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I suggested that there are a number of places in the graveyard sequence of GoF where the author seems to have deliberately chosen to use words with sexual, sensual, or erotic connotations.
Dicentra wrote:
On the other hand, the problem with sexualized language is that it's not specialized language.
No, it isn't. But if enough words with romantic, erotic or sexual connotations are used in seemingly incongruous contexts (for Voldemort to be "caressing" anything strikes me as fairly incongruous, really, because the word itself connotes gentleness and tenderness, neither of which are qualities that Voldemort possesses), then I think that they do create a cumulative effect on the reader. In the case of the graveyard sequence, that cumulative effect is to make the scene seem, as so many people have said, "creepy."
I would go a bit further, actually. I think that its effect is to make the scene strike readers as not merely creepy, but as actively perverse. We do, I think, tend to read what happens to Harry in the graveyard as something above and beyond a terrible ordeal. We read it as a violation. A violation, and a profound loss of innocence.
As far as I can tell, this is by far the most common reading of the end of GoF. It is the majority reading, the "normative reading," if you will. Different interpretations are certainly possible, but I've not myself ever heard them articulated. I therefore suspect that they are exceptionally rare.
I think that the majority of readers interprets these events in such a manner for a reason. The author directs us towards that reading. It does not happen by accident, nor simply because the bare-bones facts of what happens to Harry at the end of GoF are intrinsically horrific. They certainly are horrific. Witnessing the cold-blooded murder of a peer, being helpless and tortured and gloated over, being forced to serve as the unwilling aid to your enemy's resurrection...all of these things are indeed "violating," and they can indeed be read as constituting a "loss of innocence." But a bare-bones recounting of this series of events would not have conveyed the idea nearly as reliably, nor as universally, nor with the same degree of emotional power. The reading of graveyard-as-violation is conveyed not merely through the events of the plot, but also through the specific words that the author uses to describe them.
This brings us back to Rochelle's original Elephant In the Drawing Room: the reading of the graveyard sequence as a metaphoric rape.
I had been trying to avoid stealing Rochelle's Big Canon for this one, since I was under the impression that she had planned on coming back to this topic --- it was, after all, her pet elephant. It's been a while now, though, so I'll just go for it. Apologies to Rochelle if I'm in any way stepping on her toes here.
Okay. Rochelle cited JKR's use of the word "penetrate" as evidence for her reading of the taking of Harry's blood as a metaphoric rape. She then commented that there was a lot more, but that she wasn't ready to go into it yet.
The really big signifier of the rape metaphor, to my mind, isn't "penetrated." As others have pointed out, there aren't really all that many other words that JKR could have chosen to use here. "Nicked," "pricked" (problematic in and of itself), and "cut" all leap to my mind immediately as other possibilities—a thesaurus might suggest far more—but none of these word choices would have been quite as accurate or appropriate. The author's use of the verb "to penetrate" would therefore not strike me as necessarily all that significant if it were standing all by itself.
In combination with the precise phrasing of the ritual, however, it does seem significant to me because the precise phrasing of the ritual sets forth the rape metaphor quite blatantly.
"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken..."
I don't see how this could help but suggest rape to a native English speaker. In English-speaking cultures, to "take by force" is a common euphemism for rape.
Alley wrote:
To a certain extent I agree but I also think that sexual undertones pervade our lives and literature and we have created our language and the connotations attached to our language accordingly. And one should be aware of the connotations of the language you're using even if that's not your primary intention.
Yes, precisely. Whether JKR was consciously aware of it at the time or not, using the phrase "forcibly taken" was a significant authorial choice. Personally, I suspect that it was a conscious one. But whether it was conscious or unconscious on the author's part is really not terribly relevant. It has the same effect either way.
Nor, I would argue, does the question of whether or not the reader notices the analogy on any conscious level matter all that much. Whether the reader notices it consciously or not, the choice of phrase will nonetheless have a specific effect on the vast majority of the scene's readers. "Forcibly taken" connotes rape, which in turn connotes violation, loss of innocence, and not merely sexuality but a perversion of sexuality.
The sense of perversion is important, IMO. I don't think that the graveyard sequence is considered so "Dark" merely because it is violent, or because the protagonist remains helpless throughout so much of it (although both of these things certainly do contribute to its scariness). I also think that people tend to react so strongly to this sequence because it comes across as perverse, as an offense, a Wrongness. It is depicted as Abomination.
I believe that this sense of the circumstances surrounding Voldemort's rebirth as a "Wrongness," a fundamental and profound violation of natural law, is also strongly reinforced by the role that the shades of the dead play in opposing Voldemort at the end and aiding Harry in his escape. The text gives us a perfectly "rational" magical explanation for why this happens: Priori Incantatem.
What the subtext says to me, though, is this: "What has just happened here is Abomination. In the face of such offense, the dead themselves rise up in protest. In the face of such offense, even the silent dead are moved to speak."
Harry's heroism in recovering Cedric's body for proper disposal—standing in stark contrast to Voldemort's use of his father's bones—also comes into play here. Conceptions of the proper treatment of and respect for the dead are powerful and deeply-rooted cultural constructs. They have weight and history; they touch on some very ancient (and very fundamental) concepts of propriety and taboo.
Now, if as an author what you want (either consciously or subconsciously) is to encourage your readers to an interpretation of a scene as depicting a fundamental Wrongness—violation, perversion, abomination, taboo—then one way to do that is to strike at all of the hot button issues of your readership, and then to twist those issues, to pervert them. Violating cultural taboos is what leads to that sense of instinctive revulsion that gets translated to an emotional response of: "Oh, this is just so wrong."
Here are some issues that immediately leap to my mind as good candidates for this treatment.
Sexuality. Religion. The Family. Treatment of the dead.
The Graveyard sequence hits every one of them.
1) Sexuality.
Sexuality is a big one. As this thread has amply demonstrated, people have strong emotional reactions to any discussion of sexuality. It's a serious hot button issue.
So does Graveyard violate our conceptions of what constitutes "normal" or "acceptable" sexuality?
Yes. It draws the rape analogy. It implies that Voldemort is experiencing some form of physical arousal or excitement from torturing a fourteen-year-old boy. It uses words with sensual or erotic connotations in places where they seem inappropriate and disturbing.
(It is not that a wand is "phallic" per se that makes Voldemort's "caressing" it "gently" so disturbing to me, by the way. Rather, it is that in Voldemort's hands, a wand is an implement of murder. For a character to be described as "gently caressing" a yonic weapon, or even a starkly technological one—like the proverbial Big Red Button—would have had very much the same effect on me. 'Cause you know, sometimes even a donut can be a cigar.)
2) Religion.
Religion is just as hot a button as sex, if not an even hotter one. On this list, for example, we tend to get even more nervous about discussions that raise the issue of religion than we do about those that raise the issue of sexuality. Matters of faith and of religion are important to people, very important.
So does Graveyard violate or pervert or "twist" religious concepts? Is it in any sense blasphemous?
Yes. I think that it is that, as well. Dicentra objected to my description of the Death Eaters' apparent ecstacy as sexual by pointing out that the same quasi-sexual language is also used to describe states of religious ecstacy. Alley also commented on this fact.
True enough. Leaving aside the entire question of whether the DEs' initially ecstatic response to seeing Voldemort returned is sexual or mystical, however—or even whether there is all that significant a difference between these two states—there are plenty of other uses of religious imagery and language in the graveyard sequence. The type of obeisance that Voldemort expects from his followers, for example, is quasi-religious. Generally speaking, it is those rulers who have laid claims to a divine source of authority as well as a civil one who have historically received hem-kissing as a formalized gesture of submission.
Religious imagery pervades this entire sequence. Voldemort's cauldron of rebirth, particularly in the context of a novel entitled _Goblet of Fire,_ appears as a kind of Dark Grail. It is a vessel of resurrection, but of resurrection through parricide and murder, rebirth through the sacrifice of others, rather than the sacrifice of the self. His immersion in baby form is a perversion of the sacrament of baptism, and his use of Harry's blood is a perversion of the sacrament of communion. Voldemort demands confessional from his followers and doles out penance, but he also describes himself as unforgiving ("I do not forgive."). The rites of confessional are therefore perverted: atonement is rejected as impossible, thereby rendering confession itself empty, meaningless. All of Voldemort's "faithful servant"ing has strong Biblical echoes.
Also, and this may just be me, Pettigrew's depiction in the Graveyard sequence has always struck me as strongly reminiscent of a figure from an ancient mystery cult. Hooded, balding, physically weak, symbolically self-castrated, he is granted a singular status of intimacy with his master. As first Voldemort's nursemaid and then his valet, he tends to his physical needs: feeds him, carries him, dresses him. We never see any of the other DEs come into direct physical contact with Voldemort. They show their obeisance by kissing the hems of his robes, not his hand or even his feet. Pettigrew reminds me of a temple attendent, one of the castrated devotees permitted to enter sacred spaces which remain barred to uncut men. He plays the eunuch acolyte to Voldemort's hierophant.
There is also literal sacrilege going on in this scene. This graveyard is not merely a family plot; it is also a churchyard and thus consecrated ground. The very first sentence describing the setting gives us this detail: "They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right." This is almost certainly ground that was consecrated in a very specific Christian context, a context in which both the disturbance of the dead and the performance of malign ("Dark") magical rituals are anathema. It is therefore not only blasphemous, but actively sacrilegious.
3) The Family.
The family is a hot-button issue as well, although not nearly so much so as sex and religion. Nonetheless, messing with people's conceptions of appropriate familial relations often reaps a strong emotional response.
Graveyard messes with the family. It messes with it in a big way. Voldemort speaks to his followers as a reproachful parent to erring children. His response to their arrival is: "But look, Harry! My true family returns...."
Voldemort is, of course, a parricide, and his "true family" is treacherous, disloyal, and scared to death of him. They hold no genuine affection for him at all, nor does he treat them with any hint of parental love. He is their "father," but this is a conception of paternity that reflects *only* its disciplinarian aspects --- Father as Punisher, Father as Critic, Father as Enforcer, Father as Judge.
Divorced from the loving aspects of the paternal role, this is a perversion of our conception of proper familial relations, and the fact that it is coming from somebody who brags about having himself committed parricide only makes it that much worse.
4) Proper Treatment of the Dead.
I covered this one above. This is an ancient taboo, and JKR does not hesitate to make use of it. Exuming ones father's bones for the purpose of using them in a self-serving magical ritual is Just Not Okay, and the fact that we are meant to read the treatment of the dead as important is then further reinforced by Cedric's request to have his own body brought back to his parents for proper disposal.
So, yeah. Graveyard is creepy. It's disturbing. It's Dark. And I think that it is all those things for reasons that go a bit deeper than the simple fact that it portrays violent events, or that bad things happen to Harry in it. It's a very powerful scene indeed, and much of its power, IMO, derives from its deliberate perversions of concepts and institutions that we consider sacred.
And yes, BTW. I worry about Harry's emotional condition at this point in the storyline too.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on June 26, 2002 3:34 PM
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