Harry Potter’s Two Monuments
Like the rest of (what seems like) the country, Christie and I headed to the cinema this weekend to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 … twice. There are a number of good reviews out there, including those appearing online at Pop Theology, Relevant Mag, Think Christian, and Christianity Today, so I won’t attempt a full one.
Instead, I’d like to talk about the monuments. One of the things that we really don’t have in our American consciousness, any more at least, are the statues, cenotaphs, elaborate mausoleums, and obelisks which civilizations from ancient times — including Egyptian, Chinese, Incan, and Roman — forward have constructed. These are architectural embodiemnts of memory, with inscriptions well-known to Ancient Near Eastern historians and translators…but not really ordinary North Americans. In fact, outside of the Washington Monument and its cohort on the National Mall (and for us Texans, the San Jacinto Monument), monuments simply aren’t on our collective radar screen.
England, on the other hand, is simply littered with them. The British Isles’ most famous standing stones, Stonehenge, were astronomically significant, but also spiritually so. Standing crosses were used beginning in the early middle ages to mark pilgrimage sites, crossroads, historical significance, military victories, and spiritually potent “thin places.” A still-remembered series of crosses mark the route that the body of Queen Eleanor, wife to Edward I, took as it made its way back from Lincoln to London in 1290: the well-known Charing Cross area in London takes the “cross” part of its name due to the Eleanor cross. Imperial England erected many memorials, such as the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, or the Glenfinnan monument near Fort William, Scotland.
So what’s this got to do with Harry Potter? I would submit there are 2 significant monuments in Deathly Hallows Pt 1 that tell us a lot about the movie’s theme and trajectory. First seen is the gigantic obelisk-with-base erected in the forecourt of the underground Ministry of Magic after Voldemort topples the Ministry and installs Death Eaters as the new regime. In Rowling’s novel, it is described as a a throne, but the execution in the movie is much simpler and extremely visceral. It preserves the crucial details: the “Magic is Might” inscription, the wizards atop…and, most tellingly, with Muggles in the base, writhing in agony from being crushed. Magic is might, indeed…and might is right. Lord Acton’s now-cliched “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is cunningly depicted, and even makes the audience emotionally complicit insofar as we’ve entered the wizard world.
The second monument is much less remarkable; ordinary even. I spent my fair share of time during my British year in cemeteries: cutting through the churchyard to go to the market, presiding at graveside committals, maintaining the “fabric” of the ecumenical parish I was responsible for. I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of headstones and markers in these as well as those inside cathedrals, parish churches, and monasteries. A name, some dates, perhaps a carved symbol, and a pithy summary of a life. Perhaps a scripture citation.
Lily & James Potter’s, discovered by Harry on Christmas Eve in the Godric’s Hollow churchyard, is only different because it is still readable, being so new. Though attention is not drawn to it so much as in the novel, the inscription is still there, on the base: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Rowling writes of this (uncited) quotation from 1 Corinthians 15:26:
A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?”
“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.” (p 328)
As the boys’ choir sings a carol, the snow falls and Hermione places a wreath of white roses there. The simple, quiet moment spent by two friends in grief, remembrance, and love is utterly different from the black-bricked, gold-inlaid superiority in front of the Ministry.
All of the schoolboy fights of the past 6 installments between Potter and Malfoy, the conflict between Gryffindor and Slytherin, reach their logical maturity here. “Magic Is Might” against a bittersweet faith that “love in death shall never die.” If the Harry Potter series, in book and film, is about more than just 1 central person — as even Ron suggests in this outing — then it is about two different kinds of power. Can a humble gravestone remembering sacrificial, kenotic love stand in a world marked by monolithic and unbridled force? Can there be living after death, something wholly different from either a vicious Death Eater immortality or the frail and pale existence promised by a tricky Death and his Resurrection Stone?
For all of us who live between parts 1 & 2, we can only hope.
Well written. Thought provoking. Thank you.