The Tao of Hogwarts

Evil—more so than in any of the books of this series—is the main character in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It begins with the cover art (of the American Scholastic edition, which is once again done by Mary GrandPre)—a dark, murky green lit only by an icy phosphorescence. It continues in the very first chapter, which—with an eerie topicality—describes the squalid self-absorption of a political leader (the Muggle Prime Minister, presumably of the U.K.), whose primary focus in a time of war, death, and widespread terror is how it all colors his own public image. There is also, in the second sentence of the opening chapter, a seeming reference to none other than George Bush: the PM is said to be awaiting a very important “call from the President of a far distant country,” who is then referred to as “the wretched man.”

Throughout the 600-odd pages that follow, Evil in its many disguises walks across Rowling’s stage. But, until the very end, it is not an explosive, dramatic, or manifestly destructive Evil that occupies the reader’s attention: rather, it is an insidious, soft-spoken, amorphous, and even a glittering, alluring Evil that fuels this story and builds the volcanic tension that erupts over its climactic scenes.

Thus, Evil appears in the form of private confidences and whispered conversations; in an unbreakable promise; in gleaming and precious pieces of jewelry; amid fine wine, liquor, and candies; in an old textbook; and in treasured symbols of religion and state. As in the earlier books, Evil is equipped with a thin public mask that makes it appear benign or even righteous and noble; it is also shown as a shape-shifter, repeatedly taking new forms and facades, which make it doubly difficult to pin down to a person, thing, or place.

A related theme from earlier books, which Rowling develops still further here (helped by a maturing Harry and the persistently incompetent Ministry of Magic) is the state’s manipulation of public opinion via the media. In a brilliantly compressed scene between Harry and the Minister of Magic, the repetition-compulsion of this our age of spin is brusquely exposed by Harry:

“You never get it right, you people, do you? Either we’ve got Fudge, pretending everything’s lovely while people get murdered right under his nose, or we’ve got you, chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend you’ve got ‘the Chosen One’ working for you!” (p. 347).

Harry’s deepening self-insight is nowhere better revealed than in his reflexive disdain for that epithet, “The Chosen One,” which had been saddled onto him by the media after rumors had spread of the prophecy connecting Harry and Voldemort in Time and Fate. Yet Harry doesn’t fully understand the reasons for his aversion to that title; that understanding is, as ever, supplied by his mentor, Professor Dumbledore.

Throughout this story, running like a thread of sanity, perspective, and safety, are the private lessons that Harry has in Dumbledore’s office. Together, Harry and his mentor journey through the past in these lessons, in order to more clearly understand the Evil that they face in the present. From these scenes, a larger lesson arises to the reader, which the powerful leaders of our world had better attend to quickly. For rather than taking it upon themselves to pursue a campaign of open and misdirected war against their nemesis, Harry and Dumbledore begin by learning as much as they can about the origin and motives of the Evil that is Lord Voldemort. Were they living characters in the real conflicts of our time, these two—teacher and student—would be branded as liberals and traitors who would rather offer counseling and understanding to the forces of Evil.

But what they discover through this process of studying the history of Lord Voldemort’s genesis is a trail that leads them to a clear view of the best—and perhaps the only—way to destroy him. Here is where the psychological depth of the story plumbs even greater depths than had been reached in the earlier books. This is where Harry and Dumbledore are faced with the core to any true understanding of Evil—its essential and pre-existing suicidal movement. Whenever there is a commitment made to oppression, ignorance, accumulation, or murder, there must first be a splitting of the psyche, a cutting off of the true self, which is an act of inner suicide. In the story, Harry and his teacher find that Voldemort has already committed this act of self-inflicted inner murder, by splitting his being into seven parts, six of which are entombed in magical objects known as “horcruxes.”

This term is another invention of Rowling’s, and is probably derived from a combination of Latin words: hor, meaning hour or time; and crux, meaning torment (as in cross, the Christian religious symbol of torment and sacrifice). Time of torment: the moment where self-hatred, conflict, and estrangement become so explosively compacted within the self that one’s very soul is split into pieces, all of them lost to the whole personality and out of touch with the center. Thus, the hatred is projected outward, as in the case of Lord Voldemort and all the current fundamentalist cults of our era that he represents. It is a time of entrapment in the various competing religious and governmental ideologies that are the defining marks of Voldemort-consciousness. The ideology or group belief-system represented by Voldemort is the cover, the excuse, for acts of oppression and murder. It is the thin layer of rationale that disguises the fact that with every murder committed, the soul of the murderer is further torn asunder. In reading of Voldemort’s horcruxes, I was reminded of the American solider in Iraq who, in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, observes that “every time you kill another, you destroy a part of your soul.”

Amid all of this psycho-spiritual exploration, social commentary, and the charting of Harry’s journey of inner growth, there are the familiar back-story lines, humoresques, and supporting dramatic threads that Rowling is so justly celebrated for weaving into the Potter epic. The comic twins, Fred and George, make a cameo appearance as the owners of a new prankster’s shop in the Diagon Alley strip mall. There are also romantic plots and sub-plots of adolescent affairs, featuring lots of “snogging” (I love that term). There is also still some Quidditch action and fresh magical inventions inserted into and supporting the main plot. Because it is all organized around a central motif—the exploration of the roots of Evil—the entire tapestry comes together in a relatively unified whole that pulls the reader toward the climactic confrontations of the final chapters.

Given the monumental scope and ambitious extent of what has now become a rather sprawling saga, Rowling does tread the line of painting off the edges of the canvas here and there; and there are a few typos and dangling expressions or pieces of story line amid the text that must be corrected in future editions (when you sell 50,000 copies of a book per hour for the first 24 hours it’s on sale, as the CEO of Barnes and Noble had predicted for this book’s opening night run, future editions come sooner than they do for most books). In addition, some characters—most notably Hagrid, Lupin, and Alastor Moody—are forced into the background in this story; and the denouement to the violent and protracted conflict that concludes the main action (definitely the darkest of all the endings so far) seems rather muddled and forced, as if it were breathlessly appended at the last moment before deadline. Yet for its sweeping scope, exuberant pace, character development, and simmering compression of tension along a unifying and topical theme, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will pay extraordinary dividends to any reader who loves a great story that is beautifully told by an artist at the height of her prowess. Whether or not you’re a Potter-maniac (perhaps even more so if you’re not), you will be enriched and entertained by this story of Evil and its alternatives.