[HPforGrownups] Harry Potter=?ISO-8859-1?B?lg==?=A Worthwhile series??

[John Walton]

No: HPFGUIDX 33597

Minor ADMINy note on this thread -- Please, folks, remember to be
considerate of others' opinions and feelings, even if they differ from your
own. Remember not to make it personal -- argue about opinions and
interpretations, not about the person making them.

> And finally, adult authority is attacked harshly, leaving ultimate authority
> in the hands of the kid who can grab the most power.

I wonder to which "adult authority" you refer. If it is the abusive
Dursleys, then yes, it does. If it is the Hogwarts Professors, I disagree
heartily.

> First, breaking rules is glorified:  "Hermione had become a bit
> more relaxed about breaking rules since Harry and Ron had
> saved her from the mountain troll, and she was much nicer for
> it."  But when Malfoy or other "Slytherins" break rules, they are
> punished--to the cheers of Harry and his gang.  At one point
> Harry is told not to ride on his broom.  When he does, instead of
> any punishment, he is rewarded with a berth on the Quidditch
> team.  Somehow it is a terrible thing for Hagrid to break the rules
> and raise a forbidden dragon, yet honorable for the students to
> break the rules and explore the forbidden areas of the school.
> (Actually, it is not honorable for Malfoy to break the rules, only
> Hermione and Harry--if they feel the need.)

You neglect to mention that many of the Hogwarts rules are created by Argus
Filch, the vile caretaker. No reasonable person would accept that "Looking
Cheerful" was breaking a rule -- much like many rules in our own society are
sometimes silly.

> Second, Rowling leaves the option of lying up to the individual,
> and even glorifies it.  If Harry needs to lie, he simply will:  "When
> facing a magic mirror, Harry thinks desperately, `I must lie,..I
> must look and lie about what I see, that's all.'"  And yes, he is
> rewarded with the Sorcerer's Stone.

As Ev vy said, the Stone is not his reward -- Harry does not want to use the
Stone, so it cannot be a reward. Harry does not *get* a reward for saving
the world from evil.

> Rowling sometimes glorifies lying, and other times doesn't  consider it as an
> option.   Rowling appears confused on the issue of lying.

To the contrary -- lying is acceptable to thwart the forces of evil, and is
unacceptable at other times. That seems a clear distinction to me; where are
you getting confused?

> Finally, concerning the adult world, or those who would be in authority, there
> is only derision.  Fred tells his mother, "Honestly, woman, you call yourself
> our mother?"   And another time, "All right, keep your hair on."

Derision? No. Sarcasm? Yes. You also seem not to understand that the first
quote is part of a joke Fred and George are playing on their mother in the
best Shakespearean ethic of twins' mistaken identity.

> All the teachers at Hogwarts are either dirty, deranged, deceitful, or all
> three.  

Despite the fact that you have only read the first book (and in its American
edition, not the original British), you should at least have noticed that
Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick and Hooch are neither dirty,
deranged or deceitful.

> and when referring to late notices for library books, Rowling writes:  "He
> [Harry] didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking
> for books back."  Is it really `rude' to remind a person of a commitment he
> has made? 

If you had read more widely in the Rowling oeuvre, you would have noticed
that Madam Irma Pince has a reputation for threatening particularly gruesome
and excessive punishments to people who do not take perfect care of their
books.

> When presenting the adult human world, Ms. Rowling presents it in such a
> ridiculously negative light that it becomes completely unrealistic and even
> offensive.  

Actually, Harry's aunt and uncle are abusive to him. Given current events in
the UK (see the Victoria Climbié case), it is not unreasonable to assume
that the Dursleys have slipped through the social services system.

> All adults are foolish, bungling, stupid and boringly unimaginative.  Why
> would a child ever look up to them or need them in any way?

I disagree completely with your argument as it pertains to adults. The
Dursleys, yes, are horrible people. The adults to whom one is supposed to
look up (the Professors) are neither foolish, bungling, stupid nor
unimaginative.

> Rowling's characters twist truth into their own desires--breaking whatever
> rules necessary to get whatever they want,--become quite adept at lying, and
> see themselves as the final authority, far superior to any adult wisdom.

I think you over-generalise and over-conclude here.

> Second, respect for order is a part of a Judeo-Christian world view.  Consider
> the general anarchy encouraged at Hogwarts, when the students sing the school
> song:  "`Everyone pick their favorite tune,' said Dumbledore, `and off we
> go!'..... Everybody finished the song at different times... and when they had
> finished, he [Dumbledore] was one of those who clapped loudest."

Again, I feel that you might have missed the point JKR is trying to make --
many schools in the UK have their own school songs. These are often trite
and come with absurdly happy tunes. The fact that Hogwarts' song does not is
a *joke*, not a sign of any anarchy.

> Thirdly, good and evil are distinct.

Good and evil are not always distinct in our lives. Consider, perhaps, the
priest who abuses children, or the upstanding citizen who is an alcohol
addict, or the prostitute who saves somebody's life.

> Evil has had its day, and good will now triumph.

Yes, and in "Philosopher's Stone", evil's day is not yet entirely over -- we
are in the twilight of evil's day, with the bright light of Dumbledore's
power of Good shining through Voldemort's evil. The fact that we come to
Lewis' and Rowling's stories at different points does not mean that one is
intrinsically more or less Christian/Good/Evil than the other.

> Good and evil choices also have rewards and consequences.
> Edmund chooses evil when he decides to serve the White Witch,
> resulting in a curse that affects all around him, including Aslan,
> the one who would save him.

No, Edmund does not *choose* evil. He is corrupted by the Witch in one of
Lewis' oh-so-subtle allegories. (Don't misunderstand, I adore Narnia, and am
appalled by the idea of making an allegory-free Narnia, but just wish
sometimes that C.S. Lewis wouldn't be so obvious.)

> His [Edmund's] evil choices have painful consequences.

Again, his *choices* are not evil -- rather, he is lured into evil by the
Witch.

> There is a vast difference between Dumbledore's foolishness and Aslan's
> nobility.  

Again, you misunderstand JKR's parody of the typical British Headmaster's
Speech as "foolishness".

> Lewis and Tolkien uphold the values of absolute truth and absolute right and
> wrong.  They acknowledge an orderly world, one which brings out nobility in
> its heroes.  And learning from and submitting to those who have gone before is
> honored as a right way to gain wisdom.

Harry does learn from his elders -- had you read, for example, "Prisoner of
Azkaban", you would know that Harry voluntarily seeks out Professor Lupin to
learn how to defend himself from the Dementors.

> At the beginning of Harry Potter, Harry hates his family, laughing
> at their stupidity and dreaming of revenge - "...the largest snake
> in the place.  It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle
> Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can...."  Not much growth
> in maturity has occurred between the first chapter and the last
> paragraph.  When the other `witchlings' feel sorry for Harry as he
> goes back to his nasty family, Harry smiles and says, "They
> don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home.  I'm going
> to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer...."

As I say elsewhere, the Dursleys are abusive carers who should rightly be
taken into custody for child abuse.

As you would know if you had read past the first book, Harry does not, in
fact, use magic at home. He obeys the rules. Now, doesn't that show him as
an upstanding paragon of morality? Confronted with abusive guardians, he
does not use the easy way out. How admirable.

> In The Hobbit, even Bilbo grows from a timid, somewhat cowardly Hobbit to a
> humble yet wise warrior.

Yes, and then in "The Fellowship of the Ring", he almost attacks Frodo, his
own nephew, for Sauron's Ring. He also lies to Gandalf in FoTR, and attempts
to leave his home with the Ring when Gandalf has told him to leave it
behind. I'm not arguing that Bilbo is evil; rather, he has flaws like any
character.

> All the characters-- Harry, Bilbo and the children--are presented as heroes,
> yet only Lewis's and Tolkien's live in a world that has true consequences for
> right and wrong, and thus only they can truly grow in excellence.

I disagree. Harry's world has *realistic* consequences for right and wrong.
Sometimes, when we do the right thing, we are punished for it because others
do not see the whole picture. (I'm thinking the Norbert incident here.) On
the other hand, Malfoy is punished for telling tales to Professor McGonagall
when he too is made to serve detention with Harry and Co.

> Although there are many more avenues that can be explored-- including
> witchcraft versus mythology--the preceding points are enough to show that yes,
> there is quite a world view gulf between Rowling and Lewis/Tolkien.

In passing to your comment about mythology -- there is far more reference to
myth in Rowling than in either Lewis or Tolkien. Just take the character
names of Argus Filch (Argus is a many-eyed monster from Greek myth), Minerva
McGonagall (Minerva is the Roman Goddess of Wisdom), and Remus Lupin (Remus
is the brother of Romulus, and was brought up by a wolf; Lupin is a
werewolf).

> In handing any book to a child, one must know if the child can discern the
> world views and not be swept into a view that is counter to the truth being
> instilled in him.

Of course one must. That is why I will challenge my children to find the
Christian allegory in Lewis, the moralism in Tolkien, and the issues of what
is Right/Good and Wrong/Evil in Rowling.

> Ms. Rowling's world view of no absolutes and the flaunting of all
> authority and rules carries over into her writing.  Either she does
> not have a basic understanding of grammar and writing, or she
> purposely writes this way in keeping with her world view.

Actually, she writes in a way that is, simply, modern. It is a
widely-accepted literary convention, and has been since the 1960s or so, to
use "they"/"their" instead of "him"/"his" when gender is not specified even
though the former is a plural form. Would you prefer the even more
progressive "s/he"/"hir" forms? I must say, in literature, these tend to jar
me out of the narrative.

If we reject modernisms, your own thesis would must be decried in a similar
light for its use of split infinitives -- this sentence:

> Rowling's world view is not one to immerse a child in if you are seeking to
> raise him in a Judeo-Christian ethic.

is quite incorrect if you are rejecting modern literary conventions. It
should be (caveat about infinitive use of "to immerse"):

> Rowling's world view is not one in which to immerse a child if you are seeking
> to raise him in a Judeo-Christian ethic.

Those of us who view language as an ever-evolving dynamic concept, however,
can feel free to split infinitives as to do otherwise in some places in
modern speech sounds affected and pretentious.

I also noticed some particularly questionable usage of commas and predicate
clauses in your text. One really should ensure when criticising others'
language that one's own language is up to scratch.

[snip page-and-a-half of amusing nitpicks of modern literary convention
described above and similar]

It rather amuses me that you deride JK Rowling's literary style while making
the subject of your own message "Harry Potter^A Worthwhile series??" [sic
punct.] Remember that, in non-HTML email, the em-dash (a dash as long as a
lower-case m) is unfortunately lost -- and we must use two hyphens instead.
Similarly, if you are capitalising "A" and "Worthwhile", you should also
capitalise "series"; alternatively, you should not capitalise anything
beyond "Harry Potter", which you should in fact include in quotes to signify
that it is a title (as italicisation, the proper indicator of a title, is
lost in email). Moreover, two question marks are excessive and give a
teenybopperish air to one's question. One is quite sufficient.

> Rowling's world view is not one to immerse a child in if you are seeking to
> raise him in a Judeo-Christian ethic.  Beyond that, encouraging a child to
> read poorly written yet "sensational" literature may produce a child who can
> read Harry Potter stories, but it will not produce a reader.

Oh dear. Perhaps some of the many strong Jews or Christians on this list
could dispute the religious aspect of this, quoting chapter and verse;
however, as someone who shares neither of those religions, I would be more
than happy for my children (should I be blessed with some someday) to read
Rowling, Tolkien, Lewis, or in fact almost any literature they -- and I --
feel is appropriate to their reading and social level.

As someone who has taught children with dyslexia, autism and other special
needs, I must disagree strongly with your final sentence. I saw children who
had literally never voluntarily picked up a book before devour Harry Potter
and then turn to lengthier tomes like The Hobbit, Narnia, Lemony Snicket,
Susan Cooper, David Eddings, Madeleine L'Engle, Ursula LeGuin and others.

--John
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*"Quidditch Through The Ages" by Kennilworthy Whisp: 14 Sickles 3 Knuts
*New Firebolt Broom: just over 100 Galleons
*Watching Draco Malfoy being bounced up and down
after being turned into a ferret: Priceless

The best things in life are free. For everything else, there's Harry Potter.

John Walton -- john at walton.vu
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