JKR Admits Christian Theme/Squib Life/Things Not Overtly Mentioned In Canon

[or.phan_ann]

No: HPFGUIDX 178152

Wow, all of a sudden there's several interesting threads all at once. 
Better get cracking, then. To begin: with regard to the series' 
Christian themes, allthecoolnamesgone wrote in message 178109:
> It was fairly explicit all along if you read the signs. I was      
> firmly convinced that Harry was going to die from OOTP onwards. In 
> fact I still feel in some ways that the Deathly Hallows were       
> her 'get out of jail free card' to enable the sacrificial death    
> without him actually dying.

Ann:
Pre-DH, I thought Harry and Voldemort were both going to go throught 
the Veil and only Harry would come back. (Stop giggling at the back!) 
But I wouldn't have guessed this from any earlier books. A general 
question, then: when did listies first realise the explicit Christian 
themes? Obviously, there was always a heavy emphasis on tolerance and 
anti-bigotry, but that's hardly a purely Christian idea. What about 
the end of CoS? (Which I myself read as gleefully, almost indecently 
Freudian - but I am just the one reader, after all.)

In message 178111, Adam/prep0strous wondered about Squibs, saying:
> I've wondered for a bit about the place of Squibs in the WW.       
> [snip]  It's hard to be a part of the Muggle world knowing what    
> else is out there (I wonder how many Squibs have asked for memory   
> modification and went on to live perfectly normal Muggle lives.),  
> but a career in Muggle relations might be good. Ambassador to the   
> muggle world isn't a great job, but it's not too bad.

Ann:
As a group, Squibs fascinate me, like everyone on the borders of the 
Wizarding World. I hadn't thought of self-inflicted Memory Charms, 
though, and I suspect that not too many people have asked for them. 
It would, after all, require permanent separation from all of one's 
relatives. Muggle-borns have the opposite problem - they must live in 
a world that none of their relatives can ever become part of. Maybe 
that's a minor reason why Hogwarts is a boarding school: to "tempt" 
them away from their families. I don't see many people leaving 
Hogwarts and living in the Muggle world - for one thing, they're 
completely without Muggle qualifications. And there's the fact that 
they would find it difficult at best to form close relationships 
(including romantic ones, of course) with people unaware of the WW, 
and that all these people would be incapable of something even a 
magical child can do. (This, I'm sure, is the major influence on 
wizards' attitudes to muggles, even nice ones.) And then consider 
being a long-lived wizard and outliving so many of your Muggle 
relations. I'm sure entering the Wizarding World is pretty much a one-
way street.

There are also Muggle werewolves and their families, wizards who 
chose to leave the WW, and most interestingly, those who make a 
living importing MW items - not just radios, but also, for instance, 
books, foreign foods, and so on. Perhaps they even run Muggle World 
guided tours. Now that's something I'm sure Arthur Weasley's been 
banned from...

In message 178142, Geoff said:
> I've written quite often about Christianty in the Potterverse but I 
> never thought about this aspect in any detail owing to the state of 
> real world communal religious activity in UK schools.
>
> I've light-heartedly remarked in the past that we don't hear about
> Harry going for a bath or even to the toilet! 

Ann:
But we hear about Harry doing both! He opens the Egg in the prefects' 
bathroom in GoF, and where do the Trio brew that Polyjuice Potion in 
CoS if not Myrtle's toilet?

Yes, I know they're important to the plot. So is Wizarding World 
religion. The series villain has split his soul to make himself 
impossible to kill, and it works; and there are ghosts, paintings, 
the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, ways of ensuring eternal 
life - unicorn blood even comes with its own karmic payback - and the 
condition of Harry's soul is also important. Yet JKR has given us no 
indication of how this has affected Wizarding World religions, what 
souls, paintings or ghosts really *are*, or anything at all about the 
afterlife. JKR seems as incurious as Harry about what the afterlife 
is realy like, and she's denying us basic information about the 
series' vital premises. That's the problem with the "it's not 
relevant" argument, IMO. (Tackling racism via the 
pureblood/muggleborn issue, on the other hand, I think is a very good 
use of the wizarding world's differing culture, as it by definition 
excludes and/or offends nobody, and fits perfectly into the WW as a 
whole.)

My own view on Wizarding religion is that it began as Catholicism, 
obviously, but has now drifted away from strict orthodoxy and has 
been influenced by things like ghosts, that the wider world is 
unaware of, and that this is why Hallowe'en is so important. And 
conversely, that it's been pretty much unaffected by Protestantism. I 
bet one of the highlights of the summer holidays is the Feast of St. 
John Barleycorn. :) 

But I think I'm on stronger ground when I say that I don't think the 
modern Muggle world has influenced the WW much at all. BTW, there's 
an interesting, pre-OotP, thread on religion at Hogwarts here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/34239.)

Ann