Harry Potter and the Secrets of Freedom

I assume most everybody knows the Harry Potter stories, but if you’ve never read the books or seen the movies, be forewarned that this post contains major spoilers.

I’ve watched the Harry Potter movies many times, but read the books only once, when they first came out. I’ve been re-reading them this summer and am up to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (sixth of seven), where I found Dumbledore, the enigmatic headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, saying this to 16-year-old Harry about Harry’s upcoming battles with the most powerfully evil wizard who ever lived:

Don’t you see? Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! Voldemort is no different! Always he was on the lookout for the one who would challenge him. He heard the prophesy and he lept into action, with the result that he not only handpicked the man most likely to finish him, he handed him uniquely deadly weapons!

Damn. That’s pretty powerful stuff for a novel directed at kids. (And of course, it’s not alone; the Hunger Games trilogy is equally powerful against tyranny, and even the Divergent trilogy, though unspeakably lame, points in the same direction.)

But the message about the greatest weakness of tyrants is most explicit in Harry Potter (and moreso in the books than in the films). Voldemort not only created his own enemies through his cruelty, but in Harry’s case, he created him specifically, through a grave error.

Voldemort heard part of a prophesy that a boy would be born who could vanquish him. He concluded that boy was Harry (though it could just as easily have been the hapless Neville Longbottom). He killed Harry’s parents, giving Harry an undying desire for revenge. And in attempting to kill the baby Harry, he marked an otherwise ordinary infant not only with a scar but with powers he never intended to bestow. Powers that would eventually enable Harry and friends to destroy him utterly.

Voldemart didn’t stop to think that not all prophesies come true, even in the Harry Potter world. And he was so paranoid that he couldn’t wait to find out the rest of the prophesy, which said that the Dark Lord would mark the boy in question “as his equal.”

So … haste and overreaction in the face of an ill-perceived threat. Murder as a first resort. And creating the very enemies he fears. Yep. Sounds like every other tyrant and tyrant-wannabe in the world.

But it’s the part about a tyrant marking an enemy as an equal and giving him the very weapons to destroy tyranny that’s the intriguing part. Give that one some thought.

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I love how the books and the movies are so very different from each other, yet how entirely true in spirit the movies are to the books. Sure the movies had to leave out a lot of detail from the books and that came back to bite them a few times in the latter films. The directors (five different ones!) were handicapped by the fact that most of them had no idea how the (then partly unpublished) series was going to turn out and didn’t know in detail which items or characters omitted from movie four might be needed in movie eight.

Of course, Harry was going to beat Voldemort, that was a given. But the biggest question was: What about Snape? Here’s this dark, angry, truly foul man who hates Harry’s very existence. Yet every time push comes to shove, he protects him. And in the face of all suspicion, Dumbledore insists that he trusts Snape and that’s that.

The key issue of whether Snape is ultimately Harry’s friend or Harry’s second-darkest enemy was such a mystery that J.K. Rowling was reportedly whispering the truth only in actor Alan Rickman’s ear. Then when Rickman played scenes in unexpected ways, he’d have to explain to the directors, “I know something you don’t know about this character.”

In the movies we ultimately learn that Snape is loyal to Harry because he was in love with Lily, Harry’s mother. Very poignant. And of course, perfectly played by Rickman. No wonder Snape is always right up there on the list of favorite HP characters.

The books tell a deeper story, though. Snape was indeed in love with Lily Potter and deserted Voldemort forever when Voldemort killed her. BUT in the books we learn that it was Snape who conveyed the partial prophesy to the Dark Lord. So Snape himself was indirectly responsible for Lily’s death. Snape’s alliance with Dumbledore and loyalty to a boy he despises is a penance. It’s Snape taking responsibility for his own deeds.

Snape served a tyrant. Snape paid by being responsible for the death of the person he held most dear. Now, with great courage (even if not with the slightest bit of grace) he has to help ensure that Harry stays alive long enough for the final confrontation with Voldemort.

This is extremely deep stuff for kid’s books. I wish they’d managed to work the element of Snape’s personal responsibility more clearly into the movies, though I understand how hard it would have been. The movies are masterful adaptations and I expect they’ll be considered great classics. But there’s heart and hope and real-world meaning and considerable depth in the books that’s even better.