37 responses so far ↓

• 1 Dave the Longwinded // Sep 29, 2007 at 11:07 am

  I’m a little curious about the “union of opposites” that she posits as a “dialectical lie”. How does Harry unify good and evil when he destroyes the very symbol of evil for the whole series? And one of our criticisms here (as fans!) has been grappling with the fact that the union of Slytherin and Gryffindor doesn’t really come to a full, glorious fruition. The two houses don’t unite in a common cause! In fact, ideologies don’t unite in this series, in general. It’s only individuals that ever actually align themselves with each other.

  Hmmph….

• 2 Marianne // Sep 29, 2007 at 11:17 am

  I have partly to agree with Berit Kjos, sorry Travis. JKR spreads a totally false IDEA of Christianity. It´s not a Gospel, almost the contrary.

• 3 revgeorge // Sep 29, 2007 at 3:57 pm

  Kjos is one of those people who, no matter what proof or argumentation you put in front of them, will always put the worst construction on things. She has her presuppositions & that’s all she needs. Reality would just get in the way.

  Which is sad. I used to have respect for Kjos because back in the late ’80’s & early ’90’s, she really nailed some of the stuff going on the educational system. But re: Harry Potter she’s gone off around the bend.

  But there are some people who will not get it because a story isn’t explicitly written as a ‘Christian’ story. They don’t understand literature & its uses. Harry Potter can’t be a type of Christ because the story doesn’t play out in exactly the same way it does in the Gospels.

  Aslan didn’t die in exactly the same way as Jesus in Narnia, so I guess that’s a false gospel, too. Heck, even Isaac in the OT wasn’t almost sacrificed in the exact same way as Jesus so he can’t be a type or foreshadowing of Jesus either!

  People need to lighten up. No true Christian denies that Satan & his demonic hosts exist or that they seek to tempt & destroy the souls of men. And that one shouldn’t dabble in occultic practices. But you can’t find Satan behind every bush either.

  That is, sometimes we attribute way too much power to the devil & his forces. And in doing so, we fail to realize that world we live in, although fallen, was still created good & has many things that can be enjoyed , without having to have an explicit Christian message to them.

  Many of the people who have problems with Potter are also the same ones who will only listen to Christian music, watch Christian tv, read Christian books, go to Christian doctors, etc. They are in a sense almost gnostic in their relation to this world. Which is fine if they want to do that. They should just perhaps be more well informed before they criticize other Christians.

• 4 korg20000bc // Sep 29, 2007 at 4:26 pm

  Marianne,
  An interesting comment there.
  Now, show us your worth by telling us WHY you think that or are you just trying to enflame things?

  Matthew

• 5 reyhan // Sep 29, 2007 at 7:02 pm

  If you “know” that something is evil, and then you’re presented with evidence that it actually seems to embrace good, in fact going so far as to recreate the central theme of your understanding of good, you’ve got two choices. You either say, “Oh, sorry, my mistake, this story isn’t evil”. Or you say: “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

  Cognitive schema - the way our minds organize concepts - are very strong and resistant to change. They scan for supporting evidence and screen out contradictory evidence.

  Which makes me wonder. Some people on this site started out by shunning Harry because they believed the same as what’s-her-name, above. What made you change your minds? What made you realize that the story is about the triumph of good over evil, rather than about the devil masquerading as British school children?

• 6 Sandra Miesel // Sep 29, 2007 at 10:22 pm

  Berit Kjos does indeed consider Aslan a false Christ-figure. She’s just as hostile to Lewis as to Rowling. Check out her site and shake your head in sadness.

• 7 colorless.blue.ideas // Sep 29, 2007 at 10:48 pm

  Dave the Longwinded writes: And one of our criticisms here (as fans!) has been grappling with the fact that the union of Slytherin and Gryffindor doesn’t really come to a full, glorious fruition. The two houses don’t unite in a common cause!

  I may be in the minority, but I found Rowling’s ending concerning Slytherin to be much more appropriate than a sudden change-of-mind by Crabbe, Doyle, and Parkinson, juniors, et al. That would’ve been too slick and too fake for my taste.

  With the Malfoys, one could see the loosening of their loyalty to the Dark Lord, as he continually deals hurt and spite upon them, asking for an inappropriate loyalty to him — he never sought for their love! — above their loyalty to and love for each other. Bellatrix leads the way, but Draco and Lucius are also trending in that direction, especially with the life-debt that Draco owes Harry. “When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them . . . .” declares Albus Dumbledore. [PoA,Am.ed., 427] Thus their rather uncertain gathering in the main hall at Hogwarts after the battle is fitting — and feels quite, quite real.

  Dave the Longwinded continues: In fact, ideologies don’t unite in this series, in general. It’s only individuals that ever actually align themselves with each other.

  Perhaps Rowling intends a valuable point, contra the excesses of postmodernism, that people as individuals matter and are capable of doing things, while collectives usually do not and are not. (I have trouble thinking of the Houses as ideological havens and such, but more along the lines of camaraderie and kinship around shared preeminent virtues. Ideology, on the other hand, seems to me to reflect foundational beliefs or principles, more than a ranking of virtues.)

  I think that Rowling does present a strong ideology in her work, an ideology in which the self-sacrificing love of an individual is foundational. So I think that Dave is correct.

  What Ms. Kjos writes, however, presents her views of things, which are based upon her presuppositions. She has accepted the notion that the Harry Potter series embraces the demonic (occult). For her, that is a given, and a basis for further analysis.

  But she can not avoid noting the heavy Christian themes in the book. How to reconcile the two? What framework fits?

  John Granger HogwartsProfessor.com has strongly shown that “the union of opposites” is a recurrent alchemical theme in the Harry Potter series. (Also see his book Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader.)

  The alchemical union does have certain similarities with Hegelian (Fichtean?) dialectics — perhaps surface similarities only, but similarities just the same. From reading her article, Kjos sees the dialectic philosophy as being part of (or perhaps a cover for) that strand which runs from Hegel to Marxism to today’s ubiquitous postmodern demands. To top it off, Ms. Rowling was a French Literature major, and as such, was likely steeped in the philosophy of French postmodernism.

  From these follow a quick assignment of Harry Potter to the category of dialectics (union of lies> in Kjos’ taxonomy. It does have a certain coherence, but only if one accepts the premise that Harry Potter is something of the demonic occult.

  I think there is some high irony in Ms. Kjos’ criticism, in that Ms. Rowling in Harry Potter specifically rejects that a philosophical dialectic union of opposites is foundational to human life. Instead, she puts forth as the highest good the ideal of an individual choosing self-sacrificial love. She really creates a fairly complete ideology in its own write. Her ideology is neither a dialectic synthesis nor a “for the greater good” collective. I think that she provides a good balance between seeing people solely as part of a collective Identity and seeing people only as autonomous individuals.

  Marianne, you state that the Harry Potter message is not a Gospel, almost the contrary. I agree that it is neither a or the Gospel. (I’m defining ‘Gospel’ as God’s provision for us of salvation from the punishment of sin through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.)

  But, the proclamation of the Gospel is not Harry Potter’s purpose. Whether or not one likes the term, it is to “instruct while delighting”. It does that well.

  It exemplifies the notion of self-sacrificial love; God’s self-sacrificial love for us men is the message of Christianity.
  It demonstrates an answer to the question posed by Francis Schaeffer: How should we then live? in today’s context. Her very human heroes, with all their sinfulness and finitude on display, struggle to do what’s right in the situations in which they are placed.

  The series does not preach the Gospel of salvation. That’s not its job. What it does is to help prepare the soil, so that when the Gospel is proclaimed, the seed may wax strong and grow. She does well, not merely in spite of, but also because of her own participation in our human condition.

• 8 Scott // Sep 29, 2007 at 11:18 pm

  I read another article linked from this one, and she was suggesting that not only was Tolkien evil, but led directly to the “evil” of D&D.
  I had to laugh. She certainly doesn’t have a clue what she is talking about.
  revgeorge, I like your comment about appreciating the good in creation even though it doesn’t have an explicit gospel message. If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon, you have seen the magnificence of God’s creation, even though the gospel message isn’t carved into the rocks of the canyon walls. Isn’t there a Bible verse that talks about people who have never been presented with the Gospel still being accountable for it because it is proclaimed in the glory of God’s creation? I could be misquoting that a bit, but I think it’s along those lines.
  The point is, I believe you can appreciate art without it being explicitly “Christian”. After all, God gave man the ability to create that art.
  With respect to the occult issue, I think it has been proven pretty thoroughly that JKR (and Tolkien, Lewis, etc.) are not portraying a magic that bears any resemblance to real witchcraft. I find it very convenient that she uses a reference that CAN NOT be backed up. The person she cites “must” remain anonymous for safety reasons. That sounds like hogwash and an excuse to say whatever she wants. It’s like the old cliche “Studies have shown…” You are avoiding all accountability for you statements. It’s intellectual dishonesty, in my not so humble opinion.

• 9 Emily // Sep 30, 2007 at 8:51 am

  I don’t agree with the article, but I do agree that the story is basically a Christian allegory. But the notion that Harry is Jesus, quite literally has the “power of the blood” seems almost sacreligious to me. He’s just a teenager, who’s not a saint, and even uses Unforgiveable Curses. Yet at the end, he’s Jesus? Ugh.

  I also felt uncomfortable with the exclusionary type of religion the book seemed to preach. Harry (Christ’s) blood only protects the believers from harm, not the Slytherins. Because Christ didn’t die for the sins of the unworthy, or something? It’s clearly a Christian allegory, but the more I think about it, the more it seems to miss the morality at the heart of Jesus’ story.

• 10 revgeorge // Sep 30, 2007 at 9:23 am

  Dear Emily,

  You are right, Harry is not Jesus. I don’t think many people ever said he was. But he could be considered a type of Jesus, that is an image pointing towards the real Jesus. Just as Isaac, who was not a perfect person, in the Old Testament is not Jesus but a type of Jesus pointing forward to Jesus in the New Testament.

  As for the idea that Harry’s blood sacrifice only protects the believers but not the unbelievers, i.e. Slytherins, well, I didn’t catch that. But if it is there in the book, it does fit in with JKR’s religious background. She belongs to the Church of Scotland which is a Calvinist body. Calvinism teaches a limited atonement, that Jesus did not die for all people, just the elect.

• 11 reyhan // Sep 30, 2007 at 10:05 am

  I don’t quite understand the basis of the premise that “Harry’s blood only protects the believers from harm, not the Slytherins.”

  Harry’s blood (actually Lily’s blood) only has the power to protect one person: Harry. It initially saves him from Voldemort. After Voldemort takes some of it and puts it into himself (via Peter Pettigrew) that blood keeps Harry from dying when he’s AK’d by Voldemort.

  I don’t think there is any indication or implication that it works like Christ’s blood, that it has any actual or symbolic meaning or protective function for anyone else.

  Now Harry, on the other hand, does go out of his way to protect and save people from all the houses of Hogwarts, repeatedly saving Draco (Slytherin), as well as, in the final battle, Neville, Seamus Finnigan (Gryffindor), Hannah Abbott (Hufflepuff), and Moly Weasley. There is no mention of him specifically saving anyone from Ravenclaw, but I’m prepared to give him that one.

  There is no “power of the blood” and whatever protection Harry brings is not exclusionary. In fact, the way Harry endangers his own life to save Draco’s reminds me, very powerfully, of the message of the Sermon on the Plain, in the Gospel of Luke:

  ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.’

• 12 Emily // Sep 30, 2007 at 12:04 pm

  Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I can accept Harry as a Christ-figure, as many characters are in literature. But it seems like JKR goes that extra step & makes him into almost a literal Christ of the Wizarding World. But Harry doesn’t go through the persecution, scapegoating & death that Jesus did; he doesn’t heal the sick & blind as Jesus did. He is a good person, but he is not someone who has ideas about that change the world, as Jesus did. So, to me it seems like JKR lifted the literal elements & symbolism of Christ’s story without keeping the morality at its heart.

  I recognized the symbolism of the “blood protection” right off. Christians believe that Christ’s sacrifice & blood was given in atonement for the sins of man - through his sacrifice, mankind can now find redemption & salvation. Also, all who believe in Christ are “covered by the blood”, meaning that they will be protected from wrath & forgiven for their sins.

  “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace….” (Ephesians 1:7, ESV)

  When Harry sacrificed himself, his sacrifice seemed to create a special “blood protection” that protects all of the Hogwarts fighters from harm. Harry doesn’t feel any pain anymore when LV crucios him; Neville isn’t hurt when LV tries to light the sorting hat on fire, LV’s silencing spell against the Hogwarts fighters doesn’t work. Harry specifically refers to this sacrificial “blood protection” in the final face-off, telling LV “you won’t be killing anyone else tonight… I’ve done what my mother did. They’re protected from you.” However, LV was able to hurt Narcissa after Harry’s sacrifice, because she is not covered by Harry’s magical protection.

  So, Lily’s sacrifice created a “blood protection” that protected Harry from harm. Harry’s sacrifice created a “blood protection” that protects & saves all of his followers from harm. They are now “covered by the blood.”

  If JKR is a Calvinist, well, that explains a lot. The “limited” protection of the blood would be an analogy to the “limited atonement” of Christ, which only protects the Elect from sin & harm. Slytherins like Narcissa are not “covered by the blood”, because they are non-Elect reprobate. It adds to this uneasy feeling I have that the Gryffindors are the Elect, and the Slytherins are the reprobate in this allegory.

  Q&A on what it means to be “covered by the blood of Jesus”. - http://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=48

• 13 reyhan // Sep 30, 2007 at 1:07 pm

  Emily,

  I think that you’re superimposing the “covered by blood” interpretation on what actually happened.

  What actually happens is that just as Harry is about to act to save Neville from auto de fe by flaming Sorting Hat, Gawp and the centaurs come on scene. Harry pulls on the invisiblity cloak, Neville moves and breaks free of the body-bind curse and pulls the Sword out of the Hat (and dispatches Nagini - yay, Neville!). Harry then casts a shield charm between Neville and Voldemort. Still invisible, he keeps casting shield charms and spells:

  ‘Harry was shooting jinxes and curses at any Death Eater he could see, and they crumpled, not knowing what or who had hit them …’

  Harry then shields Finnigan and Abbott, and finally, Molly Weasley.

  When he tells Voldemort that he did what his mother did, by being ready to die to protect “these people” and how none of the spells Voldemort puts on them is binding, he’s talking about two different things. One is his sacrifice, which resulted in the destruction of the Voldemort soul fragment, making Voldemort mortal. That is one way he is protecting “these people”. The other thing is the fact that hidden by the invisibility cloak, he’s been countering Voldemort’s curses.

  His death and return does not, as I read the text, give him any extraordinary power or his friends any extraordinary protection from Voldemort. All it does is make Voldemort mortal.

  If Harry is willing to let Voldemort believe that his friends are now immune to Voldemort’s spells and curses, well, that’s just Harry psyching Voldemort out by pretending that what he did while invisible was actually some super-protection.

  BTW, I recently watched the Princess Bride again, and the similarities (the Holocaust Cloak, the storming of the castle, conning the villain that the heroes are more powerful than they really are, and the triumph of True Love) are striking.

• 14 Emily // Sep 30, 2007 at 2:18 pm

  Maybe you’re right & Harry’s sacrifice didn’t give them any special protection. Maybe I just misinterpreted that part, so I went back & looked at the book:
  Right after Harry comes back to life, LC tries to torture him, but Harry no longer feels any pain.
  “Crucio!”
  “He was lifted into the air, yet the pain he expected did not come.(DH 727)

  LV then tries to cast a Silencing Charm on the Hogwarts fighters, but the charm doesn’t hold:

  “there was an answering cheer from the crowd, whom Voldemort’s Silencing Charms seemed unable to hold.” (DH 731)

  LV casts a Body-Bind Curse on Neville, which Neville breaks free of:

  “In one swift, fluid motion, Neville broke free of the Body-Bind curse upon him…” (733)

  So, it does seem like LV’s spells weren’t working against the Hogwarts fighters anymore. It’s also true that Harry used a Shield Charm at other times to block some of his spells. I guess there’s enough ambiguity that you can look at it either way, but it does seem like LV’s spells failed against Harry, Neville & the entire crowd w/o Harry’s intervention. So I’m inclined to take Harry’s word for it.

• 15 Annie // Sep 30, 2007 at 3:07 pm

  Reyhan–You ask what made some former Harry haters turn? While I was never a Harry hater, I was leary of the books when I first heard about them, becuase of the witchcraft element. But I decided to read the first book before passing judgment. That really was all it took. I am LDS (mormon to most people) There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that teaches how to tell good (people, books,art, etc.) from evil. Basicly, it says that God will never use evil to persuade men to do good and Satan will never use good to persuade men to do evil. Using this measuring stick, I concluded that Harry Potter had to be good, and therefore, of God. I did not see one thing in these books, witchcraft not withstanding, that persuaded men to do evil. The themes of the stories and actions of the characters re-iterate over and over the teaching of Christ.

• 16 Scott // Sep 30, 2007 at 5:10 pm

  reyhan, I’m going to have to disagree on one point. I think it was pretty clear that Harry protected everyone on his side in the same way that his mother protected him with her sacrificial death. I think when Harry was casting shield charms from under the cloak, it was before he entirely realized that those people were protected. You can argue that he was shielding some people from direct attacks, but as Emily said, the silencing and body-bind curses were wearing off almost immediately without Harry’s direct help.
  Emily, regarding Harry’s imperfect represenation of Christ, I think you need to remember one thing. This is still at its heart a fiction story. JKR did not take the story of Jesus from the Bible and “change the names to protect the innocent”. It will never be an exact retelling and I don’t think Rowling intended it to be. That is why I don’t consider this an allegory.
  As far as the protection of the “elect”, the story was only concerned with those people who were in Hogwarts, and all the Slytherins left before the battle and refused to fight. Sure it didn’t protect Bellatrix, but Christ’s redemption does not save everyone either. It CAN save everyone, but only if they accept it. If it saved everyone regardless of whether they accepted it or not, then there would be no need to spread the Gospel since people would be saved regardless. I suspect that the Malfoy’s might have been protected if they had been attacked, but they weren’t. JKR chose not to mention them being protected, so we’ll never know if the protection extended to evil people who repented. I think it did.

• 17 reyhan // Sep 30, 2007 at 7:45 pm

  Emily,

  You’re right in that Voldemort - and the dementors - don’t seem to have any more power over Harry after he returns from King’s Cross. The Crucio doesn’t work, and Harry thinks that the dementors won’t affect him “now”.

  As for Voldemort’s powerlessness over ordinary wizarding folk: it’s not that he can’t affect them (the Silence and the Body-Bind curses work, they’re just more easily broken.) Obviously, Voldemort is no longer as powerful as he previously was. Remember, too, that he was knocked down when the original AK hit Harry - when Harry comes to, Bellatrix is asking Voldemort is he’s ok (speaking “as if to a lover”, which confirms that line of conjecture).

  Does all this mean Harry’s acquired some “blood protection” for the ones he loves after being semi-killed and semi-resurrected?

  I think that if that were true, it would have been more clearly portrayed, seeing as it would have been a miracle of no mean proportions. As it stands, I would agree with you that it is ambiguous. Harry claims it for himself. Is it hype? Or is it true?

• 18 Travis Prinzi // Sep 30, 2007 at 11:02 pm

  Excellent discussion, all (which I have to admit I’ve only skimmed, but what I’ve skimmed has been great).

  One minor point: It would not necessitate Calvninism for Harry’s sacrifice to not be effectual for Narcissa (or other Slytherins), because all branches of Christian theology, Calvinist or Arminian, believe that Christ’s sacrifice is only efficacious for those who actually believe in it. Most Slytherins, allied with Voldemort and against Harry, would not be counted as “believers” in the parallel.

  That said, I do agree that Rowling is not setting out to do a one-to-one parallel of the gospel message. Rather, she’s presented us the theme in the gospel message that sacrificial love conquers death.

• 19 reyhan // Oct 1, 2007 at 9:53 am

  Annie, that is very cool, what you say (what your scriptures say) about the Devil never using good to persuade men to do evil. It reminds me of the riddle of the two brothers:

  A man comes to a cross-roads. One road leads to doom, the other road to safety. Standing there are twin brothers. One always lies. The other always tells the truth. The man can only ask one question to help him decide which road to take. What question does he ask?

• 20 Emily // Oct 1, 2007 at 11:08 am

  Regarding “blood protection”, I now remember what brought this to mind: JKR said in the interview that Harry’s blood contained “hope & love”, and since Voldemort had a drop of Harry’s blood, that gave him the ability to repent.

  Hope & love are literally in Harry’s blood? That’s, to me, going beyond Harry as a Christ-figure, and saying that he is actually Christ - whose blood allowed man to find repentance & salvation.

  And if the Slytherins are the non-believers, that’s saying that the wizards must accept & follow Harry to be “saved”. Harry’s not just sacrificing, he’s a savior & redeemer, whose blood can offer protection & redemption.

  As a Christian, it just makes me a little uncomfortable to transfer that level of Christian symbolism onto a character who is essentially a typical teenage boy, especially after he tortures his enemy. Harry is a good person, but Jesus Christ he is not.

• 21 Shane // Oct 1, 2007 at 11:41 am

  I think Harry, Possibly Narnia, and certainly Lord of the Rings, is not quite allegorical but symbolical. I don’t really see a lot of “well this is that and that is this.” that define allegory. I’m perhaps one of the few mad enough to not accept Narnia as being purely allegory choosing instead symbolism with some allegorical elements in places.

  In my personal opinion, Harry Potter by no means is intended to be allegory. It is meant to be a work of symbolism far more. It is much more Lord of the Rings in it’s interpretation. Neither Gandalf or Aragorn are supposed to be Jesus Christ. But they make excellent symbols of Christ… Especially after Gandalf returns in his case. But it’s not really a debate whether they are actually supposed to be Christ… It’s obviously not so.

  So to, in Harry’s case, I don’t think he is intended to be Christ any more then Gandalf and Aragorn were. But like them, paints a good picture.

• 22 janet // Oct 1, 2007 at 4:01 pm

  Emily–

  The “Crucio” and other spells emanating from Voldemort don’t work at the end of DH because Voldemort is trying to use the Elder Wand against its true owner.

  “That wand still isn’t working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person…” (pg 742)…

  So Harry’s blood and its protective powers (or not) really aren’t relevant, at least not to this issue….

• 23 Emily // Oct 3, 2007 at 9:41 am

  The Elder Wand issue doesn’t effect the spells against Neville & others. And the Crucio spell does work, it’s just that Harry himself doesn’t feel any pain - which seems to go more with the blood protection than the power of a wand Harry wasn’t using.

  I don’t know. I’m resisting the idea that this is a Christian allegory, in spite of JKR’s comments & the many symbols in the text, because I don’t like the message it appears to be sending. If Slytherins are meant to represent “non-Christians” & Slytherins are also mostly evil, ugly, mean, awful people who are allied with Voldemort - is she saying anyone who isn’t Christian is evil & unworthy? I sure hope not.

• 24 reyhan // Oct 3, 2007 at 10:33 am

  Emily,

  I think there is a strong message of reconciliation with the Slytherins. I also think it works both ways. Harry’s repeated rescue of Draco, his statement to his son that it’s ok to be Sorted into Slytherin, the name he chose for his son, all say that Harry is accepting that Slytherins are worthy people, worthy certainly of being “saved”. From the other side, Narcissa “saves” Harry by telling Voldemort that he’s dead - when she can clearly feel his heartbeat - the Malfoys sit with the victors after the battle, uneasily, granted, but they’re still there. And remember that Dumbledore sacrifices himself to save Draco’s soul from the act of murder. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

  I think that this is true quite aside from the blood protection issue, which you have agreed - and I agreed with you - is capable of being interpreted either way.

  I will grant you that the Slytherins are not totally integrated into the post-Voldemort world - Harry and Draco exchange cool nods at the train station. But in most issues (the unnatural redemption of Kreacher being for me the clearest exception), JKR is a realist. You would not expect a total reconciliation where the lion sleeps with the lamb. That doesn’t happen. But they are no longer sworn enemies. It’s hard to be sworn enemies with a man who has saved your life, on Draco’s side; and hard to be sworn enemies with people from the House of a man who lived and died loving your mother, or with a man whose mother lied to Voldemort to save your life, on Harry’s side.

• 25 John Granger // Oct 5, 2007 at 11:29 pm

  Right in one, Reyhan! Or, at least, I think you’re correct in saying that a union of contraries, Slytherins embracing Gryffindors after the battle of Hogwarts and the like, would have been laughably unrealistic, even in a “fantasy” story.

  What we do see, however, in the Epilogue, is Harry telling his son, incredibly a boy with the initials ASP, that it would be okay to be a Slytherin. The boy seems to have born to the task if his name has any weight. In this figure - and in Harry’s saying it would be okay for him to be a Slytherin - I think we see the beginning of the end of the Gryffindor/Slytherin metanarrative at Hogwarts and in the Wizarding World at large.

  Could we expect anything less from a boy named Albus Severus Potter? Imagine a child named Winston Adolph Roosevelt, or, better, Winston Rudolph Roosevelt; talk about expectations of a Pontifex Maximus…

• 26 reyhan // Oct 5, 2007 at 11:59 pm

  Rudolf “prisoner number 7″ Hess, do you mean? Poor Severus, is there to be no end to the indignities heaped upon you, by your defenders and detractors alike?

• 27 John Granger // Oct 7, 2007 at 10:14 pm

  Yes, Rudolph Hess, the man who tried to end the war and bridge the chasm separating England and Germany. In the WAR/ASP analogy, Snape/Hess works as well as Churchill/Dumbledore or Roosevelt/Potter or better, really.

  So much for analogies, I guess. Did you get my point about ASP as the bridge builder closing the Gryffindor/Slytherin divide before I distracted you with thoughts of Spandau?

  Curious John

• 28 reyhan // Oct 7, 2007 at 11:50 pm

  Analogies have always been one of my weak points. I get caught up in them, as you observed, and lose track of the main point.

  Churchill/Dumbledore is good - charismatic, powerful, silver tongued deceivers, the both of them. Roosevelt and Harry? Another charismatic manipulator, and more Machiavellian than Churchill - playing footsies with Uncle Joseph behind Churchill’s back. Not a bit like Harry, though, is he? And Hess, convinced that his leader is insane and fighting a losing war, tries an end run which ends in ignominy and a cell in Spandau.

  Like Snape? Please. Snape, like Harry, is only concerned with personal responsibilities and personal loyalties. The big picture is for others; Snape like Harry, dies doing the right thing.

  I laughed at the initials. Was it deliberate, do you think? Did she know what she was doing, our clever mistress of the puns? But yes, of course, ASP is destined to be the bridge builder, Lily Evans’ grandson who bears the names of both of the men who loved her, Potter of Gryffindor and Snape of Slytherin.

• 29 Emily // Oct 8, 2007 at 12:28 pm

  Albus Severus Potter is not going to be in Slytherin House. Right after Harry tells him it’s OK to be a Slytherin, he tells him how not to be one - just ask the hat to put you somewhere else. Little ASP, terrified of being in Slytherin, will ask the Hat to put him in Gryffindor like the rest of his family & the hat will do so. Why did JKR include Ron making jokes about disowning his daughter if she marries a Malfoy? Why did James Jr. tease ASP about being a Slytherin? Why is becoming a Slytherin ASP’s worst nightmare & big fear?

  I didn’t get much of a sense of reconciliation from that epilogue. Instead, Slytherin still seems to have a bad rep & negative connotations. Not much seemed to have changed, really, since Harry got on the train.

  I was expecting to see more House Unity, but JKR didn’t do that - which is fine. But then it’s hard for me to think that she intended to portray House Unity w/Albus Severus when she didn’t show it happening during the novels or the next 19 years. IMO it just wasn’t a priority for her.

• 30 Eeyore // Oct 8, 2007 at 5:15 pm

  Emily, I think you may be right–the house unity theme was not one of JKR’s priorities. As we all poured over every detail of every book, I think we sometimes put way more importance on those details than did Jo. In some ways I’m bothered by that, in other ways not.

  She has said that she told the story she wanted to tell; some read only the surface story, and many of us found varying levels of underlying meanings, possibly deeper meanings or different ones than the author herself intended. I think the level to which each reader goes says more about the reader than anything else. Anything we do, whether it is reading or in our work or our daily lives, is enriched by our own personal history and our own interests.

  I do think that Jo was making the point, though, that prejudice is harmful and destructive–the whole thing of the warnings from the Sorting Hat about the need for the Houses to unify. When you think about it, there was a partial unity, but not complete–and Hogwarts WAS nearly destroyed because it was not unified. Maybe that was the point she was making rather than giving us a cheery view of all the students standing shoulder to shoulder, best friends at last, for the final show-down with Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

  Prejudice is something that is learned from generations of our own families and communities; it’s hurtful and harmful and prevents progress and understanding. And it takes a very long time to end the prejudices of hundreds of years. To think that it would end in the short time that Harry was at Hogwarts or in the 19 intervening years after Voldemort was defeated is probably an unrealistic hope on our part for a “happily ever after” ending–which wouldn’t have fit at all with the rest of the books or with the overall story. At first I found that kind of sad, but not really disappointing. But now that I think of it more, I find that JKR was writing a very realistic view of human interactions. The encouraging thing was that Harry, who was always so prone in the beginning to see everything as black and white (evil or good), came to understand that the world (as Sirius told him) was not so clearly divided. Choosing the names that Harry did for his son–Albus and Severus–show that there is the start of understanding and acceptance. And that’s what it takes to bring down the barriers of prejudice.

  No, little Albus Severus might not choose to be placed in Slytherin, but then again, he might be the one who has a better understanding and more compassion for those in the other houses. Because of what Harry told his son, even if little ASP chooses Gryffindor over Slytherin, he’ll know that he can tell his dad whatever the Sorting Hat whispers in his ear. The more they talk about it, the less influence those old prejudices will have, and little by little, I like to think that they someday will disappear.

  Pat

• 31 Jeremy Pierce // Oct 9, 2007 at 1:42 pm

  Voldemort’s complaint about the wand wasn’t that it wasn’t working. He had the complaint long before Harry sacrificed himself. It was working fine. It just didn’t feel to him as the Elder Wand should feel if he had really been its master. The special protection didn’t come in until later, after Harry died. When Dumbledore says he thinks the fact that Harry’s sacrifice is voluntary will make all the difference, we get a clear parallel with Lily’s choice (which James Potter didn’t have, since he was going to die period, and Lily chose to die for Harry).

  Now as the limited atonement issue, I think there are two important things to keep in mind, one from the story and one from what the view actually says. In the story, we don’t have a clear indication of who Harry is sacrificing for, but I think the suggestion is that he’s dying to prevent anyone else dying once combat resumes, and that means everyone on both sides is included, except Voldemort, whom Harry intends to kill. It thus includes Bellatrix and the Malfoys as much as the Weasleys. The only textual indication we have on that matter does seem to suggest this.

  As for Bellatrix, I don’t see the problem. Does Voldemort attack her unsuccessfully? I don’t remember that. The protection doesn’t apply to other people trying to harm her any more than Harry’s applies to other people attacking him. It’s only Voldemort who can’t harm people. So unless there’s an unsuccessful attempt for Voldemort to attack Bellatrix, I’m not sure what the evidence is supposed to be that Harry’s protection doesn’t include her. (That doesn’t mean it does, but I did give one textual indication that it might.)

  As for the theological point, I think many here are working with an inaccurate version of the view, one that amounts to hyper-Calvinism if taken to woodenly. Limited atonement historically allows for some sense in which Christ’s death covers every human being, elect or not in that if they were to believe they would be atoned for, but since they do not they are not. Some Calvinists like John Owen will say things that seem to depart from this, but the mainstream of Calvinist thought has insisted on some sense of potentiality alongside God’s sovereignty over these matters, and that allows for the distinction between “potentially for all” and “effective for only some”. Calvinists have been as insistent on that as non-Calvinists, although they might have to say some different things about the details of what that potentiality amounts to.

• 32 Terry // Oct 10, 2007 at 10:01 pm

  Jeremy,

  You’re right in that Voldemort complained about the wand not feeling right just before he killed Snape. He killed Snape precisely for that reason, thinking he had to kill the wizard who killed Dumbledore for the wand to respond to him properly. But as Harry pointed out to him during their final discourse, Voldemort killed the wrong man. It was Draco who defeated Dumbledore. In turn, Harry captured the wand from Draco, which made Harry the true master of the wand. So the wand does play a significant part in the apparent ineffectiveness of Voldemort’s curses. However, one could argue that it was a combination of Harry’s sacrificial protection and the wand’s “knowledge” of its true master that rendered Voldemort’s curses ineffective.

• 33 Jeremy Pierce // Oct 12, 2007 at 8:18 pm

  Terry, I’m not sure you’ve got my view right, because I’m not denying what you seem to think I’m denying. My view is that the wand’s problem of not being used by the right master is why Voldemort wasn’t thinking the wand was doing what it was supposed to be but that something was even less effective about it when Harry sacrificed himself. That’s why he was able to kill Snape, because that protection hadn’t appeared yet. It’s also why he was able to kill Harry (if that’s the right way to describe it). What was completely ineffective was everything he tried to do after that act. I suspect that Harry’s act would have had that effect even without the wand issue. It’s just that the wand issue led Voldemort to attribute it to that without suspecting a further explanation, which helped Harry out a bit.

• 34 Berean Girl // May 28, 2008 at 7:02 pm

  In reference to Annie’s comment that Satan would never using something good to persuade men to do evil you should all check out the following scripture. The Bible is a much better plumb line for whether something is good vs. evil than the opinions of others. A lot is riding on these decisions about where to invest our mind . . . .

  2 Corinthians 11:12-14 (Paul speaking)
  12And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

• 35 Berean Girl // Jun 27, 2008 at 5:24 pm

  Prior to Paul speaking of false apostles he speaks of our need for a “sincere and pure devotion to Christ”. We are warned to beware of anyone who preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus Paul preached, or of receiving a different “spirit” or a different gospel. See below:

  2 Cor 11:2-4 v2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

  As I read the above comments I came to understand for the first time that the False Prophets that Paul speaks about are much more prevalent than I imagined. Paul speaks of purity and it is hard to imagine how the witchcraft theme of Harry Potter books can be justified as fitting in that category. Especially in light of the warning against those who preach a different Jesus even if they are at best only symbolic.

  Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and so that we might be reconciled to God - who loved us enough that he gave His only begotten Son for us. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we are loved and valued by God and that He wants us to be obedient to His ways. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom it might be good to find out what He actually says about witchcraft. In Deuteronomy 18:9-11 we find out it is considered an abomination:
  9 “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.”
  Now, it is wise to follow God’s ways because it is always best for us! When we come out from under God’s protection we open ourselves up to many forces that are not good. I hope that everyone reading this will pray and ask for wisdom from God about what they read and how they spend their time. I wish all of you God’s best - both now and in eternity.

• 36 revgeorge // Jun 27, 2008 at 11:40 pm

  Berean Girl,

  Paul certainly speaks of the things you mention. But you also forget that Paul also speaks of Christian freedom. Freedom not to sin but freedom to enjoy the things of this world that God has given to all of us. By your definition, is Paul then sinning when he quotes pagan poets in his Mar’s Hill address?

  The Christian is not restricted to only ‘purely’ Christian stuff, like so many Christians try to do by segregating themselves from the world & reading only Christian books & listening to only Christian music or going to only Christian stores & eating only a Christian diet, etc, etc.

  The Christian is free to live in the world & to enjoy God’s gifts in the kingdom of this world. Again, not by sinning & also with a view of discerning things & also by not using one’s Christian freedom to harm a weak brother. But there is Christian freedom. Read Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian. It should help you tremendously to understand this.

  As for witchcraft, better people than I have shown that the magic in HP is not the same type of magic or witchcraft condemned, & rightfully so, in the Bible. Magic in Rowling’s world is akin to technology in ours.

• 37 Johnny // Jun 28, 2008 at 1:05 am

  Berean Girl,

  Keep in mind that “witchcraft” and “witch” are loaded terms. There is a great deal of baggage that accumulated with those words over time and to try to explore them here would take much more than a comment. As for your usage of scripture, I would like to remind you that Christians who like to read Harry Potter know the scriptures just as much as those Christians who don’t. That said, I provided two quotes by J.K. Rowling in my above post on her stance on witchcraft. Read them again and then tell me what you think.

  I agree with revgeorge on the freedom of the Christian and that the magic in the series bears no likeness to what is described in scripture.

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