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Fear Not the Wizard Harry Potter
UPI
Saturday, July 8, 2000
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'' will be, quite simply, the publishing
event of the summer. The buzz surrounding this book – the fourth in a projected
series of seven – has reached a deafening pitch, and the launch parties and
explosions of merchandise planned for this weekend seem more appropriate to a
blockbuster movie than to a children¹s novel about a British orphan¹s
adventures
at boarding school.
Of course, this is no ordinary novel. Author J. K. Rowling¹s vivid imagination,
sharp sense of humor, and masterful storytelling put her firmly in the company
of Roald Dahl and J.R.R. Tolkein. And this is no ordinary orphan. Harry Potter
is, of course, a wizard, more precisely a wizard in training at the Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which you can only get to by taking the train
from the mysterious Platform 9 1/2, or by an enchanted flying car (although
you¹ll have to watch out for the Whomping Willow when you land).
For many parents, the Harry Potter phenomenon is reason to rejoice: The books
are fun, stimulating, and exciting, so much so that kids who once seemed lost to
television and video games now can't think of anything better to do than read.
But some Christian parents and pastors are not rejoicing. Despite the fact that
such Christian leaders as Charles Colson have spoken out in favor of the Harry
Potter series, some Christians worry that the books are encouraging a favorable
view of witchcraft, and that Rowling¹s enchanted creation is just another part –
along with the New Age Wiccan religion, especially popular with teenage girls,
and television shows like "Charmed'' – of the mainstreaming of paganism. Some
even wonder whether the Potter books, in which teenagers and adults alike cast
spells and invoke ghostly spirits, might encourage kids to fall in with
Satanists and others who claim that they practice magic – and that they can
teach young would-be wizards how.
Even among the devoutly religious (among whom I count myself), these concerns
may sound a bit extreme. After all, it's only a story, and the magic portrayed
in the book is far from black, even far from Wiccan magic. Not to mention that
Christians have been telling their children fairy tales full of ghosts, goblins,
potions, and charms for centuries. The boys and girls at Hogwarts mix potions,
fly on broomsticks, and otherwise bustle about like the witches in the folk
tales – so why worry about "Harry Potter'' and not, say, "Snow White''?
First of all, say those who object to the books, wizardry here is not always
identified with wickedness. In fact, it is described as attractive and
fascinating, much more interesting than the stuff the Muggles do. (For those not
familiar with Rowling's fantastic catalogue of names, Muggles are the nonmagical
types, i.e., most of us.) Some have also objected to the way Harry uses his
wizard-status to escape from a world and an adopted family (the dreadful
Dursleys) he finds depressing and alienating. This portrayal of magic as a kind
of salvation seems to send all the wrong signals to kids who may be looking to
escape their own boring lives – and looking to escapist religions to do so. Add
to this the fact that Harry is actually a wonderfully realistic role model for
every child who's learning about the moral life – he has a good heart and good
instincts, and Rowling isn't afraid to let him make mistakes – and you have a
series of books that seem ready-made to sweep young readers into a blithe
acceptance of, even an eager interest in, the dark arts. Orthodox Christians,
committed to believe in the reality of the powers of darkness, are right not to
take such matters lightly.
When you look more closely at the Harry Potter books, however, those worries
turn out not to be so worrisome. In fact, the books promote exactly the virtues
that help young people steer clear of exactly the dangers Christian parents fear
their kids will fall into by reading books like this.
It is true that magic itself is never condemned outright in these stories. But
the fact is, while it is often presented here as exciting and fun, it is always
presented as potentially dangerous. Rowling gives magic neither a clear thumbs-
up nor a clear thumbs-down because, she suggests, it is simply another means of
controlling and directing our natural environment, much like the magic of our
own time that goes by the name of technology. (In fact, magic and hard science
were not thought of as antithetical disciplines until quite recently.) Again and
again the Harry Potter books insist that when people are trained to harness and
employ certain powers, they must also be trained to use those powers wisely,
virtuously, and rightly. Whether potions or computers, the tools at our disposal
are intimately linked with our education in virtue.
And education in virtue is the very core of these books. There is a remarkably
stable moral framework in the world of Harry Potter: good and evil really do
exist, they really are part of our everyday lives, and it takes the hard work of
discernment and discipline to choose the former. It also takes the special sort
of imagination that can see that there is more to our experience than meets the
eye – precisely the imagination that is cultivated by, for instance, reading
about wizards and flying cars and Whomping Willows. Here¹s one way in which the
magic in these books might actually be a positive thing: it stirs that part of a
child¹s mind that, with the right guidance, will one day be able to imagine the
existence of God.
As for the role of witchcraft in Harry's escape from the Dursleys: at Hogwarts,
it's not the magic that gives Harry such a sense of liberation. It's having
found his calling. After years of feeling misunderstood, confused, and out of
place, he finally discovers what he is meant for, and under the benevolent
guidance of the great Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster at Hogwarts, he begins to
discover how to become what he should be. Rowling means us to read the story of
Harry¹s escape, I think, as a story about his vocation – both the practical one
he learns about in the classroom and the spiritual one he keeps learning all the
time. On the related question of whether these books prepare kids to slide into
false religions, we should remember that one of the most important lessons Harry
and his friends learn is to watch out for those who think and claim that magic
makes them powerful – hence the basic incoherence of worrying that kids who read
the books will be more easily sucked in by Satanists. So, Christian parents,
have no fear. The Harry Potter books are part of a long and venerable tradition
of stories about adventure and virtue and coming of age and, yes, magic. It's a
tradition that includes "The Princess Bride'' and "The Wizard of Oz'' and the
work of such orthodox Christians as Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. Kids may be drawn
into a story by talking animals and secret spells, but they stay with a story
because it speaks to them about who they are and who they want to be. The point
is not that Harry Potter is a wizard in training. The point is that he is a
person in training.
Alicia Mosier is assistant editor of First Things, a magazine covering issues of
religion in public life. – Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All
rights reserved.
End<{{
>From http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/index.htm
}}>Begin
he idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult
world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically,
really appealed to me."
Like that of her own character, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's life has the
luster of a fairy tale. Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny
Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone at a table in a café during her daughter's naps — and it was
Harry Potter that rescued her. First, the Scottish Arts Council gave her a
grant
to finish the book. After its sale to Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic Books, the
accolades began to pile up. Harry Potter won The British Book Awards Children's
Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize, and rave reviews on both sides of the
Atlantic. Book rights have been sold to England, France, Germany, Italy,
Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden.
A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed single
parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very low, and I had to achieve
something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad." But
Rowling has always written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I was about
six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."
For Rowling, the change in her fortunes has been slightly bewildering. But her
daughter has no doubt about her mother's new career: when asked what mommies
do,
she replies without hesitation, "Mommies write!"
End<{{
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifest, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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