“A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic”: Mythology in Harry Potter

Masthead Logo The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal Volume 1 | Issue 1 Article 4 December 2013 “A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic”: Mythology in Harry Potter Daniella Rizza FCRH '11 Fordham University, Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/furj Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Rizza, Daniella FCRH '11 (2013) "“A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic”: Mythology in Harry Potter," The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://fordham.bepress.com/furj/vol1/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal by an authorized editor of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact . “A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic”: Mythology in Harry Potter Cover Page Footnote Daniella Rizza, FCRH 2011, is from Long Island, New York. She is an English major and an Italian minor. She researched Harry Potter and mythology last semester for her honors senior thesis under the guidance of Rev. Martin Chase, S.J. This fall, she plans on pursuing a master’s degree in childhood education. This article is available in The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal: https://fordham.bepress.com/furj/vol1/iss1/4 FURJ | Volume 1 | Spring 2011 www.fordham.edu/fcrh/furj Res earch Rizza: A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic “A Power Beyond the Reach of Any Magic”: Mythology in Harry Potter Daniella Rizza, FCRH ’11 ENGLISH J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter novels have over the last decade become a worldwide phenomenon, but why? It is perhaps because of the mythical elements that underlie Harry’s story, particularly the myths of the child and the hero. Comparing the Potter novels to works by mythological theorists Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, it is clear how Rowling both uses and updates traditional mythological structures and elements in the novels. The Harry Potter novels both incorporate the standard myths of the child and the hero, which accounts for the series’ immense ability to grab the reader, and update these myths, making Harry’s quest even more accessible to the modern audience in its rejection of a high-born, kingly hero. Instead, the series exalts a hero that destiny does not create whose quest is more democratic, necessarily involving collaboration with many others. J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter novels have over the last decade become a worldwide phenomenon, but why? It is perhaps because of the mythical elements that underlie Harry’s story, particularly the myths of the child and the hero. The Harry Potter novels both incorporate the standard myths of the child and the hero, accounting for the series’ immense ability to grab the reader, and update these myths, making Harry’s quest even more accessible to the modern audience in its rejection of a high-born, kingly hero. Instead, the series exalts a hero that destiny does not create whose quest is more democratic, necessarily involving collaboration with many others. Harry is an orphan raised outside his true home, the Wizarding world, in a house with his Muggle, or non-magic, aunt and uncle. As an infant, Harry became the only known survivor of the Killing Curse, seemingly defeating Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard of all time, in the process. Harry’s status as an abandoned orphan with some unique power invites comparison with the myth of the child as postulated by Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist and thinker. Over the course of the series, Harry matures and faces the choice to once and for all rid the world of Voldemort, who reclaims a body thirteen years after the night Harry survives his attack. Harry sets out with his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, to kill Voldemort, a task which requires him to surpass a number of trials along the way. In order to defeat Voldemort, Harry must first destroy six Horcruxes, external items into which Voldemort places pieces of his soul, before he can finally battle Voldemort. Harry’s heroic mission, contained mostly in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final novel in the series, has parallels with the hero quest theories of Jung and Joseph Campbell. In his discussion of the myth of the child, Jung claims “the child in mythology represents … the archetypal child, who symbolizes life’s possibilities.”1 Jung argues that the goal of childhood is individuation, which is completed “from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality.”2 The end result of individuation is what Jung calls the Self, “this wholeness that transcends consciousness.”3 Along the way, Jung’s child hero confronts both “miraculous birth and the adversities of early childhood—abandonment and danger through persecution.”4 The element of abandonment is particularly important, for “ ‘Child’ means something evolving toward independence. This it cannot do without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is therefore a necessary condition, not just a concomitant symptom.”5 Jung also notes a common paradox present in myths of the child, who “is on the one hand delivered helpless into the power of terrible I would first and foremost like to thank Father Martin Chase, S.J., for acting as my mentor, listening to all my ideas and worries, explaining the quite abstract mythological theories, and for reading and rereading my many drafts. Dr. Susan Greenfield and Dr. Jude Jones also offered valuable insights which deepened my analysis even after I presented what I thought was my final draft. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Erler for encouraging me to write my senior thesis on this magical topic which met with much skepticism. Direct all correspondence to Daniella Rizza at . 147 Published by DigitalResearch@Fordham, 2011 1 At the surface level, Harry seems to match up to the implications that Jung and Campbell make about a special child of some sort of high birth or prodigious inborn skill. The series begins with an infant Harry, who has just inexplicably survived a Killing Curse cast by Lord Voldemort directly after Voldemort kills Harry’s parents, Lily and James Potter, with the same curse. For “eleven years,” Voldemort and the Death Eaters, his followers, tortured and killed many people in order to establish a world order where wizards would dominate Muggles, the non-magic people from whom the wizards hide their powers in a secret Wizarding world.8 Harry’s feat is remarkable, for not only has he survived an attack from the darkest wizard of all time, but he also has become the only known survivor of Avada Kedavra, the Killing Curse, which “has no countercurse.”9 The Killing Curse bounced back upon Voldemort and seemingly killed him. Harry’s ability to survive this attack from the wizard so feared that wizards cannot even utter his name certainly ref (...truncated)