On Cedric and Harry: An Analysis.

On Cedric and Harry: An Analysis.

 

Recently, I had a falling-out with a close friend. This was met with near to no regret. He and I had “grown apart”, as the colloquialism suggests, yet really a more accurate description would be that the neuroses that had all ways served as dividers and stumbling blocks for us, since first meeting, had reached a fever pitch in our presence. Imagine a microphone put up next to an amplifier. Anyone who’s tried this will note the effect: Two instruments that had served a common purpose now create a disastrous sound that I would not even suggest that anyone try; it is a high-pitched squeal devoid of vibrato that may leave a noiseophile disappointed.

 

Having taken time to grow outside of his influence, I found a tremendous renewal of freedom and vigour which I might presume to be neutral. Yet in the wake of this came also an increased sensitivity to the degree to which I had been wronged. I texted him several days into our break and brought to his attention, with a level head, some gentle criticisms about the ways in which he had treated me. I drew parallels, very briefly, to other instances that I had felt myself wronged for the same reasons: A mutual acquaintance and a former romantic partner were two examples. Yet my at first eloquent and simple point, one that goes unnoticed and was predominantly drawn from the work of Jung, was met with what appeared to be sheer disorganized hostility. A squabble ensued wherein my intellectual rigour and existential passion fell on deaf ears (figuratively, since this was in text) and he allowed the exchange to degenerate into a totally unsubstantiated, neurotic denunciation of my character. All that I could discern from his insults, which met my valid arguments with blatant, explicit apathy and which twisted my words without any respect for their context, was the degree to which an extravert can cling to what appears “obvious” to him, however the introvert may try to delineate that irregularity which is the law of life. This fear that had so governed my earlier years of philosophical awareness, and even prior to my interest in philosophy in sixth grade, had now shown its source: Extraverted neurosis. I had lived in terror for years of this naive tendency that man has to again and again vilify the exception without any kind of sensible or merciful regard for the outcast and underdog. Oppressive obviousness, the illusion of a coherent world that could be taken to be Absolute, had been the work of innumerable years for me to defy, and this leitmotif of defiance was the leitmotif of my intellectual and personal life during these years.

 

What struck me was that everything that Kresten said was done with the simple underlying intent of denouncing me. He had no interest in intellectual examination or even consideration, so all of his arguments became aimed at an agenda whose goal was the perpetuation of his own neurosis: The inability to see beyond something that was “looking him straight in the face”. Extraverts are by no means the only people to suffer from this, though usually this problem occurs in insecure introverts who subordinate themselves to extraversion. In the absence of a well-integrated unconscious, one will be overwhelmingly tempted by the passions, and among those passions is the temptation towards an illusory promise of Certainty. At one point or another, the promises of our senses no longer suffice, and we see how what had seemed totally stable ground moments ago had turned out to be mere cloud.

 

Kresten is, at heart, motivated by popularity. His entire paradigm aims at context. He would probably be enraged to find that I had posted this to the internet, negligent of the fact that anyone could google for his name, and that people circulate stories about me with his permission amongst our old groups of acquaintences.

 

And I am reminded of Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter. Cedric’s death was the death of a popular man. He was also the apple of Cho’s eye, and Cho would ultimately prove to be more of a temptress to Harry than a Goddess. Yet there was more to his death and the time of his death than meets the casual eye. Cedric died at the hands of Lord Voldemort, or more specifically Wormtail. He died by the hands of the ego in service of the fear of death. It was Harry who bore witness to this. And it was because of the political unpopularity of Harry’s allegation, perpetuated by a tyrannical politician, that Harry was thought mad by the majority of the magical community, including, at one point, his best friend.

 

This story had never been unseeded from my heart. It is no mere coincidence or plot detail that Harry’s persecution began at the moment of Cedric’s death. Every character in Harry Potter is symbolic of an aspect of the individual psyche. When the possibility of popularity or its relevance dies in one’s life, one turns to the dark task of facing not only this tragic fate, looking back, but, looking forward, the looming terror of Voldemort: The Fear of Death. The popularity of the Harry Potter books in the popular culture may make this appear silly, yet it is only because Jo Rowling chose to write the books in a popular fashion; she knew the risks.

 

When one must confront the actual threat that the Fear of Death, resurrected by the sycophantic ego, portends, one must forsake the naivete of the past; it is outside of one’s control not to. One must recognize the absurdity of Cedric’s death, and one must see the absurdity of Cedric’s life. Popularity will not spare one. Popularity only dooms one’s self. Yet, with incredible luck and faith, the will to popularity is all that dies. Harry, because the series is a seven-part epic and not a four-part tragedy, survives the graveyard wherein Cedric is killed. The most important part of us – the true Hogwarts champion, one might say – goes on after the will to be liked and accepted is gone.

 

Dm.A.A.