In listening to Order of the Phoenix recently during car trips, especially in the wake of recently doing a post for reference for Professor Granger, an idea took form. I could jump right in to the details, but I think it more important first to clarify the overall project. Basically, I think that somehow chiasm is not just a basic structuring device involving just instance, meaning just one chiasm in play.
The basic idea is that the structure of the series is an overlay of two chiasms. Excluding the connections between books 1 and 7, or rather taking the role of their chiastic connection in the structure to be primarily bookends or a inclusio, a "frame" of sorts, then what we have is a 2-4-6 chiasm and a 3-4-5 chiasm overlaying each other. It's hard for me to explain the significance of the difference between this and a singular 1-7, 2-6, 3-5, 4 chiasm, but if I am right, the overlaying of two chiasms is a very significant for reading the series as a literary work, for reading its structure beyond a single-chiasm structure.
(Warning: Due to my exposition style, the concrete 3-4-5 chiasm is not revealed until "Show Your Bones" below)
Going 3D: Body
The best analogy I can think of is that, if I am right, it turns the thing into a living body on the model of a skeletal structure with a muscular structure over top of it and operating it, while at the same time needing it [skeleton] in order to be what it itself [muscular structure] is ... muscle really isn't muscle unless it's actually operating a skeletal structure. In the end, I think 3-4-5 is the most skeleton like and 2-4-6 the more muscle/flesh (I just don't want to state it absolutely conclusively in a way that cuts off possibly productive interpretation lines that might start with pondering 2-4-6 as an underlying skeleton).
There are a whole lot of synapses firing here and I don't want to get bogged down (or maybe "bogged up"). But I will note two reasons this line of interpretation interests me. One is the one captured by the jargon people use when they talk about imagery or characters or fill-in-the-blank being three-dimensional versus two-dimensional (more intricate versus more simple). The other reason is that it involves the human body. I have a friend who fought an uphill battle at the art school where he worked on his MFA in drawing, painting, and sculpture to be able to work on "figural" art ... art focused on the human form (versus the modern/abstract vein) ... and to study that kind of art, he had to take actual medical undergrad level anatomy classes to know thoroughly how the human body is composed and works (e.g., what poses it can and cannot assume without extreme pain) ... all of which is to say that I think there is something mystical in the image, the figure, of the body, and that I think that if a piece of literature can be analyzed productively using that form and its elements, it speaks to something deeply human in that piece of literature.
Just to carry the bodily analogy as far as it can be carried without breaking (all analogies break down somewhere, otherwise they would be identities, but it's good to push them and see how much mileage you can get out of them): the 1-7 pairing is the skin. But don't mistake that as cheapening 1-7 ... it's only from the materialist/pragmatist perspective that skin is less important than muscle and bone. In a "reality as relational" understanding of the world, the skin is important because that is what we experience of each other; it is the skin level that makes up the noticeable distinctions of the face, that blushes when we're angry or bashful, that smiles and winks. Obviously it couldn't do the smiling and winking part without muscle and bone beneath, and especially muscle actually taking the initiative of the physical action, but as far as what we actually expreince of each other in our relations, it's the skin that we see.
Flesh, Blood, and Bone
"No matter what you say, blood's important."
- Hagrid, Order of the Phoenix
"We can do you blood, rhetoric, and love, we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you love and blood without the rhetoric; but we can't do you rhetoric and love without the blood ... the blood is compulsory."
-King of the players, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"
I'm putting this sentence in its own paragraph to make sure it is not missed: I like the body analogy because it fits so well with ... you guessed it ... the "flesh, blood, and bone" chapter title in book 4. I could spend way too much time on image analysis here, which I don't want to do, but I'll justify this little bit here by saying it defends against a criticism that could be used of asking "so, if you like it for that so much, why doesn't it include the blood?" If the two chiasms are skeleton and muscles, bone and flesh, then the blood is the narrative movement itself that operates within them.
Continuing on ...
So, now for the two chiasms. I already mentioned the first in my post for Professor Granger's reference, meaning the 2-4-6 structure based on the potions lesson #1 formula "bottle fame, brew glory, and put a stopper in death" (2= Lockhart bottling fame, 4= the tournament brewing glory, 6 = Snape stoppering death). So the 3-4-5 is the one to develop here. If one goes through the linked material on Muggle Matters (linked in Merlin's Chiasm Claims post) , you can see that I did a number of 3-4-5 chiasms, or at least two: Dementors and Cho. But the one I realized on a recent drive out to NYC and back listening to book 5 is, I think, more apt for this kind of "deep structuring" role ... so, as I said, I would have to call it the bones (I just don't want to cut off any productive interpretive paths that might start from considering 2-4-6 as skeleton)
Show Your Bones
(sorry, I'm a Yeah Yeah Yeah's fan)
It's time for me to get around to unveiling the actual 3-4-5 chiasm I am talking about as the skeleton. The theme of this 3-4-5 chiasm is education, and for this deep structuring role, really only one concrete aspect as a skeleton. There could obviously be many correlations between 3 and 5 in education, such as Lupin's effectiveness versus Umbridge's uselessness.
But the one I am thinking of goes deeper and can be the bones of the series because it is the skeletal structure of the Hogwarts seven-year curriculum in the first place.
The real bones chiasm is that, in year 3, the number of classes increases, and then after year 5, they decrease (although, as Ron learns, the intensity of study does not decrease). In the linear progression aspect of chiasm, it is obviously simply the increase aspect, as is natural by definition of "linear" (the line is defined by the one thing of which it is "the line" ... in this case, increase of the "thing" ... in this case rigor in learning). In book 3 they get more courses, and at the end of book 5 they take OWLS. THEN in book 6 they drop some courses. So, in the 3-4-5 chiasm, there is this quantitative increase (as opposed to the qualitative increase that occurs in years 6 and 7 in preparations for NEWTs) that culminates in this grueling experience of OWLs.
So, on the chiastic reading, as is necessary if I am going to remain credible on my whole "book 4 has to be central" chiastic interpretation, what is the book 4 element? This is a difficult one, but I argue that the reason it is so difficult is that book 4 is so important for all chiasms and for both structure and content, which means that it is pretty loaded, making it difficult to pull things apart into separate "distinct" elements of different types like "structure" and "theme." There are definitely educational themes going on in book 4, for instance, as I have written elsewhere (someplace on Muggle Matters), I think Barty Crouch Jr is meant as an incredibly tragic figure precisely by means of his ability as an educator: he did it for the wrong reasons and out of psychological illness, but he was a good teacher, not just technically, but holistically - he had his own motivations for giving Neville the book, but when he realized that consolation was the best way to get Neville to take the book, he was able to pull off consolation well.
But if I had to pick one aspect of education in book 4 that might fit this whole thing of "increase in education," it would be the exposure to the unforgivable curses and the question of how much exposure to the real grit of the evil people must fight is appropriate for student age (although, I would definitely say that the answer is not that proposed by Draco's parroting of Lucius at the beginning of book 4, that Durmstrang is right to teach the actual dark arts, rather than just defense).
In fact, while "too much for kids?" is here mainly my own attempt to fit book 4 into the "increase in education" skeleton, it does actually pop up some in the chiasm itself in that it is what Umbridge uses as her supposed justification for the "teach them nothing" approach, that Lupin and fake-Moody exposed them to age-inappropriate material (she even critiques other teachers on the same grounds). I simply hesitate to put too much weight on classing that so decidedly in the "bone" level because, as I am thinking about it as I write, bones are harder and more material, so a quantitative matter like the number of courses or the rigor and quantity of study for OWLS fits that much better as a purely material detail than does an also qualitative concern like depth ... book 4 is just that book where quality and quantity get so intertwined, as do so many other things because of the density at the center (like water pressure at the bottom of the lake), that it is difficult to pin down anything as simply one thing or another ... it's kind of like sensory overload of multi-valence.
Hearts and Bones
(sorry, I'm also a Paul Simon fan)
(Ive been thinking a lot about the heart recently because a good lifelong friend just underwent open-heart surgery yesterday, and I was trying to do what small little part I can by praying a rosary, and it was the glorious mysteries yesterday, and when I hit the fourth mystery, Our Lady's assumption into heaven, body and soul, the mention of "soul" made it hit me that this was the first time since his mother's womb 45 years ago, that my friend's heart would not be being pumped by his soul, animated by it, made alive by it, "splashing inside his chest" to quote Paul Simon, while it was "offline" and his blood was being artificially circulated ... and then they would reconnect his heart muscle with his soul ... that mystical un"observable" but not un "noticeable" life force ... and it lives again)
Conclusion
If I went further with this (and as a way to sum up what I think has developed out of this in the thinking while writing), it would be called "Potter's Body" and the elements would be as follows (borrowing the last from another post I wrote):
1. Skin/Face = chiastic/ring/inclusio/envelope/bookends pairing of books 1 and 7
2. Flesh/Muscle = 2-4-6 thematic chiasm (bottle fame, brew glory, stopper death)
3. Bones/Skeleton = 3-4-5 structural chiasm (education in Hogwarts''s curricular increase and decrease)
4. Heart = Goblet of Fire
5. Blood = Narrative flow (kairos killing chronos and then resurrecting it)
Epilogue: Where do we go from here.
I would add one more thing here. What I have just been going through on "body" as an image for the structure and the little mention that I made just now of my post on narrative as a "kairotic chronology" ("Story Time") and the fact that I have gone a little beyond that post by saying that karios "kills and then resurrects" chronos all lead to where I would go with all of this material, which is in the direction of the same type of "Incarnational imagination" that I speak of in the other post I just finished on Tolkien's "hole in the ground." When I speak of the body here, I don't appeal to the holistic concept of "embodiment"; I speak of the squishiness of of skin and flesh and blood and the hard strength of bone. My biggest interest would be in the direction of "Incarnational" readings with the capital "I" (and the Resurrectional reading of narrative, possible in a way consonant with Tolkien's concept of "eu-catastrophe"). I have to be careful in doing this because I also have a strong aversion to the "Christian theories of art" I have heard some people whom I have known mention and say it is there big project to develop, which generally have struck me as along the lines of mere in-corp-eration or allegory of all-but, if-not-fully, doctrinal concepts. I honestly mean them no ill-will, but I think their project is seriously misguided by Gnostic misunderstandings of "spirituality" that have plagued Christianity from the beginning and probably always will simply because we live in a fallen world, including the falleness of our minds, and we continually struggle with our misinterpretations (especially ones that so easily yield the type of power-wielding Gnosticism has been known for). And I also honestly don't mean to pick any fights, but those have tended to be expressed and formulated by those of the Reformed Protestant tradition out of which I came before becoming Catholic. So, there you have it for what it's worth: the ramblings of a barmy codger up in the hills (like my namesake, Merlin, who began as the same in the earliest Arthurian materials).
Flotsam and Brettsam
(gag reel/outtakes)
Disclaimer: This is the kitchen sink into which I threw the raw ideas I had at the time when I first said "hey, that's an idea worth pursuing, but I have this journal issue and this book to edit, so all I can do is jot the basic ideas down" ... this really is flotsam and jetsam ... but there is some stuff here I would like to have still dumped somewhere even though I didn't work it in to the main post ... and if anybody is entertained by how a slightly mental brain works ... by all means, have at it. A mentor of mine used to say, when encouraging his classes on how to write, "we write to think," and the above essay represents the rough draft of that "writing to think" ... the below is more like the the primordial waters of chaos before getting to the rough draft.
the amount of class work in books 3 and 5. Increases in 3-5 (taking on new subjects in 3, dropping subjects in 6, so 3 - 5 = years of increased work, especially when factoring in OWLs).
1. Theme is education
2. This is more than regular chiasm. This is some sort of anchor device built on chiasm, and I think it is has to do with the fact that it is centered on education. HP has the main arc of the Voldemort story; that is the central thing. But, as a former teacher, the education theme is very deep and the structure and stage setting onto which it is overlaid is also deeply important to her.
Not to be mistaken, it's not that she is saying something here one way or the other about heavier or lighter work loads. It's that she uses progression in education in general as that structuring layer that is also a deep pervasive theme for her, and she does it through using the 3-5 chiasm connection as an anchor
Possibly also Expelliarmus: Intro in 2, triple on Snape in 3, Graveyard in 4, Zacharias Smith in 5, Draco on DD in 6, finale in 7
If books 1 and 7 are approached more as bookends for theses "structural" purposes, then what you have is a structure that is composed of two chiastic substructures overlaid on each other: 3-4-5 and 2-4-6
Another interesting issue here is the X versus the circle as structure symbols. The X definitely grips for me. That's in no way to diss the circle, because the people who have been discussing it are far more knowledgable in these studies than am I, meaning John Granger and Mar Douglas (MD is the serious big hitter in cultural anthropology who wrote a seminal work on the subject called Thinking in Circles). But I think the X holds ground too, and I more interested in just the question of why one grips so much for somebody like me and the circle/ring for them. In Chestertonian terms, you see a an opposition between the two in various writings (even naming his first novel The Ball and the Cross), and he definitely favors the perpendicular oppositions in the X/cross shape for his ideas of paradox and sees the circle as symbolic of Eastern philosophy closing in on itself etc ... but, when you move onto the plane of fully incarnational thinking (meaning based in THE Incarnation), you kind of have to think that there is going to be something that fully redeems and makes sense of both the ball and the cross, the circle and the X together. And maybe the fact that you can do this much playing around with the contrast is indicative of how rich the work is (or maybe I am eisogeting?)
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