The morality question

[psychic_serpent]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:
> JKR portrays Harry as a real kid, doing
> real kid things, making real kid-real life choice, and sometimes
> getting it wrong ... JUST LIKE REAL KIDS. Kids can identify with 
> this because life is not a Disneyfied Pollyanna cartoon; it is 
> full of struggle, uncertainly, diffcult choices, and lot and lots 
> of gray areas where right and wrong are not clearly defined. 

I think you've hit on one of the most important aspects of the 
criticism of Harry's lying, and it prompts me to ask an admittedly 
hypothetical question, as the critics, by and large, are probably 
not reading this: What ARE you approving for your children's 
reading?  

I cannot, for the life of me, think of a piece of children's 
literature that does not have a protagonist who does not err in some 
way.  It is precisely the flawed hero or wayward heroine who makes a 
story interesting, frankly, and it is in feeling that he or she is 
experiencing that character's life, flaws and all, that a reader may 
learn something about morality, in the long run.  

If one considers a number of well-loved children's books (THERE BE 
SPOILERS HERE FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T READ THE BOOKS CITED) one will 
have a difficult time finding a perfect protagonist and an all-too-
easy time sniffing out the "sins" of the main characters.

The Secret Garden: What can I say?  Mary Lennox is a pill, and no 
one likes her.  She's arrogant, obnoxious, disrespectful and lies 
about going into the garden.  She breaks a number of the rules of 
the house in which she lives.  I don't hear about legions of parents 
banding together to yank this book from shelves, even though Mary 
would be an appalling role model throughout much of the book.

The Little House Books: While Laura usually does not lie and is in 
fact almost creepily obedient to her parents, we are privy to her 
thoughts a number of times when she wants to hit her sister, she 
covets things that belong to others and has rather unkind thoughts 
about numerous people, even students in her classes, after she 
becomes a teacher.  While her actions are by and large 
unimpeachable, the reader knows that she has sinned in her heart.  
(Laura gets to join the "Jimmy Carter Club" of sinners.)

A Wrinkle in Time and sequels: There are a number of child 
protagonists in these books who lose their temper, lie, give in to 
temptation of various sorts and in general behave very similarly to 
Harry, Ron and Hermione, for very similar reasons.  Madeleine 
L'Engle is often lauded for the Christian content of her books, 
despite the fact that they also contain magic.  I don't hear about 
anyone trying to ban her books because her characters commit the 
above sins.

James and the Giant Peach/Matilda: It might not be fair to cite 
anything by Roald Dahl, since there are loads of parents out there 
who dislike his books for children on principle.  However, I think 
it's particularly pertinent, since we know that JKR likes Dahl, and 
since it's not difficult to see her homage to Dahl in things like 
her descriptions of the Dursleys (think Aunt Spiker and Aunt 
Sponge).  James rejoices in a giant peach rolling over his 
disgusting aunts.  Matilda gets revenge on her father, mother and 
headmistress; if a 'real' child did the same things, she'd be put in 
a juvenile facility and assumed to be on her way to a life of 
crime.  In contrast, when confronted with the opportunity to hurt 
(even if he didn't know how to kill) Sirius, the man he thought 
killed his parents, Harry couldn't do it, and even the twins' attack 
on Dudley (Ton-Tongue Toffee) is treated as a very serious offense 
by their parents.  How can anyone say there's a moral problem with 
the HP books?

When the Sad One Comes to Stay: I really, really strongly dislike 
the protagonist in this book (I can't bring myself to call her a 
heroine), I think that in the end she does something that is morally 
wrong (no punishment, either) and I think that she will probably 
have a terrible, unhappy life because of it.  Am I afraid that my 
children could possibly emulate this character and also wind up 
dreadfully unhappy, and make others unhappy?  You bet.  And that's 
exactly why I can't wait for my kids to be mature enough to read 
it.  (I think that regardless of reading level, a kid would need to 
be eleven or twelve to have the EMOTIONAL maturity to understand 
what's going on.)  I would look on this as an opportunity to talk to 
my kids about why what the character did was wrong, and to discuss 
the possible outcomes of her actions.  This is a very strong, 
emotionally challenging book that I could lock away and forbid my 
kids to read, but that would just be a way to avoid the issues in 
the book.  To say that this book's protagonist is flawed is really 
putting it lightly.

I can think of many more children's books in which the characters 
are less than perfect and none, with the possible exception of Ann 
of Green Gables, in which the main character borders on absolute (if 
unrealistic) moral perfection.  The fact that some people claim that 
they object to the HP books on a moral basis, citing Harry's lying, 
strikes me as just an invented excuse to bash books that they 
dislike for other reasons, such as the witchcraft, or possibly just 
because the books are so popular and they are jealous of JKR.  It's 
happened before.  These folks must not be having their kids read 
anything at all; even the Bible has people doing terrible things and 
not being punished for it.   

As for deciding what kids can and cannot read, I have to say that I 
disagree very, very strongly with this.  Personally I provide some 
guidance for my kids, as far as what I think they might like, 
because I know them, but I've never forbidden them to read anything 
and I never will.  If something is morally challenging to me that's 
probably an even better argument for why my kid should read it--and 
perhaps why I should read it, too.  (See "When the Sad One Comes to 
Stay," above.)  

For the most part, kids don't read things for which they're not 
ready.  My daughter wasn't ready to read Prisoner of Azkaban for a 
while because the depiction of the dementor on the American dust-
jacket was a bit unnerving to her.  And if my son wanted to read a 
horror novel of some sort at the age of ten, I'd probably warn him 
that he could have nightmares from it.  You probably couldn't pay my 
kids to read a book with sex in it at their current ages; when they 
feel comfortable reading that material, I daresay they'll be old 
enough for it.  Reading and doing are hardly the same thing.  Many 
thrilling spy novels, for instance, have sex in them, but I doubt 
that reading them will induce a teenager either to become a spy or 
have sex.  It's just an escape.

But WARNING kids about content that might scare or disconcert them 
is one thing--not wanting to expose them to certain ideas is 
another, and that's what folks are trying to do who FORBID kids to 
read the HP books.  I'm really not sure what they're scared of, 
unless it's that their kids might learn to think for themselves.  
That's the real sin that Harry commits, IMO.  He doesn't take 
everything at face-value, in the Muggle or wizarding world.  He has 
an inner compass upon which he relies to help him make moral 
decisions, not necessarily listening to authority figures (such as 
Snape in the Shrieking Shack).  

Given the current climate of world politics, I'd say we need a lot 
more Harrys, and I will come out as a complete subversive (oh, 
THERE'S a shock!) and say that I hope that every kid whose parents 
have forbidden the HP books to him or her is sneaking around and 
reading them anyway (they probably are--"forbidden fruit" and all).  
OR those parents might read the books WITH their kids and discuss 
the moral issues they find disturbing in them.  I think they're 
losing a great opportunity for a learning and bonding time with 
their kids by just forbidding their kids to read them instead of 
discussing issues that are clearly important to them.

--Barb

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