A far-fetched analysis of the Prophecy
Lissa B
lissbell at colfax.com
Fri Jul 11 15:19:50 UTC 2003
No: HPFGUIDX 69410
Since I couldn't accept that a 700+ page novel offered up as its main
revelations two facts careful readers have suspected for years--that
Harry is the only wizard with the ability to defeat Voldemort and that
Harry and Voldemort's fates are mortally linked--I decided to take a
closer look at the prophecy.** (I've quoted each sentence for easy
reference. The passage is on p 841 of the US edition of OOP. Sorry, I
don't know the page numbers for other editions.)
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...."
As far as I can tell, this first sentence is exactly what it seems. It
logically implies that only one being will have the power to vanquish
Voldemort and that this being will arrive soon after the spoken
prophecy.
"Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month
dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have
power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the
other for neither can live while the other survives...."
With this sentence things get interesting. Obviously it *looks* like
Trelawney is predicting that the one who has the power to vanquish
Voldemort will be born to parents who defied LV three times and that
this potentially LV-vanquishing being will be born as the seventh month
dies. I'm quite certain that's what Rowling wants us to believe and
it's certainly what Dumbledore carefully leads Harry to conclude. (It's
not what Dumbledore actually says, but I'll tackle that problem later in
this post.)
There are two remarkable things about this sentence. First, the two
participial phrases that introduce it are in past tense. In contrast to
the final sentence in which Trelawney says "The one with the power to
vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies....", this
sentence appears to describe a birth that has already occurred. I
realize this is a subtle clue, but I think it's significant. When
Trelawney repeats a key idea in her prophecy in PoA, she certainly
doesn't make any tense changes; the tenses used in that prediction all
seem appropriate.
Second, there's a sticky antecedent problem in this sentence. Since
readers know the prophecy is about Harry and since the other possible
interpretation of the pronouns in the introductory participial phrases
leads to an absurd paradox, most readers will naturally conclude that
the two phrases refer to Harry. I don't think they do. When a
participial phrase begins a sentence it is correctly followed directly
by a comma and the subject to which the phrase refers. (Recall that
Rowling uses an ellipsis in place of a comma and pause in Trelawney's
PoA prophecy.) Putting the intended subject of the phrase beyond the
first noun after the participial phrase itself is actually a grammatical
error. Rowling muddies the issue by inserting an "and" after the two
phrases, but the first potential subject for the phrases is still the
one that, logically, should apply. The boy born to parents who thrice
defied him and born as the seventh month dies should, therefore, be the
Dark Lord. I frankly confess that there are pronoun/antecedent
ambiguities throughout this sentence that make it impossible to state
such a thing with any certainty, but even so... I'm sure enough that I'd
bet a good bar of dark chocolate on it.
The rest of the sentence is more straightfoward. Since it contradicts
the present physical reality, the idea that neither the Dark Lord nor
the being who may vanquish him can live while the other survives baffles
me, but the meaning will no doubt become clear later in the series.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the
seventh month dies...."
This final sentence clearly refers to a birth that is yet to come at the
time the prophecy is offered. Although it appears at first glance
merely to echo an idea stated earlier in the prophecy, it's actually not
redundant. The first phrase does not refer to the boy about to be
born. This last sentence has to exist or there would not be evidence
that the one who can vanquish Voldemort would be born at the end of
July.
What could I possibly be driving at suggesting such a ridiculous
interpretation of Trelawney's words?
I said it before and I say it again now: I believe Harry Potter and
Ginny Weasley are Tom Marvolo Riddle's parents.
I can hear you all snickering. I know you think I'm entirely off my
rocker. I may well be. (grin)
Truly, though, I can imagine your objections to this interpretation of
the prophecy. I had them myself and I spent a good while talking
through them with my father. In the hope of avoiding a stress headache,
I'm going to try to answer a few in advance:
Objection #1: Dumbledore confirms that the prophecy means that the
person who can conquer the Dark Lord was to be born in July to parents
who thrice defied Voldemort.
My response: No, this is what Dumbledore *wants* Harry to believe, but
it is not what he says. What he says when Harry asks what the prophecy
means is this: "It meant... that the person who has the only chance of
conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly
sixteen years ago." Period. End of sentence. *Then* Dumbledore goes
on to state a fact in a *new* sentence: "This boy would be born to
parents who had already defied Voldemort three times." Note that the
second sentence does *not* begin with "It also meant that" or some
similar phrase. It would have been easy and efficient simply to include
in the first sentence the idea that the boy had to be born to parents
who had defied Voldemort. Dumbledore does not include it because it is
*not* what the prophecy says. He's being deceitful because he doesn't
want Harry to suspect his true relationship with Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Objection #2: Lissa, that's completely ridiculous. Dumbledore rambles
on at *length* about how the prophecy could have applied to Neville or
Harry. If the only thing that Trelawney really said about the boy with
the power to vanquish Voldemort is that he would be born at the end of
July in 1980, well that could be any of *thousands* of babies. That
would make Dumbledore's whole point about Neville silly.
My response: Uhhhm, yeah. It really does make Dumbledore's Neville
point silly. Now I *like* it because I'm a longtime Neville fan who
really wanted him to play a pivotal role in Voldemort's defeat, but I
truly do suspect Dumbledore is engaging in subterfuge here. Notice that
Dumbledore doesn't say Sibyll's prophecy could have applied to *only*
two wizard boys. He just says it could have applied to two wizard
boys. That doesn't mean it couldn't have applied to 80 wizard boys and
10000 muggle boys. Furthermore, when Dumbledore suggests that Neville
fits the profile in the prophecy, he includes two facts that aren't even
touched on in Trelawney's statements: that Neville is a wizard and that
his parents were in the Order of the Phoenix. He does a masterful job
of leading Harry to conclude that the "born to parents who thrice defied
him" passage applies to Voldemort's would-be-vanquisher, but he doesn't
state it. Honest! Look closely at Dumbledore's statements. He just
suggests it. Harry has no reason to question it, so he doesn't.
(Furthermore, I'm not certain Dumbledore really states the Longbottoms
*defied* Voldemort... but I'm covering that point next, so I'll stop
this argument here.)
Objection #3 Fine, Lissa, but even if "born to parents who thrice defied
him" refers to Tom Riddle, Harry can't be Voldemort's dad. He's already
defied him four times.
My response: You let Rowling mislead you with Dumbledore's words.
Think about what defiance means. Now Dumbledore tries his best to make
Harry (and Rowling's readers) believe that defiance is synonymous with
escape when he mentions that the Potters and the Longbottoms both
escaped Voldemort three times so soon after stating that Harry's parents
defied Voldemort three times. (I'm assuming that the "This boy..."
sentence on p 841 does refer to Harry and not Voldemort, but with
Dumbledore's trickiness my assumption could be wrong.) The Cambridge
online dictionary offers this definition of "defy": to refuse to obey,
or to act or be against, a person, decision, law, situation, etc.
Defiance is a willful act of disobedience, not a passive retreat or a
lucky escape. In my opinion Harry has defied Tom Marvolo Riddle twice:
once when he refused to give him the Philosopher's Stone and once when
he refused to answer Voldemort's question in the graveyard in GoF. The
escapes don't count.
Rowling doesn't want readers suspecting that Harry might eventually fit
the description of someone who defied Voldemort three times any more
than Dumbledore wants Harry to realize it. Just to prove this fact to
myself, I asked my father--who was midway through OOP at the time--how
many times Harry has defied Voldemort. My dad thought for a moment then
said, "Twice." When he finished OOP I asked him again. In the wake of
Dumbledore's manipulative words, my Dad claimed, without a moment's
hesitation, that Harry had defied Voldemort four times. My groan was
long and loud.
Don't let JKR deceive you. She could teach Dumbledore lessons on the
manipulative usage of the English language. (Just to clarify: that was
a compliment.)
I'm not going to go into my many reasons for believing Harry and Ginny
are Tom Riddle Jr's parents because this post is already too long. (You
can look them up in the archive if you're curious.) No one's going to
believe me anyway. (She smiles and shrugs ever-so-cheerfully.) And
that's a very good thing. I don't want to annoy Rowling. So please,
don't believe me. I'm a nut and my theory is ludicrous. Really! Move
along. Nothing to see here.
A thoroughly absurd girl with an equally absurd theory,
Lissa B
**A note added in retrospect: I don't mean to suggest the value of OOP
rests on the revelations it offers about the series' final outcome. The
character development in this novel was astonishing and well worth 870
pages with or without clever foreshadowing, prophecies and word tricks.
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