Harry Potter and the Goblet of Gethsemane by John Anthony Dunne

John Anthony Dunn Presents: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Gethsemane: Christian Art and Tradition in the Passion of Albus Dumbledore

Harry Potter Academic Conference 2024

Abstract: This paper brings the cave scene from Half-Blood Prince into conversation with the story of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane from the four Gospels of the New Testament. Juxtaposing the two episodes is a fruitful exercise not least because they represent penultimate struggles just before the deaths of prominent figures, but also because of how they do so with imagery related to drinking from a cup. In the case of Dumbledore, he literally consumes liquid from a cup, administered by Harry, which is intended to make him dizzy and disorientated, and most importantly thirsty, so that he consumes the water from the cavernous lake, activating the Inferi. In the case of Jesus, he does not literally consume a cup, but he refers to his imminent death as a kind of drinking from a cup, a cup which he prays that the Father might take away from him. When we put these texts into conversation with each other, and the subsequent traditions about them in the case of Gethsemane, we can see some ways in which to take on new meaning in the light of HBP in terms of the salience of pain, regret, and thirst in the cave scene.