Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings--very spoilery!!!

[dreamflower]

It seems to me that there are an awful lot of parallel characters between Harry Potter and LotR. On of them jumped out at me immediately when I read DH, but there are a lot of others… (cut for spoilers!!!)



HP=LotR

This first one came to me instantly, when I was reading DH:

Neville=Fredegar Bolger (the friend who was left behind to become the leader of the home front resistance)

And this one, fairly obvious, re-occurred to me in a discussion with surgicalsteel

Dumbledore=Gandalf ( a *lot* like Gandalf--there are a great many things Gandalf and Dumbledore have in common!)

So then danachan and I were talking on the phone, and we came up with the following:

Harry= both Frodo (self-sacrificial elements) and Aragorn (leadership) combined (both of them were “Chosen Ones” in their own ways, as well)
Ron=Sam (loyal friend) a fairly obvious choice
Hermione=both Merry and Pippin (Merry for long range planning and knowledge and Pippin for intuitive understanding, both of which Hermione excelled at.) (This was danachan’s thought, and it seemed very appropriate to me.)
Hagrid=Bilbo! ( think about it: the one who comes and rescues the orphan child from an uncomfortable situation, and who loves him very much!) (Also, thought Hagrid could also be Beorn, as well.)
Fred and George=Legolas and Gimli (okay, it’s a bit of a stretch; but I could see Fred and George enjoying the “counting game” at Helm’s Deep! And I could see Legolas and Gimli admiring Fred and George‘s antics in OotP.)
Snape=Boromir (the one who betrays the hero, yet dies a hero himself in the end)
Ginny=Arwen (though Ginny’s a lot more active than Arwen!)
Tonks=Éowyn (Tonks is pretty tough--she’d have made a great shield-maiden)
Trelawney=Ioreth (she spouts a lot of nonsense, but also the truth once in a while!)
Molly Weasley=Rose Cotton (mother figure, and a lot stronger than she appears)
Cornelius Fudge=Denethor (the paranoid politician, afraid that someone is out to get his job! Also, all too willing to use the Enemy‘s methods to defeat the Enemy…)
Remus=Faramir (honorable and wise and misunderstood)

And then after we got off the phone, I thought of these:

Voldemort=Sauron, of course!
Lucius Malfoy=Saruman (though he doesn’t have Saruman’s fate in the end.)
Kreacher=Gollum? (though Kreacher was ultimately redeemed, and Gollum was not.)
Dursleys=Sackville-Baggins (that one’s pretty obvious too, though we never see an Otho as despicable as Vernon.)
Gríma Wormtongue=Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail (that one’s kind of obvious, also)
James and Lily Potter= Drogo and Primula Baggins (also kind of obvious; and if Harry is a combination of Frodo-Aragorn, then I suppose the case could be made they are also Arathorn-Gilraen)

Some we couldn’t figure out:

HP

Sirius
McGonagall (we talked about her possibly being Galadriel, but that’s *really* a stretch, I think, and doesn‘t quite work out)
Luna
Dobby
Draco
Mr. Weasley
Mad-Eye Moody
Cho Chang


LotR

Tom Bombadil and Goldberry
Elrond
Éomer
Théoden
Galadriel
Celeborn
Beregond
Bergil
Gaffer Gamgee
Treebeard




So, really, does anyone think these are valid/invalid or just a long reach? Would you change any of them? Have you thought of any more obvious or less obvious that we missed? None of them are *exact* equivalents, of course--several of them had different fates. Still, it seems that cases could be made for the parallels drawn here.