Total Pageviews

Saturday 4 June 2016

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Evil All Along?

With just two months to go until the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, everyone is aware that we are in for an eighth instalment of the phenomenally successful franchise. To sharpen our appetites, a sequence from the first part of the book (set 19 years after the battle of Hogwarts) has recently been released to the public. To put it mildly, it features a plot twist that no one saw coming.

The excerpt opens with Harry leading a team of Aurors on an operation to apprehend a dark wizard who is believed to be a former Death Eater. (We learn that Harry has recently been de-aged by a magical brick, restoring him to the version we are familiar with instead of the aged-up one we briefly met in the epilogue to Deathly Hallows). The target wizard is apparently intent upon causing a massacre of 'mud-bloods' upon the anniversary of the defeat of Gellert Grindelwald (a figure from Potter lore with strong implied ties to the Nazis). The group track him down to a train station, where the target flees on a broomstick at the sight of Harry's legendary scar.
The chase sequence that follows is interspersed with flashbacks to Harry's pre-Hogwarts schooling (a subject that we have seen little of). It features Harry receiving much needed attention from a kindly primary school teacher named Elisa. She tells him that he is destined for greatness and sparks his interest with what may be minor displays of magic. She also teaches him that heritage is the most important factor in determining a person's destiny, inviting him to watch the parents picking up the other kids and try to figure out where his schoolmates will fit into the world from what he sees.

The chase ends with Potter and one other Auror managing to run the dark wizard to ground in a patch of forest. Then Harry turns to his muggle-born colleague and cuts him down with the Killing Curse, before uttering the most unlikely words ever to come out of his mouth - “I am Lord Voldemort”. 



Exactly what this twist means cannot be known until the rest of the story is revealed. However, the structure of the narrative and the nature of the flashbacks both seem designed to lead the reader to the conclusion that Harry has in fact been a Death Eater since before the series began.


Unsurprisingly, fans have reacted very strongly to this turn of events. Even so, the main feeling being expressed is one of simple bewilderment. Logic must take somewhat of a back seat in a high magic series, but even so the storyline has always held up fairly well in terms of consistency and internal sense. Given that Harry has personally taken a massive role in both defeating the Death Eaters and in repeatedly killing their founding leader until he stayed dead, what kind of deep cover operation could possibly be worth letting him do that much damage? It's no exaggeration to say that the Death Eaters would have ruled Britain if he'd tried even a little less hard to stop them. What could possibly be important enough about this situation to 'break cover' for?
Other fans protest that this development contradicts the events of The Chamber of Secrets, specifically the point at which Harry draws the Sword of Gryffindor from the sorting hat. According to Dumbledore, only a true Gryffindor could have performed this feat. Surely being one of the few judged worthy to take up Godric's sword precludes him being a murderous spy?

Then again, being a worthy Gryffindor isn't necessarily the same as being 'good'. The primary virtues of Gryffindor house are bravery, nerve, courage and daring – all qualities that Harry possesses in abundance. Certainly being a double agent is not considered inherently cowardly in the Potterverse – Severus Snape is described by Harry as probably the bravest men he ever knew. An argument could be made about the quality of chivalry – but sneaking around and using trickery have always been prominent amongst Harry's tactics.
Ultimately, being 'just' and 'true' are actually Hufflepuff virtues – as demonstrated by canon Hufflepuff characters like Cedric Diggory, Nymphadora Lupin and Wade Wilson. Hufflepuff has also produced the fewest dark wizards of any house, implying that being sorted into Gryffindor does not preclude one from taking that path.

Not all fans are up in arms about this radical plot twist. Some are genuinely curious to see where Rowling is going with this storyline. Others more cynically point out that such shake-ups are necessary to keep the franchise going over such a long period, expressing surprise that such a headline-grabbing twist has been so long in coming. Others blame the expressions of outrage upon the fans of the film series, claiming that those who have not read the books simply don't understand the nuances of Rowling's story-telling. This is of course rather unfair and a disservice to the vast number of people who have become fans of the characters through that medium. Daniel Radcliffe (who plays Harry in the film series) has avoided making a substantial comment on the change, simply Tweeting enough to feed the publicity machine:

“Voldemort?!?!? #sayitaintso”

One thing common to every fan is the assumption that this will not actually be a permanent change. Elisa is described as wearing 'an hourglass shaped piece of jewellery' which many are already suspecting is a Time-Turner. Did the Death Eaters send someone back in time after their defeat to indoctrinate Harry at his most vulnerable? Almost everyone is certain that some kind of second twist will restore the character to his proper self, although Rowling has taken the time to debunk a couple of the more obvious possibilities:

“This is not a Boggart, not Polyjuice potion, not the Imperius Curse. It really is Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived himself.”


Unfortunately, many fans feel that no second twist can really make up for the upset of doing this in the first place. Many aspects of Rowling's world clearly represent real-world social battles and problems – problems that have not entirely gone away. Harry has been embraced by a generation as the champion of the right side of these battles, so declaring that he was always insincere has been described as 'a slap in the face'. For some enthusiasts the very suggestion that Potter was secretly in sympathy with the woman who cut racial abuse into his friend's arm is enough to make them put down the books for good, however the plot shakes out. The Potter fandom will quite possibly never be the same again.



(P.S. If you are a Potter fan who has been screaming at the page for the whole article, don't worry! It's not real, I'm just making comment on something that is something that is. Unfortunately the metaphor can't fully satirise the most serious aspect of the real story, which can be found here.)