Reflections on the Mirror of Erised

I have a quick question about the Mirror of Erised. You know, the magical mirror that Harry encounters in The Philosopher's Stone and that Dumbledore uses, later in that same book, to create an extremely clever protection for the Stone itself?

First, I should say that I think the Mirror is an amazing creation that J.K. uses rather brilliantly to give us a peek into the deepest secrets of two of the central young characters in the series. Through the use of the Mirror, Rowling very quickly lets us know that, for Harry, the lack of a real family, a loving family, exists as a hole in the centre of his soul. His greatest wish, we learn through this surprisingly simple technique, is to be a part of a family. This would become a driving force for Harry throughout the books.

Further, Rowling uses the Mirror to help her with the much more difficult challenge of showing us some of the issues that stand at the centre of Ron's psyche. Why is this a "much more difficult challenge" for Rowling? Because she uses a third-person limited narrator to tell her story: her narrator describes what happens in the stories from an objective position (the narrator does not actually take part in the action) but, for the most part, she limits her narrator to being able to see into the mind of one single character. Harry.

We know what Harry is thinking from scene to scene but rarely do we ever get to know what other characters are thinking.

So it is not so difficult for Rowling to help her reader to understand Harry because we are privy to his thoughts and reactions in relation to every incident that occurs. We learn about him by knowing his thoughts and feelings.

It is much more difficult for J.K. to help us understand the other characters whose minds are, for the most part, closed to us. We learn about them only from what they say and do, not from what they think.

The Mirror gives her a unique opportunity to let us into the mind of another character: Ron. When Ron stands in front of the Mirror, he describes what he sees and it is himself earning all kinds of different awards and accolades. This ties in with something he said to Harry earlier in the book: that he arrives at Hogwarts already knowing that he won't live up to the standards and expectations set by his older brothers.

So, from the Mirror, we learn that Ron yearns to stand out on his own, to emerge from the long shadows cast by Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred and George.

As an interesting aside regarding Rowling's narrative technique, note that the reader "sees" what Harry sees in the Mirror (the narrator describes his family to us) while the reader only learns about what Ron sees in the Mirror from what Ron says to Harry about it. It's as if, like Harry, the narrator cannot see what Ron sees in the Mirror.

Okay, that's all a set up for this question about the Mirror:

Does the Mirror show Harry his family as it actually existed or does it show him his family as he imagines it to be?

The narrator tells us that Harry sees a large family, some members having eyes like his and his mother, others having knobbly knees like Harry. It is through these similarities that Harry realises that this is his family he is seeing and, in fact, that these are his parents in the middle of the group.

That suggests to me that the Mirror is not drawing these images from Harry's mind or imagination because, if it were, he would recognise them right away. J.K. would have written something like "Harry saw the family he had always imagined he had".

But, instead, Rowling makes it clear that, for Harry, this is the first moment in his life when he feels a part of a larger, loving family. He does not recognise them at first; the recognition comes slowly as he examines them.

So then we must conclude that the Mirror, after reading Harry's soul and realising that his greatest wish is to know his family, was able to find, somehow, images of his actual ancestors to show him.

A small point, sure, but that's what this blog is about: finding and considering small and large points about the Harry Potter world.

I find it interesting that, in the film version of the first book, the producers/directors choose to include only Harry's parents in the Mirror, to amend Harry's psyche from wishing to be part of a large family (which then ties him even closer to the Weasleys in the books) to wishing to know his parents (which makes it a much more personal thing).

It also makes the argument that the Mirror is only showing Harry that which it draws from his own mind because Harry's memory likely still retained images of his parents from his infancy.