Is there a Station Master in King's Cross? Harry Potter and Post-metaphysical Fantasy

[Mike & Susan Gray]

Some musings of a more abstruse variety - copied in from my LJ. Spoilers
nonethless.

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Here's an issue that probably won't be coming up immediately in our debates
about the epilogue, the wand-thing and the final doom of H/Hers:

There's some stuff about this series, as it has now been completed, that's
rather atypical of fantasy - or rather, there's some non-stuff. In
particular, we are never given a narrative to explain the metaphysics of the
Potterverse, nor are we offered a vision of any basic, ultimate changes in
its nature. Where did magic come from? Why does it work the way it works?
What makes wizards different from muggles? Will they ever be united (or
re-united)? What makes love so powerful? Is there some higher power - God,
for instance - behind the scenes or even pervading the story?

These are all interesting questions. They are also questions of a sort that
fantasy stories quite often like to grapple with - and answering them is
often essential to the plot's resolution. They are things you could call
(and I have called) fantasy metanarratives - or to use the terminology of
Christian theology, the salvation history of the fantasy narrative,
stretching creation (the beginning of all things) to eschatotology (the end
of all things), through hamartiology (evil) to soteriology (salvation) all
centered around theology proper (the understanding of God, or the ultimate,
or whatever).

These are common themes in fantasy fiction - including fantasy fiction that
is decidedly non-Christian (say, His Dark Materials or The Dark is Rising) -
but Rowling simply doesn't go there. We learn that love is powerful, that
death is final (though not the end) - but that's about it. We spend a
pleasant time with Dumbledore in a place Harry (but not Dumbledore) sees as
King's Cross - but we don't find out where the trains go, let alone whether
there's a station master upstairs. We learn about the Old Hallow boys, but
even Beatific!Dumbledore doesn't seem to think there was anything more
profound going on than three clever wizards getting lucky (or unlucky, as
the case may be). Voldemort is defeated - but Draco (who is not exactly evil
but hardly a saint) packs a son named Scorpio into the Hogwarts express. 

All we have to gone in the end is love and death. These are not particularly
profound concepts - but if love and death (or might I even borrow those old
Heideggerian standbys "care" and "being toward death"?) aren't the most
profound aspects of human experience, I don't know what is.

The little Heidegger riff was intentional, since Heidegger is linked with a
kind of philosophy that's often termed "post-metaphysical." There are many
ways of doing post-metaphysical philosophy - and I don't claim to understand
any of them properly - but what they share is that they want to talk about
the important things of human life without presenting a grand narrative
about the essence of being. It's less realist, more pragmatic; people are
more important than stuff. "What shall I do and what kind of person shall I
be?" tends to be more important than "Where do I come from and where am I
going?" - which itself tends to be more important than "where does the
universe come from and where is it going?"

I guess that makes Harry your standard issue, post-metaphysical hero.

I have to say I like him, a lot. Though I still would have liked to go
hunting for that station master.