What a Monterey Literary Figure Would Think of ‘Harry Potter’

If you happen to be in Morgan Hill this weekend, you just might
run into Harry Potter. Well, maybe it won’t be the real Harry
Potter, but there’s sure to be a lot of South Valley kids running
around pretending to be the world’s most famous wizard in
training.
If you happen to be in Morgan Hill this weekend, you just might run into Harry Potter. Well, maybe it won’t be the real Harry Potter, but there’s sure to be a lot of South Valley kids running around pretending to be the world’s most famous wizard in training.

To create a festive atmosphere on Saturday for the grand opening of the brand-new Morgan Hill Public Library, the Friends of the Library volunteers are encouraging South Valley residents to show up dressed as their favorite literary characters. By chance the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the last book of English author J.K. Rowling’s series, coincides with the library opening celebration. There’s sure to be roaming among the book shelves plenty of boys and girls decked out in capes and thick glasses and carrying magic wands.

Rowling won’t be attending, but no doubt she’d be pleased our local library opens its doors on the same day her series closes its epic narrative. In 1990, she came up with the idea for her series about the adolescent boy who learns about life and magic at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry’s journey started when the single mother found herself stranded on a crowded train traveling from Manchester to London. During the long delay in her journey, the character of Harry Potter emerged to lead her into a magical world.

As Rowling described it: “I simply sat and thought, for four hours, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.”

The series’s last book promises to be the darkest of the lot. Major characters will undergo torturous trials in the final fight between good and evil. Fans have been seriously speculating whether Harry Potter kicks the bucket in this final volume. I suspect he very well might. Rowling herself has said death is a major theme of the series, and no doubt readers will witness significant characters meeting their ultimate doom in the fight with the evil wizard Lord Voldemort.

The reason I believe Harry will die is because Rowling’s series has been closely following the mythic structure of the “Hero’s Journey” that was set out in Joseph Campbell’s ground-breaking 1949 book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces.” Campbell details a “monomyth” framework followed by all the world’s great stories. From Homer to Harry Potter, all epic stories that touch the human heart lay forth a basic pattern of plot points.

Interestingly, Campbell was greatly influenced locally in conceiving his idea for the “Hero’s Journey.” As a young scholar in 1931, he spent a year living in the Monterey Bay’s fishing village of Pacific Grove. He spent much of his time with John Steinbeck and local marine biologist friend Edward Ricketts. Ricketts influenced both Steinbeck and Campbell with his daring notion that all stories share common key elements in their plot structure.

Drastically simplifying Campbell’s work, the “Adventure of the Hero” can be divided into three stages. The first is the Departure stage. The hero is called to an adventure – as Harry Potter is when he receives the mailed letters from the messenger owls inviting him to attend Hogwarts. He “refuses” the adventure initially but then accepts the call when he receives supernatural aid. He crosses the first threshold by leaving the ordinary world and entering an exciting new world where he makes new friends and learns new skills. He must then go through “the belly of the whale,” a rite of passage where he’s transformed by metaphorically dying and being born again.

In the second “Initiation” stage of the journey, the hero must face trials and temptations to gain the strength and hewn his skills to prepare to fight the enemy. The hero must also undergo an “Apotheosis” where his ego is disintegrated, allowing him to sacrifice himself. If Rowling continues to follow Campbell’s model, I forecast her final book will have Harry Potter sacrifice himself to a painful death to save the people he loves. Perhaps on the other side of the grave he meets his deceased parents.

Based on the third stage of the journey – which Campbell calls “The Return” – I predict Harry will be resurrected from death by love. Back in the world of the living he’ll possess renewed magical powers as a wizard that will enable him to destroy the villainous Voldemort.

These wild guesses, written days before the final book’s release, are mere speculation of course. No doubt South Valley readers of Harry Potter’s adventures will know exactly how their beloved hero’s journey really does end. Long may he live on in our imagination.