Twins and foils in the HP books (Was: Universal themes)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 141708

jenkuy24 wrote:
<snip> Have you all done any speculating 
> about two of the larger themes in the book- 
> 
> 1) the idea of half-blood
> and 2) the idea of twins/pairings?
> 
> 1) All or nearly all of the characters in the story are half of one 
> and half of another, be it wizard, muggle, animal, creature, etc. 
> Obviously, one of the themes revolves around prejudice and how 
> unfair it is. But, there is something more to this idea. 
> 
> 2) All of the main characters seem to have a twin, Harry-Voldemort, 
> Dumbledore-Ron, Hermione-McGonagall, perhaps Snape-Draco Malfoy. 
> Twins is already a theme in book 1, with Fred and George and 
> references to twins in other contexts. What does this mean and how 
> will this play out? JKR has stated that none of the characters are 
> time travellers, so what is the basis of these pairings? <snip>

Carol responds:
Hi, and thank you for bringing a new angle to the discussion! I don't
have any thoughts at the moment about your firest question, so I'll
respond to the second.

First, I am truly grateful to JKR for curtailing discussion of the
DD/Ron time turner speculations. I've never seen any parallels between
them aside from general body build and auburn (as opposed to bright
red) hair. Even their noses are different, Ron's being simply long and
DD's being long and crooked. Not a single reference, IIRC, to Ron as
having twinkling blue eyes. Ron's sense of humor, while marked, is not
nearly as eccentric as DD's (his "few words" near the beginning of
SS/PS are a classic moment in children's literature). And, setting
aside the handicap of having his brother's old wand in SS/PS, which is
broken and malfunctioning in CoS, we never see Ron as having
exceptional wizarding abilities. His gifts are the kind of strategic
planning ahead required for chess, the kind of courage that requires
facing your worst fears despite being terrified, friendship and
loyalty, and Quidditch (it's only the ridicule of his brothers that
keeps him from excelling at it). Don't get me wrong; I love Ron and
thinks he gets more than his share of attacks from the fans, but he
isn't Dumbledore, who "could do things with a wand that [his examiner]
had never seen before when he took his OWLs some 135 years before.

That pairing aside, I can see Harry/Tom Riddle (in CoS) and
Harry/Voldemort to lessening degrees throughout the books, though
surely the chief pairing in HBP is Harry/Snape. I do agree that the
Hermione/McGonagall pairing is very marked, with its opposite being
Luna/Trelawney. I expected to see something related to the
Hermione/Luna contrast in HBP, with Luna noticing, for example, that
Harry's scar was shaped like a rune and speculating about its
significance and Hermione snorting in derision, running off to the
library to prove her wrong, and coming back convinced that Luna was
right and that the scar really was, say, an Eihwaz rune symbolizing
protection. Or, on a simpler level, that Luna's father would come back
from Norway(?) with a Crumple-horned Snorkack, proving to Hermione
that not all truth was to be found in books (and not all books
purporting to be factual are accurate and complete)--a victory for
intuition over book-learning. Alas, I was as wrong about that
speculation as I was about Agnes the dog-faced woman being Snape's mother.

At any rate, I don't think the pairings you mention (and there are
many others, including Harry/James and Severus Snape/Sirius Black) are
twins so much as foils: characters who are in some ways similar but
make different choices or seeming opposites who mirror one another:
Saruman and Gandalf in LOTR, for example. 

Even Fred and George, "identical to the last freckle," can be viewed
along these lines. It's Fred who turned Ron's teddy bear into a spider
and Fred, IIRC, who used a Puffskein for bludger practice, but George
who points out that blackmail is illegal (but grabs the letter from
Fred's hand and mails it when Ron threatens to intervene) and who
rushes to his mother to comfort her when their father is in St.
Mungo's while Fred remains in his chair with his head in his hands
(again, IIRC). I'm not sure whether JKR is simply trying to show that
George (who is always mentioned second) is not simply Fred's follower
and faithful shadow or whether there's a deeper meaning behind the
differences. (Fred comes off as the showier twin, the ringleader, but
George is more thoughtful and somewhat "nicer." Interestingly, when
Harry gives the Twins his TWT winnings, he hands them to George, not
Fred.) Similarly but not so obviously, we have Parvati and Padma
Patil, also identical twins but in different houses. But Parvati
hasn't shown her courage since she stood up for Neville in SS/PS, and
Padma has yet to show any intellectual brilliance. They seem to be a
potential but undeveloped pairing--literal, not figurative, twins who
could also be used as foils just as Fred and George are. Or, just
once, let me say George and Fred.

There are additional tantalizing references to pairs of
brothers--Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore and Sirius and Regulus
Black--that I hope will be developed in Book 7 even though three out
of the four characters are dead. (I could also possibly add Colin and
Dennis Creevey, but I'm not sure they merit further development.)

I've given up hope for any development of Rodolphus and Rabastan
Lestrange, who look and act differently in the Pensieve scene in GoF,
though it's not clear who is who. But I do think it's strange that
Rabastan was brought into the book at all (he's ignored in the GoF
graveyard scene but identified by name in OoP and later takes part in
the DoM fiasco. And yet he would fit nicely into the contrasting
brothers motif if JKR would only take time to tell us why she invented
him.

At any rate, you aren't the only one who's noticed "twins" or foils or
pairings in the HP books. Exactly what it means, except to reveal the
character of one by contrasting him/her with the other, I don't know.

Carol, who managed not to make this a Snapecentric post