The Soul Purpose

The Soul Purpose

Though J. K. Rowling may not be the great philosopher that Plato once was, she is a woman wise beyond her world. Her illustration of the soul based on her description of horcruxes is comparable with that of Plato’s own view. Though Rowling seems to write as more of a dualist, and Plato as much more a spiritualist, some similar points are made by both about the soul. In both Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, horcruxes play a very important role in the description of soul and mortality. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Tom Riddle coerces Professor Slughorn into sharing information about the workings of Horcruxes. Professor Slughorn explains that existence in the form of a split soul, or horcruxes, would be a very evil and undesirable existence. “Few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.” (497) Lord Voldemort, however, would clearly not prefer death. His main goal is power and therefore sees nothing wrong with abusing his soul in the name of attaining that power.

In Plato’s view, that abuse of the soul is highly detrimental. “If the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!” (Phaeto). For one to find purity and truth, the flow of life and death cannot be interrupted. The act of prolonging life is looked upon as pointless, and fear of death is deemed ridiculous. Fear of death, is, of course, Voldemort’s entire motivation behind creating his horcruxes. He feels the opposite of how J. K. Rowling and Plato view the soul; his soul has little worth, but as long as he is physically present he believes he has the most important type of power.

Voldemort believes what neither Rowling nor Plato does; that his evil separation of the soul with has no consequence. It does, of course, take a toll on him physically and otherwise. In The Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore explains that so many separations of the soul may be the cause for the change in his physical appearance. “Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call ‘usual evil’” (502). Although Voldemort regarded his physical presence on Earth with more importance than the well-being of his soul, the books back up Plato’s theory, that the main importance lies within the soul, and that the body is a mere vessel. “When the soul and the body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve” (Phaeto).

Voldemort’s ideas of separating soul from body greatly contradict Plato’s views on separation of soul and body. Where Voldemort seeks to literally separate his soul into many, many parts, in order to keep just a small, miserable portion of his physical self in existence, Plato views the separation of soul and body as a very wonderful, nondestructive thing. “And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure” (Phaeto).

In The Deathly Hallows, when Harry is “killed” by Voldemort and is at King’s Cross station, a whimpering, weak, repulsive animal, which seems to represent Voldemort’s soul, lies near Harry. Although Harry would like to help, Dumbledore tells him “You cannot help” (707). This image shows that Rowling’s view is that, through evil, even the soul can be destroyed, which is the complete opposite of Plato’s view that while the body can be destroyed, the soul cannot. “The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and changeable” (Phaeto). Though Rowling paints the portrait that human life and the soul are tied together, for Voldemort would have ceased to exist had he not split his soul into many parts, Plato insists that the soul is entirely free and separate of body, and that all life came from souls that existed before, and which will exist again after departing from the body. “We arrive at the interference that the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living; and if this is true, then the souls of the dead must be in some place out of which they come again” (Phaeto).

Rowling and Plato do share a similarity as far as good and evil goes, however. Though Voldemort’s soul does not seem to outlast his life, the “death” of his soul at King’s Cross seems to be a very slow and painful one, in return for the abuse of it. “And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does appear to be awful” (Phaeto). Though Voldemort, along with his soul do die, and it is at last the end for him, which is contrary to Plato’s belief of the immortal soul, neither he or his soul escape his life without some form of punishment for his evil. “If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls” (Phaeto). Voldemort’s soul does wither, but that in no way means he has been relieved of the evil he caused throughout his life.

The soul is a complex idea that deserves much exploring. Both Plato and Rowling do this in their own ways. No one may ever be certain of what the soul is or how long it lasts. No one may ever agree exactly on their ideas of what the soul is and what its existence entails, but ideas do often cross and collide and create new, shared ideas, giving the soul new meaning and all the more reason to be explored.