The Conundrum of Justice and the Divine Adversary: Literary Parallels between Harry Potter and the Book of Job
This paper explores the problem of injustice in the world of the Harry Potter series and attempts to draw fruitful parallels between it and the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible. The three main agents in the Book of Job each correspond to figures within Harry Potter. Job’s process of coming to understand God and his problematic justice bears direct analogies to Harry’s subjection to justice and injustice vis-à-vis first Dumbledore, then the godless Potterverse as a whole. It also affects how Harry finds himself positioned within his role as hero. Like Job, his worthiness is first put under question and only after negotiating various trials can he be deemed heroic. In the Book of Job this process is carried out by the enigmatic middleman, in Hebrew “the satan” (typically translated as “Satan” in Christian texts). This character carries out a peculiar combination of roles, serving at once as an agent of harm and an agent of good, and he has his parallel in the equally ambivalent figure of Snape.
Part I: The Conundrum of Justice
Hast thou considered my servant Job?
The Potterverse is fraught with injustices from the highest levels of the Ministry of Magic to the most local and particular of Harry’s daily experience. As the books begin, injustices occur specifically to Harry. His adoptive family abuses him, he discovers his dead parents were actually murdered, at school he contends with a system in which points are arbitrarily awarded and docked. As the series progresses the injustices intensify and expand to include the wizarding world at large. Innocent men go to prison without trial, wealthy criminals buy their freedom, and the MoM welters in corruption and cowardice up to the highest levels. Harry must endure all this with a resigned stoicism; his own attempts at righting the wrongs of the system meet with mixed success, and part of his maturation process requires shouldering the burdens of injustice with muted good grace.
The Book of Job1 presents a theological reading of the problem of justice which remains to this day unsettling and difficult to resolve. It sets up a paradox in which if God allows the suffering of innocent people then he is unjust, but if he is unjust then he is not the omnipotent, omniscient and all-good character we call God. And yet God and the suffering of the innocent do coexist, so how is man to understand this?
The story begins with Job, a pious, blameless man who praises God in everything he does. He possesses great wealth and enjoys the comfort of his loving family. In the prologue to the story, God holds a meeting with his divine council during which he approaches one of his angels, referred to in Hebrew as the “satan” -- a term which means “adversary” or “accuser” (more, so much more, on this character below) -- and asks him what he thinks of Job. The satan replies:
Doth Job fear God for nought?
Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. (1:9-11)
Thus he argues that Job only praises God because God has protected him and blessed him so much, but he would curse God if he knew misfortune. God seems to take this as a sort of challenge, and he gives the satan permission to wreak every sort of torment on Job: killing his children, destroying his fortune and eventually ravaging his health. Job struggles to make sense of this enormous injustice, firmly asserting his innocence, yet at a loss for why God would choose to ruin his life when he’d led such a blameless one. Job’s friends are scandalized; they argue that he must be hiding some secret sin, for God is just and would never punish him for no reason. God finally answers Job’s pleas by appearing to him personally from out of a whirlwind, and presents him with a vision of the great majesty, enormity and terror of his great work of creation. This vision humbles and awes Job and he understands that his own perspective is not great enough to understand the ways of God. Nevertheless, God admits that Job was quite right all along and his friends wrong, and he restores Job’s family and fortune and they all live happily ever after.
To summarize Job does no justice to its poetry and barely scratches its enigmatic message. On the surface of things, the point appears to be that the justice of the universe remains inscrutable. The text states explicitly that wisdom comes in the trusting and fearing of God. However, this alone does not provide a convincing conclusion. The bulk of the story is concerned with Job’s hemming and hawing, his arguing with his friends, his sense of outrage, misery, self-pity, self-righteousness and the intense work of trying to understand. The book really demonstrates the truth that wisdom oscillates in the tension between the anguish of trying to comprehend injustice and the grace of accepting divine will. These two extremes don’t resolve, and they don’t blend, but they do speak volumes about the human condition. Job’s struggle renders him a far wiser man at the end of the book then when he started.
This scenario provides some fruitful parallels for a comparison with the Harry Potter series, beginning with Harry himself as a figure similar to Job, unwitting hero of his own book, who finds himself born into his role through no conscious choice of his own. Like Job who is protected by the “hedge” of God’s blessing, Harry has received magical protection due to his mother’s sacrifice, protection that has caused the downfall of the villain Lord Voldemort, victim of his own rebounded curse. The encounter with Voldemort renders Harry heroic, at least by the standards of his culture, even though he was an infant at the time and has no memory of these events. Why this happened to Harry and not some other child with a self-sacrificing parent is unclear; he could be the heir of historic wizard Godric Gryffindor, he could be the subject of an important prophecy, or he could just be extremely lucky. Luck might not be the word for it, for of course it constitutes a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, his encounter with Voldemort has made him a legend and a symbol of victory amongst the wizarding population. It gives him specific powers such as continuing protection against the touch of evil and some of Voldemort’s other talents, like the ability to speak to serpents.2 On the other hand, Harry suffers, like Job, because he is singled out by luck or fate for this role. All the injustices he endures are aimed at him precisely because he is a hero. When Voldemort returns he targets Harry for death because he is the symbol of his defeat; he feels he must kill the boy in order to reinstate himself and appear powerful to his supporters. Analogously, the goodness of Harry’s parents and their opposition to Voldemort has lead to their deaths and left Harry in the position of being raised by his hostile aunt and uncle. The intrinsic goodness he derives from his family causes his misery.
This problem manifests itself in more subtle ways as well. Harry’s goodness becomes equated with his fame; like Job others single him out as exemplary. This attracts unwanted attention, and the line between admiration and hostility wears thin. Snape certainly seems to resent Harry for his fame, and he singles him out for ridicule on this account at the first available opportunity: “Tut, tut -- fame clearly isn’t everything” (PS:102).3 Similarly, Lockhart envies Harry his adulation and humiliates him for it whenever he gets the chance. “But when I was 12 I was just as much of a nobody as you are now” (CoS:71) he quips while accusing Harry of imitating him. Although he tries to disguise his hostility through a congenial demeanor, his jealousy, condescension and resentment remain painfully obvious. Rita Skeeter typifies the double edged sword of fame; she publishes an article full of effusive and condescending fluff (“Tears fill those startlingly green eyes as our conversation turns to the parents he can barely remember” (GoF:268)) which Harry resents just as much as the subsequent article “HARRY POTTER ‘DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS’” which adds insult to injury by quoting an unnamed source who implies that Harry’s aching scar could be a “plea for attention” (GoF:531). Even the well-intentioned Creevey brothers torment Harry like tiny little Erinyes; Harry can hardly have a moment’s peace with the constant reminders of his unintentional fame and heroism which pain him as much as criticism.
Also as with Job and his friends, Harry’s own peers often add insult to injury by suspecting him of secret crimes instead of recognizing the pervading injustice of the overarching situation. In PS/SS when Harry and some friends go to great lengths to rescue Hagrid’s pet dragon, they accidentally get caught by the authorities and very heavily punished -- 50 points off per person, an enormous amount compared to the five point increments they are used to. “From being one of the most popular and admired people at the school, Harry was suddenly the most hated” (PS:179). While Hermione and Neville also find themselves shunned, the bulk of the resentment is directed at Harry because he is so famous and supposedly perfect. It gets worse: Harry can find himself in danger of his very life and instead of taking umbrage at the injustice, his colleagues look for evidence of fault in him. In CoS when the school is threatened with an unknown menace, Harry’s classmates, particularly the Hufflepuffs (ironically known for their loyalty), assume him to be the potential killer. “Only a really powerful Dark Wizard could have survived a curse like that...That’s probably why You Know Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn’t want another Dark Lord competing with him,” (CoS:149) theorizes Ernie Macmillan. They quickly reinterpret Harry’s fame and goodness as something sinister. Like Job his evident blamelessness looks too good to be true, it must be hiding his real criminality. Worse yet, in GoF his own best friend Ron suspects him of entering his name in a contest forbidden to students his age when Harry inexplicably finds himself one of the contestants. Overcome with jealously at being outshone year after year, Ron flatly refuses to read this situation as another injustice, as something he should be outraged about on Harry’s behalf since his life is at stake. Instead Ron insists upon believing Harry has brought the situation upon himself. In each of these cases we see the supporting characters trying to make sense of a puzzling situation; why is the famous Harry Potter seemingly at the heart of such mischief? In each case they fail because they are trying too hard to make sense of it, because they accept the basic rightness of the world they live in and overlook the terrifying arbitrariness of fortune.
So who in the Harry Potter books does represent God, or Justice, or whatever overarching authority figure is supposed to be watching from on high? The closest thing we have is Dumbledore, headmaster of the school and senior mentor figure to Harry. Dumbledore certainly isn’t God but he is the figurehead of something within the books’ ethos. The precise ways in which Dumbledore fails to be godlike illuminates this study just as much as the ways in which he succeeds, particularly where in certain cases his power enables him to personify goodness but he chooses not to. On the one hand, Dumbledore seems omniscient. He can turn invisible at will and in PS/SS he walks the school’s halls late at night overseeing Harry; he knows Harry’s deepest desires and gives him the distinct impression that he knew everything all along that year. JKR herself has described him as the “epitome of goodness”4 and he can impart great wisdom, kindness and compassion when needed. He is close to omnipotent within the walls of his school (much to the dismay of the MoM and the board of governors); he can dispense justice, award points, hire, fire and promote all as he sees fit. And he has a long white beard.
But the text challenges this combination of omnipotence, omniscience and goodness. Dumbledore deliberately tolerates injustice in a questionable way many times in the first book. This begins when Dumbledore announces that he intends to leave the infant Harry with his aunt and uncle the Dursleys, against the protests of his own Deputy Headmistress who sees what horrible people they are. Dumbledore justifies his decision by stating that fame would “turn his head.” To some extent Dumbledore doesn’t quite know the situation; he imagines that the Dursleys will explain everything to Harry when he’s older, which clearly they never do. But one can argue that he doesn’t care either; the owl posts addressed to Harry at “The Cupboard under the Stairs” know full well he is imprisoned and mistreated, and Dumbledore’s old crony Arabella Figg evidently keeps tabs on the boy. Dumbledore perhaps crosses the fine line between concern for Harry’s humility and gross negligence; it has been argued that Dumbledore is an accessory to the child abuse which the Dursleys practice.5
Similarly, Dumbledore espouses an alarmingly laissez-faire attitude to fairness, pedagogy and general policy within the school. A perfectly arbitrary point system regulates discipline and incentive; teachers can dispense or demerit any number of points for whatever they see fit, the arrangement lacks a standard for what a point is worth and a set of checks and balances for keeping things fair. When he awards Gryffindor house a large amount of points after Slytherin has already been determined the winner the action comes across as even more arbitrary and disturbing, a bit like God in the Book of Job; he allows the system to proceed with no regard for fairness and then abruptly delivers retroactive compensation after the contest is over. Dumbledore’s choice of teachers reeks of comic arbitrariness; he gives Snape free rein to act as vindictively an unfairly as he inevitably desires, he has no apparent concerns about Quirrell’s squeamish inability to teach his own subject or Binn’s habit of putting his class to sleep. Future books bear this out even more; he shows little concern with Lockhart’s charlatanry and he all but admits Trelawney is a useless fraud.
Furthermore, Dumbledore occasionally encourages a favoritism towards Harry which seems connected to his status of hero-in-training. Dumbledore goes easy on Harry in certain disciplinary matters; he allows him to have a broom as a first-year against the school’s stipulations, he protects him from expulsion no matter what rules he breaks and he encourages misbehavior in subtle ways. It is suggested that Dumbledore gives Harry his father’s invisibility cloak, which comes in handy for late-night ramblings, and he allows him to witness the withdrawal of the Sorcerer’s Stone from Gringotts even though students are not supposed to know about it. Noticing this himself, Harry speculates at the end of PS/SS that Dumbledore has set him after Quirrell on purpose:
“He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the Mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could....” (PS:219)
Given Dumbledore’s knowledge and tacit encouragement of Harry’s detective activities, one might agree with Hermione that his partial absence at the book’s climax makes him guilty of either deliberately endangering Harry or being grossly negligent in allowing it to happen. Dumbledore may want Harry to experience suffering as a character building exercise, but this does not mitigate the peculiarity of his choice of attitude. Rather, it seems that he deliberately places Harry into this Job-like position of being simultaneously privileged and threatened due to some cosmic need to produce a hero.
As the series progresses the problem of injustice within the school recedes in comparison to the problem of injustice outside of it. If in PS/SS Dumbledore can be accused of allowing strange things to happen, in subsequent books he grows increasingly incapable of preventing them from happening even when he wants to. Hagrid’s arrest in CoS occurs at the very same moment that the board relieves Dumbledore of duty; and even in the end he must accept with deadpan humor the fact that he can do nothing to prosecute Lucius Malfoy for his crimes. Everything gets worse in PoA in which we eventually discover that Dumbledore didn’t know of Sirius’s innocence in the first place and could do nothing to get him properly exonerated in the end. In GoF Dumbledore’s ignorance of Crouch Jr.’s treachery leads to Harry nearly getting killed and Voldemort returning cum body. Even the Minister of Magic himself turns on Dumbledore in the book’s final chapters.
So while Dumbledore functions as a peculiar ideal authority figure in the beginning of the series, his arbitrariness and promotion of character-building experiences come across as mere practice for the alarmingly unjust wizarding world later on. But as he loses his aura of omnipotence he takes on a new role also similar to the God of Job; he is the one who knows more about Harry than Harry. Just as God understands why Job is made to suffer while Job haplessly struggles to find answers, so does Dumbledore fail to tell Harry all he knows, which can be read as a sign of compassion or cause for alarm. At the end of PS/SS he prefigures this role:
“The truth...” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you’ll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie...” (PS:216)
Dumbledore does withhold important information from Harry, such as the nature of Trelawney’s first correct prediction and the reason why he trusts Snape so much. The oft-discussed gleam in his eye as Harry relates his encounter with Voldemort at the end of GoF perhaps causes the most alarm in readers. He knows something we don’t, and this suggests that it would be harmful to Harry if he let it slip. This also relates to the problem of justice in the Book of Job. While the God of the prologue focuses on testing Job’s intrinsic goodness and loyalty (and building his character), the God of the whirlwind never gives Job a straight answer for why he is so unjust with him. Instead he reveals to Job a terrifying vision of the power of the elements and the savagery of wild beasts like the Behemoth and the Leviathan. The fact that he speaks from a whirlwind provides a visual analog for how dangerous and overwhelming this undiluted knowledge is. Likewise, Dumbledore protects Harry from the big picture, and like God, Dumbledore rarely explains himself to Harry in a straightforward way. Instead, he allows Harry to discover things on his own, even if it’s Dumbledore’s thoughts in the form of a vision, such as in the Pensieve. But this titrating of information cannot last though all seven books of the series; we know Harry will eventually discover all the secrets shaping his experience, and this knowledge might in fact prove devastating for him.
Oddly God’s attitude changes from being like Dumbledore’s to more like, of all people, Hagrid’s, whose love of the beauty and majesty of the most fearful beasts allows for his philosophical acceptance of their bloodthirsty nature. Says God:
Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? The glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. (39:19-25)
Not that Hagrid is a godlike figure; rather he shows the sort of wisdom and grace that acceptance of the brutal unruliness of the Potterverse imparts. Hagrid is one end of the wisdom spectrum suggested by the Book of Job, the childlike fascination for the world and a high degree of faith in the rightness of benevolent authority (hence his loyalty to Dumbledore). Harry is usually at the other end, questioning the motives of the authorities, taking the law into his own hands and fighting for justice. Harry is far more sympathetic, but his fervor is also more youthful than wise.
However, I predict that the Harry Potter series will, like the Book of Job, progress from concerning Harry’s immediate, personal worries to more cosmic and unruly forces. And just as the role of God changes from a character with a peculiar concern for testing Job to one who surveys the wealth of creation, so too will Dumbledore fade from being the guarantor of order and reason in favor of a more depersonalized, chaotic, yet ultimately meaningful world ethos. Harry will emerge from his relationship with the Headmaster probably sadder, wiser and with more sense of the scope and inherent order of the workings of the universe.
Part II: The Divine Adversary
And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
The Christian sense of “Satan” as the supreme agent of Evil, the fallen angel who rebelled against God, did not come into use until hundreds of years after the Book of Job was written.6 In her book An Adversary in Heaven Peggy L. Day explains that the Hebrew word “satan” is best translated as “adversary” or “accuser” and that this often has the strictly forensic sense of a prosecuting attorney or the opponent in a legal case.7 Ancient Israel lacked a formal office of public prosecutor at the time of the writing of the Hebrew Bible; hence the term “satan” denoted more of a role one played rather than a formal office. In the Book of Job, the character called “the satan” is a member of the divine council, meaning he is an angel, and a perfectly loyal one at that. The satan also appears in Numbers 22 in the story of Balaam and the Ass where the King James version calls him the Angel of the Lord, and in 1 Chronicles 21 and Zechariah 3. Since it’s more of a role than a character, it can be argued that it is not the same angel from book to book, merely an angel performing the same function of adversary or accuser.
In the Book of Job, God specifically seeks out the satan from among his divine council and questions him. For a character with few lines, the satan exerts a sardonic and eloquent presence in the text. To God’s direct question as to his whereabouts, the satan answers with deadpan evasiveness and a bad pun: “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” (1:7) where the Hebrew word shut meaning “to roam” plays off the word “satan.”8 In fact the satan’s job here appears to be that of roving intelligence agent, similar to those employed by the contemporary Persian kings to spy on the people. The satan has been doing his job well enough and is entirely familiar with God’s servant Job when God questions him about it. God even phrases the question a little provocatively: “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (1:8) Well, who wouldn’t want to rain on that parade? The satan certainly does. He quickly assures God that if he should “put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” God gives the satan permission to do anything he likes to Job except harm him physically, and the satan swiftly and efficiently carries out this task, decimating Job’s children, possessions and fortune in a single day. When this doesn’t have the desired effect and Job remains loyal to God, the satan suggests creepily “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life | But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face” (2:4-5). God, still game to this nasty challenge, allows the satan to destroy Job’s health, merely asking him to spare his life, which the satan immediately does, smiting him with boils from head to foot.
Apart from the black comedy, let us examine a few details of the satan’s role here. For starters, he belongs to God’s inner circle of servants, functioning as something like a confidante and adviser. However malicious he is, he remains completely loyal and obedient to God; God grants him explicit permission to do all he does and he never exceeds his instructions. Here we can also see how the satan has the duties a divine prosecuting attorney; he states the opposing case and casts aspersions on the hero, while God argues, minimally, for the defense. The satan also appears in this way in Zechariah 3 in which Joshua appears before the divine council who must approve his investiture into the office of high priest; the satan presents the objections which the rest of the council overrule. The satan also acts as an obstacle thrower, in the sense of the Greek term diabolos, literally “one who throws something across ones path.” He certainly makes life difficult for Job, and he also performs this function in Numbers 22, a story in which Balaam sets out on a journey that God decides was rashly taken. God sends his angel, his satan, to obstruct Balaam’s path and basically strike terror in his heart until he agrees to cooperate with God. This peculiar constellation of duties, divine council member, prosecutor, wandering spy, thrower of obstacles, local adversary and doer of unpleasant tasks, coheres into one character who acts as the hero’s opponent for the sake of ultimately proving his worth. The fact that this largely unpleasant and antagonistic character emerges directly from the coterie of divine power indicates his centrality to the journey of the hero. He performs the crucial function of insuring Job’s exoneration and spiritual growth, for without his intervention, Job would have remained unproven, and far from heroic. And of course this set of qualities reappears with almost uncanny accuracy in Snape.
Although Snape antagonizes Harry, he is still one of Dumbledore’s most loyal adherents.9 His relationship to the Headmaster carries the same weight as that of an angel of the divine council. He holds at least two administrative titles, Potions Master (which seems to have a medical supply function as well as that of departmental chair) and Head of Slytherin House. He consistently shows up and weighs in when important issues are being discussed. He arrives with Dumbledore and McGonagall after the children battle the troll in PS/SS, having just been injured in his own attempt at protecting the Stone. He takes part in questioning Harry in CoS after Filch’s cat is petrified and he leads the other professors in dispatching of Lockhart at the end of the book. He shows up immediately in PoA when the Fat Lady’s portrait is slashed; he oversees searching the school for Black and offers his theory of how Black gained entrance. He attends the meeting to determine how to proceed after the Goblet of Fire spits out Harry’s name. Dumbledore entrusts him with important jobs: he provides one of the protections against the Stone is PS/SS, he brews the Mandrake Potion in CoS, the Werewolf-pacifying Potion in PoA and the Veritaserum in GoF. He does whatever it is he does at the end of GoF (no doubt more dirty work in Dumbledore’s service). As the books progress, he is increasingly pictured as part of a triumvirate with the Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress, most notably as shown in the Foe Glass after Crouch Jr.’s treachery is revealed. He isn’t exactly the Deputy Deputy Headmaster, but rather something more unofficial and sinister in the original sense; if McGonagall is Dumbledore’s Right Hand then Snape is his Left. His increasing centrality to the story’s agents of Good complicates and informs the significance of his oppositional stance to Harry.
The frequency with which Snape takes the role of prosecuting attorney points up both his importance within the school and his function within the text. His interactions with Harry often figure as courtroom scenes, and his diction is filled with forensic allusions. In CoS after Filch’s cat Mrs. Norris is found petrified Harry in hauled into Lockhart’s office with a small contingent of professors including Snape and the Headmaster. Harry wishes to deny all involvement with the incident, and although he is in fact innocent of causing any harm, he is also withholding potentially useful information regarding the voices he has been hearing. When he nearly gets into a screaming match with Filch, Snape intervenes, requesting permission to question Harry himself. “‘If I might speak, Headmaster,’ said Snape from the shadows, and Harry’s sense of foreboding increased; he was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do him any good.” (CoS:109) Harry displays a sublimely comic reaction; he dreads the worst as if Snape were in fact the satanic figure he appears to be, glittering malevolently in the semidarkness here as usual. Indeed Snape proceeds to grill him about every questionable action of his that evening, while McGonagall comes to her own house’s student’s defense quite belatedly and only as a response to a threat to her Quidditch team. Snape is right that Harry is withholding information -- the equivalent of contempt of court -- and he suggests that he be punished until he is willing to come clean. To this Dumbledore responds with an appropriately forensic figure of speech, “Innocent until proven guilty, Severus” (CoS:110). One could speculate for a while about what sort of misfortune would have been avoided if Harry had told everything he knew at that point, but the point here is that Snape considers this role part of his job, and as long as Harry keeps secrets from the faculty he will oblige Snape to take this adversarial role.
Snape takes an even more active role in PoA when he discovers Harry returning from an unauthorized trip to neighboring Hogsmeade. He grills Harry about his activities, rifles through the physical evidence in Harry’s pockets and calls a witness in the form of Lupin, whom he grills in turn. When Ron finally shows up it’s for the purpose of providing an alibi. Although Snape appears to be functioning as judge, jury and prosecutor all at once, he actually doesn’t overstep his bounds as much as one would imagine he’d like to. He tacitly concedes that there isn’t quite enough evidence for a conviction and lets Harry go off with Lupin. Like the satan of Job, he is naturally suspicious and mean-spirited, but he knows his limits. Similarly, in CoS when he discovers Harry and Ron after they crash-land the flying Ford Anglia in the Forbidden Forest, he presents them with a variety of incriminating evidence -- the damaged Whomping Willow, the Daily Prophet article -- but finally must defer to their Head of House for punishment. When Dumbledore arrives on the scene, Snape makes a point of reciting the formal charges against them in favor of their expulsion: “these boys have flouted the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree...surely acts of this nature....” (CoS:64) He takes the same role as prosecutor with both Lupin and Black in PoA where his language is equally rife with legal metaphor. “I’ve told the Headmaster again and again that you’re helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here’s the proof,” (PoA:263) here clearly alluding to a year’s worth of evidence gathering. “And does my evidence count for nothing?” (PoA:286) he later asks Dumbledore in the infirmary scene, still angling to rest his case against Black. While in each case his testimony is, as it were, thrown out by Dumbledore’s court, at no time is Snape’s role questioned by the Headmaster or anyone else. Here as elsewhere he is disagreed with, he is overruled, but he is never told to stay out of matters entirely, especially when it comes to the students. In general, Snape’s prosecutor role insures that Harry encounters every possible objection to his behavior and forces him to confront the consequences of his actions, right or wrong.
Snape not only hectors Harry concerning his behavior, in which case he’s often right, but he impugns Harry’s very motives for his actions. In this Snape more closely parallels the satan who accuses Job of praising God conditionally rather than sinning in action outright. In each case they both incorrectly attribute faulty motives to the heroes, but their incorrect accusations are necessary to prove the hero’s motivation blameless rather than self-seeking. Sometimes Harry could benefit from Snape’s censure even if it errs somewhat, such as when Snape accosts him after his Hogsmeade expedition. Snape accuses Harry of coasting on his fame as he did from the first instance of their meeting, and this fame continues to rankle him enormously. He rants: “Everyone from the Minister of Magic downwards has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences.” (PoA:209) Can he mention it a few more times in one breath? In this case Harry’s desire to visit Hogsmeade is somewhat foolish, although no more that what would be expected of a restless 13 year old boy. Snape is correct to censure it, but wrong in his assumptions. Harry hates his fame, and he allows himself no indulgences based on what he imagines his fame permits him.
In other cases Harry is far more blameless than Snape supposes. Snape attributes recklessness and arrogance to Harry, over-associating him with his father. While talking to Fudge towards the end of PoA he remarks of Harry and his friends “they obviously thought they were going to catch Black single-handed. They’ve got away with a great deal before now...I’m afraid it’s given them a rather high opinion of themselves...” (PoA:283) This is in fact incorrect; Harry had been dragged into that situation upon returning from attempting to witness Buckbeak’s trial and final moments. Not that Harry isn’t inclined to play the hero when called upon, but he doesn’t do it for conceited reasons. On the contrary, Harry is fairly morose and stoic; when he decides to risk his life he does so because he considers it less valuable than the common good. Before pursuing the villain of PS/SS he remarks:
“Haven’t you heard what it was like when [Voldemort] was trying to take over? There won’t be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He’ll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! Losing points doesn’t matter anymore, can’t you see? D’you think he’ll leave you and your families alone if Gryffindor wins the house cup? If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I’ll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there, it’s only dying a bit later than I would have, because I’m never going over to the Dark Side!” (PS:196-197)
While Snape’s accusation of Harry’s arrogance constitutes slander, it serves the function of highlighting Harry’s real feeling to the reader and to some extent Harry himself. He, and we, must understand that his goals are not self-seeking or power hungry, but self-sacrificing and for the benefit of all. Surely this self-knowledge will prove more and more essential as Harry’s trials with Voldemort become more devastating and require more strength of purpose to overcome. In this case Snape acts as a negative character witness for the prosecution; his accusation ironically serves to highlight Harry’s relative innocence.
While the scope of Snape’s forensic duties does not extend upward to conviction and punishment (outside of his own classroom where it actually does), it does extend outwards to detective work, evidence gathering, and quite simply spying itself. Spying comes naturally to him; he did it with some success against James and his friends when they were in school and with perhaps more luck against Voldemort himself. As with the wandering satan of Job, Snape makes an efficient habit of “prowling” the school and keeping informed of its goings on. He has a standing agreement with Filch to report to him any students wandering around at night, he surveils in turn Quirrell, Lupin and Karkaroff, reporting his findings back to Dumbledore (it’s unclear but not out of the question that this applies to Quirrell) and he has a drollish habit of appearing behind Harry and Ron just as they are in the process of insulting him. (Speak of the devil...) With Harry he is particularly implacable; he follows him around in PS/SS, shooing him outside when he thinks the child is getting too engaged in detective work himself. In CoS he must notice that Harry is missing from the Hogwarts Express rather quickly because all he has to go on before then is the Daily Prophet article which seems to give no indication of who was driving the purloined Anglia. Not that Snape is averse to suspecting Harry right off the bat; that year he also notices when Harry is missing from the Halloween Ball and he takes a very unsettling mental note of Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue. He gets more ruthless from book to book until when in GoF he finally threatens Harry with truth serum (a threat, as with many in his case, never acted on) it seems an unusually desperate move, one perhaps more connected to his own fear of being framed by “Moody” than his usual spying habits.10 Still, the thoroughness with which Snape carries out his surveillance duties indicates that they constitute a major component of his role under Dumbledore’s aegis.
Snape also lives to throw obstacles and general menace in Harry’s path; from his sarcasm in the first Potions class through the end of the fourth year when he reads aloud Rita Skeeter’s article, he takes great delight in tormenting Harry because of his fame. If Harry is for any reason undeserving Snape is bound to expose it. But this has a few advantages for Harry. In a practical sense it makes Harry wilier and renders him a little tougher in controlling his emotions and staring down antagonism to its face. The self-control, pride and strength of will that Harry slowly develops while trying to deal with Snape over and over prepares him for what he needs to resist an Imperius Curse or stand up to Voldemort in person. In a more symbolic sense, Snape performs the function of crucible, in both the legal sense and the chemical (or in his case, perhaps alchemical). He puts Harry on trial, and either makes Harry aware of his own faults or, despite his best efforts, proves Harry’s innocence. His influence also has an effect similar to the chemical sense of purification; Snape keeps Harry on his toes and ultimately serves to prove him a worthy hero for having withstood his objections all along.
Snape’s role is necessary within the series due to the accidental circumstances that propelled Harry towards fame and heroism in the first place. If Harry had earned his status right away then there would be little question, but like Job his blessedness seems to be the product of extreme luck rather than merit. Like the Hebrew satan, Snape’s obligation is to present the objections -- every conceivable objection -- against the prospective hero in a public court. His relentless evidence gathering, natural suspicion and overall fondness for cruelty all serve this same function, directly sanctioned by the powers of good. Harry needs to survive these objections and remain tough, determined and secure in the fact of Snape’s discouragement (rather literally maintain his courage in the face of discouragement) in order to prove himself properly ‘heroic’ and worthy of his fame and admiration, worthy of being the savior of the wizarding world.
Copyright Porphyria, 2002.
Notes
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A/N: Eternal and boundless thanks to Elkins and Eloise for their support, encouragement, feedback and pointers for this essay. I am indebted to your help.
1 I am using the King James Version of the bible for my quotes despite its problematic inaccuracies; the poetry and archaic English are too beautiful to leave it behind. For an online source of the bible containing several translations from which to choose, go here: http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=Job+1&version=KJV&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=english
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2 Harry’s position of hero seems to comprise other mystical benefits which might or might not come from his mother’s protection or the touch of the Lord Voldemort. He seems to have a remarkable resiliency to the abuse that his stepparents reign upon him, remaining surprisingly capable of friendship, trust and good-humor despite not having known love for 10 years. In addition he possesses innate talents such as his broom-flying ability, proficiency in conjuring a Patronus and resistance to the Imperius curse, all of which mark him as either extraordinarily fortunate or singled out by the hand of fate.
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3 References to the Harry Potter series contain an abbreviation of the title followed by the page number. The editions I use are as follows:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (PS/SS, or just PS), J.K. Rowling (London: Bloomsbury, 1997)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (CoS), J.K. Rowling (London: Bloomsbury, 1998)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA), J.K. Rowling (London: Bloomsbury, 1999)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (GoF), J.K. Rowling (London: Bloomsbury, 2000)
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4 For the interview containing this quote see: http://www.cbc.ca/programs/sites/hottype_rowlingcomplete.html
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5 For the suggestion that Dumbledore is partly responsible for Harry’s abuse by the Dursleys I am indebted to the following posts on the HPforGrownups list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/35674 (Ali)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/35677 (Jim Ferer)
And an earlier thread:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/33319 (LilaHP)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/33336 (Rosie)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/33446 (mjollner)
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6 The story of the development of the character Satan is told very accessibly in The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) 39-44. For a concise, online version of the meaning of “satan” in the Hebrew Bible, see: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_sat2.htm
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7 An Adversary in Heaven; satan in the Hebrew Bible, Peggy L. Day (Atlanta: Scholars Press; Harvard Semitic Monographs 43) 25-43. The entire book is worth reading; it is available through Dove Booksellers at: http://www.dovebook.com
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8 Pagels, 41. Also Day includes an entire chapter on Job as well as the other Hebrew Bible appearances of the satan.
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9 Despite my own Catholic background, I actually have trouble incorporating a discussion of the Christian sense of Satan into this essay. Clearly Snape benefits from a certain satanic caché which complements his red herring functions, and like the Satan of Paradise Lost, he’s the most fun character because of his unapologetic maliciousness. If we insist upon viewing Snape through a Christian paradigm, then he appears more of a Satan in reverse: he’s less of a fallen angel and more of an ascending demon. Or in historical terms, his development is backwards from the Christian sense of the evil, rebellious Satan to the Jewish one of loyal but irascible servant.
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10 Snape is by all means overdetermined, and while I’d never say he’s portrayed inconsistently, there are times when one role impinges upon another. As should be obvious by now, I am restricting this analysis to that of a role with a function, rather than, say, a personality with motives. I realize this marginalizes some of Snape’s most fascinating aspects, such as figure of redemption, mourning, vengeance, all-purpose red herring and gothic icon. This is for the purpose of maintaining some focus within this paper; I make no claim that this essay “covers” Snape, but merely seeks to trace through a single facet of his purpose in the text. Furthermore, any analysis of Snape’s ‘real’ intentions, hopes, fears and desires would at this point require too much speculation. I do sincerely hope that, like the satan of Job, his role of Harry-antagonist recedes when it serves its purpose (i.e. soon), thus freeing up his character to take on more three-dimensional personal qualities.
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