[HPforGrownups] Guy Fawkes day

[Barb]

No: HPFGUIDX 46256


tiara_askew <tiara_askew at yahoo.com> wrote:
I'm new here, so I don't know if this has been discussed before, but the connection of Fawkes the phoenix and Guy Fawkes is one that has troubled me for some time. The bonfire similarity to the phoenix rising from the ashes seems pretty clear - the troubling part is that 
Guy Fawkes was a traitor.

Has anyone deconstructed this? I guess I just want reassurance that Fawkes and Dumbledore are not traitors - it's the one thing that would ruin the whole series for me.


Me:

I think that the Guy Fawkes connection depends upon your perspective.  This site: http://www.bonefire.org/guy/gunpowder.php has some interesing information about the Gunpowder Plot.  The last paragraph sums it up: 

"Some of the English have been known to wonder whether they are celebrating Fawkes' execution or honoring his attempt to do away with the government."

As the plotters were reacting to/protesting the government's anti-Catholic bias, you might also be more generously disposed toward Fawkes (Guy, that is) if you are Catholic or otherwise a member of a religious minority (anything not C of E) with the possible exception of Friends/Quakers, who are pacifists.   

While this would quite accurately be labeled an act of terrorism today, the germ of it came directly from the religious oppression practiced by the Crown.  The colonists who took part in the Boston Tea Party were also labeled traitors and would probably today be considered terrorists, although they were admittedly committing an act of economic terrorism and not trying to blow people up. (The were also responding to economic oppression, which is hardly the same thing as being oppressed because of your religious beliefs.)

To bring this back to Dumbledore and Fawkes, I believe that equating them with someone who was frustrated to the point of reacting extremely to oppression is not out of line and does not demean them in the least.  It would be rather easy, as a matter of fact, to equate witches and wizards (who were often burned--or at least, the Muggles tried to burn them) with traitors to the Crown who were reacting against religious oppression.  

In the new paradigm of a more isolated wizarding world, however, Dumbledore could very well be considered a traitor by Fudge and other people in the Ministry if he attempts to circumvent their authority by fighting Voldemort directly, along with the "old crowd."  He is a notorious Muggle-lover, and Muggle-born magical folk could also be equated with Catholics in 17th century Britain as far as second-class status in the wizarding world is concerned.  There are a number of possible parallels, in other words, none of which paint Dumbledore in a negative light unless you think being a rebel is a bad thing in general.  I seriously doubt that he's planning to blow up the Ministry, but I do wonder whether he will be seen as such a threat to the status quo that the school's board will replace him at some point (giving him the opportunity to go underground and organize a shadow resistance to both Voldemort and the Ministry).

 

--Barb

 


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