Strategies for Variable Skill Management in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels
FROM THE VICES TO THE VIRTUES, THE FOUR HOUSES OF HOGWARTS EXEMPLIFY BOTH THE BEST AND THE WORST OF THE STUDENTS WHO ARE “SORTED” INTO THEM. BUT THE SORTING HAT OVERSIMPLIFIES WHAT IS IN EACH AND EVERY STUDENT—IN EACH AND EVERY PERSON, WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO THAT. THERE’S A LITTLE HUFFLEPUFF IN ALL OF US . . . AND A LITTLE SLYTHERIN, TOO. IT’S HOW WE USE WHAT WE HAVE THAT COUNTS.
THE CARE THAT J. K. ROWLING has taken to validate different sorts of human genius has been a welcome element of the Harry Potter series since its inception. When the Sorting Hat sings its song, it assigns a species of human genius to each of four Houses: aspiration and inventiveness to Slytherin, valor and courage to Gryffindor, intellectual acuity and learning to Ravenclaw and determination and resolve to Hufflepuff.
At the end of the first Harry Potter book, Professor Dumbledore implicitly describes the accomplishments of our Gryffindor point-of-view characters in terms of these Houses. Ron Weasley wins points to Gryffindor for the “best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years,” a strategic victory that invokes elements of logical analysis (Ravenclaw) and determination (Hufflepuff) as well as the valor of Gryffindor. Hermione wins points “for the use of cool logic in the face of fire,” an achievement that clearly invokes Ravenclaw’s forte, her intellectual accomplishment enabled by her basic Gryffindor attribute of bravery. Harry’s award is for “pure nerve and outstanding courage,” the very touchstone of Gryffindor, leaving it up to Neville Longbottom to tip the balance in Gryffindor’s favor for a different sort of courage—“the bravery to stand up to his friends,” a species of Gryffindor’s valor peculiarly suited to the determination of loyal Hufflepuff.
In this way, not only are the attributes of all our beloved point-of-view characters recognized and praised, but the ways in which their Gryffindor natures express and are empowered by other varieties of human genius—all required to achieve success—are validated and admired as worthy of praise.
Hogwarts’ Houses reflect different human geniuses or talents: book smarts, people smarts, heart smarts. There’s another elemental attribute as important as what a person is good at, however, and Rowling’s novels give us insight on dealing with how good a person is at things, as well.
In Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, Malvolio, a comic foil, finds a letter which—among other things—tells him that, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” He’s being set up for a prank of which the Weasley twins could justly be proud; however, in that summary can be found the source of some of the most poignant conflicts in our lives.
Some are born great: talented, beautiful, open-hearted, charismatic. Some achieve greatness through hard work, self-discipline and a passionate desire to perfect their art, their craft or their athletic discipline. Some have greatness thrust upon them by accidents of birth, and must understand the limitations of that social capital in order to have a successful and happy life.
As human animals, one of our life-long concerns is understanding where we fit in, what our roles are and how we stand in relation to others in the multiple hierarchies of our lives. By the time we get to be Dumbledore’s age (or the Muggle equivalent thereof, anyway) we’ve generally made up our minds about where we are and why we’re there, and have either reconciled ourselves to our position in life with all of its attendant injustices (like our dear Professor Lupin), or made up our minds to be bitter and angry about it for the rest of our lives (as seems to be the case with Snape). But we all remember our early adulthood, and the pain and anxiety of trying to figure out who we are and where we belong.
In the story of Harry Potter and his friends, Rowling presents us with examples of all combinations of being born great, achieving greatness and having greatness thrust upon us. For the purposes of this discussion, when I say “greatness,” I am thinking about a respected and admired place in our human hierarchy. We want people to like us, respect us, admire us and value us. And to a greater or lesser extent we all struggle with the existence of people who have come by privileged positions by an accident of birth or genetics, as Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy both struggle with Harry Potter’s notoriety, each in his own different and instructive way.
Rowling presents positive role models for people across all permutations of that age-old and painful tension between hard work and God-given genius, validating all of those permutations in a life-affirming way that provides encouragement and insight at a critical juncture in younger readers’ life journeys. Through the point-of-view characters presented to us in the Harry Potter novels, any one of us has the opportunity to be one of the privileged students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, whether or not we happen to be the most famous child in recent history. Let’s have a look at how she does it:
Harry Potter himself is the most obvious example of one who has had greatness thrust upon him. When he is introduced to his wizarding heritage he is bombarded on all sides by the admiration and esteem of people who clearly believe that the mere fact of his survival indicates his enjoyment of powers beyond the reach of any ordinary witch or wizard.
Harry has not, however, been “born great” in the sense of being an untutored genius. He’s not a particularly good student of—of anything except for Quidditch, in his early years at Hogwarts, and his plight is familiar to any person following in the footsteps of a well-known parent or older sibling, wondering how he is ever going to measure up to such exalted expectations, secretly convinced that he’s bound to be a disappointment to one and all.
Though Snape is speaking to a special audience, one can admit to some truth in his characterization of Harry in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as someone who appears to have “no extraordinary talent at all,” who “has fought his way out of a number of tight corners by a simple combination of sheer luck and more talented friends,” and who is “mediocre to the last degree.” Snape’s assessment uncovers the fundamental weakness of the Slytherin world-view, however: the confounding of power with strength.
On more than one occasion, but most clearly at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore has affirmed his faith in Harry as an exceptional person. Neither Snape nor Voldemort can find any explanation for Harry’s continued survival other than to look for extraordinary powers or assume that he’s been lucky. They define Harry in terms of what he can do, while Dumbledore sees him as someone whose intrinsic quality of self is exceptional—exceptionally courageous, exceptional in his ability to affirm life and to love. To the extent that Harry simply is who he is—any question of magical ability aside—Harry Potter has been born great.
In the first novel Rowling gives Harry his first self-aware taste of his magical powers when he sets palm to broomstick for the first time. While the text version coyly slides us by with a “Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did,” the filmed version of this scene communicates Harry’s surprised pleasure at the success of what seems to be the first magical spell he’s gotten right on the first try. Unlike incidents in his past when things happened without Harry’s conscious volition, here Harry has not only done something magical but watched himself do it.
Rowling places Harry in the position of someone with genuinely remarkable abilities who can neither understand nor use them without training and guidance—someone who must achieve greatness. In this way she encourages people who may feel that they have no talent: to persevere (in a Hufflepuff sort of a way) bravely (since it takes the courage of a Gryffindor to persist in the face of potential humiliation and failure) in the knowledge that even genius requires a framework and discipline in which to express itself.
Harry Potter was born with superlative talents to which he gains access only as his training progresses. He has had greatness thrust upon him both by public acclaim—first in his role as the Boy Who Lived, then more recently as the chosen one about whom the prophecy was made. Dumbledore intimates on more than one occasion that Voldemort himself has thrust a species of greatness upon Harry, inadvertently transferring power to Harry during the course of his failed attack. And Harry is slowly but surely achieving greatness as his story progresses, and as he adds increasing sureness to talent and innate courage.
His antagonist, Draco Malfoy, has been born great in a different sense; aspires to greatness, building on family pride and privilege; and, in the context of Half-Blood Prince, is unfortunate enough to have a sort of greatness thrust upon him at Voldemort’s command.
Draco is clearly comfortable in the elitist environment of Slytherin: eager to learn how to manipulate and manage the people around him, conscious of his status as a pure-blood from an old and wealthy wizarding family. He has been fortunate in his birth to the extent that he’s had the resources available to him from an early age to learn and practice magical arts, and therefore comes to Hogwarts ahead of the game in comparison to people like Ron—from an old but resource-constrained wizarding family—and Hermione—who has ability and application but no wizarding background at all.
With such a privileged background Draco could clearly become a great wizard (and might still—the story’s not over yet). He has been taught to confuse talent and success, however, with strength and power. Gifted with material prosperity and an enriched wizarding background, Draco’s been taught to take his privileged status as earned and rightfully his. Growing up watching his Death Eater father kick house-elves around has shaped a young man who can’t wait for his opportunity to exercise authority over other people, either as a prefect or a member of the despicable Dolores Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad.
He is confused, frightened and resentful when he encounters people from less privileged backgrounds whose achievements outshine his own. As unattractive as this may be, isn’t it familiar? Any reader whose background is privileged in one way or another is invited to take a lesson from Draco, none of whose material advantages seem to have given him any real edge on anybody—in part because they can confer power, but not strength. The Nimbus 2001 does not make the Seeker, and it is a crucial error to confuse the edge provided by the tool (or the accident of birth which made the tool’s ownership possible) with the ability of the one in whose hand chance has placed it.
Material advantage can place an unproved Seeker on a Quidditch team and take an average Quidditch player further and faster than she otherwise might be able to go, but it can’t substitute for genius. Life is unfair, and Draco has the choice of working with or against the inequities of fate. So far he has elected to take as much advantage of privilege and position at the expense of talent and ability as possible.
The reader can draw her own conclusions about what that makes Draco Malfoy in the grand scheme of things, but Rowling deploys one of her strongest characters to make her own point. It’s not for nothing that Dumbledore’s strongest feeling appears to be compassionate pity for the boy who has come to kill him. Dumbledore displays a similar, if possibly more contemptuous, pity for Draco’s mundane counterpart—Harry’s cousin “Dudders” Dursley.
The experience of love and friendship that Harry ought to have had from the Dursleys is received instead from his adoptive family. As grim as Harry’s life was between the hour of his parents’ death and his first arrival at Hogwarts, there are Weasleys in the story now, and—for all of the contempt so freely expressed by the Malfoys, junior and senior—they’re of as old a wizarding family as any.
Ron Weasley has, of course, been far more in the forefront of the novels than the rest of his family, up until Half-Blood Prince. In Ron we see how a good-hearted, high-spirited person deals with the fact that he’s not as good at things as his buddies are. Hermione is a much better student than either Harry or Ron. Harry’s got money, and Ron gets frustrated at being poor. Harry’s got the attention and admiration of the masses, and Ron quite naturally would like a little attention and admiration of his own.
In a sense Ron is the positive side of a coin to which Draco Malfoy is the negative side. Where Draco resents Harry’s notoriety, Ron thinks it’s great—and is quick to defend Harry from envious accusations of grandstanding. Where Draco flaunts his money in front of one and all, Ron doesn’t seem to resent the fact that Harry is rich, even while Ron’s realistically sensitive to the fact that having a lot of money can be a wonderful thing.
Both Draco and Ron can think, but Draco plots to further his own advantage at the expense of others, while Ron’s strategic skills are at the service of the community—consider his chess-playing and sacrifice, so Harry and Hermione might go on, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, among other instances. Draco is a bully; Ron, having little power in the world at all, is nevertheless one of Rowling’s strongest characters, in more ways than one.
From the beginning Rowling has given Ron his own unique talents and contributions, notably the game of wizard chess in the very first novel, but also Quidditch, among other things. And Ron has always expressed honest admiration for Harry’s achievements, largely without the poison of jealousy.
Accepting the differences in kind as well as degree between his and Harry’s abilities enables Ron to remain Harry’s friend, and presents us with one way in which the person who was neither born to greatness nor had greatness thrust upon them may still be genuinely great. In the end, is there anything finer and more to be aspired to than the title of “good friend”? Ron may not be the Sirius Black of the younger generation, all parallels aside, but I don’t think there’s any question that he is as good a friend to Harry as Sirius was to James Potter.
Ron is not the hero of these books, but his ability to not mind being less well-off, less talented and less famous makes him a paradigmatic good friend—something money, privilege, talent and fame can’t buy. We can know and understand Ron’s prevailing genius as we get to know him, but Rowling has given Ron the respect and admiration of his peers as well. He is as admired for his learned Quidditch skills, having overcome his insecurities and worked hard, as Harry is honored for the inborn skill that has made him a superlative Seeker. It’s interesting to note that their achievements are valued for their contribution to the commonweal—Gryffindor House—and that neither envies the others’ success. Weasley is our King by public acclaim, while Malfoy has to settle for buying the more ephemeral respect of his House with material wealth and name-dropping.
There are lots of Weasleys. Taken all in all the family presents a range of different reactions to the combination of actual talent and resource constraint, so let’s look at them next. They’re nice people, aren’t they? Bill’s kind of a hippie, but he’s happily engaged in forensic accounting of the wizarding kind. Charlie’s happy and involved in his work with dragons.
The twins would seem to have no particular genius except that for mischief, and yet the success of their pranks and the quality of their mischief is the clear result of hard work and application, and with hard work and application—identifying their strengths and working toward them, regardless of where they fall on the traditional value scale—they achieve successes, the impact of which resounds far beyond the essentially trivial nature of the niche they have claimed as their own.
In an act of courage and daring they risked their savings on a bet to generate a stake, and they were cheated of their winnings by an unfortunate fluke of ill-luck (in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). As entrepreneurs they would have continued to seek sources of venture capital aggressively but honorably. In Harry Potter they have found an honest backer, and their successes in Order of the Phoenix and previous novels were honestly earned.
By identifying their genius and honoring it, the Weasley twins have discovered their place in life, and—having found that place and making themselves at home in it—they find themselves contributing to the commonweal in more significant ways than they ever imagined. They thought they were just opening a joke shop, but in Half-Blood Prince they have discovered that a joke shop can be a much more important weapon for resisting the forces of evil than anything else they could have done.
In this way Rowling validates the strength that comes from finding what you do best and most enjoy, and focusing on it. The Weasley twins are not necessarily powerful wizards. They have simply concentrated on making the best of what powers they have, and leveraged their skills to become a powerful force for good. They have achieved, and are in the process of achieving further, greatness. So what happened with Percy?
Percy has ambition. Ambition is good, but his ambitions appear to exceed his actual abilities, and have made him vulnerable to exploitation. Rowling shows us what kind of compromises Percy’s made to reach for privilege that exceeds his ability to earn it. His desire for the material benefits of rank—money, influence, a position of power—appears to have destroyed his objectivity.
He has estranged himself from his family, which is a very strong message in Rowling’s world—where Harry is safe from the worst that Voldemort can throw at him when he’s with Aunt Petunia, because Aunt Petunia is his mother’s sister. There are ways in which Percy shows the worst effects of Voldemort’s poison: Whether or not his behavior has anything to do with evil wizards, there is an uncomfortable harmony between what he has to say to his family and the curses Sirius Black’s mother calls down upon the heads of the Mud-bloods.
Percy may yet pull himself out of the quagmire (there’s part of me that can’t help hoping he’s working on a long-term, Dumbledore-derived stratagem), but until then he’s Rowling’s reminder that profoundly misguided people can come out of the most fundamentally decent families, wizard or no, and are capable of causing quite as much grief as they could have had they talent in proportion to their ambition.
While magic apparently runs in families like the Weasleys, there’s no guarantee that magic parents will pass on their single most distinguishing characteristic and have magic offspring. Some children of wizarding parents are born Squibs, having no magic power whatever of their own, and deal with that either more (Mrs. Figg) or less (Filch) successfully. To balance it out, sometimes outstanding magical ability is discovered in a family with no prior history of magic, as was apparently the case with both Harry’s mother and Hermione Granger.
Hermione is a fish out of water in a classic sense, like a student who’s been skipped a grade or placed in any enriched learning environment. Her family background is materially privileged to an extent: her parents are dentists. This means a lot of hard work on their part, however, and a sensible notion of economic constraint that is closer to Ron’s family than Draco’s, for instance. There is no wizarding in her background, and in that she is more like Muggle-raised Harry than anyone else in the book, except of course for Voldemort himself.
What I recognize most about Hermione, though, is that she is ambitious and intellectually voracious while wanting to be liked and fit in, and is confused and frustrated by the fact that she is not and does not. Hermione is the most Ravenclaw of the Gryffindors we know, and bright students in today’s academic environment need all of the Gryffindor they can get to face the challenges of their lives.
Hermione is more vulnerable to Slytherin elitism than anyone else in the series. She has the intellectual capacity; she has the determination and the ambition to succeed. She could easily despise Harry for his apparent lack of ambition, Ron for being lazy, everybody in Gryffindor for being less dedicated students. Feelings of easily demonstrated superiority in nearly every aspect of wizard academics could be easily substituted for her feelings of anxiety and confusion over wishing to be liked and to fit in, and would be considerably less painful.
Under these circumstances it is Hermione’s act of courage to decline to scorn, and to continue to value, the friendship of people who can’t match her on an intellectual level. Hermione’s intellectual achievement is to no mean extent in her recognition of the fact that the intellect is only part of a range of human geniuses.
At first reading, I found Hermione’s “friendship and bravery” speech at the end of Sorcerer’s Stone to be an embarrassing bit of authorial cheerleading. In light of Rowling’s subsequent books, however, I think it’s a deliberate statement of an enduring human truth about different sorts of genius and what it takes to maximize them all.
Because Hermione, as well as Ron, does something else that demonstrates her strength: She fits herself to the service of others who have the power that she lacks, but who cannot access that power without her assistance. Hermione uses her abilities to maximize her friends’ strengths toward a common goal. For all of Hermione’s genuine wizarding talent, her true genius may well be in the Muggle art of teamwork.
Every reader of Harry Potter will be able to recognize familiar talent-versus-training conflicts in one or more of the characters that Rowling has taught us to know and love. We all know how it feels to have a natural knack, how it feels to be unable to get the knack no matter how hard we try, and how frustrating and unfair it can be to be compared to other people who are accidentally or innately just plain better (more knackful?) at things than we are. We have all faced the challenge of how to respond to being better and not as good. Rowling’s characters demonstrate how to respond to all of these life-challenges in positive and honorable ways.
Rowling shows us how a Hermione manages her pride and her humility in order to remain a friend, a partner and a life-affirming person. She shows us how Harry can manage his frustration at his lack of background and training without developing the corrosive “I’ll show them” desire to make others feel inferior. She shows us mistaking material privilege for moral superiority has bred up a weak and flawed character in Draco Malfoy, and how the most powerful wizarding traits are common to Muggles and magical folk alike—integrity, honor, loyalty, friendship and the transcendent power of love.
At the end of it all, J. K. Rowling has given us all ways in which to take whichever species of human genius we’ve got, in whatever degree we’ve got it, and fit ourselves with it into a just and ordered society focused on the common good. It’s a lesson that can benefit people across the entire spectrum of talent, genius and position in life.
I was born of the Muggle equivalent of a respectable middle-class wizarding family. Compared to some my upbringing was enriched; compared to others, it was impoverished. Compared to some I was an academic success across all spectra except athletics; compared to others I had talent, but not genius, and could only watch the workings of the minds of truly brilliant scholars with appreciation and awe. Compared to some I have had great success in my life, while compared to others I am a small fry indeed.
When I first read Harry Potter it seemed to me that Slytherin was the place to be, and Gryffindor was a sorry second; of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw I knew nothing, and had an equivalent opinion. J. K. Rowling, by demonstrating the attributes of each House within the characters she has placed in Gryffindor, has taught me differently: not only in terms of the House attributes themselves, but in terms of where I fit in the human spectrum of talent, genius and aptitude.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ’em—and it’s never to late for the latter two of those three states. With the examples Rowling has presented of how a person with modest talents, some charisma and a strong sense of community can find her place among people smarter or better or harder-working (or even richer) than she is, I can claim my proper place, and be well pleased with it. Ich bin ein Hufflepuff, and I know how to bloom where I’ve been planted. It’s good to find the place where I belong, and understand how my being there is what makes it possible for Harry and Hermione and Ron to exercise their own human and wizarding geniuses for the common good of us all.
SUSAN R. MATTHEWS was born in a barracks in Fort Benning in the middle of a windstorm whose chaos has characterized her life ever since, most of which has occurred while she was paying attention to something else. She has been most recently seen in science fiction and murder mystery anthologies; her next Koscuisko novel, Warring States (whose protagonist would almost certainly have been sorted into Slytherin the moment he set foot to flagstone at Hogwarts), is due out from independent publisher Meisha Merlin in January 2006.
Susan lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner Maggie and two Pomeranian doggies. She has yet to quit her day job at The Boeing Company, where she enjoys a regular paycheck, health benefits and other Muggle perks, and is convinced that the reason You-Know-Who is determined that nobody kill Harry Potter but him is that Harry Potter is the final Horcrux.