[HPforGrownups] Re: TBAY: Stoned Harry & Who Will Definitely Survive?

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 38635


Cindy quotes me:

> Eloise:
> 
> > And surely Harry can't just die, however heroically. Even dying to 
> rid the WW 
> > of Voldemort is anti-climactic in a sense, isn't it? I mean, it's 
> heroic, and 
> > supremely good and all that, but in a way it's negative, it's a 
> ridding of 
> >


And then goes on:
> 
> I don't think I fully understand the idea that a sacrifice has to 
> result in something good beyond the immediate benefit of the 
> sacrifice.  I mean, Lily sacrificed herself for Harry and rid the 
> world of evil by reducing Voldemort to a noxious fume, and I don't 
> think there was any positive good that filled the void.  Maybe we 
> can think of it as a straight downsizing?  ;-)
> 
Laura counters with (actually, I think it may have been to an earlier post, 
but it's relevant here):
>Anyway, you left out an important part of the equation if you're trying to 
draw >parallels between Harry and Christ..Yes, Christ sacrificed his life in 
order to save >the world...But that wasn't enough.  He was then *resurrected* 
(rebirth...phoenix, >anyone?).  Without the resurrection, the cruxifiction is 
meaningless.

Eloise:
Exactly my point. And we have all these resurrection symbols, don't we. What 
else are we going to do with them?
Well, perhaps it wasn't exactly my point, but it was behind it. I was just 
trying to, well, express it in a slightly more secular manner, I suppose. But 
at the same time, the Resurrection is the crux (excuse the pun) of the 
Christian story. However orthodox or liberal your interpretation of what 
actually did or didn't happen, it was the event that turned around a group of 
dispirited, dissillusioned disciples of an apparently dead and discredited 
leader into a force that eventually influenced much of the course of Western 
history.

Laura:

>So what does this mean in the context of JKR's story?   Well...perhaps Harry 
will >die -- or appear to be dead -- without taking Voldemort with him...and 
*then* he'll >"rise again" and take V out when the Dark Lord least expects it.

Eloise:
Now that sounds like a likely plot line. No doubt Voldemort will forget 
something crucial in the process, as usual.

Debbie rolls out yet another ca(n)non:
>Harry sees in the tea leaves not only a crooked cross, but also the sun, 
both 
>a symbol of happiness and of resurrection (isn't that why all the old 
>churches always faced East, into the promise of the rising sun?).  There it 
>is, his death and eternal life, neatly packed into one teacup.

Eloise:
Oh, yes, you're right.

As a matter of interest, some of the very earliest churches used to face 
West, so that the celebrant faced East (S. Peter's Basilica in Rome, for 
one). Eastward facing was a later development. And its why Christian burials 
are East-West, so that at the resurrection, the first thing the believer will 
see is the dawn of the Saviour rising.
It's also a feature of some other Eastern mystery cults, such as Mithraism, 
which had some very similar imagery to Christianity (Mithraeae are 
architecturally  indistinguishable from basilican churches). And the Emperor 
Constantine, whose Edict of Milan in 303 and programme of church building 
first spread 'official' Christianity throughout the Roman empire was a 
devotee of the cult of Sol Invictus, (the unconquered sun) and seems perhaps 
to have regarded Christianity as a variant of this.

Debbie:
>Simple solution [to the problem of how H, R and V die simultaneously], 
completely >can(n)on-based -- Ron's wand backfires in 
>Voldemort's hands, bringing them all down together and taking Harry's head.  
>That would be sufficiently Bangy.  Just like Lockhart stole Ron's old wand 
>and lost his memory when the wand backfired.  The old Lockhart was dead; 
>Harry went to hell and was raised up by Fawkes the resurrection symbol; Ron 
>served time in Purgatory moving boulders, till Harry returned to take 
sinners 
>Ron and Ginny up to new life.

Eloise:
We were listening to this again yesterday and I was struck by the imagery of 
Harry rescuing Ginny from the Chamber. The raising of Lazarus was what came 
to my mind, as well as the Harrowing of Hell.

Debbie:
>Now for the biblical can(n)on -- three persons crucified together, Christ 
>with two sinners, one repentant and one not.  Ron, repentant, joins Harry in 
>the next great adventure (compare "today you will be with me in Paradise" to 
>the promise of happiness for Ron in the tea leaves after his suffering); 
>Voldemort loses his life and goes to hell.

Eloise:
Of course, a true parallel to Christ's crucifixion would require that Harry 
dies at the hands of the judiciary, or the establishment in some form or 
another .
We already have accusations from the MoM that Harry is dangerous, that his 
scar (depending on reading) is a warning. (FIE!)
In another thread, I was ruminating on the fact that we haven't actually seen 
a death penalty as such in the WW. Could it exist? Could it, just possibly, 
be manifsted in the form of beheading? 

L. Terrell Gould, III  
>Yew is a sign of immortality, yes, but more importantly, of death. 
>However, Harry's wand, ("Harry Potter: holly, 11", supple, single 
>phoenix feather(from Fawkes)") is made of Holly, another tree 
>associated with immortality, but on a different level. Holly is an 
>evergreen, and therefore considered symbolic of ressurection 
>(one of the reasons it is popular at Christmas, but also from older 
>roots in the Yule celebration).  

Eloise:

Now, funnily enough I was going to ask if there was anyone out there who had 
an opinion on this. Obviously, I appreciate the significance of Voldemort 
having a wand made of yew .It's just the yew trees in the churchyard that I 
can't find significant per se. You'd have to look hard to find one without 
yew trees.

(Oh and I've just read Catlady de los Angeles post, we seem to agree on that 
point! And thanks for the other bits about yew)

What is so interesting is that both Harry and Voldemort seem to have wands 
for which the symbolism is almost identical.

Now, just for anyone else who isn't sure about this, yew *is* evergreen.
As I understand it, the original symbolisms of holly and yew were similar, 
but yew, because of its association with graveyards later took on more 
strongly overtones of death, and lost (popularly) its association with 
resurrection. This is paralleled of course by societal attitudes. In the days 
of the early church, people would gather to celebrate at burial sites; they 
had positive connotations (in fact churches such as S. Peter's, Rome actually 
started out as cemetery churches, built to accomodate families of the 
deceased, or in its case, pilgrims). Later, as the mediaeval mind began to be 
filled with ideas of magic and demons and evil spirits, etc., churchyards 
became spooky and associated more strongly with fear of death.

We have discussed before that symbols act at different levels. Do we assume 
that the symbolism of the yew of Voldemort's wand is operating at a level 
where the symbolism of death is uppermost (not least in what it deals out to 
others)?


L Terrell Gould III again:
>PS
>Does anyone else find it curious that most of the parallels found on 
>this site between HP and religion involve the iconography of 
>Christianity?  Is it because it is widely known?  Are most of us 
>Christian? Are we just seeing it through the dominant socially 
>enculterated schema in western society? 
>Pardon me. I've been studying way too much for my psych and anthro 
>exams. I'll leave now *poof*.  

Eloise:
I think we're seeing it because a) it's there and b) once you start reading a 
specific interpretation into something you'll keep on finding it, whether 
it's there or not. (Hmm...yew trees.....)
Yes, for most of us the dominant culture is Christian and so whether 
Christian or not, the iconography is familiar to a great many people (at 
least, it is in the US, less so over here) and is likely to be used to 
interpret what may be more universal themes. It is certainly the culture from 
which JKR comes and our last foray into this territory was apropos a 
suggestion that JKR was actually more religious than she'd really like people 
to know (along the lines of 'if people knew, they'd be able to predict what's 
going to happen'). 
Oh, Catlady said that too! Great minds!

Eloise
Feeling slightly guilty and sort of hoping that we're not really predicting 
how the series will end.



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