Neville: Memory, History, Legacy, Power (LONG!) (Was:: Still Life)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 38398

[Note: This is a message that I wrote some time ago but then felt 
reluctant to post, as I thought that so much water had passed under 
the bridge that it might seem a bit odd to revive the thread in 
question.  I therefore decided just to let it lie fallow.  Because it 
has direct bearing on the portion of this week's Philip Nel 
discussion question that deals with literary doubles, however, I've 
now reconsidered my first decision.  Note please that my usage of the 
term "mirror" is far more generalized than that proposed by Robert 
Rogers and explained in Heidi and Dicentra's terrific Nel message.  
Apologies for any confusion this might cause.  Much of the following 
was written in response to messages that were posted quite some time 
ago; the relevant thread dates from late March and begins with 
Message #36772.]


**************************


This is one of a series of follow-ups to "Still Life with Memory 
Charm" (message #36772).  I offer my sincere apologies for the long 
delay: other matters intervened there for a while, and then, by the 
time that I got back to this, so many people said such interesting 
things that it took me quite some time just to process them all!

My first response deals with my last question, regarding the thematic 
relevance of the issues of memory, remembrance, and the past to the
story as a whole and to Neville's particular narrative function within
it.  It touches upon the (IMO) related question of just what Neville 
fears: why he might choose to downplay his own magical abilities, why 
Snape should serve as his boggart, and what significance, if any, the 
appearance of boggart-Snape dressed in Gran's clothing might have.  
It also explores some of the possible ramifications of the literary 
parallels between Neville and Harry.  

Because this particular discussion in no way depends upon the 
acceptance of any version of the Memory Charm speculation, I have 
changed the subject line accordingly.


-----


Quite some time ago, I asked:

> Tell me...what do *you* see as the narrative function of this 
> plotline? What do you imagine its thematic purpose to be? What do 
> you perceive as the thematic relevance of issues of memory, 
> remembrance, and the past to the story as a whole?

Dicentra offered to answer:

> Dicentra raises her hand, Neville-like:

Having argued that Neville's magic is powerful, dangerous and poorly 
controlled, and that it gets even more poorly controlled whenever he 
is placed under stress, Elkins calls on Dicentra gently.  

Oh, so *very* gently.

Dicentra:

> I have to believe that during Voldemort's reign people did things 
> they weren't proud of, things they wouldn't have done if there 
> hadn't been a war on, things they are desperate to keep hidden. 
> They have done what they could to cover their sins, hoping 
> that by so doing their sins would be forgotten -- that they would 
> cease to exist, in other words. But the filth they swept under the 
> rug has festered during that time, and it's taking on a life of its 
> own. Soon it will erupt in their faces.

And by the end of GoF, it already has erupted in a number of people's
faces, hasn't it?  Dicentra offered as examples Crouch Sr., whose 
dirty secret is not only exposed but also quite literally *kills* 
him, and Sirius' wrongful imprisonment without benefit of trial, 
acknowledgment of which could force public recognition of the 
Ministry's corruption.  I would also suggest that Voldemort's 
return might represent an undesired "eruption in their faces" for 
quite a few former Death Eaters other than Karkaroff and Snape.  

I found Dicentra's conceit of the "filth under the rug" a particularly
evocative one.  It led me to contemplate the role in GoF of things 
which are not only hidden, but specifically *buried*, things which 
then return to the light of day to drive the plot forward.

Barty Crouch Jr. is believed not only to have died, but also to 
have been buried.  This is strongly emphasized in "Padfoot Returns" 
when Sirius recounts, with some degree of emotion, the story of 
having served as eye-witness to the event.  The situation, however, 
is not what it seems: it is in fact the young man's mother who was 
buried at Azkaban; he himself underwent a different and more symbolic 
form of "burial" by spending over a decade both under the mental 
subsumption of the Imperius Curse and the physical/visual subsumption 
of the Invisibility Cloak.  He is therefore, in a sense, doubly 
buried -- or perhaps even triply buried.  The plot revolves around 
the havoc that he wreaks once he has been "exhumed."  In the end, he 
turns the tables on his father, transforming him into a bone and 
burying him, in turn, in Hagrid's pumpkin patch.  The buried son who 
was also the "skeleton in the family closet" is restored to life; it 
is the father who becomes a buried bone.

Paralleling the story of the Crouch family, we then have the saga of 
the Riddle family.  At the story's opening, Elder Riddle has been 
buried.  He is dead and gone; his body has been interred.  And yet 
his murder is never truly "buried" at all for Frank Bryce, who 
continues for the rest of his life to suffer the social stigma of 
having been unjustly accused of the crime, a crime actually committed 
by Riddle's son, in part as a type of vengeance for having himself 
been "buried:" hidden away in a muggle orphanage, rather than 
accepted as a member of the family.  Young Tom Riddle (and his 
mother) are themselves dirty secrets, the skeletons in the Riddle 
family closet, things that had been hidden safely away and out 
of sight.  The exhumation of Elder Riddle's bones is the necessary 
prerequisite for the spell by which Younger Riddle, as Voldemort, can 
once more return to the flesh: what was buried is exhumed, what was 
bone (quite literally in Elder Riddle's case, more figuratively in 
the case of "skeleton in the closet" Younger Riddle) is transformed 
to flesh.  Here once again, we see a strong connection between three 
concepts: the father/son bond (further emphasized by the sharing of 
names); turnabout, or Nemesis; and the idea that the exhumation of 
things long-buried can bring about a dramatic, violent, and not 
always positive result.

Placed into this context, the Niffler scene interests me very much.  
Here, the buried material is illusory money, leprechaun gold.  Its 
exhumation leads to a reawakening of Ron's frustration with his 
family's poverty and his resentment of Harry's own wealth.  In this 
case, however, the exhumation has no dire effects.  Ron weathers it.  
He is able (perhaps because it is merely *illusory* gold?) to 
overcome his frustration and his envy: he does not allow the event to 
lead to a second schism in his friendship with Harry.

Nonetheless, it seems to me that the financial concerns of the 
Weasleys do play a strong background role in GoF.  Ron's quarrel with 
Harry, the Twins' conflict with Molly, the Twins' blackmail subplot, 
and Percy's desperation to prove himself on the job (a desperation 
which allows him to be manipulated into unwittingly aiding 
Voldemort's plan) are all, as I see it, motivated in large part by 
the Weasley children's attempts to come to some terms with their 
family's poverty.  Undercurrents of tension and discord underscore 
the Weasley family dynamics throughout GoF; it is difficult for me 
not to view their financial difficulties as one of the leading causes 
of this disharmony.  Although Ron resists the negative temptations of 
the Niffler scene, therefore, I still tend to read it as thematically 
tied to the dangerous role that exhumed items play throughout the 
novel.

And yet that which was buried and is later exhumed can also prove 
beneficial.  I do not think it coincidental that the novel's 
climactic conflict should take place in a graveyard, nor that the 
outcome should be decided by wand cores of Phoenix feather, by the 
spirits of the temporarily reawakened dead, by the Ghosts of Spells 
Past.  Revival of the past can help as well as harm; sometimes, as in 
the end of PoA, it can even protect and heal.  


Dicentra wrote:

> It occurs to me that Neville is emblematic of the whole of the 
> Wizarding World.  If the Memory Charm theory is correct, the charm 
> is an attempt to erase the horror he experienced while watching his 
> parents be tortured (symbolizing the whole war), and possibly it's 
> to erase one or more dirty little secrets. 

It's an interesting parallel, to be sure.  Neville, whether Memory
Charmed or not, is notorious for his "poor" memory.  And yet, 
whether for reasons psychological or magical or both, something 
certainly does seem to be interfering with his ability to function.  
Crouch's demonstration of the Cruciatus upsets him tremendously.  
The past would seem to be affecting him very strongly, and yet 
he is the one who, it is claimed, "cannot remember."

I do see a strong parallel here with wizarding culture overall.
A culture whose children are not told even the most basic facts 
about the last war -- and yet reenact its schismatics on a daily 
basis in their feuds and rivalries at Hogwarts.  A culture whose 
members simultaneously insist that Voldemort is gone, never to 
return -- and yet fear to speak his name out loud.  A culture whose 
adults all seem to share the tacit understanding that many of its 
most well-respected members are also unrepentent practitioners of 
dark magic.  Is this memory, or is it forgetfulness?  Is what's 
afflicting this culture that it is *trapped* in the past, or that 
it refuses to *remember* the past?

Well, both, I'd say.  Both.

In this respect, I can also see Neville's parents as a kind of 
personification of the wizarding world.  We are told that they
"do not recognize" their own son.  And yet what could their madness
be, if not a kind of perpetual reenactment of their past suffering?
Are they amnesiac, or are they trapped within their own memories?
What lies at the core of their dysfunction: that they *cannot* 
remember, or that they remember certain things not wisely, but 
too well?

Again, I think that the answer is: both.  What is wrong with
the Longbottom family -- and with the wizarding world as a whole,
as I see it -- is an inability to deal with the past in a healthy 
manner: what ought to be remembered is forgotten, while what should 
have been let go is retained.

Or, as Gulplum quite succinctly put it:

> The ability to forget is as important to the health of the human 
> psyche as the ability to remember.

Yes.


Dicentra:

> Someone might have hoped that if these things are forgotten, maybe 
> they didn't happen. Maybe they'll go away. Maybe then everything 
> will be OK. But Neville isn't OK. He isn't functioning well. The 
> filth swept under his rug keeps surfacing. It keeps interfering 
> with his attempts to be a good wizard. It erupts in his face 
> uncontrollably. And there's every reason to believe his Memory 
> Charm will fracture and all hell will break loose.

> The thematic importance of Neville's Memory Charm, therefore, is to 
> be a microcosm of the larger theme of memory and secrets in the 
> post-Voldemort years.  That "forgetting" or hiding the evil done 
> during that time doesn't make it go away. That the world ISN'T 
> functioning normally. That it will eventually come back to bite you 
> hard in the anatomy. 

I agree with Dicentra, and I must also confess here to a streak of 
sheer black envy (always a very dangerous thing in the Potterverse, 
as we all know!), because she expressed all of that so much better 
than I could ever have done myself.

I also find myself wondering, though, to what extent *remembering* 
may not also be problematic.  All of the books have placed some 
degree of emphasis on the problems inherent in dwelling, in holding 
on far too tightly to the past: grudge, vengeance, depression, 
distraction.  Porphyria did a very good job in message #36787, I 
thought, of itemizing some of the ways in which Harry's memories are 
shown throughout the books to be both seductive and dangerous.  I 
think that the burial motif in GoF also strongly supports this 
reading.  Burying things away may be problematic, but exhuming them 
again is always a risky proposition.  The legacy of the past does 
help Harry to escape from the graveyard, but it is also what enables 
Voldemort to rise again.

Neville is indeed not functioning well.  Unlike Harry, he is 
profoundly ineffectual.  But also unlike Harry, he is -- and this 
is the word that nearly always seems to be dredged up to describe 
him -- "sweet."  He is charitable, forgiving.  He is not prone to 
anger, and he seems to possess very little in the way of malice.  
Above all else, he does no harm.

Sweet, dear, sensitive Neville -- why, he's just a little angel, 
isn't he?

Is anyone else here a fan of the Ever So Cheesy cult film 
_Barbarella?_  The last line of the movie is:

"Angels have no memories."

But what about avenging angels?


Dicentra:

> I can picture Neville going postal when he regains his memory. I 
> can see him as an angel of wrath wreaking vengeance on all those 
> who messed with him (or with anyone). And I can see that running 
> parallel to what happens in the Wizarding World when the Truth 
> comes out.

Yes, there is an unsettling sense of "just you wait" about Neville 
as he is presented in GoF, isn't there?  A sense of something coiled 
to spring?  A sense of even the lowliest worm will turn?

But is turning really what we as readers want for Neville?

Is it really what Neville wants for himself?



"Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive for such things..."



In my first message on this subject, I proposed that to whatever
extent Neville's poor memory may be beyond his control, many aspects
of his apparent feebleness, his apparent inability to *compete,* seem
to be his own doing.  I cited my reasons for suspecting that Neville 
himself goes out of his way to encourage others to view him, 
incorrectly, as "nearly a Squib," and as a bit of a coward as well.  
I expressed my belief that whenever Neville is forced into conflict, 
he deliberately plays to lose.


Porphyria wrote:

> You've made a convincing point that Neville is the one responsible 
> for leading everyone to think of him as Squib-like. And I'm 
> wondering what exactly you think is going on with him. 

And then promptly answered her own question:

> Elkins points out all the ways in which Neville seems to lack 
> wizarding pride and refuses to take part in the obligation to grow 
> up big and strong and avenge his wronged parents. He goes out of 
> his way to make it look (and perhaps make himself believe) that 
> he's incapable of doing so. Snape OTOH is the very epitome of 
> exactly what Neville is trying to avoid being himself. Is that what 
> scares him? That Snape could be an image his fully actualized self? 

Yes. I think that's what scares him.

Like Porphria herself, as well as Gulplum, Tabouli, Dogberry, and 
others who were kind enough to respond, I think that Neville is 
afraid of power.  That is a large part of what I think that Snape 
represents to him: power, and not only power in the general sense, 
but even more specifically, power as it seems to find its primary 
expression in the traditional culture of the wizarding world.

JKR's wizarding society strikes me as above all else a *competitive* 
culture.  It is capitalist, combatative; it is obsessed with sport.  
Duelling is not only legal, but also sufficiently socially acceptable 
that it is taught to schoolchildren as an extracurricular activity; 
one of Professor Flitwick's credentials as a Professor of Charms is 
that he was once a duelling champion.  The entire structure of 
Hogwarts is based around competition.  Everything, from academics to 
athletics to comportment, is viewed as fair game for the allocation 
and docking of "points" which apply towards the attainment of an item 
which serves a purely symbolic function: the House Cup.  The House 
Cup is nothing but a trophy.  It confers no actual benefit to the 
members of the House which possesses it.  It is a pure expression of 
winning for the sake of winning.  And yet the entire student body 
would seem to be terribly invested in its attainment.  They are 
willing to allow their desire for this empty symbol to motivate their 
actions to a degree that at times seems quite ludicrous.

(Are *none* of these otherwise seemingly bright students capable of 
realizing that the Cup is nothing but a chimera? I always find myself
wondering, not without a certain degree of irritation.  Can't *any* 
of them see through that particular ploy? Or is it just that we never 
meet any of those students, because they were all sorted into 
Ravenclaw?)

In such a cultural context, power is not merely power.  It is power 
as expressed through pride and ambition, power as expressed through 
competition, conflict, certamen.  It is power as expressed through 
struggle.  It is power as expressed through striving and through 
strife.  That is what I believe that Neville fears, and that is what 
I think that he sees personified in Snape.

It is a very masculine type of power, and viewed in this context, 
Snape's targetting of the toad Trevor takes on some unavoidably 
Freudian overtones.  In spite of having proposed in my last message 
that Trevor might serve as a textual symbol of Neville's magical 
potency itself, I'd been hoping to avoid getting *too* Freudian with 
this analysis, but...oh, well, it's just so hard to avoid with 
Neville, isn't it?  The poor boy really does seem to be quite the 
mass of Freudian conflict.  And besides, it's fun, so let's go for 
it.  After all, as Pippin and Tabouli have had a blast discussing, 
frogs and toads have a long history of standing in as representations 
of masculine sexuality, and the concept of wizards' animal companions 
as repositories or symbols of their potency has some very deep roots 
as well.  

So when Snape threatens Trevor in Potions class, or forces Neville to
disembowel toads as his detention, I'm afraid that I *do* tend to 
read that as a castration threat.  In essence, I think that the 
message that Neville himself must be taking away from it is: "Use it 
or lose it, boy!"

Small wonder that Snape scares him so.


And while we're grovelling around down here in the dirt with the 
psychoanalytic theory, how *about* those cauldrons, eh?  

Gulplum wrote:

> The main way in which Neville's problems with Snape show up is his 
> knack of destroying cauldrons. We're reminded of this several 
> times. What's so important about that element, or am I just reading 
> too much into it?

Mmmmmmm.  Well.  We could go off on quite the riff here, I suppose,
about what it might mean for Dreaded Dark Animus Snape to encourage 
the fire of Neville's suppressed masculinity to erupt forth, melting 
right through the protective womb-like enclosure of the cauldron, 
couldn't we?  If you favor both "Gran gave Neville a Memory Charm" 
and "Snape is trying to crack Neville's Memory Charm," then such an 
interpretation would certainly give you plenty of room to maneuver.

Or, if you prefer, we could contemplate instead the symbolic 
connection between a cauldron with a melted bottom and the 
flawed receptive vessel of a mind that cannot retain memory.  
Here we touch on Jung: memory is the repository of culture, 
the cauldron is the receptacle of the collective unconscious, 
and the effect of Neville's poorly-controlled magic is to 
render his own internalized cauldron inoperative, thus cutting 
him off from both the benefits and the dangers of his own 
cultural legacy.  

Is "a mind like a bottomless cauldron" the wizarding equivalent 
of "a mind like a leaky sieve," perhaps?  Or, for that matter, 
a mind like a leaky PENsieve?

Perhaps.


So if what Snape represents to Neville is power, then how does
that relate to the ongoing motif of memory?

Porphyria wrote:

> I think his cultivated ineptness is related to the memory charm, 
> but perhaps only thematically. Perhaps his susceptibility to 
> forgetting parallels his refusal to acknowledge his power.

I think that it does.  We really have two conceptual clusters here:
one involving power, competition, struggle and strife, and the other
involving issues of memory, remembrance, history and the past.  In
Neville's case (and, I would argue, in the books as a whole), these 
two clusters seem to be inextricably thematically linked.  And I 
think that they are both represented very neatly by the figure of 
Snape.

After all, Snape doesn't really represent power to *us,* does he?
I would say that Dumbledore and Voldemort, taken together, stake 
a far stronger claim to that role than Snape does.  

What Snape *does* often represent to the reader, I think, is 
*memory,* and a particularly negative manifestation of memory 
at that.  Snape, it seems to me, often stands in as a personification 
of the perils of memory retention: grudge, envy, bitterness, 
resentment.  

He also often stands in as a personification of the shadow 
side of the desire for attainment: not glory, but thwarted 
ambition; not the noblesse oblige of the gracious conqueror, 
but the twisted vindictiveness of the seething and resentful 
conquered.

Where these two conceptual clusters converge, there we find Snape.

There we also find vengeance.

"Vengeance is very sweet," quoth Snape.



In my original message, I asked:

> So just what is it about Professor Snape -- ex-DE Snape, Snape who 
> is proud and vengeful and combatative, and who is obsessed with 
> duty and honor, Snape who looks like the very archetype of a 
> Powerful Sorceror, Snape who is the Head of House Slytherin, Snape 
> who appears in boggart form looking as if he may well be reaching 
> for his wand (even though he teaches a wandless subject), Snape in 
> whose class Neville keeps melting down his cauldrons, Snape who 
> is *onto* Neville and obviously doesn't believe this "I'm just 
> nearly a Squib" act for a second...

> What does this man represent to Neville Longbottom? Just what *is* 
> it about Snape that scares Neville so very much?

I then went on to invite speculation about just what it might mean 
for Neville's boggart Snape to appear dressed in Gran's clothing.

Eileen, who sometimes seems to understand how my mind works so well
that frankly she scares me just a little, all but read my thoughts
when she likened the wizarding world to the culture of Livian Rome. 
(Did Eileen somehow *know* that this was my academic focus back in 
my University days? I found myself wondering.  Or was that just an 
amazingly inspired deduction?)  In addition to making me laugh out
loud by translating Neville's family name to "Lombottomi," she 
also wrote:

> I wouldn't be surprised if Gran and the rest of the clan 
> desperately want Neville to be an auror. That's how it works in the 
> Potterverse. 

I am convinced that Neville's family wants him to become an auror.
The members of his family, particularly Gran herself, would seem to 
speak to him often about his duties and obligations in regard to the 
family name.  

When Gran sends Neville a howler in PoA, the nature of its complaint 
is that he has "brought shame on the whole family."

"She's always going on about how I should be upholding the family 
honor," Neville tells the others, in a "gloomy voice," right after 
the Triwizard Tournament is first announced in GoF.  

I also find it telling that Gran sends him that Remembrall.  It is, 
as others have pointed out, a completely useless item, even a 
somewhat mocking one.  It serves only to remind you that there is 
something that you have forgotten, something that you have neglected 
to do.  

But then, that certainly does convey quite a message in and of 
itself, doesn't it?


Eileen:

> Taking Neville every year to see his parents? "Will you let 
> this wrong stay unrighted? Will you forget what has been done 
> to us?"

Here, Neville.  Have a Remembrall.  Yes.  You're welcome.

> Under this scheme, Gran and Snape are firmly united. They are the 
> ghost of Hamlet's father in this mixed-up rendition of the immortal 
> play. 

Yes, that was *precisely* what I was trying to get at when I wrote 
about the significance of Neville's boggart: the image of Snape, the 
archetypical Proud and Vindictive Wizard, dressed in Gran's clothes.  

What I was hoping to suggest there was that both of these figures,
Gran and Snape, might represent to Neville the cultural expectations 
that have been laid upon him as the scion of an old, proud and 
pureblooded family, as the only son of a heroic and effectively 
martyred Auror father.  I was hoping to suggest that together
they might serve to stand in as animus and anima of the entire 
warrior culture of the wizarding world, of its dynamics of hatred
and strife: the grudges that get passed down through the generations, 
the endless cycle of violence begetting violence begetting violence.

I cling to the feeble hope that there may be some significance to be 
found in the fact that Neville *was* capable of banishing the 
SnapeGranBoggart.

Oh, but I am afraid.  I am very much afraid.  I am afraid that...

> Elkins, are you afraid that JKR plans to have Neville cry, "From 
> now on, let all my thoughts be bloody! Or nothing worth!" To fall 
> into line with the warrior culture which he has resisted so far? 

Yes!  Yes, that's it!  That is *exactly* what I fear.

After all, wouldn't that just be a kind of reiteration of what she 
did with him at the end of PS/SS?  

> If so, I now begin to see why you think JKR isn't on your side, or 
> my side either.

Or, for that matter, on Neville's side.  Because...

> And, personally, I don't think Neville very much wants to fulfil 
> his destiny. He tries to supress his magic because he wants that as 
> an excuse for not becoming the avenging son. 

That's exactly my reading of Neville.  He wants to avoid the entire
dynamic.  He does not hope to turn again, he does not hope to turn.  
He no longer strives to strive towards such things.


"Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?"


And indeed, why on earth should he?  Why on earth should any of
us?

But I have this horrible feeling that JKR might disagree with 
me there.


Eileen:

> There is hope, however. Rowling has said that one of the students, 
> but not one of the trio, will become a teacher at the end of the 
> series. I think that would be a perfect ending for Neville. Still, 
> all occasions do inform against us. 

Occasions, sadly, do.  And besides, Neville could be an avenging 
angel and *still* become a teacher, couldn't he?

Oh.  I am wary.  I am ever so wary.

As I believe that Eileen herself once wrote (causing my inner
classicist to chortle with glee): "Consider no author trustworthy 
until she is *finished.*"  



Porphyria had some very insightful things to say about legacies:

> If the series in general revolves around Harry accepting his 
> legacy as a Potter, then maybe Neville is there to demonstrate 
> the refusal to accept a legacy, and just exactly why legacies 
> are such a dangerous and threatening things to have.

I very much like this reading, and I am swooningly grateful to
Porphyria for her suggestion of the word "legacy."  Legacy is
the perfect term for the concept I have been trying to wrap
my mind around, I think, because it encompasses both of those
conceptual clusters that I mentioned before: it touches on both
the issues of history and the past, and also on those of ambition
and attainment.  The word "legacy" also serves well here because 
it carries with it both negative and positive connotations.  There 
are legacies of wealth, and then there are legacies of horror.  A 
legacy can be either good or bad.  Usually, it is a bit of both.

Harry benefits in many obvious ways from his legacy as a Potter.  His
mother's love protects him, both as an infant and at the end of PS/SS,
and his championing of her memory helps to sustain him during his
confrontation with Riddle at the end of CoS.  His father -- 
represented both as the incarnation of Harry's future self and as 
Harry's Prongs Patronus -- appears to protect him at the end of PoA, 
and James' memory is what saves Lupin and Sirius from their own 
vengeful impulses in the Shrieking Shack.  The reminder of his 
father's past heroism is what gives Harry the strength to resist 
Voldemort in the graveyard at the end of GoF (when *will* Voldemort 
learn to stop taunting Harry about his parents?), and his parents' 
temporarily-resurrected spirits aid in his escape.

And yet his legacy also harms him, and in far more ways than the
exceptionally powerful enemy that he has inherited.  Harry is highly 
vulnerable to the siren song of the Mirror of Erised, to the draining 
power of the Dementors, to the temptations of ambition and of anger.  
The desire to avenge his parents very nearly leads him to murder 
Sirius in the Shrieking Shack.

Eileen wrote:

> Remember Draco Malfoy telling Harry that he'd want personal revenge 
> on Black if he were in Harry's shoes? 

Oh, yes.  That I do.  And as it happens, once Harry learns the story 
of Sirius Black's supposed role in his parents' murder, he *does* 
want vengeance on him, doesn't he?  He wants that very badly.  And 
he wants it so very badly in large part because of all of that time 
he has spent being forced by the Dementors (and by the boggart 
Dementor) to listen to the sound of his parents' murders, to the 
voice of his mother pleading helplessly for his life.  That is what 
drives him to such anger, to that desire for vengeance.

What drives Harry to the desire for vengeance is *memory.*

One of the things that has always most intrigued me about the notion
of amnesiac Neville is its implication for the contrast that I
perceive between Neville's forgiving and pacifistic nature and 
Harry's own tendencies to anger and violence.

There are strong parallels between the two characters.  They have 
very similar family histories.  Both were effectively orphaned by the 
last war.  Both have every "right" to feel themselves deeply invested 
in the upcoming conflict.  Both would seem to have been subjected to 
rather harsh upbringings.  And both of them were placed into House 
Gryffindor by the Sorting Hat...but only after a long hesitation.

But just look at the differences between them!

Neville exhibits very little in the way of True Warrior Spirit.  He 
doesn't seem to hold any particular grudge even against the 
Slytherins, who torment him, nor does he often express anger.  He is 
always being exhorted by others to "stand up for himself," but the 
few times that we actually see him *doing* so, he seems to be doing 
it far more to conform to others' expectations than to please 
himself.  He certainly does lack self-assertion, and this can at 
times make him unreliable: at the beginning of PoA, he tells Malfoy 
about Harry's reaction to the dementors; at the beginning of GoF, he 
either slinks away from or remains utterly silent throughout (the 
text is unclear) the confrontation on the train.  His poor memory 
causes problems for him, as does his timidity.  His flaws are the 
flaws of quietism: he suffers from a certain lassitude, an 
unwillingness or an inability to engage head-on with the trials of the
world.  But he also lacks both pride and anger, and he seems to 
possess very little in the way of malice: Neville  may fear Snape a 
great deal, but he never gives the slightest indication of wishing 
him harm.

Harry, on the other hand, has no difficulties at all with self-
assertion.  He is admirable in his exhibition of all of the classic 
warrior virtues.  He is exceptionally courageous and strong-willed; 
he defends the weak; he has a strong sense of honor.  He's also prone 
to all of the corresponding warrior vices: pride, anger, violence, 
ambition, vengeance.  He is deeply competitive.  When Snape angers 
Harry, Harry fantasizes about casting the Cruciatus Curse on him.

If we accept some variation on the notion that Neville's memory is 
suppressed (regardless of how this came about), then it is very 
tempting -- for me, at least -- to view these differences in behavior 
as partly a reflection of the difference between those who can 
remember the past, and those who cannot.  

This seems to me to fit in very neatly with the way that the books, 
particularly PoA and GoF, have already dealt with the effects of the 
past on the present: the deeply corrupting influence of past wrongs, 
the profoundly redemptive influence of past love.  Harry, as one who 
can remember the past, can be both helped and harmed by it.  Neville, 
by virtue of being cut off -- or having cut himself off -- from his 
past, reaps none of its benefits, but neither is he exposed to its 
more corrupting and baleful influences. 


Porphyria asked me what I meant by emphasizing the fact that the 
Sorting Hat took a very long time with Neville:

> Were you thinking the Hat was tempted to sort him into Slytherin?

Oh, dear!  Oh.  No.  No, I wasn't.  That *would* be a sorry fate for 
someone terrified of competition, wouldn't it?

No, that wasn't really what I meant to imply at all, although I 
suppose that by calling Neville "sneaky," I did rather.  No, what I 
was thinking at the time was really two entirely separate things: one 
of them far more subversive than the other.

The first thing that I was thinking was that Neville, as Harry's 
mirror and as someone desperate to avoid conflict, probably spent an 
awfully long time trying to convince the Hat *not* to put him in 
Gryffindor.  I imagine him sitting there on that stool thinking "Not 
Gryffindor, please not Gryffindor, please, *anywhere* but 
Gryffindor..."  But of course, because Neville is the anti-Harry, the 
Hat just ignored him completely. 

The second and to my mind far more intriguing possibility lurking at 
the back of my mind, though, was that the entire paradigm by which 
the Sorting Hat evaluates character might, in some sense, not have 
applied very well to Neville at *all* due to his estrangement, 
whether voluntary or not, from his own culture.

Culture is, after all, itself a type of legacy.  It is passed down 
from parent to child, it is conveyed through history.  To some 
extent, it resides in the memory.  But memory is precisely what we 
are told that Neville lacks.

The possibility that the Sorting Hat's dilemma with Harry was due to
Harry's role as the possible unifier of all four Houses has been 
discussed here often in the past.  People have pointed out that in 
the Hat's musings, it touches upon all four of the Houses' criteria 
before offering Harry a place first in Slytherin, and then in 
Gryffindor.  Some have speculated that this might represent Harry's 
role as a kind of exemplar, an embodiment of all *four* of the 
founders and thus, by extension, of a holistic unification of the 
wizarding world.  

If we accept this premise, and if we agree that Harry and Neville can 
be read as shadow images, or as mirrors, to one another, then what do 
we make of the Hat's long hesitation over Neville?  Could it be that 
just as Harry reaps both the benefits and the drawbacks of his 
heritage, while Neville accepts neither of them, so Harry answers the 
Sorting Hat's fundamental question with "All of the Above," while 
Neville answers: "None of the above?"

A very long time ago, so long ago that I have long since lost the 
message number, Tabouli wrote:

> Hmm. I wonder what made JKR choose the qualities she did to 
> identify the houses?

> - Courage
> - Ambition
> - Diligence
> - Intellect

> ... why these four qualities? Obviously you can't get completely 
> mutually exclusive qualities, but you could get less overlap than 
> those four.

Yes.  You certainly could.  Really, they're very telling, aren't 
they?  They represent only the hard virtues.  Where are sensitivity, 
imagination, creativity, spiritual insight?  Where are the Christian 
virtues of humility, charity, faith or temperance?  

If I were forced to hazard a guess as to what quality or virtue 
Neville most strongly values, both in himself and in others, I would 
probably say "compassion."  It is what Ginny, in GoF, says that he 
gave as his reason for asking Hermione to the Yule Ball: not that she 
was smart or clever or faithful or brave, or even pretty, but that 
she had been *kind.*

But compassion, it would seem, was not a trait that any of the four 
founders particularly valued or sought in their students.

I joked around a bit in an earlier post about Indeterminate Neville, 
citing the student list's lack of any symbols at all next to 
Neville's name as proof of his status ("You see?  That proves it!  He 
*is* Indeterminate!"), but all joking aside, this is very much how I 
see Neville's position at this point in the story: as strangely 
indeterminate, or perhaps even indeterminable, a figure who seems to 
be standing outside of the circumscriptions of his own culture and 
who therefore may have the ability to *change* that culture in a 
far more deep and profound manner than someone like Harry ever can.  
Harry, by accepting the power of his legacy, must also accept its 
restrictions.  Neville, by rejecting his legacy, might enjoy an 
unusual degree of freedom from the snares and the patterns of history.


 
"Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place..."



Considering Neville's memory problems as indicative of a fundamental
rejection of history leads me to contemplate the ever-mounting and 
often confusing proliferation of generational parallels that the text 
seems to go out of its way to suggest to readers -- Draco/Snape, 
Draco/Lucius, Ron/Sirius, Ron/Arthur, Neville/Peter, Ginny/Lily, 
Hermione/Lily, Hermione/Remus, Harry/James, Harry/Riddle, 
Harry/Dumbledore, Voldemort/Grindelwald, and so on and so forth -- 
almost all of them incomplete or contradictory or unconvincing, or in 
some other way profoundly unsatisfying.  

History, the text seems to be suggesting, both does and does not 
repeat itself: it may or it may not; it can or it can't.  Individual 
choice is vital, but choice is also constrained by the circumstances 
already laid in place.  The extent to which any of the characters 
really have any choice at all in their affairs is to my mind one of 
the great tensions of the series as a whole.  

I think that as readers, we can state with some certainty that our 
strong and heart-felt desire is for history *not* to repeat itself, 
or at least not precisely as it did the last time around.  But the 
question then becomes: to what extent does knowledge of the past help 
or hinder this goal?  Is it really those who are unaware of history 
who are doomed to repeat it?  Or is it perhaps *only* those who 
choose to reject history who stand the slightest chance of resisting 
the patterns that history imposes upon the culture and those who live 
within it?  Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

Which attitude is more likely to lead to a repetition of the horrors 
of the past: Neville's or Harry's? If we take as a starting 
assumption that the Sorting Hat's long hesitation with Neville 
represented a classification of "None of the Above," while its 
dilemma over Harry was one of "All of the Above," then what does that
say about their respective relationships to the culture and history 
of the world that they live in?  About their respective abilities to 
avoid becoming ensnared in the negative patterns of the past?  About 
their respective abilities to draw off of the strengths provided by 
the positive aspects of the past?

Would Neville with a restored memory become more like Harry?  Would 
this necessarily be a Good Thing?

People who believe that Neville has a memory charm often speculate 
that this charm will eventually be removed, and that when it does, 
Neville will "come into his own."  He will be able to access 
previously-suppressed reservoirs of magical power; he will gain self-
confidence; he will become SUPER-Neville.  He will go out and kick DE 
butt.  He will bring honor to the family name; he will exhibit Proper 
Pure-blooded Wizarding Pride.  He will become at last a True Warrior-
Spirited Gryffindor.

I lie awake sometimes at night, fearing that something like this 
might indeed be the author's intent.  Because if it is, then I won't 
view it as a triumph for the forces of Good at all.  I will view it 
as a horrible horrible tragedy. 



"And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I might forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us..."



In terms of their respective coming-of-age stories, Harry and 
Neville seem to me to represent mirrored archetypes.  Harry's 
story is that of the orphan boy revealed to be the heir to the 
throne.  His adoptive family had denied him the knowledge of the 
potency of his legacy: his magical power, his financial wealth, 
the social status that he holds by default within the wizarding 
world.  His story then, the coming of age story that accompanies 
his own particular archetype, is one of acceptance, of "coming 
into ones own" by proving oneself worthy of the legacy that one 
has inherited, and by learning to accept that legacy's negative 
aspects along with its positive ones.

Neville, on the other hand, I tend to read as a representation
of the opposing archetype: the prince renunciate, the abdicator or 
the apostate.  Neville has always known that he is (or that he is 
"supposed to be") a wizard.  He has always known that his family 
is old and proud and well-respected, that they are "pureblood."  
He has always known that his father was a kind of a war hero, albeit 
a martyred one.  And he has always been aware -- far too well 
aware, I'd say -- of the role that he is expected to play within 
his society.

And he's running away from it just as fast as he can.  His 
story, the coming of age story that accompanies Neville's type, 
is one of renunciation, rather than of acceptance, of "coming 
into ones own" by finding the strength to *reject* the legacy 
and to forge instead a new destiny of ones own choosing.  

In this respect, Harry and Neville are themselves mirrored by
GoF's two parricidal villains, aren't they?  Voldemort, as
Harry's nemesis, is himself an orphan-revealed-to-be-heir.
And Crouch Jr. serves as Neville's shadow, the darker manifestation 
of the renunciate, the Golden Boy turned apostate.

With Neville (not to mention Crouch), JKR has certainly shown us 
quite a bit of the perils of renunciation.  She has not shown us very 
much of its advantages.  I suspect that this is because her authorial 
vision does not encompass them.  I find this extremely disappointing,
admittedly largely for autobiographical reasons: I am, you see, a bit 
of a renunciate myself.  But I also find it disappointing on far less 
personal (if perhaps equally idiosyncratic) philosophical grounds.  
I would very much like to see some challenge offered to the 
fundamental tenets of the Potterverse's wizarding culture.  I 
would very much like to see *someone* within the series show the 
capacity to think outside of the box represented by those four 
horrid Houses of Hogwarts School.  I would like to see someone 
question a few of the assumptions which serve as the foundations
for the culture of the wizarding world.  

I would like to feel, upon closing Book Seven, that a sequel starring 
the next generation of young wizards had not been left as a virtual 
inevitability.  I would believe that it is possible to walk away from 
Omelas.

-----

Something about talking about the theme of memory seems to inspire 
people to quote poetry.  Porphyria cited Browning, and then Eileen 
provided us with the verses, after herself sliding into Shakespearean 
iambics.  And yet I notice that no one seemed to fix upon the poem 
that was stuck in my own mind when I wrote my original message on 
this topic, the poem that was responsible for my decision to call it 
a "*Still* Life."


"Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death."

TS Eliot, from "Ash-Wednesday," 1930



A very happy May Day/Beltane/Workers International Day to you all.


-- Elkins, indebted to Fiat Incantatum for reminding her of those who 
walk away from Omelas