our senses conveying information to our brains.)

So Rowling gives us the option of thinking that Harry actually did communicate with the spirit of Dumbledore, and that there is life after death, or that Harry hallucinated it all, and that there might not be. In either case, the information that Harry gains in this experience is both “real” and correct.

So Harry crosses the return threshold, in Campbell’s phrase, in order to become the leading figure of the forces of good in “The Battle of Hogwarts,” in which the entire school battles Voldemort’s forces of evil. Here I found myself thinking of the finale of season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like Harry, Buffy had been regarded with suspicion by many of her classmates. But in the final episode of the third season, Buffy leads her high school graduating class in combat against that season’s leading villain, the Mayor. Voldemort is a sorcerer with serpentine features who is accompanied by a large snake; the Mayor, in that climactic episode, transforms into a colossal serpent. I’m not saying that Rowling is imitating Whedon, but that in dealing with mythic archetypes, great creative minds can often think alike.

It looks as if Rowling studies Campbell as closely as George Lucas does. But what makes Harry’s figurative death and resurrection specifically Christian? I believe that it’s the fact that Harry goes voluntarily to what he believes will be his death at Voldemort’s hands, in order to save the lives of others, or like Christ going to his crucifixion without resistance, in order to redeem humanity. For me, a key moment comes when Voldemort insists on parading Harry’s supposed corpse before the Hogwarts community. Rowling’s narrator notes that “it must be subjected to humiliation to prove Voldemort’s victory” (p. 726). Christ, too, was mocked and humiliated by his tormentors, through means such as the crown of thorns. As the Beat observed, Rowling is an admirer of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, and its Christ figure, Aslan the lion, in order to save a life, willingly surrenders himself to the evil White Witch, and allows himself to be humiliated (though such means of the shearing of his mane) and killed, before rising from the dead to destroy the white witch. Harry is clearly treading in Aslan’s–and Christ’s–path.

Much earlier in Hallows, Harry, Hermione and Ron invade both the Ministry of Magic and the Gringotts bank; they are also captured and brought to Malfoy Manor. In each case Harry finds himself underground (below Atrium level at the MInistry, in a subterranean vault at Gringotts, and in the Malfoys’ basement). In Campbell’s terms, these are all descents into the underworld, or into the “belly of the beast” (and in Gringotts’ case, there is a literal beast: a dragon). When Harry and company escape from the Ministry and the Malfoys, they bring prisoners to freedom with them. I suspect that these are allusions to the “Harrowing of Hell,” whereby Christ, immediately after his death, descended into hell and freed souls of the just that had been imprisoned there. Even in his descent into Gringotts, Harry and company free a captive: the dragon whom the goblins kept chained underground.

I have still more to say about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but this week’s column is running long, and this is a busy summer, with more topics waiting in the wings. I hope to return to Hallows in the future to address, among other questions, just why did so many people expect that Harry would die–and stay dead? I’m glad to see that J. K. Rowling has a far more positive outlook.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

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One Response to “Comics in Context #187: All Hallows Eve” Harry Potter Analysis by Peter Sanderson » Needcoffee.com Says: November 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm […] that I have finished, though, Ken sent me over this Comics in Context article from Quick Stop Entertainment by Peter Sanderson. And if you’ve read anything by Peter […] Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Δ