Harry and Christ (Was Re: veil/Ddore's cowardice? (longish)

[urghiggi]

No: HPFGUIDX 78049

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "feetmadeofclay" <
feetmadeofclay at y...> wrote:
>> As a non-Christian I would not be happy with my (nonexsistant) 
> children reading this series.  I won't be giving it to them nor when 
> I have children will it even be in my home - that would just 
> encourage them to read it.  If they picked it up by themselves I 
> wouldn't censor it (or anything).  But we'd certainly be talking 
> about why 'love' is not a force and why marytdom is not a solution to 
> prejudiced facist overlords. 
> 

Hi Golly  -- I think you're right to feel that way if you don't want your putative 
kids exposed to such messages -- since the books do seem to me (and not a 
few others) to be subversively Christian. (To write anything overtly Christian is 
the kiss of death for the general lit market, and would be asking to be 
consigned to the ash-heap of bad religious fiction and never taken seriously 
by "normal" -- ie secular -- readers..... :-)

Harry as Christ, I don't buy. I think you're right to be skeptical about that idea. I 
don't see a lot of evidence for it either. And the books are not allegorial in the 
true sense -- not like "Pilgrim's Progress" is allegory and like some (not all) of 
the Narnia passages are allegory.

However, to interpret Harry as everyman on a journey of spiritual purification, 
facing common obstacles (both societal and internal) and the threat of human 
& supernatural evil, and getting guidance from a spiritual mentor (while 
constantly surrounded by a bunch of Christian symbols) -- I think you can 
make a very plausible argument for that. Thus the whole Christian 
fundamentalist outcry about the magical milieu of the stories is ironic, to say 
the least.....

Re the lack of a god, church, etc in Potterworld -- there's none of that stuff in 
the world of LOTR, either. No god in Middle Earth at all (until of course you get 
into the Silmarillion and beyond). And yet the LOTR books -- taken strictly on 
their own terms, without the whole "first age" theological back story -- are 
pretty much universally acknowledged to be profoundly religious in terms of 
their prescriptions for right actions, and especially in their exploration of the 
theme of sacrificial love that benefits others. The messages in LOTR about the 
kinds of behaviors that are beneficial and not beneficial for the soul and for 
society are not explicitly religious but these messages are nevertheless 
completely consistent with Christian theology, and serve as reinforcements of 
that world view.

Tolkein was a writer whose work was informed by his theology, but he wasn't 
writing theology; he was writing stories whose message, symbols, character 
development, and plotlines were consistent with his theology. I think JKR falls 
into this camp too, and I'm not the only one.

Of course the story arc in books 6 & 7 will necessarily prove if this theory is 
correct or cockamamie. Ultimately it should be pretty easy to interpret Harry's 
final triumph, or bitter defeat, or victorious death, or victorious but painful life 
(a la frodo), or WHATEVER happens in terms of whether it is consistent with 
this kind of theology or whether it's merely another stupid case of (as JKR 
herself likes to say) reading into a story whatever you want to find there. :-)

Thanks for your comments and your patience ....

urghiggi, Chgo

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