Nothingness Review of Related Studies
anguish of freedom. Katrin Dahlbäck on her take on Harry Potter exposes a combination between existentialism and Freudian psychology.
This thesis is created for Master Degree Project at Stockholm University. It consists of a comprehensive character analysis of the protagonist and antagonist in
the Harry Potter series. The idea of this thesis is to see Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort as individuals that represent the ideology of the writer. The important part
of this study is to see Harry and Voldemort as individuals that trapped in their destiny because of their past life. There are some circumstances where harry expose the
notion of anguish. Dhalback states that: The paralysing anxiety one feels when confronted with death is one of
the basic existential facts that one must accept in order to exist completely. I
n Rowling’s series, this is most clearly symbolised by Dementors: creatures who “suck the happiness out of a place” Rowling,
Prisoner 76 as they cause “a person to relive the worstn memories of their life” Order 33. In order for this portrayal to be effective, Harry’s
reaction to the Dementors is the most powerful one by far. In existential psychology it is claimed that “[a]nxiety shows that we are in the presence
of our supreme dread, anguish
69
.
Dhalback sees Harry’s reaction when he meets the Dementor as the reaction that is affected by his anguish. She uses such condition as the exhibit of her analysis.
Dahlbäck sees Harry Potter and Lord Voldermort as an individual that should be seen through both existentialism and psychology. The highlighted part of this dissertation
is the anxiety of death. She states that “By accepting his inevitable death, Harry has arguably confronted nonbeing and the anxiety that comes with it, and is able to live
69
Katrin Dahlbäck, “The True Master of Death: An Existential Reading of Harry Potter” Doctoral Program in Stockholm University, 2015 18
life more fully than before”
70
. Dahlbäck, furthermore, argues that Harry and Voldemort have undergone very different parental experience. The discussion about
the parental and the experience of Harry and Voldemort during their life is the key to psychological involvement in this study.
Harry and Voldemort’s experiences with parental love are, however, portrayed as drastically different. In contrast to Harry’s
mother, who gave her own life in order for her child to live, Voldemort’s mother “refused to raise her wand even to save her
own life
71
. Dahlbäck sees Voldemort and Harry Potter as individuals who are trapped in
their past. She argues that Harry’s and Voldemort’s childhood is the one that shapes
their character. This thesis shows that the psychological condition of both characters is an important element in identifying their existential attitude. This thesis,
furthermore, exposes an alternative application of existentialism in academic study. A unique analysis that is showed by Dahlbäck is an idea that can become such a great
contribution to any development of existentialism. Psychology will not be the element of this thesis, but the way Dahlbäck sees
characters trough the scope of existential philosophy is valuable to this research. Regarding the character analysis, to see Lord Voldemort as a subject and not merely
as an antagonist character is something useful to my thesis. Besides the character formation that is developed in Dan Brown’s Inferno, my study should see Zobrist
70
K. Dahlbäck, “The True Master of Death: An Existential Reading of Harry Potter”, 22
71
K. Dahlbäck, “The True Master of Death: An Existential Reading of Harry Potter”, 28
merely as the subject of analysis, which possibly leads the research to the path where the action of Bertrand Zobrist is, perhaps, explainable.
It is precipitate to say that Zobrist is not entirely wrong, but the way Katrin Dahlbäck sees Voldemort exposes a subjective scope towards a particular character is
something that should be taken into account. Readers possibly think Zobrist simply as an antagonist character, but the important part about Bertrand Zobrist is not his
action, but his reason for doing so. In the context of analysis, the understanding that was brought by Katrin Dahlbäck is an important element that significantly valuable to
this thesis. People need to see an antagonist character not simply as an antagonist. They also have reasons behind their action. The thesis written by Katrin Dahlbäck is
simply giving the people who analyze certain character the benefit of a doubt. Other work that shows the application of existential philosophy, especially
anguish and anxiety is a study by Mahdipur Alireza. On his work, “The Existential
Idea of Shakespeare’s Hamlet”, he states that the major theme on Hamlet is not incest
and revenge, but hesitation. Alireza argues that the event when hamlet hesitates to take revenge for his father’s death is an existential event. He states that “Hamlet
suffers from perplexity in his self or selves. If nobody in the play or the audience knows what is Hamlet, it is because he himself does not either. He is an existentialist
hero, in search of his true, authentic self, and thus he suffers from the anguish of freed
om”
72
. Alireza sees that hesitation as a picture of a man who is trapped on his own
freedom. As states by Sartre, men are condemned to this world and they need to decide their own fate, Alireza sees Hamlet as a man who tries to explore their own
life and question of his self-existence. Moreover, Alireza states that: “Hamlet’s “problem” is that he lacks any significant obstacle for action.
In fact he suffers from the anxiety of a fairly vast freedom of choice, or, as Kierkegaard describes it, as the “dizziness of freedom”. This anxiety
“represents freedom self awareness; it is the psychological precondition for the individual’s attempt to become autonomous, a possibility that is
seen as both alluring and disturbing”
73
. This work explores existential notion by combining the figuration of the
character and the event in which the character involve. Furthermore, Alireza also describes Hamlet as an existentialist hero because, by the end of the story, Hamlet
does not kill the king because of his father’s ghost, but because of his own desire. He kills the king only when he himself is in a near-death situation. The way he finally
able to get rid of his father’s ghost and do anything by his own will is a notion of existentialism where man’s free will is the highest currency of the life itself
74
.