Theme of Love and Death in Harry Potter:
Love and death are major themes in J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter books. She herself has said in a recent interview in recent interview in The Tatler magazine that “My books are largely about death.” And in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, one of J.K. Rowling’s chosen spokespersons, Professor Dumbledore, impresses upon Harry that his “ability to love” is “[t]he only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort’s.”
In order to be able to love, one must accept who one is; the love of
another
reveals one’s humanity to one’s self. The experience of love,
then,
becomes
a threat to one’s rejection of mortality. To be able to love and to
accept love,one has to embrace one’s humanity—and with it
one’s mortality. To reject the reality of death is to reject the
reality of life and love. In refusing to accept one’s mortality,
one is refusing to accept the reality of one’s humanity. Dumbledore
suggests this link, when he tells Harry, Voldemort fears the dead. He
does not love”. Voldemort rejects love as a power and so ignores
it—at his own peril. He fails to understand it and continually
underestimates it. As
Dumbledore
tells Harry, if he didn’t reject love and the power it holds, then
“he could not be Lord
Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all”.
At the very beginning of the story we hear that Harry’s parents have died, and in due course both we and Harry learn that they were murdered. The shadow of death hangs over Harry; he learns that he, too, was intended to be a victim, but spared in a way no-one can explain. ” Dumbledore tells Harry and Sirius after the death of Cedric. On the other hand, death is not to be feared. When Harry is sad at the thought that, without the Philosopher’s Stone, Nicholas Flamel and his wife must die, Dumbledore assures him that “‘to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.’Harry finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that his godfather, Sirius, has gone and will not return. He questions one of the ghosts of Hogwarts, who has remained for five centuries after his beheading, but Nearly Headless Nick tells him, sadly, that the only reason he has remained is because he feared death too much, and failed to go on as he should. Because of this, he is “‘neither here nor there.’ The wise know that death is not the end. Although Sirius has passed (quite literally, in the story) “beyond the veil,” Harry has a sense that within the mysterious veiled archway there are people hiding and whispering. His friend Luna Lovegood is sure that she will see her mother again.
In contrast to this hopeful perspective, we have the quest of Tom Riddle (the self-styled Voldemort, the Dark Lord) for immortality. Riddle’s background, fifty years before, was similar to Harry’s—an unloved childhood without parents. But whereas Harry has grown up still capable of love, Riddle has devoted himself to domination of others and, if possible, immunity from death. Through his spokesman, Professor Quirrell, he declares, “‘There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.’He calls his followers “Death Eaters,” although there is no hint that he would share immortality with them. He boasts of having “‘gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality”, of the steps he has taken to guard himself against mortal death . We learn that this is because he has discovered how to split his soul in pieces, and conceal each part in a Horcrux. Every tearing of his soul requires him to commit a murder, taking the life of someone else. To preserve his own life he must deal death to others.
At the very beginning of the story we hear that Harry’s parents have died, and in due course both we and Harry learn that they were murdered. The shadow of death hangs over Harry; he learns that he, too, was intended to be a victim, but spared in a way no-one can explain. ” Dumbledore tells Harry and Sirius after the death of Cedric. On the other hand, death is not to be feared. When Harry is sad at the thought that, without the Philosopher’s Stone, Nicholas Flamel and his wife must die, Dumbledore assures him that “‘to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.’Harry finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that his godfather, Sirius, has gone and will not return. He questions one of the ghosts of Hogwarts, who has remained for five centuries after his beheading, but Nearly Headless Nick tells him, sadly, that the only reason he has remained is because he feared death too much, and failed to go on as he should. Because of this, he is “‘neither here nor there.’ The wise know that death is not the end. Although Sirius has passed (quite literally, in the story) “beyond the veil,” Harry has a sense that within the mysterious veiled archway there are people hiding and whispering. His friend Luna Lovegood is sure that she will see her mother again.
In contrast to this hopeful perspective, we have the quest of Tom Riddle (the self-styled Voldemort, the Dark Lord) for immortality. Riddle’s background, fifty years before, was similar to Harry’s—an unloved childhood without parents. But whereas Harry has grown up still capable of love, Riddle has devoted himself to domination of others and, if possible, immunity from death. Through his spokesman, Professor Quirrell, he declares, “‘There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.’He calls his followers “Death Eaters,” although there is no hint that he would share immortality with them. He boasts of having “‘gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality”, of the steps he has taken to guard himself against mortal death . We learn that this is because he has discovered how to split his soul in pieces, and conceal each part in a Horcrux. Every tearing of his soul requires him to commit a murder, taking the life of someone else. To preserve his own life he must deal death to others.
(Klein) (Spilsbury)
Works Cited
Klein, Shawn E. Harry
Potter and Humanity: Choices, Love, and Death. 18 February 2018
<https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/341/rp_341_3.pdf>.
Spilsbury, Paul. Love
and Death in Harry Potter. 3 april 2006. 18 February 2018
<https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2006/04/03/love-and-death-in-harry-potter/>.
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