1. OMG a Pokemon reference. I love you guys. And you mentioned it right when you were talking about cartoons that come on after school, which is totally when I watched it.

2. I liked your ideas about all the ambiguity in this book. Since Greg said he was into existentialism, I was surprised you didn’t talk more about that in relation to this book (although you came pretty close with Choice and Consequence). I’ll go ahead and admit that my knowledge of existentialism comes almost entirely from the four days my Western Civ teachers dedicated to it, but from what I can remember the main idea is that no person is created for a specific purpose–a man has to make his own purpose. In other words, to use Sartre’s example (I am about 80% sure it was Sartre anyway), man is different from a stapler in that with staplers, someone needed to stick some papers together and so they created a device especially suited to perform that duty. With people, it’s the other way around–you’re invented, or born, first, and then you have to find something useful to do with yourself. We see Harry struggling a lot to understand this as he worries that his connections to Voldemort (which he may as well have been born with) mean he is meant to be an evil person. But as Dumbledore takes Harry through Voldemort’s past in the pensieve, we see that Tom Riddle was not born evil; it was the decisions he made throughout his life that turned him into the Dark Lord. There is also ambiguity about the nature of magic and whether any magic can be inherently Dark–this comes from Harry’s Potions book. Hermione says the spells hand-written in the book must be meant for evil; Harry maintains that it only matters how one uses them.

At the same time there are a lot of things in the book that suggest that our fates are inescapable. We see people start calling Harry The Chosen One, which contradicts existentialism by suggesting that Harry was born especially to end Voldemort’s reign. The prophecy made by Trelawney reinforces that idea. We also see clear signs of sociopathy in young Tom Riddle, suggesting that he was always going to become a very Dark wizard. And regarding magic itself, Harry is pretty taken aback when he tries Sectumsempra, and I think this suggests that some magic is by nature pretty close to the Very Dark (Unforgivable?) end of the continuum that you guys mentioned in this episode.

These ideas, that you create your purpose in life and that your fate is inescapable, seem to be polar opposites, but I think as the book progresses they become intertwined. Dumbledore sums it up well (as he always does) in Ch 23 when he explains that Harry can and must destroy the Horcruxes and kill Voldemort. My favorite quote: ” ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried!’ ” (pg 511, US version). Harry then realizes that even if it weren’t for the prophecy, he would still try to kill Voldemort. The only reason the prophecy is true is because it was *heard* by Voldemort, who, by killing Harry’s parents, indirectly made Harry into who he is. The prophecy on its own is meaningless. (This brings up the power of Perception to create and change Reality, which is a whole other theme.) For me, the duality of making your own fate but at the same time being destined for a single fate because of who you are, is one of the central themes of this book (aside from being very hard to wrap my head around).

As a side note, another thing I thought while reading Ch 23 was that this must be why Dumbledore has such distaste for Divination (he mentions in OOTP that he was thinking of discontinuing it at Hogwarts when Trelawney made her prophecy). It’s not that he, like Hermione, thinks it’s an imprecise or even “phony” branch of magic; it’s just that the future is so obvious to Dumbledore. He recognized that Tom Riddle’s personality would not allow him to become a good person in spite of his unfortunate childhood. And he was perfectly sure that Harry would be the one to destroy Voldemort because he saw how genuinely good Harry still was in spite of neglect and death and tragedy in his past. Divination isn’t unreliable, Dumbledore just thinks it’s unnecessary to use so much magic trying to see what’s right in front of your nose.

Anyway, sorry that was so long… I just really discovered my intense love for this particular book the second time around (I must not have paid enough attention the first time…) and wanted to comment here because I think you guys are pretty awesome

Let me just say that the episode of Saved By the Bell when Jessie gets addicted to Speed, is my absolute favorite! Therefore, the beginning of this podcast had me cracking up!