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Harry Potter, a Christian Hero? by Massimo Introvigne (the Italian version of this article has been published on November 3, 1999 by "Avvenire", the daily newspaper of the Italian Conference of Catholic Bishops) |
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While Harry Potter's third novel, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" leads the lists of best sellers in a number of different countries, a strange crusade against Joanne K. Rowling's hero is been fought by Christian fundamentalists in the United States. In Columbia, South Carolina, and Marietta, in Metro Atlanta, Georgia, fundamentalist parents have requested that Potter's books be banned from public schools. In Marietta, the books were temporarily put "on hold". However, after a survey by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that 93% of the citizens in Georgia were against the ban, Harry was left off hook, much to the delight of most schoolchildren. Protests against the Potter books continue, as of October 1999, in States such as New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and California. In Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, two parents transferred their son to another school when their request to ban Harry Potter was not accepted. Who, exactly, is Harry Potter? Seven and a half million readers, who have purchased at least one of the three books written by the young Welsh author Joanne K. Rowling, know all the answers. For the others (who may read for more details the cover article published in September 1999 by Time Magazine) I would say that Harry is currently 13 and attends a most unusual British school, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The school is invisible to non-magicians (called by the magical community "Muggles") and equally invisible is the train taking pupils from London to Hogwarts and everything connected with magical activities in general. Muggles simply do not realize that a parallel dimension exists, although they do see the wizards and witches (but do not understand what they are), and there is a Minister for Magic who occasionally interact with his counterparts in the Muggle government (implying that somebody at the top Muggle level does know). Pupils at Hogwarts include sons and daughters of magicians, but this is not a pre-requisite and indeed the best student, Hermione Granger, comes from a Muggle family. Harry Potter's father was a powerful wizard, but both his parents died fighting the chief villain of the saga, Lord Voldemort, and Harry grows up as an orphan in the home of uncle Vernon Dursley, whose whole family hates magic and despises Harry. The latter only spend (quite dreadful) summer holidays with the Dursleys, and his real life is at Hogwarts. The school is both an icon and a satire of the British high school system, with great and not so great teachers, rivalry between different houses (good guys tend to belong to Gryffindor, including Harry, and less nice guys to Slytherin) and a preferred sport, quidditch, a half-polo half-cricket event played by boys and girls (together) riding, of course, broomsticks. Courses include Charms, Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and so on. There is more to make the books entertaining. Each year there is a mystery, normally involving a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort or his minions, and Harry and his Scooby gang (including primarily Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, the son of an employee at the Ministry for Magic) end up solving it, with a little help from some teachers and the heroic principal Albus Dumbledore. Just as in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" there is a high school, and all the usual problems of high school students are alluded to. Just as in "Buffy", the characters grow up: each year when a new book comes out Harry celebrates a new birthday. (In "Buffy", this is a need, since the actors grow older; for Rowling, it's a choice). Unlike in "Buffy", romantic problems are not very important for the main characters, but at the beginning of the series Harry was only 11, and Rowling assures us that he will find a serious romantic interest in installment four (she may in fact have been introduced in book no. 3, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akzaban" as a female quidditch player called Cho Chang). The basic plot is, as expected, good versus evil. Good guys, including Potter, in the end prevail because there are clever, brave, and - more than anything else - morally good. Potter is a hit with readers of all ages. Readership includes adults, but Potter is also credited with making reading books more popular than it used to be with junior teens and even younger kids. Critics are almost unanimously enthusiastic, and throughout the world propose very flattering parallels with the likes of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Collodi (the author of "Pinocchio"). Only fundamentalists do not join in the yearly birthday party for Harry when a new book is published (Rowling plans seven, and in the last Harry will be seventeen). Do Christians have cause for concern? They may claim that a belief in magic (or magick) is more prevalent today than a century ago. Then, almost no reader would have considered the existence of beings such as Pinocchio's fairy godmother as a serious possibility. Today, who knows? Although concerned Christians have been easily derided as "Muggles" in Georgia and elsewhere, their concern for the return of a magical worldview is understandable. But does Harry Potter really promote it? Magic is the main usual metaphor for life in fairy tales of all ages. If one should ban Harry Potter from Christian (or public) schools, one should also ban Peter Pan, Cinderella, or Pinocchio. Harry Potter (unlike a number of cartoon superheroes) does not win because he is more proficient than the bad guys at magic. He is very good for a student in his third year at Hogwarts (although he is not the best student - Hermione is). But he is not even in the same league with experienced wizards such as the dark Lord Voldemort and his main minions. Yet, he defeats them. Harry wins because he is intelligent and brave, but above all because he is more human than his opponents. What the bad guys - who perhaps have lost touch with Muggles for too long - utterly lack is humanity, human feelings, and basic human values. Harry has them all, and many of them are Christian values. In the surprise final of the "Prisoner of Azkaban", why Harry really wins is because he is able to forgive the wizard who betrayed his parents leading them to be slaughtered by Voldemort. It is because they lack pity, compassion and a capacity for forgiveness, that the bad guys are handicapped by their missing a whole part of the real picture. In the second book, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", principal Dumbledore tells Harry that because of the mysterious link with Voldemort created when his parents were murdered, he may have become a Slytherin but in the end was sent to Gryffindor because the magical hat presiding at the students' division perceived that he deeply wanted to be a Gryffindor. Free will and moral choices, Dumbledore concluded, are more important than circumstances, lineage and even ability. This is not what the cheap New Age brand of the magical worldview so deprecated by Evangelical Christians is supposed to teach. There, moral choices and responsible exercise of free will are no match for forces nobody can really control, including cosmic energies, astrological influences, and karmic debts to be repaid through reincarnation. True, it is Harry's moral superiority who carries the day, not divine grace. There is no chaplain at Hogwarts. But neither there is a parish priest in Cinderella's village or near Pinocchio's school. Christian authors of old did not regard this as objectionable. They preferred religious figure to stay out of fairy tales, in order to teach children that there is a different degree of "truth" in fictional fairy tales and in the historical facts of Christian salvation. I don't know whether Rowling considers herself religious (I have read that she is divorced and a former Labour activist, but nothing about religion). This does not really matter. As the old textbooks of rhetoric stated, the "intentio auctoris", the intention of the author, may in the end be different from the "intentio operis", the objective intention or direction of the work. Giacomo Cardinal Biffi wrote a fascinating book about finding Christian values in "Pinocchio", whose author was a non religious secular humanist. Rowling writes in a recognizable British tradition including such Christian storytellers as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the influence is apparent, no matter what Rowling's personal position. Until some years ago, it was perhaps even too easy to find a "Christian hero" almost everywhere in the non-Christian world. Literature, however, is full of such heroes, whose values are so human that they may be regarded as at least pre-Christian. Christian parents are certainly well advised, in a world of confusion, to discuss with their children the books they read (not to mention TV shows). But, should I cast a vote in a poll similar to the one taken in Georgia, I would vote for Harry Potter, and would do so as a parent and a Christian, not only as a scholar of religion. He is the last scion of a more than respectable British literary tradition, and a healthy reading for children of all ages. |
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