The Harry Potter series

In 2017, I first proposed that the Harry Potter novels could be understood as a hidden meditation on suicide. ^{Reference Sinyor5} Suicide is pervasive among those closely tied to the series’ villain Voldemort, particularly in the context of absent or lost love. The pub in the village where Voldemort’s father grew up is called The Hanged Man. ^{Reference Rowling6} Voldemort’s mother dies by suicide following unrequited love. ^{Reference Rowling7} His henchman dies by suicide using his silver hand conjured by Voldemort. ^{Reference Rowling8} The Bloody Barron, ghost of Voldemort’s house, died in a murder-suicide, ^{Reference Rowling8} and head of house Severus Snape expresses a wish to be dead, ^{Reference Rowling8} both in the context of unrequited love (see also The Warlock in The Tales of Beedle the Bard ^{Reference Rowling9} in the Supplementary Material).

Suicide is also a theme for the Harry Potter series protagonists. Arguably, school headmaster Albus Dumbledore dies in a sort of assisted suicide, orchestrating his murder at the hands of Severus Snape. ^{Reference Rowling8} Notably, Voldemort’s actions eventually lead Harry himself to manifest suicidal ideation in book five. ^{Reference Rowling10}

We later discover that, when Voldemort murders Harry’s parents, a piece of his soul is transferred into Harry and he becomes a ‘Horcrux’. ^{Reference Rowling8} Harry is quite literally scarred by the death of his parents and, if we understand Voldemort as a metaphor for the link between trauma and suicide, then the piece of Voldemort in Harry can be thought of as a death wish arising from his character’s foundational trauma. Harry voices suicidal ideation only in book five, in which his mental connection to Voldemort is strongest. ^{Reference Rowling10} The ‘Resurrection Stone’, an object of fascination for Harry, helps its possessor to reunite with dead loved ones; its original owner, Cadmus Peverell, discovers that it does not truly revive the deceased, and ‘driven mad with hopeless longing, [Cadmus] killed himself so as to join [his lost love]’. ^{Reference Rowling8}

Rowling has publicly emphasised the importance of parental love in her life story and personal story of survival. Her mother’s early death from multiple sclerosis had a profound impact and led her to make generous philanthropic contributions to research, and to found a clinic in her mother’s name at the University of Edinburgh. ¹¹ Rowling has described missing her mother and feeling anger that she can no longer share her experiences with her. ^{Reference Rowling12} Notably, Rowling points to love for her own daughter as the impetus for seeking help when she was depressed and experiencing suicidal ideation:

The Harry Potter series embodies Rowling’s thesis that love, in particular parental love, is a path to surviving suicidal crises. At the series climax, like Dumbledore, Harry chooses a sort of altruistic suicide in which he walks into certain death to protect his friends and his school. ^{Reference Rowling8} He uses the Resurrection Stone not to reverse the past, but to bring back the memories of those he loves to be with him and to support him as he dies. He accepts what he cannot change, and the killing curse destroys the part of Voldemort within him. Freed from the death wish arising from his trauma, Harry has a conversation in his own mind with Dumbledore, who presents him with a choice to move ‘on’ or to return to life. ^{Reference Rowling8} Voldemort, who cannot feel love, is destroyed and Harry, who is capable of deep love and human connection, survives. Like Rowling herself, ‘The Boy Who Lived’ chooses life.

The Casual Vacancy

Rowling’s novels for adults include a deeper and more expansive exploration of these and other suicide-related themes. Her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, has three characters who experience suicidal crises. Colin Wall is deputy headteacher of a local high school who is plagued by obsessive–compulsive disorder, characterised by ‘bad thoughts’ that he is a paedophile, fears that he will assault the youth whose education he oversees and has a non-fatal suicide attempt. ^{Reference Rowling13} Here again, Rowling draws on her own life experience as described in an interview about the novel:

Rowling has publicly disclosed that she is also a ‘domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor’, and has said that ‘the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made’. ^{Reference Rowling15} Sukhvinder Jawanda and Krystal Weedon are characters who experience suicidal crises following mistreatment by male characters. Sukhvinder is cyberbullied and publicly humiliated by a fellow student for her racial background and physical appearance. ^{Reference Rowling13} The portrayal of Sukhvinder’s crisis is particularly heartbreaking and among the most realistic of Rowling’s depictions of psychic pain and hopelessness (see Table 1 for evocative quotations from Sukhvinder and others). Rowling includes multiple graphic depictions of the self-harm that Sukhvinder uses as a coping mechanism (‘Some of her self-hatred had oozed out with the blood’). ^{Reference Rowling13}

Table 1 Evocative quotations regarding suicide and self-harm in J.K. Rowling’s novels

Krystal Weedon suffers from poverty, bullying and neglect. She is raped by her mother’s drug dealer and then, at the novel’s climax, is unintentionally responsible for the death of her 3-year-old brother to whom she is more a mother than a sister. ^{Reference Rowling13} Krystal’s character arc explores whether a strong person can overcome social biases and extreme life adversity to persevere and become a valued member of society. Ultimately, Krystal fails to protect the person she loves the most. Her sorrow in the context of bereavement leads her to die by suicide for ‘joining’ with the deceased, ^{Reference Rowling13} the same reason that Harry Potter experiences suicidal ideation.

The Cormoran Strike series

The eight Cormoran Strike mystery novels to date represent the apotheosis of Rowling’s exploration of suicide, and include several dozen characters who die by suicide, experience non-fatal suicidal crises or are wrongly suspected of dying by suicide, with numerous other comments and reflections by various characters about suicide (see Supplementary Material for additional details). The first novel in the series is an investigation into the apparent suicide of a celebrity, and explores ideas including motivations for suicide, common suicide locations and methods and media coverage of suicide. ^{Reference Galbraith16} The mother of the series protagonist, Strike, is described as previously dying in a possible suicide. ^{Reference Galbraith16}

The integrated motivational–volitional model posits that suicide fundamentally arises as a result of feeling trapped following an experience of defeat and humiliation. ^{Reference O’Connor RC, Kirtley17} A key plot point in the second novel is the suicide of first-time novelist Elspeth Fancourt, who ends her life after her book receives poor reviews and following a parody of the novel being released anonymously. ^{Reference Galbraith18} The novel ends with Strike speculating that the story’s villain, who he has just caught, may be planning suicide (‘Off to kill herself, probably’), and she is subsequently placed on suicide watch while in custody. ^{Reference Galbraith18} The notion that those accused or convicted of crimes are defeated, trapped and may attempt or die by suicide recurs in books four, five, seven and eight.

The third Cormoran Strike novel has the smallest amount of suicide content, but does include an important juxtaposition regarding the potential suicides of the series’ two most important female characters. ^{Reference Galbraith19} Charlotte Campbell, Strike’s former fiancée, suffers from depression and an alcohol use disorder and is emotionally dysregulated. Strike recalls that, when they fought, he might find himself needing to ‘restrain her from throwing herself from the high balcony’. ^{Reference Galbraith19} Robin Ellacott is Strike’s business partner, and the woman he secretly loves. Like Charlotte, she has suffered from mental illness. Unlike Charlotte, she engages well with psychotherapy. ^{Reference Galbraith20}

Robin is a sexual assault survivor who suffers a vicious physical attack by the killer in the third book. After Robin fights with her partner Matthew, he texts pleading with her to confirm that she is still alive. In contrast to Charlotte, Robin replies, ‘Oh, don’t flatter yourself. Like I’d kill myself over you’. ^{Reference Galbraith19}

By book four, the number and variety of suicide depictions escalate substantially. Strike is hired by a Member of Parliament, Jasper Chiswell, to investigate blackmail. ^{Reference Galbraith20} Chiswell believes the blackmailer to be the husband of another Member of Parliament ^{Reference Galbraith20} whose daughter previously died by suicide after nude photos of her were circulated without her consent, again repeating the theme of public humiliation precipitating suicide, particularly in women who have experienced sexual victimisation. ^{Reference Galbraith20} Later, Chiswell himself dies in an apparent suicide, although we later learn that he was murdered. ^{Reference Galbraith20}

As the main plot unfolds, we learn that Strike’s ex, Charlotte, who is recently married to another man, is now pregnant; she expresses a lack of maternal love and only a desire to be dead or with Strike. ^{Reference Galbraith20} Later, Strike muses that Charlotte’s choice to leave him for another man ‘had been self-immolation, done purely for spectacular effect, a Charlottian form of sati’. ^{Reference Galbraith20} At the conclusion of the book, Chiswell’s killer attempts suicide when cornered by the police. ^{Reference Galbraith20}

Book five repeats many suicide-related themes already explored, including suicide in women mistreated by men, in criminals and in those suffering public humiliation. ^{Reference Galbraith21} Meanwhile, Charlotte’s suicidal ideation and lack of connection to her children escalate. She texts Strike:

She is admitted to the hospital and attempts suicide in the hospital grounds while on the telephone with Strike. ^{Reference Galbraith21}

Book six contains what is, arguably, Rowling’s most scholarly treatment of suicide. The plot centres on an internet gaming community and an ‘alt-right’ misogynistic group whose agenda is to harass and bully women into suicide online; the prime suspect’s username is ‘Anomie’, after French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s concept of anomic suicide. ^{Reference Galbraith22,Reference Durkheim23}

Most suicide depictions in the Cormoran Strike series focus on death and tragedy. Notably, however, in book six, two minor characters also describe how their drive to participate in life and to find meaning and purpose prevented them from attempting suicide (see Table 1; Kea Niven and Zoe Haigh).

Book seven explores how indoctrination and abuse by a religious cult influence characters to consider and, in some cases, die by suicide. ^{Reference Galbraith24} As in previous books, people involved in its central crime attempt suicide. ^{Reference Galbraith24} Unlike previous books, the person under suspicion who dies by suicide is a mother, Cherie Gittins, who participated in a murder years previously. ^{Reference Galbraith24} After Cherie is interrogated by Strike and Robin, her husband reports that he has found her dead. ^{Reference Galbraith24} Robin feels guilty and distressed that Cherie’s young children have been left without a mother. ^{Reference Galbraith24}

The repeated focus on the importance of not dying and leaving daughters and children behind aligns with Rowling’s public statements about her own life, and that her daughter was the motivating factor for her seeking help:

From the standpoint of suicide-related narratives in the series, arguably the most important event of book seven is that Charlotte dies by suicide (this event is also the major suicide focus of book eight, with more than 20 mentions). ^{Reference Galbraith24,Reference Galbraith26} Charlotte’s suicide occurs in the context of a charge against her for assault, but Strike believes her motivation to be unrequited love for him, a fact that Charlotte confirms in her suicide note. He thinks:

And says:

Processing his bereavement, Strike describes Charlotte as a ‘walking suicide even when I met her’. Of her misery he says:

One could argue that this description could also apply to Voldemort. Harry and Voldemort are both orphans with profound sadness and anger, but the former embraces love and the people around him while the latter does not and, at least in the end, appears incapable of doing so. This duality arguably also exists for Sukhvinder and Krystal in The Casual Vacancy.

In these characters, Rowling also skilfully explores the dialectic of free will and determinism in suicide. Strike and Robin’s friend Ilsa is said to have ‘scathingly categoriz[ed] Charlotte’s various suicide attempts into two categories: those meant to manipulate, and those that were genuine’. ^{Reference Galbraith24} Here we see suicide as both a maladaptive form of communication and a true wish to be dead in the context of a depressive illness and/or substance intoxication. Strike notes that, at her best, Charlotte ‘always regretted the things she’d done when high, or angry’. Strike notes that he once quoted Aeschylus, the famed Greek dramatist, to Charlotte: