Before I officially start, let’s make a statement, so as not to attract some mosquitoes who have nothing to do but judge others to sting me: This article will make some very controversial interpretations of the Harry Potter series of novels. I don’t like strangeness. The fans of thought, please detour. All the viewpoints described in this article are just to provide you with a unique way of interpreting Harry Potter novels, and should not be regarded as judgments in any sense. They are merely my OPINIONS, not STATEMENTS in any sense.
Let’s talk about my Harry Potter complex first. The Harry Potter series are the novels I know the most. To be precise, it should be "most familiar". I started watching the first "Sorcerer's Stone" when I was in elementary school, and until I finished reading the last "Death Hallows" in college, the main form of consumption changed from the Chinese version to the English version, and from the paper book to the audio book. . For the Chinese version, I bought the complete works of People's Literature Publishing House; there are three or four English versions, which I bought from the second-hand bookstand of the National Normal University. I have read each of these ten books about three times on average. Jim Dale's English audiobook was dragged from Dandan.com (Thanksgiving...). I can't count how many times I have listened to it. When I was preparing for the TOEFL, I used it as listening materials, and then it gradually became a tool to pass the boring time-when cooking, eating, exercising, driving, playing games without dialogue tracks At that time, Harry Potter was one of my preferred background "music". After arriving in the United States, these times add up to an average of two or three hours a day or more. I have actually listened to a lot of audio books in the past few years, but Harry Potter is one of the few materials I would like to listen to repeatedly. One is because it's interesting; the other is because you listen to too many times, and you can distract yourself in the middle. To what extent am I familiar with the details in this series? I know what Dumbledore’s favorite jam flavor is. I remember Neville’s grandma’s full name. I know where the thief Mondungus’s name first appeared. I can list at least three novels without thinking. The logic of the plot is flawed, and I have even memorized several codes for the fat lady...
With more passes of the same material, you can't help but change the way of decoding and the angle of inspection, so as to see different levels of the same thing. The long history of Harry Potter listening and reading allowed me to discover countless grooves in this series. The purpose of this wonderful article is to share with you the most extraordinary set. I originally wanted to write this article in English, because the English version listens a lot, and a lot of slots are vomited in English in my mind. But then I suddenly realized a very embarrassing fact: for many years I only listened to but did not read, and I couldn’t spell many names in the book and the nouns invented by Aunt Rowling, so I decided to use Chinese, but if at some point I cannot help myself and start to use English like I'm now, please just bear with me. Your patience is deeply appreciated
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1. The father-
killing complex was the first Freudian slot that caught my attention. It was this breakthrough that I started to taste Harry Potter from the perspective of psychoanalysis. There are too many father-killing plots in the Harry Potter series. Let me first list a few of the most straightforward: Little Riddle killed Old Riddle, Little Crouch killed Old Crouch, Iriana (Dumbledore's sister) killed her mother. Two more indirect ones: Sirius hates his parents, and Snape hates his dad. Finally, I discovered the symbolic father-killing: Snape killed Dumbledore, Harry hated Snape (the most important combination of father and son), James hated Snape, and Voldemort killed Snape. In the eyes of most people, these latter groups may have nothing to do with father killing. Don't worry, listen to me slowly.
Freud used his theory to analyze "Hamlet" and thought that "Hamlet" was a story of father killing. Hamlet wanted to kill his uncle to avenge his father, but he repeatedly missed the opportunity in entanglement. Freud believed that this was because Hamlet's uncle realized Hamlet's desire to kill his father and marry his mother. Hamlet's indecision on revenge is because he realizes that he is not much better than the sinner he is going to punish. I used a similar idea in the process of interpreting Harry Potter. Although I think it’s a bit too extreme to say that Harry Potter is also a father-killing story, it is undeniable that father-killing is one of the key themes. Both Freud and his cultural environment have a strong machismo, so his theoretical perspective is extremely masculine. The author of Harry Potter is a woman, and to a certain extent a feminist, so her spiritual experience may not completely conform to the Freudian definition. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, I think Harry Potter is a story about inner struggle and personality growth. It is a very politically correct story about civilization defeating primitive desires and positive energy conquering negative energy, while the impulse to kill the father is to be conquered. A core force in one side.
The contradiction between father and son in the Harry Potter novels mainly occurs between Harry and Snape. When the last Harry Potter movie was released, my former roommate and I went to the cinema to see the 3D version. On the way back, my roommate asked me, "I don't understand. Was Snape Harry's real father?" I said, " No, that's too much for a children's story." Snape was indeed not Harry's father. But not being a father is better than being a father. From Freud's perspective, Harry's nominal father, James Porter, does not meet the "father" standard at all. Freud believes that in the eyes of children, the image of the father means authority, strength and moral restraint. It comes from the image of the tribal leader in the primitive patriarchal society: an older, powerful male dominates resources and women , Domination restrains other young men. The image of this father gradually developed into the superego in the process of personality development. Except for James sleeping in a bed with Lily, none of the above criteria are met.
Therefore, James cannot be regarded as Harry's "father". Judging from the frontal and profile descriptions of James in the novel, James is more like an extension of the protagonist's self, Harry's ideal self. In the appearance setting, Rowling repeatedly emphasized that Harry looked very much like James. The similarities between Harry and James are by no means limited to appearances. James's two old friends Sirius and Lupin's attitude towards Harry is very telling. Sirius almost treated Harry as James' rebirth. This tendency reached its culmination in the fifth "Order of the Phoenix". When Mrs. Weasley objected to telling Harry the information of the Order of the Phoenix, she pointed out very clearly: "Sometimes the way you talk about him, it's as though you think you got your best friend back!" In the process, Hermione also said that Sirius sometimes couldn't distinguish between Harry and James (I can't remember the original text). Sirius himself said after Harry warned him not to leave the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix: "You are less like your father than I thought. All the above performances support the idea that James is Harry's ideal self. Of course, it is not unusual for a child to regard his father as a role model in life, and it is also a phenomenon that an orphan idealizes a father he has never met before in line with the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis. But James as a father figure to Harry is at the most incomplete. He certainly does not qualify as a father figure in a psychoanalytical Oedipus complex.
By the same token, I don't think Sirius and Lupin can be regarded as Harry's "fathers." Because these two regarded Harry more as friends, and their relationship with Lily had no sexual meaning. After all these calculations, only Snape met the "father" criteria best. Snape was the teacher who treated Harry the most severely and gave Harry the most pain, and he was also the teacher who feared Harry the most. Harry's attitude towards Snape was very important. Although the novel repeatedly emphasizes the mutual disgust between Harry and Snape, a careful reading will reveal that Harry's first reaction to seeing Snape for a long time was fear. This sentiment turned into anger and hatred after Sirius sacrificed and Harry experienced important growth. It was very similar to a child's feelings towards a disappointing father. In addition, from potions to Occlumency to Silent Charms, Snape actually taught Harry a lot of abilities, although most of the time the teaching effect was greatly compromised by the negative emotions of both parties. But this can be regarded as a very typical characteristic of a problem father and son. When Snape escaped from Hogwarts at the end of the sixth part, Snape blocked Harry's spell while reprimanding Harry for not silently cursing. Here the image of Father Yan has been very vivid. And when Harry was not blinded by hatred, he discovered that Snape was actually a brilliant and good teacher, and learned a lot from him (the Half-Blood Prince's Potions Book). After putting aside the family conflicts, the child finds that the old man he has always hated is actually a very powerful person. This kind of plot is already a cliché.
Finally, the relationship between Snape and Lily is the most critical piece of this puzzle. I don’t know how many people like me feel that Lily should be with Snape after watching the seventh part, instead of marrying James somehow. The perfect Lily and the perfect James, the Golden Tongyu girl played a brilliant protagonist: no matter how I look at it, I think this is childish wishful thinking. There is no positive description of James and Lily's love affair in the seven Harry Potter books. Is it really just because it is completely unnecessary? Could it also be because the author couldn't write it at all? After choosing the perspective of psychoanalysis, there is an obvious explanation for this sense of violation: James marrying Lily is the realization of the Oedipus complex, and the feat of killing father and marrying mother is finally achieved. According to Freud's theory, the Oedipus-style father-son contradiction is inherited from the contradiction between the old tribal leader and the young male members of the tribe in the primitive patrilineal society. The old tribal leaders dominate all resources in the tribe, including women, and are guarded and control the growing young people everywhere; while the young people challenge the leader's dictatorship in order to seize resources and eventually seize the dominant position. I have analyzed before, Harry and James are actually two in one. James is the adult version of Harry. The origin of Snape's aversion to Harry in the novel, and the consequent response from Harry to him, is the contradiction between Snape and James. A disappointing father who is unworthy for the woman he is with, defeated by a righteous, noble, popular, cool, grown-up self, I really cannot find a better example for stories of Oedipus complex.
Traditional psychoanalytic theory believes that the Oedipus complex is a boy's patent. Girls will relatively develop "penis envy" and "Eracht complex" (Electra). But I mentioned earlier the limitations of Freud and Victorian patriarchy in Europe. I personally think that women may also have the possibility of Oedipus complex, although the form may be different from the classic form. Rowling had a very poor relationship with his father since she was a child. Later, Rowling's father gave him a copy of Rowling's inscription as a personal gift of Harry Potter for public auction, and Rowling was completely cut off from his father. Rowling's mother died of multiple sclerosis, a chronic neurological disease. Less than half a year after his mother's death, Rowling's father married his secretary who was eight years younger. Rowling has a deep relationship with her mother. She once mentioned in an interview that the death of her mother gave her a better grasp of Harry's feelings about the loss of a loved one. Although there is no direct evidence, I think Rowling may have been disappointed with his father during her mother's long illness. Rowling's first husband was also a man with a tendency to domestic violence. It is said that domestic violence is exactly why Rowling left her husband with her daughter. With these experiences, it is not difficult to understand why there are so many disappointing parents in the Harry Potter series. Have the a little girl Rowling ever imagined, consciously or subconsciously, growing defeat into a hero like Harry,ing her father and saving her mother? Have the wife Rowling who suffered from domestic violence ever imagined a knight in shining armor like James coming to replace her unworthy husband? These are bold questions.
My friends sometimes are surprised by how accurate I evaluate people whom I've never met based limited information; but sometime they are also surprised by my self-assertion in making absurd suggestions about people I barely know. Now you might have a better idea why . This is how I think. A tip of the iceberg.
2. Why can't Harry marry Hermione?
A post with the same name was once popular with everyone. But the main purpose of that post is to introduce European political, economic and cultural knowledge in the framework of Harry Potter. The author's drunkard's intention is not to drink, not to analyze the relationship between the characters in the original work, and obviously he has not read the original text of the novel very much (the quotations are all plots in the movie). I really want to talk about the relationship between Harry and Hermione. Why can't Harry marry Hermione? With the analysis of the father-killing complex, this question can actually have a very simple answer: because Hermione is nothing like Lily. But before resorting to this simple and crude idea, I still want to seriously analyze the character of Harry.
Harry is a character with a very weak gender load. Of course, the author sets him as a boy, thus giving him many boy-specific behavior characteristics. But most of the core elements that make up this character’s image are very neutral under the framework of modern culture: courage, sense of justice, loyalty, altruism, rebellious spirit, intuition, and adventurous spirit. These qualities can be transplanted to A heroine of Hayao Miyazaki style. In contrast, for a very masculine image like James Bond or Superman, if you change its gender, the entire character will no longer be established. Harry's neutralization may have something to do with the Harry Potter series being positioned as children's books at the beginning of writing. But I think what is more important depends on the prototype on which the author designed this role. The archetype I am talking about here is in a broad sense, not just the archetypes of real characters. Harry has no realistic prototype, which can be seen from Rowling's own creative experience. Harry is an idealized and symbolic character, a collection and embodiment of many outstanding spirits that Rowling cherishes. Rowling’s boyhood idol was a female photographer. During the Spanish Civil War, this woman faced the social prejudice against women and the pressure from her family and took the camera to the front line, took many excellent photos, and left many valuable battlefield records. Someone has done a semiotic analysis of Harry Potter novels before, proving that Rowling is a person with feminist tendencies. Considering Rowling's personal experience and her role model in life, this tendency is almost inevitable. Many idealized male protagonists described by female writers are the author's dream lover, the prototype of animus in her subconscious mind. But Harry is not. Harry is part of Rowling's self, a part that she can connect to greater powers through her passion and love. He is the very best she can do, the most glorious agent she can enable, the Christ in the world she created. He shines on behalf of her. He is her most beloved son.
Both Hermione and Ron had realistic prototypes. Rowling had made it clear that Hermione’s prototype was her middle school self, who followed the rules and was very bookish; while Ron’s prototype was a good friend of her youth. It is very brainstorming to make a relationship between realistically archetyped characters and idealized characters. If it is a story between a real person and a real person, there are real life to refer to; if it is a story between an ideal person and an ideal person, there are a large number of classic melodies in the history of literature for you to constantly change. But if it is a story between a real person and an ideal person, it basically depends on personal fantasy. Specific to the description of romantic relationships, if the protagonist is the author’s anima or animus, you can also write sexual fantasies directly, and like Harry and Hermione... It's just plain awkward...
Rowling gives Harry The matching lover is also a very ideal character. Ginny is enthusiastic, cheerful, and rebellious, and her personality is in sharp contrast with Hermione. And Ginny looks very good-looking (Hermione looks very average, which is clearly described in the novel. Don't be misled by the big beauty Emma Watson). If you score Harry, Ginny, and Hermione on the Big Five personality scale, you will find that the similarity between Harry and Ginny is much higher than the similarity between Harry and Hermione. Although there are not many positive descriptions of Lily in the novel, from the limited information, Lily's personality seems to be more like Ginny than Hermione. It's pretty obvious who the chosen one is.
Three, Voldemort
Snape finally died at the hands of Voldemort. Yeah, who else could it be? The killing between good and good will only happen in serious tragedies, and Harry Potter as a children's story is not that far. Unsolvable ethical issues cannot be raised in dramas and comedies, so conflicts can only occur between good and evil, and good will eventually overcome evil. Even if the good has to sacrifice for the just cause, this account can only be counted on the evil. Therefore, Voldemort became the culprit of all the misfortunes in the Harry Potter series.
In my opinion, Voldemort is an atypical shadow archetype. According to Jung's theory, shadow is a component of a person's subconscious that is not recognized and accepted by the self. Therefore, the shadows are often filled with negative forces such as primitive desire, violent impulse, etc. According to general ethical standards, shadows are evil. But the shadows are also very powerful. Voldemort fits the shadow very well in many ways. He and Harry have a lot of similarities-from life experience to personality traits, they all have a taste of "the evil version of the protagonist". There is also a soul bond between Harry and Voldemort, allowing Harry to see Voldemort's thoughts and emotions in his dreams. The psychoanalysis in this setting is so strong that it has rushed to the nose and mouth like the oak of aged whiskey. Dreamland is originally the home of psychoanalysis. You only have to read Harry’s dreams described in the novel (I mean ordinary dreams, not the kind of thought transmitted by Voldemort), and you will find that Rowling, like most modern writers, is the key to processing and psychoanalysis. The themes related to words are deeply influenced by psychoanalytic thoughts.
Voldemort despised the pro-social forces of love, affection, trust, and so on, and was eventually defeated by Harry with these forces, but he was not a collection of all ugly. I’ve seen a Umbridge’s Meme. Around Umbridge’s big face it says "Let's be honest. You want her dead more than Voldemort." I guess I hate Umbridge better than Voldemort’s fans Probably not in the minority. Umbridge seemed to have more ugly genes than Voldemort. Voldemort's evil is just like the blood knife ancestor in "Lian Cheng Jue", it is an upright evil, an extreme destructive force. This straightforward evil coincides with the characteristics of shadows. Shadow is a structure in the subconscious. If you cross Jung's and Freud's theories, you can think that shadow is part of the id. The impulse in the subconscious is primitive and will not circumvent or use social ethical rules. The shadow may have many evil qualities, but it will never be hypocritical.
Why is Voldemort atypical? The first is because he is too pure and unwilling. The shadow should be a prototype full of primitive desires, but Voldemort's possessiveness is very weak, he is not greedy for money, and only shows a little greed in the process of pursuing power (I don’t think his obsession with eternal life is a manifestation of greed. , This point will be explained in detail below). Greed for personal power is a common feature of most of the images of evil leaders, and Voldemort is also very restrained on this point. His powerful mana is based entirely on his genius and hard work, and even the original intention of pursuing the Elder Rod in the seventh part is to kill Harry, not just to become stronger. Again, the shadow of this abstinence version may still be because Harry Potter's positioning is a children's story, and the author did not let go of writing. But it may also be related to the author's values. The Rowling I know is definitely a liberal. Western leftists are very open-minded. Shadows are a collection of elements that are unacceptable to the ego, so Rowling probably won't spend a lot of effort to settle Voldemort's desires that she can accept. Rowling, as a liberal, probably doesn’t feel that sensuality (look at Aberforth...) or love for money (look at the Weasley twins) is unacceptable, and there is nothing wrong with even pursuing power (look at Dumbu Lido), as long as this power is not destructive (black magic). The second atypical feature of Voldemort is the status of evil leader. Perhaps because of sampling bias, I always feel that the typical shadow archetypes are all lonely, and the degree of secular involvement is very low. However, I have to admit that Voldemort is very incompetent as the leader of the organization. Renren once had a post analyzing how Rowling would not create bad people. Although the factors considered are limited, many points of view are still very pertinent. Voldemort does not use people (often sending a bunch of idiots to perform critical tasks), does not manage public image (you want to conquer the world, so people all over the world think you are a demon), but also repeatedly use organizational power for personal interests, not only A lot of organizational benefits were sacrificed, and personal weaknesses were exposed. Before I start to attack her shallow understanding of evil, I have to give Rowling the benefit of doubt and play the “children's book” card again. Rowling probably also knew that power writing was her weakness, or knew that Harry Potter could not be written as a crime novel, so she avoided direct descriptions of the activities of the Death Eaters as much as possible. In general, Voldemort has been doing two things all his life, one is to pursue immortality, and the other is to establish a dictatorship of pure-blood wizards under the leadership of Death Eaters with himself at the core. In Rowling's positive description of Voldemort, most of the pen and ink was spent on the former, which made Voldemort's image very personal and gave it a more shadowy taste.
Voldemort's two major pursuits, or two major sins, reflect his two dominant needs, and at the same time give this character a very clear theme of life. First, the pursuit of immortality reflects the need for safety. In Maslow’s demand pyramid model, safety requirements are a basic requirement second only to physiological requirements. Recently, the evolutionary psychologist Douglas Kenrick of Arizona State University renovated Maslow’s pyramid from an evolutionary perspective (Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010. The article is very well written, you can find it if you are interested), and the need for security (Self-protection) still occupies a very important position. The fear of death is one of the most primitive and powerful emotions of human beings. If this force develops into a distorted psychological structure, then it should of course be part of the shadow. Voldemort's fear of death is the source of his extreme selfishness. For the sake of immortality, he not only invested a lot of time and energy, willing to take risks to explore black magic, but also did not hesitate to kill more. Voldemort's obsession with killing Harry was also out of fear of death, and his efforts to kill Harry (attempted to steal the prophecy ball, kidnapped Ollivander, searched for the Elder Rod, besieged Hogwarts) No less than the effort he spent on Horcruxes. As I mentioned earlier, almost all of Rowling's direct description of Voldemort's activities revolved around the theme of conquering death. For most allegorical literary works, death is an inevitable topic. According to the Terror Management Theory, one of the motivations for mankind to build civilization is to overcome the fear of death. Through labor and reproduction, human beings create things that can transcend the continuous existence of limited life, thereby continuing their existence in a certain sense. Research under the framework of Terror Management Theory found that people have two natural reactions when facing the fear of death. One is to hold on to one's cultural world view, such as being more convinced of ethical beliefs and religious beliefs, and more persistent in careers; the other is want to feel more connected to others, such as cherishing family relationships more and having the urge to contact family and friends. Both of these schemes are rational and adaptive, and are the result of a compromise between original impulse and reality. Voldemort's method of fighting death is obviously not feasible in the real world. His behavior symbolizes the form when the primitive desire of mankind to conquer death has not been restrained by reality. After all, the pursuit of immortality seems to be the most direct way to overcome the fear of death. According to Rowling’s life experience, I think the strong need for self-protection or lack of a sense of security may be an important psychological factor that bothers her-the experience of an incompetent father, a violent husband, and a single mother, combined, is very likely Rowling is very sensitive to threats and harm, and it may also be one of the reasons for her depression after divorce. The lack of security often affects all aspects of a person’s life, making it difficult for the victim to get along with, and even very irritating. Unhappy. In other words, the highly activated self-protection needs of insecure people often hurt those around them. Judging from Rowling's later achievements, she probably finally overcame the bad influence of the rough life in her early years. But this does not prevent her from expressing this negative factor in an extreme form, Voldemort's form in her writing. The contrast between Harry's way of defeating death and Voldemort's pursuit of immortality may be a portrayal of Rowling's inner struggle.
Voldemort’s second sin is to regard Muggles as inferior humans and other magical races as inferior races, trying to establish the dominance of pure-blood wizards. This reflects the need for respect or status. Rowling's description of Voldemort's career is relatively indirect, but this is after all a main thread of the story. I believe that many fans will think that Voldemort's purebloodism alludes to racial discrimination. I think Rowling may indeed draw a lot of inspiration from the reality of racial discrimination, but racial issues are not the origin and core of Voldemort's pure bloodism. Voldemort's admiration for pure blood began with his hatred of Muggle father and Muggle orphanage. The difference between Muggles and wizards is not racial. Here we touched on another important set of symbols in the Harry Potter series: What is magic? What is a wizard? What does the difference between a wizard and a Muggle symbolize? To answer these questions, we might as well start with the most typical Mugglesli family. What kind of people are the Desri family? If you want to use one word to summarize their characteristics, it is "vulgar". The Desri family is realistic, conforms to the rules, and is extremely disgusted with super-conventional things, advocating the value standards generally recognized by the secular society, and in short, it is vulgar. Regarding the characteristics of Muggles, Stanley
Sampac , the conductor of Knight Bus, has a very good comment: Harry: "How come the Muggles don't hear the bus?"
Stan: "Them! Don't listen properly, do they? Don't look properly either. Never notice nothing, they don't."
Stan's words, is it appropriate to describe people who look disdainful while listening to Mozart dozing off? My conclusion is that the so-called magic is a cultural element ahead of the times-avant-garde art, modern literature, fresh scientific philosophy and so on. From this perspective, Harry Potter is a petty bourgeois intellectual who feels good about themselves, a hymn of bourgeois. I believe I am definitely not the only one holding this view. In the episode of "The Big Bang Theory", Petunia drove Xie Er and Amy to a restaurant for the first official date. Petunia was silent on the nerdy talk between Xie Er and Amy. Xie Er sarcastically said: "Muggles!" The world of Harry Potter is probably a world that thank you ears are longing for. Here, knowledge can be directly transformed into productivity, and the most powerful people are professors in the school. The magical abilities in the Harry Potter world are innate, which is also a setting full of superiority. Many literary and academic people think that they are qualitatively different from the secular public. For example, I have always believed that talent comes from genes and very early growth experience. The day after tomorrow hard work can improve academic and literary accomplishments, but cannot cultivate academic and literary talents. Voldemort is an extreme manifestation of this superiority. When Voldemort was a child, he suffered from mediocre and worldly oppression in the orphanage, and his magical ability awakened very early, always thinking that he was special (The sixth part is in Dumbledore's memories, after learning that he was a wizard, he said: "I knew I was special."). After gaining success in the magical world, he, like every nouveau riche, showed a sickly hatred of poverty in the past. So he killed his disappointing father, and extended his hatred of non-magic and his superiority as a wizard to the entire world. The fantasy writer Rowling, who took feminist figures as idols and grew up from Hermione-style girls, is undoubtedly a witch in the real world. And her father, who can put the precious books created by his daughter and donated with inscriptions to auction, is probably an out-and-out Muggle... After graduating from middle school, Rowling also took the entrance examination of Oxford University, but She was not admitted, but her desire for the world of elite intellectuals may never be extinguished.
If Adler were to analyze it, he might say that Voldemort's career is a twisted form of transcending inferiority. In Freud's eyes, pure bloodism may be just a continuation of the paternal killing complex. Voldemort eventually killed Harry's "father" Snape. When Rowling described this scene, perhaps it was not the grudge between Harry and Snape in her mind, but in my opinion, the moment Nagini’s fangs pierced Snape’s throat was the whole The most symbolic moment in the Harry Potter series.
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