J.K. Rowling!Existentialist

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 179484

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "thetrojanvabbit" <gatesreaver at ...> wrote:
>
> Existentialist!JK Rowling
> 
> "Of course it's happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth
> should that mean it's not real?"
> 
> Warning:  Deathly Hallows spoilers and Heidegger
> 

<large snip>

> 	Rowling said she would reveal what book she had been writing from
> with Deathly Hallows, and apart from a plot trope that far predates
> the New Testimate, it wasn't the bible.  It was an existentialism
> textbook.  I wonder if that's why some Christians hate Harry Potter so much!
> 
> --gatesreaver

Geoff:
Having read your post, I felt I needed to comment on the last 
two sentences. 

Starting at the end(!), I wondered why you wrote your last sentence 
"I wonder if that's why some Christians hate Harry Potter so much!"; 
it seems to be something of a red herring. You might just as well 
add the converse that a lot of Christians like Harry Potter. I am a 
practising Christian and know many people in my own church who 
are. And, in the four years and more that I have been a member of 
HPFGU,  I have made contact and formed friendships with several 
other group members who profess the Christian faith.

However, coming to the penultimate sentence, you wrote: "It was 
an existentialism textbook". Sadly, I suspect that you have fallen 
into the trap which other groups, such as the alchemical theorists 
have in the past, namely, presenting your hypothesis as a statement 
of fact. If you had said "I believe it was
.", then good enough. But 
to categorically write "It was
" is, in my view incorrect and possibly 
misleading.

I haven't heard or seen any reports of JKR making the assertion that 
this was the basis of her story. Only this month, she has given an 
interview to the Dutch newspaper "De Volkskrant" and, in the 
translation which I have seen, she says that she was raised in the 
Church of England and held Christian belief until she questioned it 
at University but has now returned to believing and, as we know, 
worships at the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh.

So, although I agree that you have every right to hold your 
existentialist view as I have to hold my pro-Christian view, without 
some definite evidence from Jo Rowling, you can only put it forward 
as a possibility. For my part, I believe that there are many pointers 
to Christianity in the books and that, like Tolkien and Lewis before h
er, she has used her own position as a starting point.