a miraculous origin or birthNeville Longbottom: The Hero with a Thousand Faces
AS WE HAVE LEARNED, THERE WAS SOME DOUBT AS TO WHETHER THE PERSON DESTINED TO OPPOSE LORD VOLDEMORT WAS HARRY POTTER OR NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM. MARTHA WELLS’ ESSAY POINTS OUT JUST HOW CLOSE TO THE CAMPBELLIAN PATTERN THE MUCH-ABUSED AND WOEFULLY ORDINARY NEVILLE REALLY IS.
NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM IS MY HERO. Yes, I know Harry is the main character and the hero of the series, and the focus of the book-universe, and the only one who can save us, and all that. And I like Harry, I really do. But Neville’s my man.
This seems to be true for a lot of fans, who from the beginning hoped that Neville would have a bigger role in the series, simply because Neville is very easy not only to sympathize with, but to identify with as well. Neville’s life sucks beyond the telling of it, and yet he perseveres. Not that he has much choice. He has a lot more in common with most of us in the audience, in that respect, than someone like Harry, who regularly affects the circumstances of his own life. But I also think that Neville is really a hero, in his own corner of the Harry Potter universe.
Despite the general ordinariness of Neville’s existence in the first two books, fans had long speculated that Neville was destined for something greater: that he would be instrumental somehow in the final battle against Voldemort or prove to be just as badass a wizard as Harry. I don’t think this was just wishful thinking, a side effect of identifying with a sympathetic character, though Neville is an easy kid to feel drawn to. His life is pretty normal. He’s a little overweight. He’s intelligent, and he does well when he gets good instruction, but he’s not brilliant, he’s not a natural at anything except working with magical plants. He has low self-esteem—and with his family, who can blame him?
But I think that to a large extent readers were picking up on, both consciously and subconsciously, the elements of Neville’s character that reflect the typical trappings of the hero in Western culture. And in many ways, Neville has continued to follow the typical hero model as the series has progressed.
Neville’s life in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is not much of a grand adventure, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. The kid has magical powers and he goes to a magical school for wizards, with flying broomsticks and magic candy and talking portraits. Neville’s life should be an adventure, even if the wizarding life, like our own, obviously has its ups and downs. But Neville’s life seems to be mostly just downs.
School can be brutal for kids in real life. But while Neville doesn’t have to worry about drug dealers and school shootings (though Fred and George do get a little scary occasionally with the joke candies that enlarge people’s tongues and so on), he does have to worry about monsters and Voldemort and whichever psycho nutjob is currently masquerading as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. (I personally love the fact that up until Snape took it over in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the only decent teacher of that class turned out to be a werewolf. And not just a cute Disney human-in-wolf-form, but a real werewolf who has no control over it and might end up eating you by mistake.) So with all this to contend with, you would think that Neville’s life would involve a lot of adventure, high and low. Except it didn’t, at least not at first.
In Sorcerer’s Stone, we find out poor Neville was thought to be “all-Muggle,” or a Squib, until he was eight. Neville’s Great Uncle Algie kept trying to startle Neville into performing magic, and Neville mentions in particular the time Great Uncle Algie dropped him off Blackpool Pier and he nearly drowned. This unusual parenting technique finally bore fruit when Great Uncle Algie dangled Neville out of a second-story window by the ankles, and then accidentally let go. Neville’s incipient magical talent allowed him to bounce to safety instead of being killed instantly. It’s mentioned later in the book that Neville is afraid of flying, and has difficulty making his broomstick work. Gosh, I wonder where he could have gotten that fear of heights? Any thoughts, Great Uncle Algie?
Neville’s grandmother sends Howlers, those magical mail bombs that, when you open them, shriek at you like a demented shrieking thing. In public, at breakfast, in front of all the other students. Personally, I’d chew my own arm off to get away from a parent or guardian who thought it was a good idea to publicly humiliate a basically well-behaved kid whose only crime is being a little absent-minded and clumsy. Newsflash to Grandma: Step off. He’ll grow out of it. Too bad you won’t ever grow out of what’s wrong with you. I’d even go to Hogwarts to get away from her, where Voldemort is trying to kill the kid in the next bed over, my favorite teacher may accidentally eat me and there’s a good chance of getting mauled in Care of Magical Creatures.
Hogwarts has its own share of bullies, but the bullying from Draco and the other Slytherins seem almost impersonal. Draco’s group does that to a lot of people, though Ron often gets the worse end of that stick. (The “Weasley Is Our King” scene springs to mind. Ouch.) I find the bullying Neville gets from his grandmother to be worse. Emotional abuse from people who are supposed to be on your side is always more detrimental than impersonal attacks from the school’s designated bullies. Professor Snape also torments Neville in Potions, but then Snape does this to Harry, Ron and apparently most of the other students in his classes. And while Snape’s classroom style isn’t particularly good, to put it mildly, he has a point. Potions are dangerous, and you can kill yourself and others with them. Even meticulous Hermione comes to grief with her Polyjuice Potion in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Potions seem to be something that, if you can’t get them right every time, you really shouldn’t be messing with them at all.
Neville’s early life sets him up as something of a Cinderella figure, paralleling Harry’s miserable treatment at the hands of the Dursleys. Again, it’s not unreasonable for readers steeped in the heroic and adventure traditions of Western literature to pick up on this and expect that Neville will be shown to have hidden talents or a mysterious destiny as well. But Neville also fits comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell’s universal hero pattern, which just reinforces the feeling that the character is meant for more.
Campbell’s hero arc includes the following aspects:
a miraculous origin or birth
a call to adventure
trials and challenges in which the hero confronts and defeats his or her inner demons
a mentor or spiritual guide that aids the hero in these confrontations
descent into the underworld or equivalent, where the hero faces an ultimate nemesis
rebirth and resurrection, after which the hero returns to his or her people with the gift of knowledge
Neville’s initial “Squibdom,” his torture by Uncle Algie and the tragedy surrounding his parents that is revealed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire can be seen as fulfilling the “miraculous origin or birth” requirement. And Neville’s admission to Hogwarts certainly qualifies as a “call to adventure,” especially when he, against his and everyone else’s expectations, is sorted into Gryffindor, the Hogwarts House commonly associated with heroic deeds.
Neville goes through trials and challenges and faces and confronts inner demons pretty much constantly, with a gutsiness-in-spite-of-a-wholly-justified-terror that is Neville’s hallmark. He’s afraid of a lot of things, often justifiably so, and yet he’s forced to confront many of them every day of his life. Even if a reader doesn’t pick up on this as a pattern consistent with the hero archetype, it’s damn hard not to sympathize. Or to hope that it presages greater things.
I felt one of Neville’s greatest acts of courage came in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when he admitted that he was the one who wrote down the Gryffindor passwords and then lost them, compromising the security of their dormitory. It’s this courage in taking responsibility for his actions, facing potential humiliation, and loss of friendship and what little status he had managed to achieve, as well as being willing to admit that he has put his friends in danger through carelessness, that makes Neville stand out. This isn’t an example of magical adventure heroics; it’s an example of real-life, everyday, non-sexy heroics from which any reader could benefit. Despite his mistakes, Neville is a true, solid friend. It’s one of Neville’s best qualities that his support for Harry never wavers no matter what rumors fly or what the Daily Prophet says.
And speaking of Harry: a hero also needs a spiritual guide, and while Dumbledore fulfills this function for Harry, we also see Harry to some extent fulfilling this function for Neville. Even though he gets annoyed with Neville at times, Harry is mostly supportive of him, telling him in Sorcerer’s Stone that he’s “worth twelve of Malfoy.” And Neville does seem to want to emulate Harry.
Before Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, some fans speculated that Neville would play a low-key but important role in the war against Voldemort, probably involving his ability to work so well with magical plants. He would survive the war and come out a stronger individual. But Neville goes through some important changes in Order of the Phoenix that take him further down the hero’s path, suggesting that he may play an even more essential part in the series’ conclusion than even his most devoted fans had guessed.
It’s first revealed in Goblet of Fire why Neville is so distressed by the subject of patients who are in St. Mungo’s because of magical damage to their brains. His parents were members of the Order of the Phoenix, and were tortured with the Cruciatus Curse until they were driven insane. This is obviously one of Neville’s inner demons. In Order of the Phoenix, Neville is willing to attack Draco for an offhand remark not even aimed at him: “[A]s for Potter . . . my father says it’s a matter of time before the Ministry has him carted off to St. Mungo’s. . . . [A]pparently they’ve got a special ward for people whose brains have been addled by magic.”
We see how Neville faces this demon when Harry, Ron and Hermione run into him in the St. Mungo’s Incurable Ward, where he and his grandmother are visiting his parents. The humor in Neville’s characterization suddenly seems cruel (well, it always seemed a little cruel to me) when we see the pathos of his parents: how his mother gives him the gum wrapper, a sign that she possibly does remember him. Neville is afraid the others will laugh at her, but to his credit, Harry “. . . did not think he’d ever found anything less funny in his life.”
Scenes like this contribute to the feeling that Neville is destined for something better than simply a further demonstration of Voldemort’s abuse of power. Something, it seems certain, will happen to him to mitigate this tragedy and give it greater meaning.
The “Christmas on the Closed Ward” chapter in Order of the Phoenix also sets the scene for Neville’s defeat—or at least struggle against—another of his demons: the first time we see Neville admit aloud that he isn’t happy with the way his grandmother is continually pointing out to apparently everyone she knows, as well as random strangers on the street, that Neville doesn’t have the kind of talent his father had. (Okay, fine, that’s not exactly how he puts it, but seriously, I can’t stand that woman. Even Uncle Algie, who gives Neville a highly rare plant as an acknowledgement of his growing skill in Herbology, looks more supportive, and this is taking into account the Blackpool Pier incident.)
You could make the case that Neville actually completes his hero’s journey in Order of the Phoenix. It’s Neville’s extracurricular lessons in Defense Against the Dark Arts with Harry and the other students in Dumbledore’s Army that cause him to “improve beyond all recognition” in his ability to use defensive magic. And in the end Neville insists on going to the Ministry with the others when Harry wants to try to rescue Sirius, though Harry tries to dissuade him. Neville replies: “We were all in the DA together. . . . It was all supposed to be about fighting You-Know-Who, wasn’t it? And this is the first chance we’ve had to do something real—or was that all just a game or something?” This shows us just how far Neville has come since his introduction in Sorcerer’s Stone.
At the Ministry, it’s Neville who fights at Harry’s side after Ron and Hermione are incapacitated. Neville even faces the Cruciatus Curse at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange, the witch who helped torture his parents. The climax of the hero’s story is his descent into the underworld to confront his ultimate nemesis, and the battle in the Ministry with the Death Eaters, in particular the confrontation with Bellatrix, fits this requirement well.
It’s after this battle that Dumbledore reveals that Neville also fits the prophecy that sealed Harry’s destiny—that but for a twist of fate, Neville could very well have been in Harry’s position now, as the Boy Who Lived, the boy who is destined to destroy or be destroyed by Voldemort. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore adds that it was only Voldemort’s belief in the prophecy, and Voldemort’s assumption that it was Harry who the prophecy described, that distinguished between them.
On the one hand, this is a powerful statement about the consequences of our choices and the nature of prophecy, and Neville’s role may simply be to act as Harry’s foil, a human reminder that Harry’s status as chosen was neither inevitable nor earned. But after the revelations in Order of the Phoenix, I’m personally a little afraid it indicated that Neville will heroically die in the last book, perhaps taking Harry’s place.
Imagine if Neville’s life had been the focus of the prophecy, instead. Harry would have still been invited to go to Hogwarts because of who his parents were, and still had the chance to live in the wizarding world rather than with the Dursleys. In fact, he might have grown up with his mother and father both still alive, and Uncle Sirius visiting at holidays. He might not have been a Parseltongue, or quite as talented with magic, but he would have still been good at Quidditch, still had friends, still had the chance to have adventures. What he wouldn’t have had is the constant scrutiny and attention that comes from being the Boy Who Lived. I don’t think he would have balked at giving that up. Harry also would have avoided having access to Voldemort’s thoughts, and the crushing responsibility of being the one prophesied to kill Voldemort. Not having to wake up every morning to that destiny probably wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But if Neville had been the designated the Boy Who Lived, how would he have weathered both the unwelcome attention and the pressure of the responsibility? Not as well, I suspect. Harry, even while suffering under the handicap of being raised by the Dursleys, was not cripplingly shy, or plagued by low self-esteem brought on by a psychotic grandmother. I do think Neville would have held up under the burden and eventually grown to deal with it. His response to the burdens in his own life make that a strong possibility. But I don’t think it would have been pretty. A Neville Longbottom series would have been a much different set of books.
Neville’s journey is different than Harry’s, but it’s also no less valuable. As Neville moves through Campbell’s heroic journey, it’s really not surprising that fans have gotten the idea that he is destined for a more important role in the series. And really, in the first three books, either Neville is a one-note incompetent fat kid who exists for the other characters to pity and make fun of, or he’s being set up for something else, something greater. There aren’t a lot of choices there. And readers with well-developed imaginations who are drawn to fantasy are mostly going to pick the more interesting choice.
Neville fandom is a vast and diverse group. One camp hopes against hope that Neville will turn out to be a major player in the series—that he will become an even bigger character than Harry. Others are just looking for Neville to take on a more heroic role, and hope that his presence in the battles at the ends of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince foreshadow this. Of course some people (and that may be mostly just me) like him the way he is.
MARTHA WELLS is the author of seven fantasy novels, including Wheel of the Infinite and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer. Her most recent novels are a fantasy trilogy beginning with The Wizard Hunters and The Ships of Air. The last volume, The Gate of Gods, will be published by HarperCollins Eos in November 2005. She also has a media tie-in novel, Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, coming out from Fandemonium in February 2006. She has sold short stories to Realms of Fantasy and Black Gate, and her books have been published in eight languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Polish and Dutch.