“The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” is a tale of dehumanization because of unwillingness to love, for fear of being hurt. Fear vs. Love the overriding theme of the Harry Potter stories.
I love it when I come across a comment written by someone decades or hundreds of years ago that perfectly describes a newer story I’ve recently read. In this case, C.S. Lewis provides insightful commentary on this dark Beedle tale:
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. (The Four Loves)
This is not the first time Lewis has provided insight into our Potter stories.
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It would almost make you wonder whether or not Rowling has read through The Four Loves. However, I would tend to think she’s just been imbibing from the same fountain of humanity that Lewis drank from so deeply & which makes him such a wonderful critic of modernism and naturalism & thus a good critic still for our post-modern days.
As one of the podcasters I listen to says, post-modernism is just modernism with a twist.
Good observation, I love it when that happens too.
(By the way it should be heart not hear in the first sentence of the quote.)
I thought the same thing – that Rowling may not be that fond of all of Narnia, but she must have spent considerable time reading Lewis’s other books. That’s a really good catch, Travis. It’s almost an exact description of “The Hairy Heart”.
Oh, and Shane Deal, I have to smile at your crow or raven or whatever it is. My daughter and I were sitting in the living room and kept hearing something knocking on the roof. It was two crows up there. It’s amazing how much noise they can make with their tapping.
Pat
If I remember correctly, Rowling actually is a really big fan of Narnia – it’s just The Last Battle she wasn’t too fond of. She said in 1998:
“Even now, if I was in a room with one of the Narnia books I would pick it up like a shot and re-read it.”
Shane, thanks for the correction!
That is so good.
I’m interested in his use of “casket or coffin”. It point towards the death of the one who would do such a thing.