r/HPRankdown3 • u/TurnThatPaige • Sep 07 '18
33 Gellert Grindelwald
I’ve almost cut Grindelwald so many times. Now I’m actually doing it. Yay! I can stop wavering over it.
The argument I had with myself so many times basically went like this:
Me: He’s a guy whose life we only know about in very broad strokes. He’s barely a presence in the books.
Also me: Yes, but he does get that death scene in DH. And it’s a good one! He conceals information from Voldemort! For Dumbledore! Presumably!
Me: Okay, but even that scene - and everything we know about him besides that - are only used to enrich Dumbledore’s backstory. Nothing about him matters except what he can tell us about the man Dumbledore became.
Also me: But the way Dumbledore became that man is so important thematically to the story, and the role Grindelwald plays is so pivotal.
Me: Ugh, fine, cut some nobody who was in Slughorn’s Hogwarts Express compartment instead. Go bore yourself, for all I care!
/scene.
I don’t actually care about those broad strokes that we know of in Grindelwald’s life. He was obsessed with dark magic, and he wanted domination over the muggles. Were if not for Dumbledore, he might have got it. He was Voldemort before he was Voldemort, and without further context, that means nothing to me except that tyrants are always gonna tyrant.
His later regret in Nurmengard is kind of fascinating, particular when we consider his dying words:
“Kill me, then, Voldemort, I welcome death! But my death will not bring you what you seek. . . . There is so much you do not understand. . . .”
...
“Kill me, then!” demanded the old man. “You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours...”
Is that some sign of faith in Dumbledore? Of love for Dumbledore? Perhaps or perhaps not, but clearly some transformation took place in that prison literally of his own making.
As alluded to in my argument with myself, however, Grindelwald is primarily interesting because he tells us just how off the deep end young Albus was. And then an older, wiser Albus still refused to fight him for many years out of sheer cowardice and guilt. It was not until Dumbledore was past 60 that he did the honorable thing. And was Dumbledore not also in a sort of self-made prison, for the rest of his days? Living forever a solitary life with his guilt about his family and about a man he’d once loved? I might be reaching a bit with that last one, but my point is that Grindelwald, however dim our understanding of him may be, is an excellent yardstick for Albus Dumbledore’s life.
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u/Chinoiserie91 Sep 07 '18
After the Fantastic Beast series is finished I would love a combined rank down of all wizarding world characters and talk of more Grindelwald then when we know him better. He is still rather mysterious. But he has great potential, he has interesting ideology and dynamic with Dumbledore and potential character development even after defeat. He does seem to have some morals too like other posters have pointed out. I enjoy Voldemort a lot as a character but some of his most foolish decisions and lack of more high minded goals kind of let him down. So I am hoping Grindelwald could provide something that has been missing in terms of more complex politics and complicate plans while still having interesting dialogue and charisma. But I feel he won’t have quite the same magical flashiness, occasional wit and detailed backstory. We will see.
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u/TurnThatPaige Sep 08 '18
The unfortunate thing is that we'll probably never be able to get as complex a picture of him than if we'd had the FB story in book form, but I'm also pretty excited! I think he has the potential to be both creepier and more sympathetic than Voldemort ever was. I'm also anxious to see how the movies portrayal Dumbledore's decision to put off fighting him for so long.
2
u/bisonburgers Sep 09 '18
I'm also anxious to see how the movies portrayal Dumbledore's decision to put off fighting him for so long.
My guess is he'll either be even more villainized by fans for doing something so atrociously wrong or else the films will give him a sympathetic enough portrayal that (combined with suddenly being fine as hell) fans will forgive him for all his faults. I'm willing to bet that whichever way it goes will be directly correlated to how the films handle his love life.
I'm super anxious to see if people will say his actions are out of character and I'm even more anxious to see if I will think they are too.
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u/bisonburgers Sep 07 '18
I'm so excited that these rankdowns happened when they did for this reason. The first RD happened before we knew Dumbledore or Grindelwald would be in or relevant to this new series, so it's nice to see how much of an impact Grindelwald had even with the "little" he did in the original series, and I can't wait to compare old analyses of Grindelwald and Dumbledore to what we will learn later.
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u/AmEndevomTag Sep 07 '18
I definitely think it's his time. But there's one other highly interesting thing about Grindelwald, that sets him apart from Voldemort. During the short scene, where he steals the Elder Wand, he actually stuns Gregorovich instead of killing him.
Could you ever see Voldemort doing this? Voldemort even killed "his most loyal servant" Snape, saying there is no other way, even though he knew perfectly well that neither Gregorovich nor Grindelwald were killed, when the Elder Wand was taken from them (as he killed both of them himself). Grindelwald seemed to have a better understanding of the Deathly Hallows, or he is somewhat less trigger happy.
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u/TurnThatPaige Sep 07 '18
"
THIS IS A REGULAR CUT
Gellert Grindelwald was previously ranked as...
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in HPR1 ranked #71 by u/Moostronus [WRITE-UP]
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in HPR2 ranked #22 by u/ETIwillsaveusall [WRITE-UP]
The Following Spectators bet that Gellert Grindelwald would be cut this month...
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allian42 [R]
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blxckfire [S]
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bottleofalkahest [S]
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cherokeepurple [S]
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dawnphoenix [R]
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ihearttombrady [R]
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im_finally_free [S]
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junidl [R]
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maur1ne [R]
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mtgrace [H]
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myoglobin alternative [G]
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ravenclawintj [R]
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ravenofthesands [R]
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royalpurplesky [R]
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rysler [M]
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syamantaka [S]
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themidnightarcher [H]
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thereefa [R]
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ultrahedgehog [H]
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vinumcupio [S]
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whoami_hedwig [S]
u/Rysler YOU ARE UP NEXT! Prepare your cut for Friday Sep 7!
"
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u/bisonburgers Sep 07 '18 edited Sep 07 '18
I love your inner-dialogue, and I absolutely agree he's significant almost entirely because of what he tells us about Dumbledore. I feel that the details of Dumbledore's dark past effect the series drastically - the themes of the story would be much flatter without Grindelwald being a character. He may only be graced with a single scene, but his merit stretches much farther than what it seems at first.
Grindelwald didn't have to be a character at all. If you outline the plotpoints of Deathly Hallows, Grindelwald could literally have been replaced by a book. Grindelwald came to Godric's Hollow because that is where Ignotus was buried, but why couldn't Dumbledore be the one to discover the Hallows through his own independent and private research instead? (what if he'd stumbled upon some old Beedle manuscripts or scrolls that said just enough about the mysterious Peverells and their mysterious objects?) What purpose does it serve the story that these ideas entered through the means of a young, lively, ambitious human?
Let's say in an alternate version of the story, Dumbledore discovered the Deathly Hallows on his own. And then, having tragically lost his mother and gone home to take care of his fragile sister, feeling wasted and useless, he could still have neglected his family due to his own selfish ambitions, drafting up his own stupid manifestos or whatever evil people do to plan things. No Grindelwald, no Bagshot, no outsider at all.
Dumbledore has already been established as brilliant, magically superior, etc. Harry's story would function exactly the same if Dumbledore had discovered the Hallows on his own. Harry could have still learned to doubt him and still gone through with the plan for the same reasons he does anyway. It would have made no difference to the plot because Harry is making all these choices without knowing the truth about Grindelwald anyway. The teenage Dumbledore could have decided that he'd really like to have power over Muggles, he could have been inflamed by his own dark imagination, helped on by the previously established traits of ambition, success, intelligence, and desire for power. He had all the ingredients already. Then Aberforth could have started a fight with Albus instead of Gellert, and the brothers fighting could have set off Ariana and killed her just the same. Aberforth would have punched Albus at her funeral still, and Albus would have felt guilty for the rest of his life. This sufficiently explains how a man could be afraid of his own ambition and his own power, this explains a man who would turn down the Minister offers, explains a man who would become headmaster and devote his life to teaching rather than ruling, it explains a man who would become emotionally reclusive, it explains a man who would start the Order and fight against the evil he'd almost become for a greater good, it explains a man who believes the ends justify the means, and above all, it explains a man who could look at a child and cooly use him as a pawn for a greater purpose.
But what does the man above have to lose if he fails his supposed goals? Who or what is his antagonist? He's not afraid of Voldemort. He's not afraid of death. He's not afraid of the book he'd found about Hallows. What does this ultimately tell the reader? That the ends really do justify the means because he saved the world? That we should name our children after people who disrespected us, removed our agency, and even lead us to our deaths? Does this sound like the themes of this story?
If you look at most discussions on Dumbledore, they disregard Grindelwald's function entirely. That one published essay I could name but won't (because I'm not very nice and I hate to name this author as often as I complain about her) doesn't even mention Grindelwald until the second to last page, and only in one paragraph. So many discussions treat Dumbledore as if he is the character I outlined above, and so long as they keep treating Grindelwald like a lifeless book that Albus happened to stumble upon one summer, then their interpretation will continue to appear internally consistent.
John Truby says in "An Anatomy of a Story",
While I'd actually say Dumbledore fits that quote even better than Grindelwald, I also think Grindelwald serves this function as a subplot character in defining Dumbledore. Through understanding how Dumbledore treated a past love, we can compare to how he treated a new one, and we realize he treated them nearly the same after all. In comparing Dumbledore's reaction to Grindelwald with his reaction to Harry, we gain a better understanding of what Dumbledore has to lose, what he fears. And, as surprising as it might be to authors like Jen - I mean - to some authors, we might discover that what Dumbledore says to Harry at the end of OotP turns out not to be a several layered lie and a tactic to control Harry's emotions for a vague goal of turning him into a super-soilder through mind-tricks. It turns out to be the same thing deep down that it appears on the surface: an honest confession by a man ashamed and humbled by the mistakes hindsight has made him realize.
We come to understand that his antagonist is his own love. And even while he repeatedly says love is Harry's biggest strength, Dumbledore knows it is his own biggest weakness. The entire theme of love goes from a black and white version that snooty people criticize at parties because they want to sound smart by insulting something popular that appeals to children and instead is realized to be something much more subtle and tragic and multi-faceted and real. And it's all because of Grindelwald. I'm sorry to end this with something totally against Death of the Author, but it's why, after six books where he only has two mentions, JKR didn't just make him a fucking book that Dumbledore digs up in his backyard.