Erised=Desire

"Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?"

Harry thought. Then he said slowly, "It shows us what we want ... whatever we want..."

"Yes and no," said Dumbledore quietly. "It shows us nothing more or less than our deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasly, who has always been overshadowed by hs brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

--J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

This then is the only quotable quote so far in my reading of this Harry Potter mania.

Some comments about Rowling's oeuvre: It is decidedly in the tradition of British tradition, and so is as telling of that tradition as it is of a story for the new millennium.

In it you will find the British class system and its built-in obsequiousness to authority, old money, and a coolness to human relations.

I don't know what it is about these types of stories that is so compelling, other than one is put into a game of life in which all the rules are carefully spelled out and blindly followed to their end. It sort of a Kafka-esque wet dream, what, with rules, punishment, taking on of guilt, desire to defend oneself, one upmanship--it is indeed a Hobbesian universe created in the Harry Potter universe--mean, brutish, and short.

Oh, of course Harry is just lucky to be born who he is.

And maybe that is the message after all.


Did anyone see the Lindsay Anderson film O Lucky Man?


Now that is a story!!