Sexuality as a theme in HP (long)

[imamommy at sbcglobal.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 119613


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cat_kind" <cat_kind at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> Olivier wrote:
> > Some read HP books as mysteries, other like to see them as of the 
> > adventure and fantasy genre, and some as fairy-tales. There are 
even 
> > readers that see in them deep christian or symbolic meaning. In 
this 
> > post, I try to explore the way I read them: as the journey from 
boyhood 
> > to manhood, with an explicit reference to sexuality.

snip> 

> catkind:  I have to admit, my first reaction to this post was to 
laugh
> aloud.  You can Freudian-analyse anything, and a world full of wands
> and broomsticks is asking for trouble. 
> 
> But to some extent I feel you're not even doing F

reudian analysis so
> much as playing the teenaged-boy-game of going "snigger, snigger,
> nudge,nudge" whenever anyone says anything. For example, 
substituting
> rape for every other kind of violence, and substituting sexual 
desire
> for every other emotion (Harry is supposed to learn to control his
> *anger*, as McG explicitly states elsewhere) as in the above quote, 
is
> just not playing fair IMHO.

Snip

> I would strongly debate your claims that the books make "explicit
> reference to sexuality" - perhaps explicit wasn't the word you were
> looking for? Whatever messages you are reading into it, they're very
> much implicit. 
 catkind, hoping it is not being offensive.

imamommy

I think truth is as truth does, so to speak.  There is Truth and 
Wisdom contained in these books, which allows them to speak to many, 
many different readers.

I think a lot of the interpretative differences depend on the "lens" 
if you will that each of us uses to view the world.  My guess, 
Olivier, is that you tend to view life in general through sexual 
metaphor, am I correct?  I am a Christian, and yes I do see some 
Christian symbolism, because that is the view I have of the world.  

I don't think JKR is intending allegory here, in any sense.  I think 
she just writes the story that is bursting to come out, and I dont' 
know how conciously she thinks, well, I'd better have an Aids 
patient, and I'd better have this group or that group represented.  I 
think she makes it up, and we interpret it according to our 
own "lens".  JRR Tolkein rather than CS Lewis, you might say.

Thanks to the Lexicon, I reference a CBC interview with JKR from 
October 23, 2000:
Rogers: Jo, there's lots of fun and fantasy in these books, but there 
are also life lessons in these stories. What did you intend to write 
when you started?

Rowling: Initially, I intended to write a story. No more or no less 
than that. I love stories. We need stories, I think. 

Every 'message' - and I put that in heavily inverted commas because I 
don't set out to teach people specific things... I never sit down at 
the beginning of a novel and think 'What is today's lesson?'

Those lessons, they grow naturally out of the book and I suppose they 
come naturally from me. 


imamommy