I. The Oxford Inklings
The influence or lack of influence of Lewis and Tolkien on the Potter series is more than I care to elaborate. I will restrict myself to suggesting a link between the Inklings, a literary group that included Lewis and Tolkien, and the Giant Squid living in Hogwarts Lake. Being a relatively un-stereotyped animal, being besides armed with ink and connected to comedy (the twins and tickling), and being a secretive beast, I have an inkling that the Giant Squid probably symbolises the author, Joanne Rowling, but also Lewis and Tolkien, and maybe two other authors whose works influenced Rowling’s. The ‘bread’ tossed by Hogwart students to the squid might be a pun on money (bread=money), which means the children are throwing money at the greedy, inky authors, children (and adults too!) who, being covered by the immense flood of ink produced by these voluminous authors, do not have a inkling about what they are paying for.
Since the Inklings were associated with and met at the University of Oxford, Hogwarts might be inspired by Oxford. The similarities are tantalizing. Ox = animal and Hog = animal. ‘Wart’ and ‘ford’ form a pleasant jingle. Coincidentally, this identification also explains why Hogwarts is full of professors instead of teachers, and a quick glance at the university’s map will reveal a sizeable little lake fit for a squid.
Finally, according to rumours, Rowling has claimed, or joked, that the Giant Squid is Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts, and that the squid is the largest known animagus, a kind of enigmatical cloaking form used by wizards. The joke is on us, because Joanne Kathleen Rowling is the animagus of Joanne Rowling (her original name), whose animagus is a bewitching children’s fantasy writer, but who is, in reality, something very different. In fact, her penname, ‘Kathleen,’ likely shares etymological roots with Hecate, the goddess of the underworld associated with witchcraft.
II. Parodies of Lewis?
As shown earlier, Sirius Black’s name stands for light and darkness, good and evil. His name might also have been inspired by C.S. Lewis’ names for the horses of good and evil, Coalblack and Snowflake, names Lewis lifted from Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Similarly, in Plato’s Paedrus, two horses attached to the soul symbolize the competing powers of appetite and reason, which roughly translate into good and evil. Sirius Black, having both powers in him, and manifesting both in his actions, is therefore rightfully given a name that symbolises his morally ambiguous nature.
In Lewis’ The Silver Chair the fire-dwelling Salamander is a great and almost mystical creature, but in Rowling’s works the firework-spewing Salamander is a Hollowe’en accessory (TCOS 100). Draw your own conclusions about the import of this habit, but not without first questioning received opinions about Lewis’ spiritual allegiance.
C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and Rowling’s HP series both comprise seven books. On the very last page of The Last Battle Lewis’ narrator claims that the end of the Narnia series is really “the beginning of the real story.” Rowling alludes to this by titling her last chapter of her fourth book “The Beginning.” In Lewis’ last paragraph the narrator says of the characters: “at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story”. But I will provide more on this cryptic synonymy of the last with the first and the number four in part four, below.
III. The James Joyce Connection
The widespread assumption that J.K. Rowling is just a children’s fantasy writer who writes children’s books—pure and simple—might be dispelled upon a careful inspection of the evidence linking the Potter series to the esoteric literature of James Joyce.
Character Names: We have Dedalus Diggle (HP) and Stephen Dedalus (A Portrait of an Artist and Ulysses ), and Seamus Finnegan (HP) and a Finnegan in Finnegans Wake. Lily is Harry’s dead mother and a character in Joyce’s story “The Dead.” Bloom is the main sur-text character of Ulysses and HP is overgrown with botanical and flowery names like Lily, Lavender, Rose, Fleur, Florence, Florean, Sprout, Daisy, Petunia, and Myrtle. Plump Molly Weasley bears startling resemblance to Molly Bloom, and Molly Weasley’s husband is a kind of surrogate father to Harry, as Molly Bloom’s husband Leopold is a surrogate father to Stephen. Leopold Bloom is a Jew and reappears as Rowling’s Leonard Jewkes and Leopoldina Smetwyk (a somewhat Jewish-sounding surname?). Finally, a character with the initials J.J. appears in Flying with the Canons [sic], a book read by Harry whose errantly spelled title provides a clue Joyce might have appreciated.
Thematic: Joyce’s Dubliners is commonly misunderstood to relate the epiphanies of ordinary people, as HP is commonly misunderstood to relate the truly heroic behaviour of a schoolboy. Plus, the school years of Stephen Daedelus are arguably as tormented as Harry’s.
Lexical: both writers are prolific creators of words, though Rowling specializes in names and other nouns.
Punctuation and Formatting: Joyce’s last book ends without punctuation, Rowling’s ‘first’ book ends with an ellipsis: they achieve the same effect. Rowling’s first book has 17 chapters, Joyce’s last book has 17. The middle chapter of TPS has a title that echoes it middle position: “The Midnight Duel,” while the middle chapter of FW is unique for being the only chapter not introduced with a blank space.
Autobiographical: In their early adulthood, both authors were involved in radical thinking about the world. Joyce was involved in a Nicolas Flamel club and Rowling worked as a researcher and secretary for Amnesty International. Both authors seem to have consciously refused to write moral or philosophical works, the one choosing to write linguistic-aesthetic experiments (Joyce) that toy with the topical issues of the day, and the other choosing to write children’s literature that, similarly, glosses over the topical issues of the day. The difference may be even smaller given the importance of children’s nursery rhymes to Finnegans Wake and Joyce’s record of treating everything as mere nursery rhyme.
IV. Symmetrical Thanatological Numerology
Surprisingly, numbers play an important patterning role in HP.
In the first sentence of the first book, Rowling mentions Four Privet Drive. The Hogwarts student population is division into precisely four houses founded by four men. The opening chapter of each of the first three books is set in the Dursley house, but the fourth book’s first chapter is set in Riddle House. In fact, the Riddle House is a mirror image of the Dursley house. Each house was occupied by a mother, a father, a son and a fourth person with magical powers.
In the first chapter of book four, the three dark figures in Riddle House are the likely murderers of the three dead people; in the last chapter three people (Harry, Hermione, and Ron) strike Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy unconscious, a state not far removed from death.
As shown above, book four contains a first-last parallel or symmetry that invokes the theme of death. This connection of death to the-first-equals-the-last pattern refers to the fact that death is the last, or end, also always marks a beginning. Additionally, the fourth book marks the centre of the HP series, and death is central to HP.
Additional evidence linking death to the number four requires knowledge of the fact that the number four symbolizes death in the Chinese and Korean tradition. This is significant because the only character with a Chinese or Korean name is Cho Chan. She first appears in the fourth book, but by the end of the seventh she has had a total of four boyfriends, one of whom dies during their relationship. Cho Chan is also Harry’s first girlfriend and the first girl to kiss Harry, a fact I mention only because kissing is linked to death through the Dementors’ kiss of death.
The entwining of the concepts of death and the beginning occurs with “The Boy who Lived”, that being the very first chapter title in TPS. The boy who lived? Why lived? This either forms an incomplete sentence or a hint that Harry no longer lives and is, well, dead. Let me explain: no other chapter contains a verb, and ‘lived’ is a verb, and to end a title with this verb is to tempt the reader to assume the author meant The Boy who Once Lived…
The entwining of the concepts of death and the beginning also occurs in the last chapter of the fourth book, “The Beginning,” which describes the beginning of Voldemort’s second life.
If the number four signifies death, why did Rowling write a fifth book? Consider the title of the fifth: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The phoenix is famous for its ability to resurrect from death. But Rowling negated the phoenix myth by naming her phoenix ‘Fawkes,’ after Guy Fawkes, whose name is synonymous with failure, and is linked to the subject of religion and resurrection because he failed to help Spain ‘resurrect’ Catholicism in the low lands. Guy Fawkes day is remembered every November 5th in Britain.
To end this thana-numerical-aesthetical meditation, I ask, who is Rowling’s Golgomath? Is he the new Goliath? Golgogath killed Karkus, friend of the Order of the Phoenix. Karkus might be derived from calculus or Kirk, an old English word for church, and therefore linked to the resurrection theme linked to the phoenix. Golgotha is the name of the place where Jesus was killed.
Each exposure of the subtext reveals the same heresy, parody of Christianity and philosophy. Once I was amazed, now I only wonder why the author chose to whisper what has already been sung, shouted, and announced in public.
V. Harry Potter is Lord Voldemort
While much evidence for this argument already lies scattered above this chapter, I wish to elaborate a little on Christopher Hitchens’ remark that the lightning-shaped scar on Harry’s forehead is a social-marking once used by a now defunct group of British Nazi sympathizers (The New York Times). Most disturbingly, Joanne Rowling likely knew this, judging from what she wrote in the Telegraph.co.uk in “The First It Girl.” Moreover, considered in light of her remarks that Voldemort was partly inspired by the figure of Adolf Hitler, doesn’t Harry’s lightning-shaped scar suggest that Voldemort and Harry are essentially inseparable, that part of Voldemort is still in him? Indeed, when you consider that Harry is short for Harold, an Old English name that meant ‘leader of an army’….
