The Allure of Harry Potter and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: On Self-Execution

Magic. It’s what happens when we utter some words, think in a certain way, and “it” does what we want for us.

As everyone has experienced far too many times, it’s pretty hard to do everything we’d like to do. Social situations are often frought with the necessity of preserving several different rapports simultaneously; if offered the chance to talk to any of these four people individually, I’m sure I could construct a reasonable response to that question. Even when dealing with one person (most prominently, and the focus of the titular poem, the current subject of our more primal desires) it’s pretty tough to really say what you mean to say.

But it isn’t like your inability to immediately correctly deal with that question is a sign of a flaw in your conceptual scheme: You got flummoxed for hormonal and reptilian reasons, among others, totally independent of the validity of how you like to live your life. If only we could walk around as representations of our inner selves that people could see and understand without our having to execute them. A manifestation of our algorithm; our painting; the sculpture of what we can be.

At some level, that’s what the magic is in the Harry Potter books. Hermione is tragically undergifted, so, although she knows the precise methodology behind the execution, there’s an inherent power missing from what comes out. Longbottom’s magic emulates his being too: More times then not, the way he’s trying to represent himself comes out awkwardly and differently from what was intended. Harry, the golden boy, doesn’t necessarily grasp every concept at first coup, but, when he does, the results emanate the strength that can only be given. Because the “inner” is outwardly visible, the representations are capable of interpretive empirical evaluation themselves. The only defense to mistake is faulty effort.

Pondering magic led me, perhaps invariably, to Eliot, and his lamentations in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. One of the most popular poems of the 20th century (and, anecdotally, extremely popular among English majors at my undergraduate institution), Prufrock strums on our heartstrings by putting us in the eyes of a “paralyzed” protagonist. Al cannot do anything because it might be incorrect. It’s hard enough to be cool when you’re worried that the surrounding people might think you’re a stout short of a sixer, but Prufrock’s even worried that, as an awkward fellow, he’ll do things that not even he himself would approve of.

He just wants there to be something he can show: “It is impossible to say just what I mean! / But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen…” He’s done a lot of stuff, has a lot to tell, gathered up a lot of “butt-ends of my days and ways” that people want him to “spit out.” What more does he have to do to get the girl to stop being coy and like him?

He has to do it. Harry is like a Prufrock that gets his nerves in patterns on a screen whenever he casts a spell: Everyone’s always like “Holy shit Harry, you’re the bomb, I can’t believe the inner you was able to do such a thing!”

And thus the modern notion of confidence observed by Eliot and finessed by Rowling: People admire the way you do something because it tells them, well, that the people you’ve done this to before must have liked it well enough to respond in a way that encouraged you to do it again. And that’s generally true: We can all remember a few moments in our life where we got seriously called out for something to the point where it makes you nauseas to think about doing it again for fear of the same severe reprimand.

Instead of that being a flaw in execution, though, it could be an adorable dimple on the observable manifestation of yourself; A missing antler on Harry’s Patronus. Something on you, instead of something about you. How you’re showing yourself is only a part of it, of course, until you try to figure out what the hell is going on with the person next to you.

You should just cast a spell on them.

Second-to-last last day of skool

It's the Wednesday before reading week
and all through the school
not a prof makes any sense;
it's like it's a rule.

But, nonetheless, tis the season for the professorial post-class applause that's been pretty standard since I arrived. Why should you clap for a teacher at the end of a class? Is it a way to bridge the gap between the wide-eyed thoughts that your professor lives in the school of yesteryear and the very real idea of having to confront them in a courtroom in the future? Is it meant to make the prof feel complacent about the students' attitudes and scale back his/her final accordingly? Are we just monkeys that clap when anything ends?

Who knows. But, a warning to unrepentent instructors: Your right to congratulatory applause is, like a tip at a restaurant, dependent on you not being a total d-bag all semester. There are exceptions (my 15 person seminar class didn't clap, because the room wouldn't fit it) but, if you're waiting at the front of the room for questions/applause on the last day, and the room's empty, I'd suggest making your class (1) easier; (2) shorter; (3) easier; and (4) more fun.