Harry Potter and the Jung interpreter

[dfrankiswork at netscape.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 36547

I was looking at the portkey (www.hpfgu.org.uk) the other day and spotted a link there I hadn't seen before, Philip Nel's 'JK Rowling on the web' page, which is essentially a list of links.  It's excellent, and so I draw your attention to it.

One particular link, in the literary criticism section there, is to an essay, (www.cgjungpage.org/articles/grynbaumpotter.html) by Gail A Grynbaum on the Jungian and alchemical symbolism that she finds in the books.

We have had a few alchemical interpretations here before, is there any evidence from chats and interviews that this is something that JKR consciously puts in? I have checked Aberforth's Goat's search site (www.geocities.com/aberforths_goat/), and there is one mention of the alchemists in an Amazon interview (search on 'alchemist') suggesting she knows a bit about it.

The essay is very good, though it contains one or two oddities and the language is occasionally hard work.  It is a very different way of interpreting the books than we mostly do here, and there are lots of ideas to be sparked from it for general discussion.  Unfortunately the po

The approach to interpretation also lends itself to a degree of prediction.  Just to whet your appetites, here are a few that I have come up with.  Unfortunately most of them relate to book 7.  I won't try to explain how it works: read Grynbaum's essay.

Harry will die at the end of book 7, probably shortly after Hagrid, who will continue to be important in all 7 books;
He will SHIP Ginny, however, the nature of the ship will be outside of our rather impoverished platonic versus romantic polarity;
Snape is not a vampire;
Peeves will be important, particularly his relationship to Dumbledore;
Voldemort will for a while occupy Harry's body, like he did with Quirrell;
Ginny's character will be developed at the same time as Lily's history is revealed; in the book in which that happens the first time we see her Ginny will be asleep or otherwise lacking in life;
In book 5 Harry will have a major foray by himself into the wizarding world outside Hogwarts (actually that is fairly predictable just from the increasing amount of involvement from one book to the next)
Sirius (less sure about this one) will continue to be presented in a manner that leaves us feeling he's inconsistent.

All the above IMO of course, and specifically dependent on the method of interpretation.  I will try to substantiate the above assertions in later posts.

David

All predictions are subject to a policy of continuous improvement and may be withdrawn without notice or so much as a by-your-leave
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