Hope in Hogwarts: The Myth, Magic, and Christian Ethos of Harry Potter
An Essay
Platform 9 3/4 by Christopher Clark.
The Harry Potter fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling share significant narrative themes with the biblical corpus. Criticisms by Western Christians of the series typically concern the potential negative influence of the books’ occult imagery on the culture and its heirs. Upon closer inspection, the magic of Hogwarts – far from subversive – is a literary means of spiritual enchantment and moral guidance in an age of mere-materialism, relativism, and selfishness.
Bloomsbury Publishing released Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of Rowling's novels, in the United Kingdom in 1997; the book made its 1998 American debut with Scholastic Press as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone – with an initial print run of fifty-thousand copies. Though garnering success and much acclaim, many groups and communities throughout America sought to censor the title as its popularity grew; for example, a teacher’s prayer group submitted a proposal to their employers at a high school in Russel Springs, Kentucky seeking the removal of Rowling's work from the library – concerned that the book's depiction of “ghosts, cults, and witchcraft” would warp the minds of their students. By 2003 the novel ranked second on the American Library Association's list of most challenged works.
Christian author and playwright Richard Abanes presents a quintessential case against Rowling's fantasy by contrasting it with the work of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The pertinent point parents should consider in assessing fantastic imagery, he says, is whether children “can find information in a library or bookstore that will enable them to replicate what they are seeing in the film or the book.” Abanes posits that Harry Potter’s verisimilitude with respect to real world practices of “magik” qualifies it as dangerous, unlike the “story magic and imagination” of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Lewis' Narnia books – which he perceives as “not real.” Attributing growing interest in Wicca among young Westerners to the series, he says that “real Wiccans, real witches, and real occultists are using the popularity of Harry Potter to lure kids toward real world occultism.”
A defining feature of Abanes’ criticism is his reference to the respective religious beliefs of the three aforementioned fantasy world-builders. He writes, “Tolkien and Lewis, of course, were devout Christians. J. K. Rowling does not seem to be…we have no statements from her at all that would indicate that she has made a profession for Christ, that she defines God the same way that Christians define God, or that she views Jesus Christ in the same way. There is nothing.” In point of fact, Harry Potter’s creator is a practicing member of The Church of Scotland. While Abanes does acknowledge the literary value of the series in communicating themes that are “biblically sound…like integrity, honesty, bravery, courage, [and] forgiveness,” he holds that the manner in which this is done, i.e., through representations of sorcery, puts Potter on precarious ground from a Christian perspective.
However, narrow focus on the less-than-pious superficial particulars blinds one to the significance of the story’s deeper narrative pillars of peace, sacrifice, love, and hope; this tendency of Rowling's hyper-conservative critics to fixate on specific literary devices of imagery used to frame profound themes renders them comparable to the Pharisees who “cleanse the outside of the cup and leave the inside untouched, or strain at gnats and end by swallowing camels.” Studied in the classics, Rowling draws from a store of myths that have contributed to the growing Western literary tradition – the foundation of which being the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament. Rowling’s execution of plot development, her use of foil pairing, and the portrayal of certain moral principles conflict with the conclusion of Richard Abanes' critique.
A recognizable Christian concept serves as the foundation of the series' plot: the salvific nature of sacrificial love. Harry's parents, Lily and James Potter, are killed whilst trying to protect their son from Voldemort – whose name derives from the French vol de mort meaning “flight of death.” Dumbledore makes this explicit to Harry, saying “Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, that is love.” An ultimate act of familial affection overcoming death thus establishes Harry as “The Boy Who Lived.” It is later revealed that Potter and Voldemort have been bound by this event such that Harry retains a part of the Dark Lord's essence. Literarily, the linking of the characters in this manner creates their foil-pair relationship; narratively, the connection will prove to be the core of Harry's role as a wizard and the key to Voldemort’s ultimate downfall.
Early foundational plot points of Harry Potter are analogous to the narratives of the Fall and Flood in Genesis. In the Christian cosmogonic myth, God “moved upon the face of the waters” and orders the world out of chaos – water being symbolic of disorder; the familiar story of Noah’s Ark shows the immersion of the world in this chaos, with a dove bringing an olive branch indicative of dry land, i.e., a sign of hope for peace and order. Orphaned and marked by death with the iconic scar, Harry is sent to live amongst the Muggles; he is brought to the home of Petunia and Vernon Dursley, the former being his only blood relative. Over the next decade, the young Potter suffers the chaos of an unloving reality in experiencing the abuses of the Dursley family. A week before his eleventh birthday Harry receives a sign of hope: an acceptance letter from Hogwarts – a place of enchantment, order, and peace.
The magic Harry participates in throughout the series after his arrival at the “School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” is shown to be a force with which the witch or wizard engages so as to effect change – for good or ill. Criticisms of the series often omit reference to a crucial point in the ethos of Potter’s world: Not all forms of magic are permitted. “The Ministry of Magic” enforces prohibitions against improper conduct; this institution of authority is infiltrated by Voldemort's underlings to undermine Potter's plot to defeat the Dark Lord. In the event Harry and other protagonists act in defiance of the rules they do so to adhere to a higher principle: loving sacrifice for the sake of the other. When Harry's cousin Dudley Dursley is attacked by a dementor, a life-draining creature that serves Voldemort, Potter uses a spell to protect him – the use of magic by a student of his year beyond the walls of Hogwarts is strictly forbidden. Thus, a clear moral message in concordance with Christian thinking is conveyed: the spirit of the law takes precedence over the letter thereof.
Nowhere in Rowling's series does the triumph of loving sacrifice over death become more potent than in the final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry discovers that he harbors a part of Voldemort’s vitality, along with several objects called “Horcruxes,” and must die to facilitate the Dark Lord's demise. Potter willingly confronts Voldemort and is struck with the Killing Curse spell. However, Harry has since gained ownership of the “Deathly Hallows,” the Invisibility Cloak, the Elder Wand, and the Resurrection Stone – which make their possessor immune to death. There is an important contrast made between these magical items and the MacGuffin narrative device of the first novel: The Hallows conquer death, the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone only forestalls it. In Rowling’s first book, Dumbledore offers Harry reassurance that the ultimate destruction of the stone of earthly life was proper and necessary; he says, “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure…the [Sorcerer’s] Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most humans would choose above all – the trouble is, humans have a knack for choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.”
Following his sacrifice, Potter enters an ethereal vision of King's Cross station, where he first departed the Muggle world for Hogwarts, and encounters a vision of Dumbledore. The schoolmaster's spirit tells his pupil that Voldemort “did not recognize the Resurrection Stone he turned into a Horcrux.” Explaining this blindness, Dumbledore says “whom would [Voldemort] want to bring back from the dead? He fears the dead. He does not love.” Following the startling revelation to onlookers that he survived, Harry enters into his last battle with Voldemort – a final duel with death. As they war, Harry says to his foil-pair counterpart “I know things you don't know…I know lots of important things that you don't.” “Is it love again?” Voldemort retorts, “Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love.”
Love being the proper animating spirit of Hogwarts is also seen in Dumbledore's description of an object that plays a key role in kindling Harry's development as a wizard: the magic mirror of “Erised” – desire reversed. The wise wizard tells his student, “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.” Potter peers into the looking glass and sees the parents who knew and loved him, whom he never fully knew. Dumbledore goes on to admonish Harry against staring too long, he says, “Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible…It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Symbolically, an inkling of familial love beckons Potter to its unity through a balance of self-reflection and redemptive action – a cardinal characteristic of Christian faith. The series concludes with a collision of polar forces: love and hatred, good and evil, life and death. Voldemort is “killed by his own rebounding curse,” reuniting Harry with his friends and mentors in a new condition of peace without the looming threat of the Dark Lord: “The sun rose steadily over Hogwarts” while the personification of death lay dead, “the snakelike face vacant and unknowing.” In this outline of Rowling's story one can discern clear and significant overlap with a central theme of the Christian mythos, viz., love, life, and peace win in the war against pride, death, and chaos.
Central to addressing the Potter problem is appreciating the didacticism of literature and mythology. Critic and philosopher Sir Roger Scruton writes, “We read stories of heroes and their adventures…the emotions and motives of other people ‘come before us’ in works of art and culture and we spontaneously sympathize, by recreating in imagination the life they depict.” Rowling affords a positive ontological status to imagination through the words of Dumbledore, her wise old man archetype. In the post-death vison, Harry poses a question concerning the reality of his experience to his now-deceased mentor and master wizard; the latter responds, “Of course this is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” Harry then contrasts Voldemort’s selfish lust for power with Dumbledore’s “favorite solution” of love, calling his mentor “a better wizard, a better man” than the Dark Lord.
Qua modern myth, Harry Potter employs exemplary characters that are formed by and comprehended with the emotional knowledge of the West's Judeo-Christian cultural inheritance. Harry Potter embodies the role of heroic savior, a mythological archetype epitomized by the figure of Christ. Practical knowledge is not the only stock culture deals in. Rather, a culture is also a repository of “knowledge of the heart,” which pulses through its body of literature, music, visual art, etc. Thus, Rowling is not demonstrating how to do witchcraft or perform spells but is inviting her readers to feel as Harry does in his growth as a wizard learning the ways of magic – as a person seeking to understand love, sacrifice, and hope.
Many of the series’ initial disparagers have since come to acknowledge and embrace Rowling's work for its narrative successes. Russ Briemier writes in Christianity Today, “People seem to be changing their minds after seeing the films or reading the books, discovering that there’s more to J. K. Rowling’s multi-volume masterpiece than fantastic storytelling. They’re finding redemptive themes that point to larger life lessons in harmony with Christian beliefs.” The principles propounded in Harry Potter transcend the “non-Christian” imagery employed to communicate them; indeed, a macabre crucifixion cross, in the context of Christ, is transfigured into a symbol of life.
Emotional didacticism being a key function of myth, J. K. Rowling's fantasy is to be seen as one among many stories that allow its readers to feel foundational narrative themes that undergird Western culture, e.g., love and sacrifice triumph over death and despair. In an increasingly anxious, apathetic, and chaotic cultural moment, Harry Potter affords young readers a ticket to hopeful enchantment from a stair cupboard of spiritual isolation.
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