A Twist of Canonicity in the Magical World of Harry Potter

THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 1 A Twist of Canonicity in the Magical World of Harry Potter Chawna Crawford & Angela Scheres Gonzaga University SOCI 255 01: Sociology of Literature May 5, 2016 *Title footnote- Research paper on the canonicity of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, written for Sociology of Literature, Professor William Hayes. THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 2 A TWIST OF CANONICITY IN THE MAGICAL WORLD OF HARRY POTTER Abstract: CHAWNA Rowling's use of tragedy and death, strength of communication and value of knowledge, and the empathy and sense of justice that Harry possesses epitomize the aspects of the canonical novels Rogers describes. Bettelheim reveals that "a child's emotions and interpretations of such passages change from day to day- as family feelings and relationships change- and each time she deals with them they are invested with new meaning. Thus the ever-changing magic of Harry Potter is in the magic of the child's own experiences, feeling, and imagination." Harry Potter shares the themes and features of canonical novels, such as Oliver Twist, shares joy and tragedy, helps us learn to cope with death and loss by working through grief and emotional trauma. Keywords: Harry Potter, Oliver Twist, canon, canonicity, literature, juvenile, adult, young adult, tragedy, emotion, death, Severus Snape, Nancy THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 3 A TWIST OF CANONICITY IN THE MAGICAL WORLD OF HARRY POTTER INTRO: ANGELA Literary critics the world over have read Rowling’s bestselling Harry Potter series, yet there is much disagreement whether the magical books deserve a place on the same shelves that have become home for novels that have earned their place in literary history, the resting place of the canon. Novels written by great authors of the past, such as “Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Wordsworth, Austen, Whitman, Dickinson, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, Neruda, Pessoa, [and] Beckett,” have achieved canonicity—literary immortality—in their own right (Hayes 2016b). It seems likely that the disagreement currently being experienced over the Harry Potter series has occurred in the past, over novels that were accepted into the canon, securing their spot, not only in history, but in the present, as well as in the future. Charles Dickens has numerous novels that have earned their rightful place on the shelf of canonicity, including one about the life of an orphan, Oliver Twist. Harry Potter is another tale of an orphan, albeit, an orphan that belongs to a wizarding world of magic. Rowling has cleverly woven remnants of Oliver Twist into her extraordinary tale: even Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, is part of the Oliver Twist web, named after Cruikshank, the original illustrator for Dickens’ classic tale (Wikia). Amongst the remnants are similarities that cannot be ignored, such as the devastatingly portrayed character deaths. Two rather despised and misunderstood characters, Nancy in Oliver Twist, and Severus Snape in Harry Potter, share murderous ends to their lives. Neither died in vain, as Nancy gave her life to protect Oliver, and Snape willingly sacrificed himself to save Harry in the final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling has surpassed Dickens with her ability to hide the true nature of Snape from THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 4 millions of readers. Though she alluded to Snape’s plans and actions throughout the series, his character was written so beautifully elusively, readers could not accept that he had protected Harry from the beginning, until Harry was able to magically look back and see the truth. A. N. Wilson shares: there are not many writers who have JK’s Dickensian ability to make us turn the pages, to weep—openly, with tears splashing—and a few pages later to laugh, at invariably good jokes ... We have lived through a decade in which we have followed the publication of the liveliest, funniest, scariest and most moving children’s stories ever written. (Hayes 2016) The Harry Potter series, in effect, begins with death and loss, and those themes continue until the end. The pages are filled with an astute perceptiveness of what readers, of all ages, are searching for, between the lines, and the occasional tears of the characters are almost palpable. Rowling allows us to experience the entire range of human emotions, time and again, with these characters that so quickly become our friends. As the characters learn to cope and move forward, readers learn from them and with them, in tandem, that death and loss are part of our lives, and emotional crises can not only be overcome, we can learn from them, even become better people because of them. The powerful emotions we read and feel, during difficult portions of Harry's journey, after the deaths of characters we dearly love, misunderstand, or abhor, only solidify our belief that there is a rightful place on the shelf of the current canons for Harry Potter. We will step into the worlds that Oliver Twist and Harry Potter reside in, to further explore the literary canonicity that the Harry Potter series has rightfully earned. PART 1- EMOTIONAL CONTEXT: ANGELA The magical pages of Harry Potter fill us with joy, the wonder of love and amazement, and, at times, surprise, anger, fear, and sadness. Harry's tale begins on Privet Drive, in the aftermath of death, leaving him an orphaned infant with a lightning scar on the doorstep of relatives that didn't consider the magical child part of their family, but a burdensome menace THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 5 forced upon them. Ten years later, we eagerly begin a journey alongside Harry, as we are filled with myriad emotions once we learn that Harry has been horribly treated— he was looking for socks, "he found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept" (Rowling 2013a:19). We are drawn in quickly, and we become part of Harry's world so easily because of Rowling's brilliant imagination, and her masterful skill of tapping into emotions, making her wizarding world seem like a reality that is somehow parallel to our own. Zipes shares that "nineteenth-century writers [such] as Charles Dickens, George MacDonald, John Ruskin, George Sand, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, L. Frank Baum, and others, designated now as 'classical,' opposed the authoritarian tendencies of the civilization process and expanded the horizons of the fairy-tale discourse for children" (1991:171). It seems Rowling may have surpassed many of these 'classics' with her uncanny ability to draw the readers into Harry's world, as no others have become worldwide phenomena, cherished by children and adults alike. Corliss tells us "the Potter series is one of those cultural events that [spill] out of narrow categories and into the Zeitergeist. Reading the books, kids feel more mature, adults feel younger. And all become part of a community where age doesn't matter" (Borah 2004:347). How many other novels throughout history have had this rather amazing effect on people of all ages, spanning continents and cultures? Hayes (2016a) shares that 23-25 percent of adults are illiterate, and 23-38.2 percent of school-age youth in America do not read at their grade level. As reading levels drop, research has shown an increase in both depressive and anxiety disorders in juveniles (Grills-Taquechel 2012). It is quite possible that the lack of reading, reading skills, and comprehension also THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 6 contributes to decreasing abilities to properly process emotions, and, consequently, is weakening societal morality that the classics, such as Oliver Twist, have reinforced throughout canonical history. The Potter series is reawakening the younger generations to the delights of the written word, and the imaginative worlds behind them. Outside of those pages, it becomes a means for initiating communication, increasing comprehension abilities, and is enabling juveniles to experience dealing with difficult emotions in positive ways, with positive outcomes, through the characters themselves. Furthermore, when Harry makes moral choices that are opposite his emotional desires, similar issues "may be a part of the lives of real children who read the series. As is the case with many of the lessons contained within the Harry Potter series, leaving loose ends for readers actually helps validate real feelings" (Strimel 2004:44). Even though this occurs within the realm of a fictional world, these learned emotional processes will transfer over when similar events inevitably occur in real life. Rogers tells us "canonical novels emphasize the correlation between communication and knowledge. They imply that the root cause of human problems is the failure to recognize and temper ideologies, thereby undermining people's possibilities for empathy and justice" (1991:194). Rowling's use of tragedy and death, strength of communication and value of knowledge, and the empathy and sense of justice that Harry possesses, epitomize the aspects of the canonical novels Rogers describes. According to a study on basic emotions by Shaver et al. (1987), Harry Potter takes us through the entire range of human emotions: love, joy, surprise, anger, fear, and sadness; and, though most readers may not be consciously aware of the emotional rollercoaster they embark on with Harry and his friends, they share the characters' experiences, because they, too, enter the magical world and join in on the adventures. PART 2- DEATH IN OLIVER TWIST: CHAWNA THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 7 Initially released in monthly installments that spanned from February 1837 to April 1839 (Perry 2016), Oliver Twist, or The Paris Boy’s Progress fantastically depicts the orphan tale, which authors the world around jump at the chance to emulate, including J.K. Rowling, among countless others. It is not only the orphan archetype that is rousingly popular with readers, but the way novelists build and develop relationships with those orphans and the other characters in the stories they create. One of these incredibly important and dynamic characters is Nancy. Dickens portrays Nancy as a prostitute even though words like “hooker,” “whore,” and “prostitute” are never used. Nancy learns to be a thief and pickpocket from the villainous Fagin. Orphan Oliver Twist meets Nancy and she takes him under her proverbial wing and becomes his protector. The turning point in their relationship, for Nancy, happened when she though Oliver was in danger of being kidnapped for a second time. “‘You see he knows me!’ cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. ‘He can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s good people, or he’ll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!’" (Dickens 171). She lied about being his sister just to get him back. The depth of her character, immense, most readers spend time upset with Dickens for the heinous way she was murdered. Make no mistake, Nancy was not a pleasant person much of the time. She was hard on Oliver, often holding him to very high standards. Often seen drunk, she yelled at anyone and everyone if things were not how she perceived them to be. Critics are often quoted as saying she is the quintessential “hooker with a heart of gold,” and goes out of her way to protect Oliver even when he refuses to see it or is not in a place to want to see it. This love and loyalty makes Nancy’s brutal murder so difficult to deal with. She overhears a plot about Oliver being Monks’ half-brother and how Monks conspires with Fagin to kill, maim, or otherwise destroy Oliver, so that he cannot receive any of his family’s inheritance. She vows over and over to not betray THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 8 Fagin and Sikes and ultimately Sikes bludgeons her brutally and repeatedly. Queue the tears and anger and broken hearts because that is what readers go through by this point. Dickens develops Nancy so well and so completely, and her death is so horrible, that it is often likened to reading about the death of a loved one. “By offering forms for exploring the horizon of unfamiliarity (and “unreality”) bordering the commonsense world, literature makes individuals’ everyday realities seem more solid” (Rogers 1991b:11). Knowing that Nancy is a fictional character does not take away from the pain in the readers’ hearts, but it in some way helps our real lives and helps compartmentalize what is stressful and tragic, and allows us escape from what seems overwhelming. PART 3- DEATH IN HARRY POTTER: ANGELA Though readers experience many different emotions while they are in the world of Harry Potter, sadness is oftentimes at the forefront of the emotions that Rowling so gracefully manages to elicit. Harry suffers the loss of many friends and loved ones, and we feel his pain as if it is our own. We were with Harry when Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, and Snape were murdered. With the exception of Snape, the agony he felt in the aftermath of each loss seemed to be more than words on the page, as they have become more than figments of Rowling's imagination: they are loved, they are missed. Each reader goes through the mourning process with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and as they mature, they handle tragedy and devastation admirably. Bettelheim reveals that "a child's emotions and interpretations of such passages change from day to day— as family feelings and relationships change— and each time she deals with them they are invested with new meaning. Thus the ever-changing magic of Harry Potter is in the magic of the child's own experiences, feeling, and imagination" (Black 2003:239). Younger readers learn from actions and decisions of those they love, whether a person in their life, or in a book they choose to read. THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 9 Severus Snape suffered a brutal death at the hand of Voldemort, the "single character that embodies" the qualities that cause the "tone of death, hate, lack of respect, and sheer evil" throughout the entire series (Strimel 2004:43). But, his death did not cause the absolute sense of sadness and despair, as did the others, as Snape was so intricately and sensationally written, most readers could not see the clues that Rowling had left in order to piece his story together. Harry, Hermione, and Ron thought Snape was out to get them, though Snape had protected Harry from the start: "I'd have managed it before then if Snape hadn't been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you." "Snape was trying to save me?" "Of course," said Quirrell coolly. "Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn't do it again." (Rowling 2013b:289) Harry, Hermione, and Ron were in the boathouse when Voldemort ordered Nagini to kill Snape, and they heard the terror of the attack and forthcoming death. Immediately after Voldemort and Nagini left the boathouse, Harry approached the dying man: He did not know what he felt as he saw Snape's white face, and the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound at his neck. Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak and looked down at the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry as he tried to speak…Take…it…Take…it…(Rowling 2013c:657) The tears that Harry took from Snape allowed him to see everything in Snape's past. Snape had vowed to protect Harry, and it ultimately cost him his life. We felt the shock, guilt, and sadness Harry felt when he learned the truth. The heart-wrenching truth that he had been horribly wrong about Snape's motives, that Snape had willingly taken the life of Dumbledore, at Dumbledore's own request, and had given his own life to protect Harry. Strimel shares that "Rowling's work with Snape's character present a very difficult lesson for humankind in general … makes it clear that even past actions prove to be a poor litmus test as an indication of a character's worth and goodness" (2004:45). In light of Snape's sacrifices and the depth of THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 10 misunderstanding, his loss becomes one of the deepest wounds Harry and the readers feel, a great emotional toll on many levels. As Templeton notes, “the most distinctive cultural quality of literature, [is] its power to engage individual readers” (1992:26). Rowling’s talent exceeds this, as millions upon millions of people feel the sorrow, guilt, and loss, and share a new understanding after the death of a misconstrued character, engaging individual readers on a global scale. ANALYSIS: CHAWNA There are numerous parallels between orphan Oliver Twist, and orphan Harry Potter. The most important among them being how their protector, brash Nancy and brooding Severus, respectfully, go to great lengths to save them, even the orphans themselves are not aware of their protectors heroic efforts. There are differences between Oliver Twist and Harry Potter which serve to establish each of them as their own character in the annals of canonicity. For example, Oliver generally tends to see the good in most everyone, including Nancy. Everyone knows that Nancy is a prostitute and thief, but Oliver does not treat her differently because of this. In contrast, Harry feels great disdain for Severus from the very beginning of the series and it continues until Harry is in the pensieve watching Severus’ memories. Additionally, both Dickens and Rowling get at the heart of the importance of the relationship between orphan and protector, and ultimately the readers as well: emotions and heart. “The values, the human voices, the tragedies and comedies and romances of the literary world address individuals’ needs as surely as those same human realities in their nonartistic forms do" (Rogers 1991a:12). The readers are entwined with emotion as they navigate the words on pages and images in their minds, struggling with heartbreak and begging the texts to teach THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 11 them how to work through the loss and grief of a character that they spent an entire novel, or series of novels cheering for, and growing to love. CONCLUSION: ANGELA A true phenomenon in the harsh and critical realm of the written word is a rarity, and literature that achieves such a feat ought to be categorized in a manner that reflects its exceptional status. There are many novels, series, and children’s books that are favorites among their respective age groups, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat; but to have one series that captivates people of all ages is truly amazing. Zipes (2002) tells us that: for anything to become a phenomenon in Western society, it must become conventional; it must be recognized and categorized as unusual, extraordinary, remarkable, and outstanding. In other words, it must be popularly accepted, praised, or condemned, worthy of everyone's attention; it must conform to the standards of exception set by the mass media and promoted by the culture industry in general. To be phenomenal means that a person or commodity must conform to the tastes of hegemonic groups that determine what makes up a phenomenon. Harry Potter and Oliver Twist share many similarities, even though they were written over 150 years apart, spanning the course of history, each reminiscent of societies with different values and cultural norms. They both reel the reader in, making them part of their world, but Rowling does a far superior job of making Harry’s wizarding world come to life. Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, and many other characters, live in each person that has made their way to platform 9 ¾, traveled on Hogwart’s Express, become lost in the hallways at Hogwart’s, and experienced emotional ups and downs with Harry. Younger generations are once again reading for pure enjoyment. The magic of Harry Potter is no longer concealed within the pages of books, it is all around us. The difficult choices Harry makes are remembered by children and adults, and perhaps his strength, integrity, and morality help people make better choices in their THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 12 own lives. As Rogers noted, “the themes of canonical novels with their ideology of ideology usually concerns authenticity, or the continual struggle to maintain one’s personal integrity across the public and private spheres of life” and that “the definitive features of canonical novels imply that all knowledge is social” (1991:194). Harry Potter shares the themes and features of canonical novels, such as Oliver Twist, shares joy and tragedy, helps us learn to cope with death and loss by working through grief and emotional trauma. Rowling’s extraordinary creation is timeless, ageless, an achievement of epic proportions, and as the eternally wise Dumbledore tells us, “words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic” (Yates, 2011). Harry Potter will bring its magic, emotional lessons, tragedies and triumphs to the eager minds of new generations, and it belongs on the shelves of canonicity. Canonical authors, past and present, should be honored to share the future with Rowling’s wizarding world; of course, not forgetting to give an occasional tap while whispering “mischief managed” (Rowling 2013d). THE CANON AND HARRY POTTER 13 REFERENCES Black, Sharon. 2003. “The Magic of Harry Potter: Symbols and Heroes of Fantasy.” Children's Literature in Education 34(3):237–47. Retrieved May 3, 2016 (https://learn.gonzaga.edu/ webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/ launcher?type=course&id=_925385_1&url=). Borah, Rebecca S. 2004. “Apprentice Wizards Welcome: Fan Communities And the Culture of Harry Potter.” Pp. 343–63 in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Retrieved May 3, 2016 (https://learn.gonzaga.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1876545-dt-content-rid-19476321_1/ courses/SOCI255_01_22363_SP16/Borah%20--%20App%20WIzards%20Welcome.pdf Dickens, Charles. Nd. Oliver Twist. 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