(no subject)
I hope it's OK. I really liked the Warlock's Hairy Heart and I've posted some thoughts and questions.
My favorite part of the Beedle the Bard tales has been the way knowledge of the series have been enriched by details in the stories. The book has answered questions I had about the mind of Animagi and the ability of wizards to Apparatt without a wand. (They apparently can not because the loss of a wand kept Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington from being able to “magic himself out of” imprisonment in a Muggle dungeon and his later partial beheading.) Dumbledore’s comment that wizard children with their inability to control their own magic were often victims of Muggle witch-hunters brought the fate of his own sister Ariana to mind. I thought the Warlock’s Hairy Heart which was the first of the fables to bring in anything expressly called Dark Magic brought up some interesting questions for the series.
1.Dumbledore in his discussion of the story mentions “the quest for invulnerability” as the darkest and strongest temptation of magic and claims that we wizards are “particularly prone to the idea that we can bend the nature of existence to our will.” ( I noticed the use of the we. Dumbledore hints at his own temptations in this area, but still keeps his own past private .) Do you think that is a fair assessment? Did you see signs of that temptation in the books in anyone other than Voldemort? What does that say about the temptations involved in Tranfiguration where the natural existence of an object is changed, or Snape’s promise in book one that in Potions they will “bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death”?
2. The connection between the Warlock with the Hairy Heart and Voldemort are obvious. Voldemort separated parts of his soul from his body and shored them away in hidden dungeons of various kinds. Voldemort openly scoffed at love and obviously didn’t understand or want it. Were there elements in the story that might have helped Dumbledore understand Voldemort better?
3. Are there any other characters with a Hairy Heart in the Harry Potter series?
4. I thought it was ironic that the Warlock’s actions had made him an object of pity rather than envy as he expected, but the scoffers laugh at him because no one loves him not because he loves no one. Could anyone have loved a man without a heart?
5. I liked that the heart had become ugly and hairy locked away in its prison. It had also grown perverse in its life, because it had never been used. What do you think of a hairy heart as a symbol of losing humanity? (Did you think of Voldemort’s red eyes and snake like appearance when you read that?)
6. Did the perverse heart lead him to kill the maid or was that part of the Warlock’s own desires? In the end the brutal perverse heart had mastered the Warlock, and so the Warlock kills the heart rather than be mastered by his heart. Was this a sign of repentance in the Warlock or something else?