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Entry tags:	deathly hallows uberwank, discourse analysis

Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 21, The Tale of the Three Brothers
Uuurgh. OK, I think I probably owe an apology for the delay on this one, but! It was not my fault. You see, there are a bunch on paragraphs in it which go into basic semiotics, and I sent them to my dad for beta-ing, given that he is (well, was) an ethnomethodologist and therefore in a position to check my facts and provide critique. But he was too busy, apparently, and I waited and waited and kept thinking, oh, I'll just wait one more day, but no dice, so I'm going to go ahead and just post anyway. Therefore, if you happen to know your semiotics and spot any glaring errors, please direct your comments to:

Dr Dad J Festiva
Department of Something
University of St PE Teacher
Airport Rd
Greymouth
Guuuuh. Honestly, also, I struggled over this chapter for ages and I think it's boring and ranty and not interesting and also I am generally a bit nervous because, frankly, my academic interests and scepticism are showing like woh and I am paranoid that I am going to offend someone with all my ranting and... oh fuck it. Here it is, ignore at your leisure. I'll work extra hard and try and get a few more parts out over Christmas and New Year, and make sure they're actually entertaining, to make up for it. Please be nice.

Ahem.

CHANCELLOR PALPATINE: Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: No.
CHANCELLOR PALPATINE: I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. It's a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life. He had such a knowledge of the Dark Side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER: He could actually save people from death?

- Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

"For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

So! In this chapter, we get some more information on the deathly fucking hallows. They're quite rubbish though.

Xenophilius Lovegood pisses me off almost immediately by going off on one about how Krum, back in chapter 8, was wrong to pwn him for wearing the symbol of the hallows. I ranted about this back then, too, but fuck it. Xeno is a twunt and I will now explain why. The next six paragraphs contain headache-inducing social science, so feel free to skip 'em.

I had to have this conversation with a friend a few weeks back. I can't remember how it came up, but I mentioned flying to Germany during the 2006 World Cup and how Gatwick Airport was full of signs aimed at football hooligans, reminding them that as funny as they might find it, wearing swastikas and throwing the Nazi salute is not cool, and is in fact illegal in Germany, so please deposit any "hilarious" swastika accessories you may be carrying into these bins. My friend was incredulous. "The swastika is illegal in Germany now?" she said. "Even though it's really a Hindu symbol?" It was clear from her tone that she thought this was pretty out of order of the German authorities. We argued that the history attached to the symbol, the meaning it has acquired, the connotations it has, basically trump any meaning it might have outside of Germany.

I would argue that she was engaging in what is sometimes called the etymological fallacy; put simply, this is the (false) assumption that the original or archaic meaning of a word is its "true" one. She was talking about a symbol, not a word, but the principle is arguably the same. To illustrate this, it's necessary for me to provide a very brief summary of some of the basics of semiotics. (There's a lot I've left out, and I've oversimplified a bit in places for the sake of not being too boring, but on the offchance you actually want to read more about it, this is a good starting point.)

So - some background. According to semiotics (e.g. Saussure, Barthes), symbols and signs - which can be literal symbols but also symbolic actions, and we can argue that all actions are symbolic - are to an extent arbitrary. It doesn't matter whether we refer to a dog as a dog, chien, Hund, inu, etc - it still has four legs and barks. "Dog" is just the sound we happen to have assigned to it. However, the dog itself signifies meaning at a secondary level - loyalty, man's best friend, etc. (Consider the symbolism inherent in making Sirius Black a dog and not, say, a snake.) Or, another example - we have a tall tree with acorns, and we call that an "oak tree", which is the first level of meaning, but at the next level the oak itself is symbolic of things like nature, steadfastness, Englishness, the Robin Hood legend, etc. These are called connotations.

With me so far? This is leading somewhere, I promise. The next piece of the puzzle is that meanings aren't fixed, because meanings are constructed in use and through use; between people in multiple interactions, not by a select commitee. (Incidentally, I would argue that this is why the term "mudblood" as used in these books doesn't have much impact, because we've never felt its harshness in a real-world sense.) So, it is through being used in context that connotations become attributed to particular symbols/words/actions; at the most basic level, the swastika is a good example. The only reason we find it so unpleasant is because of its use as a symbol of genocide and fascism. If the Nazis had instead adopted as their symbol, say, the Yin-Yang, or the logo of the Boy Scouts, then it's likely we'd feel disgusted when we saw those things today.

So although in the first instance a symbol is arbitrary, as it is used it becomes tied up with the meanings and contexts associated with it. Given names are another good example of this in action: consider the connotations of a name like "Crispin" versus a name like "Wayne". Both are at the most base level just a jumble of letters that can be pronounced by a speaker of English, but the culture and society and people and practices they are generally associated with (which, of course, also includes the things they are not associated with) gives them a further level of meaning. Consider the difference between "the party was crap, it was full of Jocastas and Tarquins" vs "the party was crap, it was full of Sharons and Kevs". Grammatically the sentences are identical, but they imply vastly different things about the party in question. Another example is the value of a coin, which comes from its use in transactions, not the literal market value of the metal that comprises it.

All this, then, is the background to why Xenophilius Lovegood is a complete fuck. He is arguing that the "true" meaning of the triangular symbol is to convey the meaning, "magical artifacts that may not exist and which most people don't seem to have heard of", and therefore Krum was wrong to call him on wearing it. However, for Krum - and presumably others from Krum's culture - the symbol strongly denotes "attempted takeover of Europe and slaughter/imprisonment of opponents for the greater good". (I know we do later discover that Grindelwald chose the symbol because it was the sign of the deathly hallows, but that's immaterial.) For, the record, I'm not trying to suggest that whether or not something is true comes from the number of people believing it. I'm arguing that there is no "true"; meaning is wholly and solely a product of the use of symbols to express meaning (and it is use that allows meaning to be understood, so these meanings are self-perpetuating, but that's an essay for another time). Therefore, Xenophilius can bang on about the deathly hallows all he wants, but Krum's family were still murdered by Grindelwald. I think I may be rambling a bit here. This all makes sense in my head, but I'm having problems expressing it. My brain hurts. Xenophilius is a tit, OK?

Right, if you've been skipping, this is where you can start reading again.

Xenophilius explains that in order to explain the deathly hallows, it's necessary to begin with a fairytale called The Tale Of The Three Brothers. By an incredible coincidence, it's one of the stories in Hermione's book, left to her by one Albus Dumbledore, erstwhile headteacher of Hogwarts. Well how about that.

Hermione reads the story aloud. It's about various ways of cheating death. To summarise: there are these three brothers and they make out. Sorry, it's a compulsion, you know. Anyway, these three brothers are heading home when they come to a river. They magically build a bridge over it, and Death shows up, and they make out with him. Sorry. Death is pissed off, since they were supposed to die (like in Final Destination); but he grants them a gift each, giving one a stone that brings people back to life, one an unbeatable wand, and one a full kiss on the mouth. Sorry, an invisibility cloak. The first two brothers are both morons, and manage to be claimed by death right away (the first guy by boasting about his amazing wand then passing out only to have his throat cut, the second by using the stone to summon his dead girlfriend, only she's a ghost, which is so depressing he kills himself). The third brother is allegedly more clever, so he spends his entire life hidden under the invisibility cloak, and then when he's old, takes it off and he and Death ride into the sunset, making out all the while.

Harry continually interrupts the story, saying inane things like, "Death's got a cloak!?!" and "They wanted to cross a river?!?!"

The moral of the story seems to be: keep out of trouble and don't do anything that'll draw attention to you because you might die. Or else you might end up being the kind of guy that gets stories told about you. Well, that's going to happen whatever. So, I guess, do your homework, and... brush your teeth, and don't be a dick, I guess.

Once the story is over, Xeno explains that those three things - the wand, the stone, and the cloaking device - are these "deathly hallows" we've spent over half the book waiting to hear from. If you have all of them, you become "master of death", I guess kind of like how if you collect all the Pokemon you are winnar the game, or whatever. I keep trying to unpack it in my head but I'm not really feeling those three things as fitting together in that way, if that makes sense. The cloak only allows you to hide - as far as I can tell it can't literally stop you from dying. The wand, presumably, allows you to beat anyone in a duel, but the whole point of the story is that it puts you in more danger.

I dunno - I just get the impression that anyone interested in collecting and uniting the hallows (whether that's Xeno or Dumbledore or whoever) has utterly missed the point of the story. It says, right there in the tale, that the wand puts you in more danger - the guy gets his throat cut. Is the point that if he'd had the cloak he could have hidden under it and not had his throat cut? Perhaps, but what the fuck kind of life is that? As for the stone, it seems like a bit of a red herring. It's made perfectly clear (by the story initially, but also by Harry's use of it in chapter... what, 34 or something) that all it can do is call up the ghosts of the dead; in the original story this is torture enough to drive the original owner to suicide. What good is that, really?

Hermione is sceptical about this whole Deathly Hallows thing, pointing out that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side etc; Xeno babbles on about how the invisibility cloak in the story is a proper one that stays invisible. In other words, it's Harry's. They don't tell him that, though, and he considers this proof that they've never seen a cloak that badass. And anyway, if someone had a cloak like that they would be indescribably wealthy (presumably because they would steal stuff, like I've been arguing for chapters on end). Which is proof that the hallows... exist? Apparently? Wait, what?

Then Xeno says something that makes me really fucking cross:

'All right,' said Hermione, disconcerted. 'Say the Cloak existed... what about the stone, Mr Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?'

'What of it?'

'Well, how can that be real?'

'Prove that it is not,' said Xenophilius.

AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH. That, Xenophilius, is known as the argument from ignorance, a logical fallacy often thrown around by topaz-touting homeopaths, creationists, conspiracy theorists and other bullshitters. One version of this essentially states that if a given premise has not been disproven, then it is by definition true; of course, this is bollocks (and Hermione agrees with me in her next line, pointing out that she'd have to find and test every pebble in the world in order to prove the nonexistence of the resurrection stone, and that, "you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that's nobody's proved it doesn't exist". I'm proud of Hermione for bringing the rationality, and it makes me like her, but then I remember that back in chapter 6 she was working on the assumption that there is such a thing as a soul, and I headdesk).

Xenophilius, with the Quibbler and all the crap he spouts about the existence of mystical creatures and conspiracies, is a classic pseudosceptic; like a creationist, he claims to be challenging the dominant paradigm, but fails to offer any scientifically sound alternative, merely claiming that the burden of proof lies on anyone who tells him to STFU. You claim something exists and it's your job to prove it; the role of the true sceptic is not to run around after believers who offer no evidence, clearing up their mess. As Hermione quite rightly points out, you can erroneously show that anything is true if you succeed in convincing others that it's up to them to disprove it and not your responsibility to show it exists in the first place.

And I gotta say, it pisses me off more than I can possibly describe that Xenophilius turns out to be right. I really like the fact that Hermione (who JKR has compared to herself in the past) calls Xeno on his crap, and then JKR goes and undoes it all by showing that he was absolutely correct. What's her point? That when some trustafarian cockweed tells you that you can shove a lump of organic quartz under your foreskin instead of taking antimalarials to travel in a malaria zone, you should do it?

Not that it matters anyway, since right after this, Xenophilius claims there is loads of evidence for the existence of the elder wand, since it is passed on through violence and therefore can be traced. Oh, right, so when the evidence actually supports what you're saying then it's OK to rely on it.

Man, the elder wand gives me such a headache. Partly because it's supposed to be an unbeatable wand, and yet clearly all those people were beaten. I can just about let that go, if we assume that every single owner of the wand was an idiot (not hard to believe) and drew enough attention to him or herself that someone else came along and slit their throat. But then there's the whole thing where disarming someone - even by simply wrenching the wand from their hand - counts as beating it. Does this apply to all wands, or just the elder wand? Because if it's all wands, then Expelliarmus is a way more badass spell than it seems. Only it clearly isn't, since most of the characters in these books have been disarmed a bunch of times and their wands still work for them... and that is part of it, I think, because doesn't Harry find the wand he took from Draco easier to use than the one Hermione found and gave him? (Or perhaps that's just H/D subtext, which goes without saying, really.)

Urgh, I keep going off on these tangents. I do apologise. They are no doubt tedious. Sorry about that.

Oddly enough, though, as annoying as Xeno is, I can't fault JKR for him, because they're clearly deliberate. He's presented as a bit of a buffoon and somewhat pitiful with it, so I'm not counting this against JKR. Like I say, though, what's ultimately really irritating is that he is right.

So, right after this, Hermione brings up the name "Peverell" in connection with the hallows, and Xeno practically orgasms right there. Harry wracks his brains, trying to remember where he's heard the name, which was a) a couple of chapters ago, on a grave, and b) during HBP. It's also an area of Plymouth, squished in between Mutley and Mannamead, but that's probably not what Harry's thinking of. Anyway, apparently the three brothers in the story are in fact the three Peverell brothers, one of whom was buried in Godric's Hollow (it's implied it's the guy with the cloak).

At this point, Xeno goes downstairs to make dinner ("plimpy soup" - oh those wacky wizards etc), leaving our intrepid trio alone to discuss the story. Both Ron and Hermione think they've wasted their time hanging out with this lunatic, because it's obviously just a cautionary tale, and not for real. There's a somewhat interesting bit when Hermione says, "It's obvious which [hallow] you'd choose", and simultaneously she picks the cloak, Ron picks the wand and Harry picks the stone. The original story that Hermione read out describes the guy who chose the wand as "combative", the guy with the stone as "arrogant" and the cloak guy as "humble" and "wise" - and those adjectives certainly apply to Ron, Harry and Hermione respectively, although it's not like those are their (only) defining qualities. In any case, Harry seems to choose the stone for a reason other than arrogance (the original guy wanted the stone so that he could humiliate Death, whereas Harry wants it so he can see those he's lost). Still, I rather like this - it's an interesting bit of characterisation, and it doesn't feel too shoehorned.

Meanwhile, as Ron and Hermione make a series of dick jokes concerning some wizards' wands being bigger and stiffer than others', then get into arguing in circles over the cloak, Harry wanders about the house. Heading upstairs, he finds himself in Luna's bedroom (yay character bedroom!). Luna has painted portraits of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville, and intertwined the word "friends" over and over all around them. I know some people found this creepy, and I can understand why, because it is, but I really loved this part and found it very touching. (My heart goes out to Luna. She's like a significantly cooler, more ostracised, and way more badass version of me when I was that age. Plus, she's really cool in general, regardless of me being a socially inept freak at fifteen.) Harry feels a "great rush of affection" for Luna, something I don't recall him ever feeling for Ginny, and srsly I'm not even a Harry/Luna shipper in particular.

However, having checked out Luna's paintings, Harry glances around the rest of the room only to notice that everything seems to be covered in dust and that the bed hasn't been slept in. Heading back downstairs, he calls Xeno out on this bullshit, and it transpires that the death eaters snatched Luna, as a way of getting at Xeno, months ago, and it seems to have worked. In other words, Xenophilius has... well, done this.


Yes - he's pulled a Lando, selling our intrepid trio out in an attempt to get Luna back. I'd've been more emotionally affected if exactly the same thing hadn't happened in an episode of Doctor Who a couple of weeks before this book was released, but that's nobody's fault.

Right on cue, the death eaters arrive to capture Harry. Xeno throws a stunning spell at the trio, which - surprise sur-fucking-prise, hits Chekhov's erumpent horn, which blows up half the house. The death eaters start hitting Xeno with curses as he protests that Harry is upstairs. As he begs for his daughter back, our intrepid trio dig themselves out from under all the rubble that just fell on them. Whut, a pile of rubble kills Fred in a few chapters' time, I dunno how they survive, but apparently they do. Somewhat roundabout form of the law of contractual immortality, maybe. Anyway, Ron puts on the invisibility cloak, Hermione blasts a hole in the floor, the death eaters get a glimpse of her and Harry and then they disapparate in mid-air before the DEs can get to them, escaping relatively unscathed once more, to continue their wacky adventures in next week's episode.

I get Hermione's logic in escaping that way, but I'm wary of her reasoning, because a massive part of it is supposed to be about getting Xeno off the hook, but they have no guarantee that allowing themselves to be seen by the Death Eaters will do that. In fact, it would be out of character for the DEs to let him off on a technicality like that - they'd be more likely to torture the guy anyway just to show him who's boss or because they felt like it. Hell, we've just seen them cursing Xeno rather than check upstairs. I wonder if JKR got to the end of the chapter and had promised herself a big glass of wine once she'd got it done, because she's been putting it off for a while, and she's done a bunch of work and wanted to stop, so she sort of rushed the last bit.

Oh, wait, no. That was me.

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