is harry potter good for the world
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Is Harry Potter Good for the World?
Perhaps no other work of fiction in the last century -- and
arguably in all of history -- has captured the hearts and minds
of adults and children alike more than the Harry Potter series
by J.K. Rowling. “The Boy Who Lived” has shaped a generation of
readers and defined the first part of the twenty-first century;
but is this a good thing? The story of Harry Potter has been
ingrained in the imaginations of millions of fans both young and
old, but what is it leaving them with? What message does the
series teach and what effect does it have? Is Harry Potter
actually good for the world?
I firmly believe the answer to this question is yes: the
story of Harry Potter is indeed good for the world. In addition
to the books’ central conflict of good versus evil, the reason
for this lies in the story’s themes regarding the dangers of
prejudice, the importance of our choices, and -- most
importantly -- the defeat of death through sacrificial love.
The Dragon in the Room
Before jumping deeper into the reasons I believe Harry
Potter is good for the world, I should first explain why the
story isn’t bad for the world. To do this I must address a
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misconception regarding one of the central elements of the
series: magic. For many Christians, this issue has been what a
friend of mine has referred to as “the dragon in the room” (due
to the fantasy setting of the stories).
Some Christians stand strongly against the Harry Potter
books because of its use of magic, since the Bible explicitly
condemns the use of witchcraft and sorcery. And while the series
does use those words to define what the young witches and
wizards learn at Hogwarts, the entire issue is grounded in a
misunderstanding of the terms magic and witchcraft.
Before addressing this misunderstanding, there is an issue
with the first book that should be cleared up. When arguing
against the magic of the series, Christians sometimes point to
the title of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone, to make their point. The Bible condemns sorcery, and this
book has it in its title. However, the original title was not
Sorcerer’s Stone, but Philosopher’s Stone. Arthur Levine, the
American publisher, changed it from Philosopher to Sorcerer
because he thought no American children would want to read a
book with the word “philosophy” in it.
The misconception regarding the magic in these stories is
that it is the same as the magic in the real world. But while
biblical real-world magic and the fantasy magic used in Harry
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Potter (as well as many other fantasies) use the same terms,
they are entirely different. Real-world magic centers on
communication with spirits, praying to them and summoning them
to do man’s bidding. This magic is invocational -- literally,
“to call in” -- and this is what Scripture forbids. An example
in the Bible of invocational magic is in 1 Samuel 28, where King
Saul meets with the witch of Endor and asks her to call up the
spirit of Samuel to speak with him. She obeys (and seems
surprised that it worked) and Samuel’s spirit converses with
Saul. The Bible is very clear that this kind of magic is evil.
In contrast, the fantasy magic of Harry Potter is
incantational, meaning in Latin, “to sing along with,” and has
nothing to do with invocational magic. Unlike invocational
magic, incantational magic does not exist -- it is just fantasy.
There is absolutely no invocational magic in Harry Potter .
Not even the villains use it. The magic of these stories is
purely incantational. A clear picture of this is in The
Magician’s Nephew , when the great lion Aslan sings the land of
Narnia into existence.
The magic in these stories is nothing to worry about. In
fact, the argument could be made that it is actually another
positive aspect of the series, as it speaks so strongly against
the materialist creed of our culture, which is that only what is
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material and measurable exists. The idea that there is more to
the world than what can be measured is incompatible at the core
with such a creed.
The Cosmic Battle
Christian children are taught from a very young age that
there is much more going on than what they can see. A great war
is being fought between the forces of good and evil, the
servants of God and the servants of the devil. The best stories,
arguably, are the ones that give us glimpses of this ultimate
battle that otherwise we may not notice but still understand
instinctively.
Does the story of Harry Potter portray this ultimate battle
between good and evil? The answer is yes, and it uses obvious
biblical symbols to do so.
The conflict in the Harry Potter novels largely hinges on
the Gryffindor/Slytherin divide, the two most prominent Houses
at Hogwarts. The Gryffindors are known for their bravery and are
symbolized by a red lion. The Slytherins, on the other hand, are
a bunch of racists whose House symbol is the serpent; they look
down on anyone who isn’t a “pure-blood.” Harry, the hero of the
series, comes from Gryffindor House, as does his mentor
Dumbledore, the great opponent of Voldemort and the only one the
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dark lord ever feared. Voldemort is not only from Slytherin
House, he’s the heir and descendant of Salazar Slytherin, the
House founder.
A lion versus a serpent -- sound familiar? In the Bible
Jesus is called the Lion of Judah, while Satan is portrayed as
the great serpent. Though not without flaws, Dumbledore is the
leader and champion of the Good in this war. Voldemort can
obviously be seen as a stand-in for the devil -- he has
serpentine features, he can speak to and control snakes, and he
is the master of a basilisk, a giant serpent, hidden deep under
Hogwarts.
The image in this story of a battle between the lion and
the serpent and their servants provides an insightful glimpse
into the cosmic battle being waged throughout the centuries in
the spiritual realm. As Perry Glazer of Baylor University
writes, “Children need more than a set of virtues to emulate,
values to choose, rules to obey, or even some higher form of
reasoning to attain. They long to be part of a cosmic struggle
between good and evil. And that’s why children want to read
Harry Potter.”
And not just children -- adults, too.
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Pride and Prejudice
As a writer in a postmodern age, we can expect to see many
of today’s cultural battles being fought in Rowling’s books --
namely the battle with prejudice and racism.
The series is filled to the brim with prejudices, and
Rowling depicts for us just how dangerous and destructive they
are, not only in the form of Voldemort and his conquest, but
also among the good guys, who are not only victims of prejudice
but oppressors as well. But Rowling does more than simply show
us prejudice and its consequences -- she reveals it in
ourselves.
All the lingo concerning tolerance, open-mindedness and the
like can turn Christians completely off to postmodernism’s
concerns, largely because we are the ones often labeled as
“intolerant, narrow-minded, and judgmental.” But if we examine
the issue more deeply, we realize that their concerns, if not
right in most regards, are at least partially valid at the basic
level. We are just over a decade out of the twentieth century, a
time largely defined by prejudice and racism. The Nazis have
become the stereotype of absolute evil and it makes sense that
we should strive to be as unlike them as possible. While this is
obviously not the only reason for the postmodernist’s values
(the predominant belief in relativism plays a large part as
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well), I do think this is one reason for it. As a result,
prejudice in any form is viewed as the ultimate evil.
Harry is surrounded by prejudices in the wizarding world --
and even holds a few himself. The villain Voldemort seeks to
subject the muggles (non-magical people) to slavery, seeing them
as little more than animals. Racism abounds in the wizarding
world, with those of all-magical descent priding themselves on
being “pure-blood” while those with muggle parentage are
disdainfully referred to as “mudbloods.” Those of mixed ancestry
are known as “half-bloods.”
Besides the racism against muggles and witches and wizards
of mixed parentage, the wizarding race as a whole also looks
down on other magical races, viewing them as less intelligent
(even when this is not true). The house-elves are forced to be
slaves for wizards. In Order of the Phoenix , book five of the
series, Harry sees a fountain in the Ministry of Magic called
The Fountain of Magical Brethren, which portrays how wizard kind
sees other races: it depicts a house-elf, a goblin, and a
centaur staring up adoringly at a beautiful witch and wizard.
Harry mentally notes that a goblin and a centaur, at least,
would be very unlikely to gaze at a witch or wizard with such an
expression. The majority of the wizarding world, however,
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believes that they should be adored by the rest of the magical
world.
It’s not just the characters who are prejudiced though. In
every single book Rowling introduces us to characters, and we
naturally draw assumptions about them based on what they look
like and how they dress, talk, and act. Snape is the prime
example, as he looks like a stereotypical villain: hook-nosed,
greasy hair, always dressed in black, and always in a foul mood.
In the first book we, along with Harry and his friends,
naturally assume that he’s the bad guy, the one after the
Philosopher’s Stone hidden in the castle. But Rowling shows at
the end of the book that we are wrong: Snape is innocent. The
real culprit not only appears cowardly on the surface, he
teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class meant to teach
students how to fight against Dark magic. When Harry realizes
this, the professor (named Quirrell) also reveals that he has
allowed Voldemort to share a body with him.
Snape, on the other hand, is not only innocent of the crime
we and Harry suspected him of, he actually did all he could to
protect the Stone from Quirrell and even saved Harry’s life
earlier in the story without him knowing.
Rowling repeats this process in almost every book -- she
makes us think something about someone, and then shows us that
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we have it completely backwards. No one is who they seem to be
in the world of Harry Potter. Surface appearances reveal next to
nothing of what the character is really like, yet we continue to
fall into her trap every time she sets it. We are the prejudiced
ones. We judge people based on their outward appearances and
know nothing of who he or she really is until it’s blatantly
obvious.
In warning her readers of the danger of prejudice, Rowling
not only reveals it in ourselves but also gives us the cure:
love. Prejudice grows from a lack of love. Harry had no love for
Snape -- in fact, he hated him until after Snape’s death. It is
only after this Harry learns that Snape had been in love with
his mother Lily since their childhood, and after her death had
lived his life to protect her son. Snape had sacrificed every
day of his life to keep his love’s son alive and safe, and
continued to do so even when every person alive was convinced he
was a traitor to Dumbledore and loyal to Voldemort. Years later,
Harry names one of his sons after him.
Dumbledore repeatedly pleads with the wizarding community
to put aside their prejudices and to love each other despite
their differences. His advice is tragically ignored by the most
of his listeners, but Rowling holds up love as the solution to
prejudice, an idea that should not be foreign to Christians.
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Jesus said that the world would know we are his disciples by our
love for one another (John 13:35).
Revealed by Our Choices
What is it that makes us who we are? Culture gives us an
answer: our appearance and our abilities. Who we are is defined
by what we look like and what we can do. The better you look and
the more you can contribute to society, the more you’re worth.
As Christians we know that this answer is not the right one
-- physical attributes are not what make us who we are. What,
then, is the alternative?
Harry’s mentor Dumbledore gives us the answer: “It is our
choices, Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our
abilities.”1 Rowling repeatedly shows us in every book that it is
one’s choices that matter, not one’s abilities, looks, or
background. Her characters range from rich and poor, old and
young, slave and free, magical and non-magical, black and white;
and people from every group choose to join together against evil
while many also choose to join evil.
In creating characters from so many walks of life, Rowling
argues against the secular belief that our choices are
determined by our background and thus we are not truly
1 Chamber of Secrets, p. 333.
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responsible for them. Harry and Voldemort, the hero and villain
of the story, both come from very similar backgrounds. Both were
orphan and raised without love, often neglected, and in Harry’s
case possibly abused by his relatives, the Dursleys. If
background circumstances determine who we will become, Harry and
Voldemort should have ended up as very similar people. But this
could not be farther from the truth.
Voldemort, who was raised in an orphanage without ever
being loved, grew into a monstrous person who couldn’t
understand love and therefore hated it. He murdered without any
regard for his victims, using their deaths to create Horcruxes
to protect pieces of his soul so that he could be protected from
physical death, which he feared above all else.
Harry, though sharing much the same beginning as Voldemort,
became his opposite. Though he never felt love from the family
who raised him, he still chose to love, sacrificing himself over
and over again for his friends. According to Dumbledore, love
was Harry’s great power that Voldemort couldn’t understand and
that would enable him to defeat the Dark Lord. And in the end,
when Harry discovered that the only way for Voldemort to be
defeated was for himself to die, he followed through. Out of
sacrificial love for his friends he walked calmly into the arms
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of that which Voldemort feared, and in doing so he was finally
able to vanquish him.
Some might argue that because of the prophecy implicitly
naming Harry as the one who could defeat Voldemort, he really
didn’t have a choice. Though raised in similar circumstances to
Voldemort, Harry was also born with the prophecy hanging over
his shoulders, saying that he would have a “power the Dark Lord
knows not” and that “either must die at the hands of the other
for neither can live while the other survives.” Because of the
prophecy, it seems that Harry really had no choice but to
confront Voldemort -- it had to happen. It was his destiny. His
choices had no relevance in the predetermined outcome.
This is a view that Harry himself held for a while,
believing that he had no choice in the matter. After learning
about the Horcruxes and voicing this belief, Dumbledore explains
to him the difference. Because of Voldemort’s obsession with the
prophecy, he will stop at nothing to kill Harry, the only one
who supposedly has the power to defeat him. As a result, it is
almost certain that one of them will end up having to vanquish
the other, but not because of the prophecy . It is because
Voldemort had chosen to act upon it and had marked Harry “as his
equal” the night he tried to kill him as a baby, unwittingly
pouring his own powers into the infant. Neither of them were
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forced to do anything, but because of Voldemort’s actions, he
made Harry the only person who could defeat him, and so he will
stop at nothing to destroy this threat. Harry’s choice matters,
then, in deciding how to meet this destiny.
He understood at last what Dumbledore had been
trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference
between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to
the death and walking into the arena with your head held
high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was
little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore
knew -- and so do I, thought Harry with a rush of fierce
pride, and so did my parents -- that there was all the
difference in the world.2
Though Harry does indeed have a destiny, it is his choices
that will determine how it will play out, whether it will be
realized in his victory or defeat. One of the reasons I think
Harry’s story is so popular is because deep down people know
that they too have a destiny that their own choices are moving
them toward. We all have a part to play in the Story.
2 Half-Blood Prince, p. 512.
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We live vicariously through the characters we read about,
and as Harry learns how to choose right when faced, as
Dumbledore says, “with a choice between what is right and what
is easy”3 we learn as well. As John Granger writes in his book
How Harry Cast His Spell, “By reading these books and
identifying with the hero’s good choices, readers get a boost
via their imaginations to do the right thing in difficult
circumstances themselves.”4
While we all have an ultimate destiny, it is still our
responsibility to choose what is right over what is easy. Though
another man’s actions have locked Harry into a kill-or-be-killed
relationship, it is his own choice how to confront situation,
and that, he believes, makes all the difference in the world.
Love’s Triumph over Death
As I have already hinted, the Harry Potter stories revolve
around death. They begin with a double murder and death is never
far from sight. Rowling says as much in an interview: “In fact,
death and bereavement and what death means, I would say, is one
of the central themes in all seven books.”5 When Harry visits his
3 Goblet of Fire, p. 724.
4 How Harry Cast His Spell, p. 90.
5Malcolm Jones, “Harry ’s H ot,” Newsweek (July 17, 2000) : 56 and David B. Caruso, “Harry Po tter Case Illu strates Blurry
Line in Copyright Law,” Associated Press (April 19, 2008). Qtd in John Granger, How Harry Cast His Spell , p. 63-64.
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parents’ grave, he finds an inscription on the headstone that
reads, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” This
line is a quotation from 1 Corinthians 15:26, and Rowling says
that it, along with another Bible passage (“Where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also”6 written on the Dumbledore
family tomb) basically sum up the entire series.
Every book develops this theme. Throughout the series
Rowling teaches us not only about the nature of death, but also
that it is not the end, that there are things much worse than
physical death, and that ultimately, death is conquered by
sacrificial love.
In Order of the Phoenix , Harry and his friends travel to
the Ministry of Magic to save his godfather Sirius, who Harry
believes is being tortured by Voldemort. The rescue mission is a
disaster, resulting in Sirius’s death, but while they are in the
Department of Mysteries, Harry and his friends find a room
called the Death Chamber. In the middle of the room is an arch
with a curtain hanging from it, and Harry and Luna are sure that
they can hear voices coming from “the other side” of the
curtain, even though when they walk around the veil to look
there is no one there.
6Matthew 6:21
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After they’ve returned to Hogwarts and Harry is reeling
from his godfather’s death, he meets Luna in one of the
corridors. During their conversation, she tells Harry about her
mother’s death, but then adds that “it’s not as though I’ll
never see Mum again, is it?”
Harry questions this, to which Luna responds,
“Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil,
didn’t you?”
“You mean ...”
“In that room with the archway. They were just
lurking out of sight, that’s all. You heard them.”
They looked at each other. Luna was smiling
slightly. Harry did not know what to say, or to think.
Luna believed so many extraordinary things ... yet he had
been sure that he had heard voices behind the veil
too....7
Harry remains uncertain concerning life after death until
he kneels in front of his parents’ grave nearly two years later
and reads the words written on the stone.
7 Order of the Phoenix, p. 863.
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Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have
only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the
last of them aloud.
“‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’
...” A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind
of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that
there?”
“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the
Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice
gentle. “It means ... you know ... living beyond death.
Living after death.”
But they were not living, thought Harry: They were
gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that
his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and
stone, indifferent, unknowing.8
Harry reads the Bible quotation and dismisses it as “empty
words.” The evidence he’d seen in the Death Chamber of a life
after death is forgotten, and he continues to hold this belief
until he is walking to his own death a few months later. There
in the forest he is at last able to get to the Resurrection
8 Deathly Hallows, p. 328.
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Stone -- a mythical object with the power to bring loved ones
supposedly back from the dead -- hidden inside the Snitch.
And again Harry understood without having to think.
It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was
about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They
were fetching him.9
He uses the Stone and at once he sees his father, mother,
godfather, and favorite teacher, all dead, standing around him
and smiling. They are “neither ghost nor truly flesh.... Less
substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts” and
Harry understands that they were not really gone, at least not
in the way he had believed. Though dead, they were still alive,
and as Harry moves closer to his own death, they feel more real
to him than his still-living friends he left at the castle.
When at last Harry confronts Voldemort and willingly dies,
he “wakes up” in a place that seems to him like King’s Cross
station, where he meets his late mentor Dumbledore, and Harry
learns beyond the shadow of a doubt that death is not the end.
Dumbledore tells Harry that if he so desired, he could “board a
train” from King’s Cross that would take him “on.” Harry instead
9 Deathly Hallows, p. 698.
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chooses to return to the world of the living to defeat Voldemort
once and for all.
Voldemort feared death. His entire identity was wrapped in
his desire to escape death. His name is French for “flight from
death” and he tells his followers (called Death Eaters), “You
know my goal -- to conquer death.”10 He sought to make himself
immortal by creating Horcruxes, objects in which he could
conceal a part of his soul. To do this, he had to tear his soul
apart so as to separate part of it from his body, and the only
way to do this was by murder. Voldemort, by seeking to escape
death, became an instrument of death so that he wouldn’t have to
die. Even if his body was destroyed (which is what happened when
he tried to kill Harry as a baby) he would continue to survive
as a spirit-like being as long as his Horcruxes survived.
The word “Horcrux” means “horrible cross.” Rowling’s point,
I think, is that Voldemort put his trust in these objects to
defeat death, rather than in the Cross that was the real
instrument of death’s defeat. During the duel with Dumbledore in
Order of the Phoenix , Voldemort shouts, “There is nothing worse
than death, Dumbledore!” Dumbledore replies that he is wrong.
10 Goblet of Fire, p. 653.
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“Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much
worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.”11
What is worse than death? Rowling, through Dumbledore,
tells us that what is worse than death is an absence of love:
“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all,
those who live without love.”12 Love has the power to conquer
death, and it is the power that Harry possesses that “the Dark
Lord knows not.”
“There is a room in the Department of Mysteries,”
interrupted Dumbledore, “that is kept locked at all
times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful
and more terrible than death, than human intelligence,
than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most
mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside
there. It is the power held within that room that you
possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at
all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That
power also saved you from possession by Voldemort,
because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of
the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that
11 Order of the Phoenix, p. 814.
12 Deathly Hallows, p. 722.
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you could not close your mind. It was your heart that
saved you.”13
Earlier that night, Voldemort had tried to possess Harry
and felt extreme pain as a result. A similar thing happened four
years earlier, when Quirrell, whom Voldemort was possessing at
the time, tried to kill Harry. Every time his skin made contact
with Harry’s, it would burn. Dumbledore later explained the
reason for this to Harry:
“Your mother died to save you. If there is one
thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He
didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s
for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible
sign ... to have been loved so deeply, even though the
person who loved us is gone, will give us some
protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell,
full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul
with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason.
It was agony to touch a person marked by something so
good.”14
13 Order of the Phoenix, p. 844.
14 Sorcerer’s Stone, p. 299.
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Lily Potter’s sacrificial love for her son provided him
with a protection unlike any other. After her death, Dumbledore
moved Harry to her sister’s home and cast an enchantment so that
as long as Harry could call the place where his mother’s blood
dwelled home, Voldemort would be unable to reach him. Dumbledore
called this the “bond of blood.” He also states, “Her blood
became your refuge.”15
Sixteen years later, when Harry lays down his life
sacrificially at Voldemort’s hands, the same thing occurs:
Harry’s friends are immune to Voldemort’s curses. When he
returns, Harry explains, “I’ve done what my mother did. They’re
protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells
you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t
touch them.”16 In epitomizing sacrificial love, Harry defeats the
man who embodies spiritual death.
Throughout Deathly Hallows, Harry struggles with his faith
in Dumbledore, the man he looked up to and trusted during his
lifetime. At times it seems that Dumbledore has left Harry to
grope in the darkness, never having shown him a clear way.
Rowling has, in fact, said that her struggle with belief is
15 Order of the Phoenix, p. 836.
16 Deathly Hallows, p. 738.
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evident in this book. Despite his doubts, Harry chooses to
follow the path that Dumbledore had laid out for him even though
Harry doesn’t have all the answers. When Harry learns that the
headmaster’s ultimate plan was for Harry to sacrifice himself
and die willingly to destroy the Horcrux inside him, he follows
through and lays down his life.
Dumbledore explains in King’s Cross that in doing this,
Harry has done what Voldemort failed to do: “You are the true
master of death, because the true master does not seek to run
away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands
that there are far, far worse things in the living world than
dying.”17 Harry, through his death, has become its master. He has
defeated it. Voldemort is a piece of cake after that.
Love triumphing over death, refuge in blood, defeating
death through death -- these are all ideas that should be very
familiar to Christians. Throughout the series Rowling weaves
this theme, and in Deathly Hallows, in quoting from the Bible,
she becomes explicit. In discussion about the series Rowling has
even called the Christian content of her books “obvious.”18 The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
17 Deathly Hallows, p. 720-21.
18Granger, The Deathly Hallows Lectures, p. 128, n. 13.
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The Verdict
After exploring these themes in the Harry Potter novels
concerning prejudice, choice, and love’s defeat of death, the
answer to the question, “Is Harry Potter good for the world?”
seems obvious. The twenty-first century began with a worldwide
publishing phenomenon unlike any other in history. These books
are arguably the most popular works of fiction ever written, and
they instruct us on how to overcome prejudice, how to make the
right choice over the easy one, and they show us firsthand how
love vanquishes death.
Though this learning experience happens in our imagination,
it plays out into and affects our real lives, what we believe
and how we interact with one another. That is the magic of
stories, and it is another message Rowling delivers to us. Just
before leaving King’s Cross, Harry asks Dumbledore, “Is this
real? Or has this been happening inside my head?” The headmaster
responds, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry,
but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”19 As John
Granger writes,
The real [magic] of Harry Potter is in our
identification with Harry’s struggle to believe and, via
19 Deathly Hallows, p. 723.
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this suspension of disbelief, our transformation with him
into a hero of sacrificial humility and love who is
cleansed of his interior failings and thereby changes,
even “saves,” the world. It all happens inside the
reader’s head, of course, but the reality of this
experience is so great, so foreign, and so near to our
spiritual beings that, though only imaginative, it has
the power to turn us right side up and orient us to that
Light that shines in the darkness and in whom is our hope
of eternal life.20
Is Harry Potter good for the world? Yes. It is very good.
Arguably no other series of fiction has had this much impact on
the world, and what better way to begin the twenty-first century
than with a series that “smuggles” into our hearts the values
that are distinctly Christian and yet at the same time can speak
to the spiritual needs of people from all different beliefs.
Readers of all different ages, languages, and races are united
in our love for the story of The Boy Who Lived and conquered
death -- a story that resonates with the Story of another who
died, conquered death, and lives still.
20 How Harry Cast His Spell, p. 243.