Patch wrote:Yay! ^^
I can't wait to talk Potter with you, Tacky! I've read the books a bunch of times through, but I've also heard them all on audio throughout the year for, like, 8 years? Gah! I just love them so much, and Jim Dale does an outstanding job at reading and doing the characters' voices. (:
I've listened to parts of the audio book for Sorcerer's Stone, and I agree. Jim Dale does an
amazing job with the audio book. I think there were points with a couple of characters (I seem to remember Hagrid being one) that he sounds exactly like the actor in the films. XD
Oh oh oh, we learned a really cool thing in Harry Potter class the other day. Hopefully I can remember all of the little bits and pieces because I don't have my notes on me at the moment.
So, we all know that the concept of alchemy is fairly present in the books yes?
Well, the alchemist's goal was to be able to turn lead into gold. To do this, they tried to use sulfur and mercury. These two reagents are also known as the "unlikely/quarreling couple."
So, take this and assume Harry is the "lead" that is being transformed into the gold. What quarrelling couple is going to transform him? Ron and Hermione right? It sounds like a little bit of a stretch at first but bear with me. Sulfur (although yellow) is through to represent fire in alchemical terms (mercury is described more like water) and is also thought to have a more masculine quality. Sulfur thus, represents Ron. In contrast, Mercury has more of a calm, cool, collected, feminine quality.
In addition, Mercury of Roman mythology is the messenger god. Hermes is the equivalent in Greek mythology. The female form of Hermes is "Hermione." Also, lets look at initials for a moment. Hermione Granger. HG. Hg > the chemical symbol for mercury. Interesting theory isn't it? But there's more.
In the process of changing lead to gold, you go through three major steps (that I hope I can spell correctly.)
Nigredo (the black stage) > Albedo (the white stage) > Rubedo (the red stage)
From Wikipedia:
The nigredo of the process of individuation on the other hand is a subjectively experienced process brought about by the subject's painful, growing awareness of his shadow aspects'. It could be described as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development. As individuation unfolds, so 'confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible
If you had to pick a book that describes Harry like that, which would you pick? Order of the Phoenix when he has a kind of identity crisis perhaps?
Let's assume Order of the Phoenix. At the end of the book, Sirius
Black dies. The
black stage is over and Harry moves onto the white stage. The white stage is sort of a purification point. In the Half-Blood Prince, Harry dips his head a lot into the pensive, which you can almost think of as an act of purification. At the end of Half-Blood Prince, Albus dies.
Albus means white in Latin. The white stage is over.
In the Deathly Hallows, there is a point where we think Hagrid dies.
Rubeus, red. (We've already talked at this point that Rowling is very, very good at misdirection.) Hagrid lives though, hooray! Unfortunately, Fred is the one that ends up dying. A red haired individual with 'red' actually in his name. The red stage is over and the process is complete.
Now, you can choose to believe this or not, but just think about it cause it's cool. XP