I’ve written before about possible sources — or close similarities, at least — between motifs in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World and earlier works by other authors. In one case, I compared horcruxes in the world of Harry Potter with an analogue in Lloyd Alexander. In another, I looked at whether Rowling could have been influenced by Charles Williams in her conception of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. I’m back today with another such similarity.
I’ve been on a horror kick in my reading of late. William Peter Blatty, Stephen King, and Ira Levin so far this year. I’ve been a big fan of horror films for — well, pretty much my whole life — but I’ve actually read very little horror fiction until recently.
In Rosemary’s Baby (1967), I spotted something that reminded me immediately of a similar episode from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999).
Potterphiles will remember this scene near the end of the novel:
“Voldemort,” said Riddle softly, “is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter. . . .”
He pulled Harry’s wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
“You see?” he whispered. […] “I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!” [1]
In Ira Levin’s novel, something similar occurs. Rosemary Woodhouse, nearing the end of her pregnancy, has begun to suspect that something isn’t quite right with her neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet. Her erudite and wary friend, Hutch, had formed the same suspicions far earlier and planned to meet with Rosemary once he had done some research. Before he could, he succumbed to an unexplained coma. Just before he died, he briefly returned to consciousness and asked another friend, Grace Cardiff, who was at his bedside, to give Rosemary a book. With the book came the clue and Hutch’s last words: “the name is an anagram”. The book, All Of Them Witches by J.R. Hanslet, is a pseudobiblium detailing the history of the Dark Arks and witch covens of the last century. (Incidentally, a similar fictive history of witchcraft features in Blatty’s The Exorcist. In that case, it’s A Study of Devil Worship and Related Occult Phenomena, borrowed from the Georgetown University library. This seems to be a common motif in horror.) The fourth chapter describes the witch, Adrian Marcato, born in Glasgow in 1846, and killed by a mob outside the Bramford, the same apartment building Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse were now living in.
She remembered then the other part of Hutch’s message, that the name of the book was an anagram. All Of Them Witches. She tried to juggle the letters in her head, to transpose them into something meaningful, revealing. She couldn’t; there were too many of them to keep track of. She needed a pencil and paper. Or better yet, the Scrabble set.
She got it from the bedroom and, sitting in the bay again, put the unopened board on her knees and picked out from the box beside her the letters to spell All Of Them Witches. […]
With All Of Them Witches laid out on the board, she jumbled the letters and mixed them around, then looked to see what else could be made of them. She found comes with the fall and, after a few minutes of rearranging the flat wood tiles, how is hell fact met. Neither of which seemed to mean anything. Nor was there revelation in who shall meet it, we that chose ill, and if he shall come, all of which weren’t real anagrams anyway, since they used less than the full complement of letters. It was foolishness. How could the title of a book have a hidden anagram message for her and her alone? Hutch had been delirious; hadn’t Grace Cardiff said so? […]
She took up the board and tilted it, spilling the letters back into the box. The book, which lay open on the window seat beyond the box, had turned its pages to the picture of Adrian Marcato and his wife and son. Perhaps Hutch had pressed hard there, holding it open while he underlined “Steven.”
The baby lay quiet in her, not moving.
She put the board on her knees again and took from the box the letters of Steven Marcato. When the name lay spelled before her, she looked at it for a moment and then began transposing the letters. With no false moves and no wasted motion she made them into Roman Castevet.
And then again into Steven Marcato.
And then again into Roman Castevet.
The baby stirred ever so slightly. [2]
The Roman Polanski film adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) depicts this scene almost exactly as it’s written in the novel, and although I’ve seen the film many times, it wasn’t until I read the novel this past week that the similarity to Harry Potter struck me. As a side note, one might almost say that the first time I saw Rosemary’s Baby was in utero. It’s family lore that my father took my mother to see it at the drive-in while she was pregnant with me. This supposedly reflected a lot on his character; what kind of sociopath takes his pregnant wife to see Rosemary’s Baby!? Maybe. But I also like to think it helps explain my life-long love of horror films!
Quite similar episodes, aren’t they? In both cases, the hidden identities of dabblers in the Dark Arks are revealed to the story’s protagonists, and to readers, through anagrams. Off the top of my head, and from my own reading knowledge, I can’t think of any other obvious analogues. Does anyone know of any others?
Now I’m not suggesting Rowling was directly borrowing from, or even knew, Ira Levin’s novel or the Roman Polanski film. Maybe she did — they were very successful — but just as likely, more likely even, she just came up with a similar idea for this dramatic revelation on her own. But it does catch the eye, doesn’t it?
[1] Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Scholastic, 1999, pp. 313–314.
[2] Levin, Ira. Rosemary's Baby. Pegasus Books, 2010 [1967], pp. 174–175.
