Chamber of Secrets: Harry’s Eye-dentity

Today at lunch I was talking with my family about the talks I’ll be giving at Summer School in Forks: A Twilight Symposium (Register today, whether you haven’t already!). The first one will be Bella Swan at Hogwarts: The urgent Influence of the Potter Novels and Potter Mania on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. I’ll be discussing the similarities and differences in how Mrs. Meyer and Rowling use story voice to win reader buy-in and identification, apply Gothic touches for a ‘fallen world’ backdrop, build a school setting, blend genres, foster a ’shipping controversy, push the pervasive notice that choice is the life-defining value, and develop a theme of hidden magic in which supernatural reality is just out of sight.

At lunch, though, what I talked about was eyeballs, considering both these authors hang much of their meaning on their use of eyeballs in an exploration of ‘vision.’ [If you want to read about that as it applies to the meaning of Harry Potter, see chapter 5 of my The Deathly Hallows Lectures, ‘The Seeing Eye.’] My children have heard the Deathly Hallows eyeball lecture ample times that they can verbally reel off the five eyeballs in the series finale without straining and they were curious to invent out about the Twilight eyes. I made an aside to my eight year old, Zossima, about Harry being a story symbol for spiritual vision, hence his ability to see but not be seen under the Invisibility Cloak. The Z-Man responded, “Just like in the Flying Car in Chamber of Secrets.”

All of us said “What do you mean?” considering we didn’t remember a ‘Harry as Eyeballs’ scene

in Chamber of Secrets. But there is one. He ran to the bookshelf, pulled down Chamber, and showed it to me.

Ron pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished — and so did they. Harry could feel the seat vibrating beneath him, take in the engine, feel his hands on his knees and his glasses on his nose; but for all he could see, he had become a pair of eyeballs, floating a few feet above the ground in a dingy street full of parked cars. (Chamber, Chapter 5)

Now, I knew that Deathly Hallows was not the first place Ms. Rowling explored ideas of vision, understanding, and reality via eye imagery. Order of the Phoenix, for example, largely turns on ideas of Occlumency, Legilimency, and eye contact. I haven’t gone through the first six books, though, to run down the more interesting pointers she puts in text to the notion of Harry as divine sight or ‘eye of the heart.’

After Zossima’s find, I guess I should. He has been enlisted in the effort and is now combing the books for every reference to Harry’s and Dumbledore’s eyes.

Can you think of any eyeball occurrences that are perumbrations of the Hallows use? For example, does at least one character in every loner book compose the “you have Lily’s eyes” comment? Hagrid does on meeting him in Stone, Lupin makes the observation in his office in Prisoner, and drunk Slughorn notes the resemblance in Hagrid’s hut in Prince; can you think of the others? Any more floating eyeball references for Harry?