Essay: Harry Potter and the Frog King
In Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows JK Rowling retells a Grimm fairy tale: “The Frog King” (sometimes
known as “The Frog Prince”). This is not the first time she uses a Grimm fairy
tale in the series; she retold “Little Red Riding Hood” in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 12: Grow Up Now,
Episode 13: Deus ex Machina,
and Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.)
The golden locket Horcrux
not only plays the role of a Golden Snitch in the seventh book in the series
(see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 26: Until Someone Loses an Eye),
but it is also like the golden ball in the Grimm story, a precious ball that a
princess loses when it rolls into a deep well. At first, the fairy tale seems
very familiar, like a folktale version of myths in which a symbolic sun
disappears underground and is retrieved by a winter-solstice hero, ensuring
that the round of the seasons will continue. Myths like this are common in
cultures around the world, to explain the winter’s shorter days and longer
nights. However, that
is not the goal of the Grimm tale.
The 1857 version begins this way:
In olden times, when wishing
still did some good, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but
the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, who, indeed, has seen so
much, marveled every time it shone upon her face. In the vicinity of the king’s
castle there was a large, dark forest, and in this forest, beneath an old
linden tree, there was a well. In the heat of the day the princess would go out
into the forest and sit on the edge of the cool well.
The princess is considered to be a wonder by the sun itself,
implying that the reader is supposed to see the princess as the sun’s equal, even
though the golden ball itself also symbolizes the sun (but not just the sun). The forest and a well are
introduced, which are used in many Grimm fairy tales as symbolic hells or
underworlds.
The story continues:
To pass the time she would take a golden ball, throw it into the
air, and then catch it. It was her favorite plaything. Now one day it happened
that the princess’s golden ball did not fall into her hands, that she held up
high, but instead it fell to the ground and rolled right into the water.
It’s difficult not to
see James Potter’s actions as an echo of this passage; Harry sees his father do
this with a Golden Snitch when he
goes into Snape’s Pensieve in Order of
the Phoenix (the same book in which Dolores Umbridge is constantly
described as toad-like). This, in
turn, puts Harry in the role of the princess, since Harry is equated with his
father many times, but never more so than in the third and fifth books by both Snape
and Sirius.
This fairy tale is cited by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces at the
beginning of his explanation of the hero’s “Call to Adventure”, specifically
the hero’s “Departure” from the everyday world. Campbell writes
that the princess’s call to adventure, as with all heroes’ calls, raises the
curtain “on a mystery of transfiguration—a rite, or moment, of spiritual
passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth.”
Harry technically owns the locket Regulus Black took from the cave
after he inherits Grimmauld Place, since it was part of the house’s contents,
but he loses it when another unsavory person who could be said to live
underground—metaphorically—steals it and uses it to bribe the toad-like
Umbridge. Mundungus Fletcher, the perpetrator, seems to inhabit a sort of
wizarding criminal underground, and his nickname, “Dung” also reminds us of
something that should be buried and remain so.
In the next part of the story, a frog hears the princess lament
the loss of her ball. While she offers him her clothes and jewels, including
her crown, what he really wants is to be her companion. He says:
“...let me sit next to you at your table and eat from your golden
plate and drink from your cup and sleep in your bed. If you will promise this
to me, then I’ll dive down and bring your golden ball back to you.”
This part of the tale is reminiscent of the myth of Persephone, who
was taken to the underworld by Hades, causing her mother, the goddess Demeter,
to mourn for her, thus bringing on winter, a myth that is another version of a
folktale to explain the round of the seasons. However, Hades didn’t just take Persephone
to annoy her mother; he made her his consort. Demeter bargains for her
daughter’s return and in the story, this is what “explains” the seasons, like other
sun-disappearance and reappearance tales from around the world. But when a
story like this falls into the hands of someone with a religious axe to grind (such
as Wilhelm Grimm), it becomes a religious allegory. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell writes:
The
frog, the little dragon, is the nursery counterpart of the underworld serpent
whose head supports the earth and who represents the life-progenitive,
demiurgic powers of the abyss. He comes up with the golden sun ball, his dark
deep waters having just taken it down...
Like Persephone’s mother, who must return her daughter to her
husband each year, it is the princess’s parental figure, her father in this
case, who tells her that she shouldn’t despise someone who’s helped her in a time
of need: the frog who returned her golden ball. She is supposed to keep her
promise to make him her companion.
The story continues:
She picked him up with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and set
him in a corner. As she was lying in bed, he came creeping up to her and said,
“I am tired, and I want to sleep as well as you do. Pick me up or I’ll tell
your father.”
With that she became bitterly angry and threw him against the wall
with all her might.
“Now you will have your peace, you disgusting frog!”
But when he fell down, he was not a frog, but a prince with
beautiful friendly eyes. And he was now, according to her father’s will, her
dear companion and husband.
Despite the frog evoking the serpent in the garden earlier in the
story, a “little dragon”, we learn that he was cursed by a witch. Just as
Little Red Riding Hood’s misbehavior (when she goes off the path in the forest)
doesn’t permanently doom her, it also does not doom the princess for her to be
uncooperative, nor that she was neglectful enough to let her ball roll into the
well and then rejected and tried to kill the frog. Little Red Riding Hood did not
heed warnings about speaking to strangers, and Eve did not heed the instruction
not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
When the princess lets her golden ball roll away, it can be seen
as her immortal soul, so the golden ball being equal to the golden locket
containing a piece of soul is even more appropriate. She receives grace from
the Christ-figure, the frog-turned-prince, who marries her, positioning her as
the entire Christian church (i.e., the bride of Christ).
Throughout the seven-book Harry
Potter series, Harry is a Christ-figure in many ways, not just when he is in
the role of the woodsman in Rowling’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood”, Chamber of Secrets. Christmas occurs
around the time of the winter solstice, a festival the early Christians were
competing with when they positioned their religious festival in late December.
Harry taking on the role of the one who retrieves the “sun” (the locket) from
underground, is consistent with this Christ-figure role; he retrieves the symbolic
sun because it is the role of the winter solstice hero to do this, restoring
light and life to the world. The locket ceases to symbolize this once Harry has
it, but this symbolism still holds true for the scenario in which he is trying
to obtain the locket.
Rowling describes the courtroom as a “well” despite never using this description for
courtrooms in the fourth or fifth books. Umbridge is repeatedly called
toad-like in Order of the Phoenix,
and Mundungus Fletcher uses the same descriptor for the person who took the
locket from him. This is reinforced in the seventh book, in which she plays the
role of a frog/toad instead of this simply
being the chief way that she is described. Harry is metaphorically a frog/toad while trying to get the golden locket/ball/Snitch
away from her because he is disguised (with Polyjuice Potion) as someone who is
on her side. He will transform into
his true self soon, just as the frog transformed. Harry also frees the
Muggle-born wizards awaiting trial, delivering them from a sure hell. Like the
princess, they do not need to do anything to earn salvation, to earn his grace.
Harry indiscriminately saves them all.
The connection between this locket, whose capture is analogous to
a Grimm fairy tale, to the place where Harry originally sees it, Grimmauld
Place, is also interesting because of some possible etymologies of “Grimmauld”.
Many readers immediately seized on the meaning one gets from slowing down the
pronunciation of the address—it is a “grim old place”. The word “Grimmauld” is
also striking because it explicitly contains the name “Grimm” at the beginning.
If the name is broken apart a little more and the M’s are separated the word “mauld”
also appears, which sounds like the word “mauled”—past tense of “maul”, which
is how an attack by a large black dog might be described (“grim-mauled”). This
also sounds a little like “mold” or “mould” (in the British spelling). In Order of the Phoenix, the house is in
fact a moldy/mouldy old place in severe need of cleaning, top to bottom.
Sirius Black’s house is also the headquarters for the Order of the
Phoenix, their primary meeting place. English place names containing the MAULD
root, such as the town of Maulden in the county of Bedfordshire, have various
meanings ascribed to this name, among them “cross on the hill”, “high down” and
“place of meeting”. Thus, in addition to being a “grim old place” or a place
where one runs the risk of being “grim-mauled”, the Black house could also be
thought of as having a connection to the Brothers Grimm, being a moldy/mouldy
old place, and a meeting place—because all of these are true.
Rowling’s symbolism and allegory operate on multiple levels and
she displays dexterity in manipulating these morphing story elements. The myth
of Persephone is also visible in Chamber
of Secrets: Ginny is Persephone, the Maiden goddess without whom the world
will go dark and eventually end, since Hogwarts’ closing is announced when she
is taken into the Chamber. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 3: Iron Maiden.)
The incident in Deathly Hallows when
Harry retrieves the locket Horcrux from Dolores Umbridge represents the second
time this mythical motif appears, though the locket episode doesn’t feel like a
retread of the second book, despite also being the second time Rowling draws
from a tale by Grimm about salvation through grace.
Harry, Ginny, and a golden locket with part of Voldemort’s soul
(another version of which was the diary) have been metaphorically equal to
Snitches and to a golden ball symbolizing a sinner’s immortal soul that must be
rescued by a savior. That Rowling conflates mythical, fairy tale, religious and
game imagery yet again shows how layered her work is, how easily she weaves in
and out of allegory and metaphor while remaining true to her pattern of turning
games into battles (sometimes for love), and writing battles that are elaborate
games.
In
the first book of the Harry Potter
series, JK Rowling writes two seven-part entities, thresholds and obstacles,
that each align with the seven books of the series. In brief, the seven
thresholds are:
1. Hagrid
brings Harry to Surrey as a baby, when they fly over Bristol Channel (a water-crossing/symbolic
baptism) and Harry is metaphorically reborn as a “Muggle”. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 11:Wargames.)
2. Hagrid
takes Harry over water (another baptism) when they leave the hut-on-the-rock,
after Hagrid gives Harry his Hogwarts letter and he is reborn again, now
knowing that he is a wizard. (See QuantumHarry, the Podcast, Episode 13: Deusex Machina.)
3. Hagrid
takes Harry through the wall of the Leaky Cauldron to shop for his school
supplies in Diagon Alley, a rite of passage for all Hogwarts students. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 15: Prisoner of Quidditch.)
4. Hagrid
takes Harry to his underground vault at Gringotts to withdraw gold to pay for
his school supplies, a visit to a symbolic underworld and a place linked to his
dead parents. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 17: The Goblet of Games.)
5. Hagrid
takes Harry and all of the first-year students across the lake, another
symbolic baptism all Hogwarts students go through. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 20: The Order of the Rebel.)
6. Hagrid
supervises Harry, Neville, Hermione and Draco during a detention in the
Forbidden Forest (another symbolic underworld), when they search for a wounded
unicorn. Harry, however, finds Voldemort, centaurs and a warning about his
future. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 23: The Half-Blood Potions Text.)
7. And
finally, Hagrid slips up and reveals to Harry, Ron and Hermione that music can
be used to pacify Fluffy, the three-headed dog guarding the threshold to the forbidden
area of the castle where the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden, yet another
symbolic underworld, and this overlaps with the
first obstacle to the Stone.
When
Fluffy is an obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone, this obstacle aligns with the
first book because Fluffy, like Hagrid himself, is a threshold guardian and
Harry crosses many thresholds in the first book of the series.
However,
when Fluffy is the seventh threshold Harry crosses in the first book, all of
which he crosses with Hagrid or with his help, this threshold aligns with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
because once they cross this threshold and are past Fluffy, Harry and his two
best friends are in completely new territory and must overcome one game-like
obstacle after another to stop Voldemort from achieving immortality (which,
technically, he already has) and returning to full strength (which he has not
yet, in the first book). This is, essentially, what the three of them are doing
throughout the seventh book. They must leap into the abyss, leaving the world
they know behind, the familiar world of lessons and homework and books. They
must put what they’ve learned into practice. The stakes are no longer what sort
of mark they will get on an essay, or whether their potions will turn out as
they had hoped; now the stakes are life-and-death.
In
the seventh book of the series, Harry, Ron and Hermione must flee the Burrow
when Bill and Fleur’s wedding reception is disrupted by a message from Kingsley
Shacklebolt about the Ministry having fallen to Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
They go from celebrating love, plus enjoying an event that includes music (which
pacifies Fluffy) to leaping into the unknown with both feet, no clue about what
will happen to them or what they will find, let alone whether they will succeed
in stopping Voldemort. In the first book they are hoping to keep him from acquiring
a means to immortality: the Philosopher’s Stone. In the seventh book, however, they
are hoping to deprive him of his Horcruxes, the objects he has already created
that keep him tethered to this world, so it is the flip side of the first book;
instead of keeping Voldemort from acquiring a powerful object, they are trying
to take powerful objects belonging to him and destroy them. And, as in the
first book, by the end, Harry is facing Voldemort on his own; his best friends
have helped him to fight the good fight, but in the end, he is the one who must
confront his enemy. Thus the first obstacle is also the last threshold, and
aligns with both the first book and the seventh, but for different reasons.
The
last obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone aligns with only the last book of the
series. The first six game-like obstacles to the Philosopher’s Stone align with
the first six books:
1. Fluffy,
the three-headed dog threshold guardian aligns with the first book, in which
Harry crosses many new thresholds. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 11: Wargames.)
2. Devil’s
Snare, a snake-like adversary conquered by sunlight, real or artificial, ties
this to the phoenix Fawkes, who helped Harry to conquer the basilisk and thus aligns
with the second book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 14: The Devil’s Game.)
3. Flying
keys that Harry has to catch as he would catch a Snitch align with the third
book, the only one structured around a Hogwarts Quidditch season. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 16: TheSeeker.)
4. The
life-sized wizard chess game aligns with the fourth book, about a wizarding
Tournament, a life-sized board game. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 19: Not Playing to Win.)
5. The
fifth obstacle is a troll whose club (earlier in the first book) is turned
against him, just as the Weasley twins turn fireworks and gunpowder, the method
that the English government used to celebrate a traitor’s defeat, against Dolores
Umbridge and the Ministry, aligning this obstacle with the fifth book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 22: The Phoenix Games.)
6. The
potions challenge set by Snape, the eponymous Half-Blood Prince of the sixth
book, aligns with that book. (See Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 24: Disarmed and Ready.)
The
seventh obstacle to the Philosopher’s Stone is the Mirror of Erised, in which
the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden, but this is more of an obstacle for Quirrell
than for Harry, who is uniquely positioned to extract the Stone from the
Mirror. This Mirror isn’t just part of a seven-part obstacle to the
Philosopher’s Stone, the ultimate goal of all alchemists; in this chamber are
three things that are versions of the
Deathly Hallows, and the Mirror is one of them.
The
Philosopher’s Stone is the equal of the Elder Wand. These are the two items, at
each end of the series, that Voldemort believes will give him immortality. Harry
once felt that he could gaze forever at the images of his family in the Mirror
of Erised, a desire he sets aside just as he gives up the Resurrection Stone that
summons his loved ones before he presents himself for death in the seventh book.
And his mother Lily’s love, which saved him from death as a baby and is in his
very skin, is like Death’s own Invisibility Cloak, which belonged to his other
parent, James. The Cloak is the only Hallow Harry keeps after dropping the
Resurrection Stone in the forest and returning the Elder Wand to Dumbledore’s
grave.
Dumbledore
convinces Nicolas Flamel to give up the Philosopher’s Stone and Dumbledore is similarly
ready to give up the Elder Wand at his life’s end, expecting no one to be its
master, not Snape, not Draco, and not Harry. He neither bequeaths it to Snape nor
anyone else, nor does he order it to be destroyed after his death.
Dumbledore
presumably keeps the Mirror of Erised after Harry’s first year, but though as
far as we know he has resisted the urge to spend his life gazing at his family
in it, he is still tempted by the Resurrection Stone once he realizes what it
is. These two magical items are clearly equal to each other when used by Harry
and Dumbledore.
Harry
keeping only his Cloak makes it clearer than ever that Harry is the successor
to Dumbledore’s legacy, but he is the new-and-improved hero, despite how
talented and wise Dumbledore was. Albus Dumbledore was not infallible and above
temptation. Giving in to temptation, reaching for power, rather than letting it
come to him, cost him his life.
Harry
succeeds where Dumbledore does not and becomes Master of Death, which equips
him to destroy the most difficult Horcrux: himself. He does not fight back or
defend himself, but throws off Death’s own Cloak to willingly face death. The
Snitch he inherits (equivalent to both Harry and his soul) gives him another
Hallow, the Resurrection Stone, connecting him with people he loved and lost, just
as the Mirror of Erised did the first time he looked into it. This gives Harry
the courage to face his death at the age of seventeen.
It might have
seemed counter-intuitive to some readers that Voldemort could kill Harry with
the Elder Wand in the forest but not later, when the spell backfires on him. However,
the rules of the Wand Game (see Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 25: The Wand Game),
tell us why this occurs. The curse would have rebounded upon him because
Rowling makes it clear that your own wand cannot be made to do something by
someone else that is not your will.
The key word
is “will”. When Harry goes into the Forest, it is his will to be killed, so
that the soul-bit in him, the thing making him a Horcrux, will be destroyed. He
believes that he is making this sacrifice to benefit the rest of the world, and
that it is good and necessary. He has no expectation of surviving. It is his will to die, to be killed by
the Elder Wand. And the wand does his will, just as Snape was doing Dumbledore’s
will by killing him, so even if Draco had not disarmed him first, Snape would not
have become master of the Elder Wand, because he never “defeated” Dumbledore.
He did the headmaster’s will. This could be how Dumbledore hoped to leave the
Elder Wand without a master, and if Harry had died and stayed dead, the Elder
Wand would have been without a master after his death.
However,
Harry chooses to return from the dead, and in his final duel with Voldemort, he
is still master of the Elder Wand, which Voldemort is wielding, a power Harry does
not knowingly seek, like the Philosopher’s Stone he received from the Mirror of
Erised, but he is aware now that he is the wand’s master. This means Voldemort
cannot prevail against Harry’s will; the spell he casts against Harry,
predictably, backfires, killing Voldemort, who has now lost all of his
Horcruxes, including Harry and Nagini, the last one to be destroyed, the great
serpent slain by Neville Longbottom. Voldemort is no longer tethered to the
world. With no soul but that torn from his vanquished body by his own
rebounding spell, the Dark Lord falls.
Adapted from the script for Quantum Harry, the Podcast, Episode 28: The Grimm Campaign. Copyright 2017-2018 by Quantum
Harry Productions and B.L. Purdom. See other posts on this blog for direct
links to all episodes of Quantum Harry.
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