Even before John Granger came along and pointed us all to the wonderful Christian imagery in Harry Potter, some folks were picking it up. As I was working through the 1999 interviews at Quick Quotes Quill, I stumbled upon this gem:
Master Potter is an orphan forced to live under the stairs by cruel relatives until he learns on his 11th birthday that he is, in fact, the son of famous wizards, whereupon he is whisked off to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he takes lessons in potions, herb lore and Quidditch, a kind of football played on broomsticks. Oh yes, and he saves the school and the world from the fallen angel Lord Voldemort, a former head boy of Hogwarts, who chooses to turn his magic against the institution. In other words, a ripping yarn of good versus evil that legitimately conjures up the New Testament, only with characters that recall Roald Dahl.
JKR has expressed her deep appreciation for CS Lewis while resisting the frequent comparison to Dahl:
C S Lewis is quite simply a genius and I’m not a genius,” she said. “And while I think Dahl is a master at what he did, I do think my books are more moral than his. He also wrote very overblown comic characters, whereas I think mine are more three-dimensional.
In any event, folks were noticing the Christian imagery even just after the first book was published. Interesting stuff.
Read the entire interview here.
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Pauli
02.14.06 at 6:36 pm
I’m not a huge fan of Roald Dahl and I really like Rowling’s short summation of him. Good fantasy like HP can contain many comic elements but so many of the characters in books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seem to exist for a comic purpose. They have no depth in the historical context of the story, e.g., Oompa-Loompas versus House Elves.