Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Discerning Christian scholars of the Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling - such as John Granger (Eastern Orthodox), and Jerram Barrs (Calvinist Protestant) - have proved beyond reasonable doubt that these books are profoundly Christian in their attitudes and messages and in many symbolic references; and this is confirmed explicitly albeit discreetly in the text and authorial interviews.

(I have also written about this on this blog - the pieces can be found by word-searching 'Potter' and 'Christian'.)

The Harry Potter series has also been a sales sensation, and have reshaped the whole publishing environment.

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This should, of course, have been the greatest possible news among evangelical-minded Christians of all denominations - the best news in decades! - a tremendous opportunity for those who want to spread the word, and encourage Christians in their faith.

Instead, a sizeable number of influential Christians in the USA launched and sustained an aggressive, ill-informed and slanderous (false, dishonest) attack on the Harry Potter phenomenon; so that Christians labelled these books as anti-Christian in intent and tendency - and did their best to prevent their own and other children from reading them.

http://www.bethinking.org/culture/jk-rowling-and-harry-potter

The Christian anti-Rowling attacks were avidly encouraged by the mass media (which should have been sufficient to warn serious Christians of what was going on).

The result has been a disastrous lost opportunity and self-inflicted wound for Christianity:

1. The most popular books in decades have been labelled, and interpreted, as if they were anti-Christian; and instead distorted into a frame which supports the dominant culture of secular Leftism.

This was a tragically lost opportunity for Christianity in the West - perhaps the biggest lost opportunity for several decades.

2. For Christians, the depth and faith strengthening beauty of these books has been lost.

3. The author seems to have been astonished and wounded by these attacks from Christians; and from subsequent interviews and published novels it seems very probable that she has become apostate, has changed sides - and now consistently takes a pro secular Leftist (and implicitly anti-Christian) stance.

Clearly this was very wrong of her - but my point is that this corruption and change in JKR was (in my view) probably begun by the vile and hysterical attacks on her personally and on the HP books by Christians.

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One consequence may have been that the very popular movies based on the books, which followed a few years later, almost-entirely deleted the Christian elements - and indeed inverted some of the primary moral and spiritual messages of the novels.

Given the innate tendency of movies to usurp the understanding and interpretation of novels,this was a further deep wound inflicted on the potential-for-good of the Harry Potter series.

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In conclusion, the Christians who campaigned against Harry Potter seemingly ended-up inflicting very serious damage on Christianity, and doing the work of Satan.

How did this happen?

There were good and bad intentions at work - as usual.

The good intentions were thoughtless and lacking in discernment - regarding the HP books with prejudice rather than actually reading them with sympathy. This attitude means that inevitably Christians will reject on a priori grounds any Christian phenomenon successful among non-Christians, and any potential major opportunity for evangelism.

The bad intentions were the usual ones - seeking any 'plausible' excuse to indulge in hatred, moral showboating and status striving, the pleasures of controlling and bullying others...

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The Harry Potter phenomenon handed Western Christians a great opportunity. The same applies, of course, to the Narnia books by CS Lewis, and the Middle Earth books by JRR Tolkien.

That opportunity remains - but an aggressive and influential minority of US supposedly-'evangelical' Christians are working against this great opportunity - by gifting this Christian literature to anti-Christians: handing it to them on a plate!

Unsurprisingly, this kind self-destructive lunacy by Christians has been given every possible encouragement and amplification by the secular Leftist mass media.

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The damage has been done - water under the bridge - why write about it?

Well, now that the scenario has played out, now that the scale of damage can be surveyed; those serious Christians who participated in the slandering of Harry Potter should now be able to see the extent of their error, and to repent.

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I have been, very belatedly, hooked by the Harry Potter series; which initially I was indifferent-to, or mildly hostile about.

It required that I read the end of the series (to 'get' what the books were doing) and then went back and read the earlier books (albeit in some peculiar order, which I cannot now recall).

Now I am very taken with them, and regard them as genuinely inspired (whereas, previously, I saw them as merely ingeniously contrived - the product of a magpie bricolateur, rather than of a wise and farseeing owl - as I now think).

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The most stunning, and heartening, thing about the series is their moral seriousness underpinned by a transcendental perspective: which is pretty much exactly what the modern world requires.

The Harry Potter books provide a rich Christian perspective - but not too rich nor too obvious (indeed, not-at-all obvious - there is their strength); they provide about as much as our deeply corrupt and barren modern world can reasonably digest.

Much more, and the books would have been merely a cult. As it is, there is a great deal in HP, and it has gone out to tens (or, more likely, hundreds) of millions of people - and the books have not merely been read-through, but devoured, multi-read, and assimilated. 

Remarkable.

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The first and most vital thing is that the Harry Potter series is predicated on the reality of the immortal soul.

The reality of the soul is not argued; it is accepted: as indeed it must be.

It is there; indispensable and woven through the whole story: Death is real, necessary and irreversible; yet the soul is eternal.

And the soul is regarded as being a person's primary concern; susceptible of change as a result of choices.

(And free will is foundational, assumed, intrinsic to the series as well, as it must be.)

The soul can be maimed and diminished, irreversibly, by choices during life - as we discover from Harry's sight of Voldemort's maimed and diminished soul in the King's Cross chapter of Deathly Hallows.

Such damage cannot be undone after death.

That is what I mean by moral seriousness.

How many other works of late twentieth century mainstream literature can compare with this? I can't think of any at all.

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The second aspect is prophecy.

We moderns have a big, big problem with the reality of prophecy - which I take it is a self-made and artificial problem, because earlier generations did not share it.

That there were real prophecies was a given: the problems related to discerning the real prophets and prophecies from the fake; and understanding the real prophecies, and recognizing when they were being, or had been, fulfilled.

But the reality of the phenomenon of prophecy was not in question.

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In relation to Harry Potter the explicit explanation of prophecy (both from Dumbledore, and by JKR) is psychological - prophecies are real because (and only because) people believe them, and make them come true.

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/11/19/new-interview-with-j-k-rowling-for-release-of-dutch-edition-of-deathly-hallows

But as pointed out in this insightful blog posting...

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/08/prophecy-potter.html

...this is not quite right, since Dumbledore clearly recognizes when Professor Trelawney is making a real prophecy (only twice, when she goes into an altered state of consciousness and is apparently unaware of what she is saying and does not recall it), and when she is just consciously making-up stuff.

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My feeling is that these are moments when JKR is pointing off-stage, beyond the world of HP, since true prophecy is supernaturally inspired (and is beyond the capability of 'magic'); ultimately true prophecy would imply God.

(Prophecy implies God even when a specific prophecy might well be 'demonic' - indeed it might well be that most true prophecies were indeed demonic - because the existence of demons is predicated on the existence of God)

Rowling must have known, or been inspired to act on the basis, that she could not bring God explicitly into Harry Potter, or else her book would have been restricted to a Christian genre and a Christian sub-culture.

The Harry Potter novels are therefore compatible with a Christian perspective, subtly point to that perspective, but in an entirely optional and 'deniable' fashion.

You don't need to acknowledge the presence of Christian underpinnings; but they are there if you notice them, want them, or need them.

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As CS Lewis recognized after publishing That Hideous Strength and Perelandra, it is one advantage for the Christian apologist in our secular public discourse that almost any amount of theology can be 'smuggled' into fantasy novels without being detected, but still having an effect - so long as it is not explicitly labelled as such.

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Given the sheer scale of their sales, and the obvious devotion of their readership (and no book can have much real influence on people unless it inspires multiple re-readings - which the series clearly does) - I would have to regard the Harry Potter books as one of the most hopeful and potentially fruitful recent phenomena of the Western world.

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I am again re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - and as I began to break down in tears in a cafe (halfway through 'The Missing Mirror' chapter), and was forced to lay the book aside and stop reading or risk dissolving into a blubbering mass; I realized for the nth time that many adults are missing reading this wonderful book for the simple reason that they are either unable or unwilling to read children's books.

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The problem is that, according to conventional wisdom, the Deathly Hallows can only be approached via the preceding six Harry Potter stories; two of which are designed for intelligent (approx) eight year olds, the next for ten year olds, two more for 12-14 year olds, and only the last two volumes of being fully adult novels.

But, despite that I enjoy reading 'children's literature' - this was in fact not how I personally approached the Harry Potter series.

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I had seen all the early movies (which I found entertaining but not deep - because the deep stuff has been censored or edited-out); but after abortive attempts to tackle the early HP volumes, I finally read some chunks of the Half Blood Prince, due to my inability to understand the movie (becuase it incompetently missed-out key facts).

Then, my daughter got very keen on HP and began reading through the series - and in order to be able to discuss it with her, as she progressed through each volume, I read the corresponding plot summaries on Wikipedia/ Harry Potter Wiki - then I eventually read the whole of Deathly Hallows and was amazed, astonished, delighted - and extremely moved by it.

So I went back and read all the earlier stories, but not in chronological order (I have read the whole series, aloud, in chronological order since then).

Anyway, my point is that, so long as it is regarded as essential for adults to read through the Harry Potter stories from the Philosopher's Stone onwards before tackling the last books, for so long will many adults be prevented from appreciating the wonderful last book.

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In fact, in terms of both structure and style, the Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows make up a unit: therefore, the solution is that they should be published together in a single mega-volume marketed to adults - and with all the necessary back story provided in the form or a Foreword or Preface, plus a few explanatory notes (probably as footnotes).

This would be ideal: but in the meantime I invite adults to plunge straight into the Half Blood Prince followed by Deathly Hallows, having read the back story on Wikipedia, the Harry Potter Wiki or somewhere similar; and looking-up any puzzling references as you go.

Because, you really don't want to miss these books - especially if you are a Christian.   

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One of the primary functions of literature, of art generally, has been to priovide examples of heroism: of courage and endurance in a good cause.

One example is the Old Testament, which can function as a series of cameos of heroic virtue in the face of persecution, corruption and a multitude of disadvantages. The way I remember the OT from my childhood is, indeed, in exactly this way - David and Goliath, Sampson, Daniel... heroic figures. (There are better examples, of course, but these are the ones I remember.)

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The same applies to the Book of Mormon, and indeed this line of thought was stimulated by an e-mail from commenter 'MC' who is an active Mormon. He described how the BoM functions to provide a set of heroic examples upon which modern Mormons can model themselves.

When I again looked through the BoM, I could see that this was indeed something of a Key to understanding the special role or function of the BoM in the LDS church: more explicitly than the OT, and in greater number and with more variations on the theme, the Book of Mormon provides one account after another of individual courage and endurance in faith; in face of recurrent apostasy, decadence and violence - and thus a spectrum of hero models, from whom the modern Mormon may gain inspiration and resolution. 

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In the increasingly secular environment of the twentieth century, this role has devolved from scripture to fiction, and especially to the 'fantasy' genre of which Tolkien is the greatest exemplar.

I myself have used characters and situations from Lord of the Rings in order to model and clarify situations in life, and from whom to gain inspiration.

The Harry Potter series is a more recent example - and much of the appeal of HP comes from its many and vivid depictions of self-sacrificing heroism.

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Scripture and fantasy are traditional genres, and the atheistic, radical, progressive opposition can only parasitize upon heroic literature - as when the heroes of Carol Kendall's (excellent) Minnipins/ Gammage Cup story are depicted rather in the fashion of sixties counter-culturalists with their unconventional dress, poeticizing and abstract painting;  nonetheless, their heroism is in service of traditional 'goods' and made possible by the eccentric reactionary Walter the Earl.

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But despite its fundamental rootedness in the traditional, and despite its quasi-scriptural basis; heroic fantasy literature can be turned against traditional values, as happened when Tolkien was adopted by the sixties counter-culture, and interpreted to be in favour of drop-out drug culture, the sexual revolution, and extreme Leftist utopianism generally.

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The same has now happened with Harry Potter, but in a much nastier fashion given the modern environment of media-spun political correctness, with an organization called the Harry Potter Alliance - which bureaucratically harnesses Potter-mania to all the latest hot-button causes of modern Leftism, with Potterphiles deployed as funders of radical pressure groups - and thereby 'turns' heroic idealism from defence of tradition into subversion of The Good.

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As with the Left's appropriation of Tolkien, the HPA works by ignoring the deep Christian structure of the novels, and focusing on superficial aspects which can be channeled into 'supporting' a pre-existing agenda.

But the HP novels are much more ambivalent about tradition/ Leftism/ the sexual revolution than is Lord of the Rings.

With her post-Potter works and public persona, JK Rowling herself seems to have turned against the deep Christian and traditionalist structure of the Harry Potter books, and embraced all the distinctive concerns of modern Leftism.

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The turning of Harry Potter shows the way that Leftism works. It was made easier by the fact that the deep Christianity of the Harry Potter books is - while real and powerful, as depicted by John 'The Hogwarts Professor' Granger's analyses - covert and coded; while the more Leftist concerns are much more obvious: for instance the Nazi-like 'racism' of Voldemort and the 'pure blood' death eaters.

Thus makes it easier to invert the meaning of HP; but in fact, such is the power of the mass media to impose its own categories (by selection, emphasis, diversion, invention, shock) - that even real life personal experience can now be reframed to mean its opposite: this is a matter of daily, headline routine.

Modern people believe what they are told by the mass media; not what they know by experience: we are tabulae rasae, 'hollow men', the 'men without chests' - each night forgetting everything; each morning waiting to be re-filled by the latest media content.

So the potential benefits of heroic literature are quite simply turned-against their traditional and Christian basis.

Perhaps the LDS church has been fortunate that the Book of Mormon is off-the-radar, being considered as beneath the notice of the mainstream mass media culture; which has not therefore condescended to 'reframe' its stories of heroic virtue into meaning the opposite of their real meaning; a process which has, of course, long since happened with the Bible.

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Is Harry Potter a Saint?

The answer is a clear and resounding yes!

By the end of The Deathly Hallows, Harry is indeed a Saint - indeed the seven book series is an account of the making of a Saint who can save the world from the personification of evil.

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Of course Harry does not start out as a Saint when we first meet him as a 10 year old boy - but following his numerous trials and tests, symbolic deaths and rebirths, and actual death and restoration to life, by the last pages of the last book Harry really has become a Saint:

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In saying that HP is a Saint I am aware I appear to be contradicting both JK Rowling and John Granger (aka The Hogwarts Professor), both of who have categorically stated that Harry is 'no saint'.

Who am I to go against the author and the premier Potter Scholar?

My understanding is that JKR and JG would not disagree with my explanation of why Harry becomes a Saint, but in saying HP is 'no saint' they were trying not to be misunderstood by the average reader - because the average reader profoundly misunderstands what is a Saint.

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JKR and JG are also probably trying to be clear that for most of the series Harry is not a Saint, indeed nothing like a Saint.

But that applies to many real Saints too - for much of their lives they were not Saints.

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The corrupt and secular (legalistic) mainstream modern definition of a Saint is (roughly) a person without flaws, who never does anything wrong.

But by this kind of 'zero-tolerance' definition - not only is Harry no saint, but nor was any real-life saint a real Saint. All real Saints were fallen humans (except perhaps the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to recent Roman Catholic doctrine), lived in this world, and had flaws when their lives as a whole are surveyed.

(Except that some Saints probably did achieve a 'flawless' perfection after long struggle and shortly before death.)

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In what follows, I hope I am simply sticking somewhat closer to the idea of a Saint being someone who, while still living on earth, has their deepest being turned-toward God, their soul in communion with God (feet on earth, head in heaven).

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Real life Saints are a result of a long process of 'theosis', sanctification, of purification - this is what is happening to Harry in the first six and three quarter books.

Harry is tried, again and again, and comes through these trials a better and braver man: indeed, by the end he is the best and the bravest (as Dumbledore tells him in King's Cross).

Then Harry accepts death in a spirit of loving self-sacrifice, is killed and chooses to return to life.

Thus he becomes a martyr-Saint - which (sadly) is the most abundant type of Christian Saint: but unlike most martyr-Saints, Harry is restored to life to intervene in the world, to save the world.

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(Harry is not 'resurrected', which would suggest a new and perfected body - but Harry's soul, having vacated the body and been endowed with greater wisdom and sanctity, then returns to and reanimates his briefly-dead body.)

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Harry's loving self-sacrifice renders immune to the enemy not just himself but all his loved friends, all the good forces defending Hogwarts - after Harry returns to life, from that point onwards nobody among the defenders of the castle is killed, nobody is injured nor even hit by a curse.

This means that Harry is a miracle-working Saint - a wonderworker.

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Harry returns from death by martyrdom as a wonderworking Saint, a saviour and messenger.

Only a great Saint could save the world from Voldemort - who has become, by his choices, not so much a human but more a kind of demonic servant of (implicitly) Satan.

(Satan is, of course - but implicitly, the source of Voldemort's extraordinary powers, the source of all 'Dark magic'; although Voldemort himself does not realise it, since Voldemort's pride is such that he will not acknowledge any other will, but claims everything to himself.)

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'Saviour' because Harry's self-sacrifice enables him to save the world from Satan's emissary Voldemort; returning from death Harry immediately realises that is now immune to the Cruciatus curse (cough cough - symbolism alert).

Harry is given power (uniquely, nobody else could do it) to kill the un-dead Voldemort - but pauses in order to offer him a chance for remorse/ repentance.

Voldemort cannot even comprehend the offer.

And it is through his invincible pride in persisting in trying to kill the invulnerable Harry that Voldemort kills himself with his own rebounding death curse.

A beautiful, deep parable.

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(Harry knows, because he has seen Voldemort's soul and because Dumbledore has told him, that Voldemort almost certainly cannot be helped. Humans can always repent, but Voldemort - with his multiply-fragmented soul - is hardly human, almost a demon. (And for various theological reasons, fallen angels/ demons cannot repent). Why then does Harry try to bring Voldemort to feel 'remorse'? I think it is 'just in case'. Since Voldemort is an unique kind of maimed being, Harry is not sure of what he is capable. Harry knows (from Dumbledore in King's Cross) that Voldemort cannot be saved by another person's will. Repentance cannot be done by others. So Harry offers Voldemort a final choice to repent and 'save' his remaining fragment of soul (although it is unclear what that might mean) - because Harry cannot be sure that such a choice is impossible to Voldemort.)

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Harry is a 'messenger' because he has learned about ultimate reality - beyond death - from Dumbledore in the King's Cross chapter; Dumbledore himself has become a prophetic messenger from the other side.

When restored to life, Harry brings this divine revelation back to earth for the benefit of the world.

This is typical of great Saints - they are divine messengers and intermediaries; explaining, clarifying, amplifying revelation.

Indeed, only Saints can really understand Christian teaching. So far as we know, by the end of the series, only Harry, in the whole world, can really understand the nature of the world.

Harry thus takes over the role of 'Spiritual Father to the wizard world' from Dumbledore, but as a greater - because better, albeit less magically powerful - man than Dumbledore.

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So, I would say that, at a deep and mostly implicit level, the Harry Potter series is precisely about 'the making of a Saint'.

And is not that a remarkable and wonderful thing?

That the best-selling and most widely-read book series of recent decades (in some respects, of all time), this in a modern world apparently without any living Saints, should ultimately be about the making of a Saint?

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Note: the above analysis is built-upon the work of John Granger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Granger

And his vastly-documented insight that the Harry Potter series is, without any doubt, an essentially Christian work: both by intent and in achievement.

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I have been to see the newly released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2.

I can pronounce it an excellent movie - in particular the middle section from the death of Snape, which packed as powerful an emotional punch as any movie I have seen.

At any rate I was reduced to a blubbing wreck by it for a continuous period of some 20 minutes; which hasn't happened to me with many films, and none before quite so much as this one.

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As I had predicted, this last part of the series continued to delete almost all of the the deepest moral and spiritual theme of the books - which, as I discussed recently, are concerned with the soul:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/07/soul-in-harry-potter-and-deathly.html

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However, this leaves open the question of what is the deepest moral message of the movie, and by implication of the whole series of movies. What was it that moved me so?

The deepest theme of the movies, in my opinion, is the validity and importance of steadfast, unrequited, disinterested, sacrificial Love.

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This theme gets a double emphasis from the stories of two major characters of Harry and Snape.

Harry is motivated explicitly and throughout by love for his dead parents, who died when he was a small baby, and of whom he has (initially) no memories. Ultimately, this love leads him to allow himself to be killed by Voldemort. He allows himself to be sacrificed for love.

Snape, we discover towards the end of the last book, was motivated covertly and throughout by love for Harry's dead mother Lily; a love which was unrequited (except, partially, during their childhood) - and for which he endures much fear, horror, hazard and suffering until he is finally killed by Voldemort. His whole life, since the death of Lily, has indeed been a sacrifice, a martyrdom, for love.

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Harry and Snape's greatest love is for the dead, indeed the focus of their love overlaps; and this love is not actively reciprocal.

Since Harry's parents are dead and 'therefore', so far as he is aware until near the end, the love is unilateral; Snape's love was explicitly unilateral since Lily repudiated him. Yet both Harry and Snape both voluntarily acquiesce to death for this love.

What can this mean?

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In a modern, worldly secular morality, unrequited love, love for the dead, suffering unto death, martyrdom are all behaviours generally regarded either pathetic, stupid or pathological.

Harry and Snape would therefore be regarded (from a modern and this-wordly perspective) as losers, creeps or nutters.

Yet, clearly this is not the case in the world of the movies (and even less so for the books): which implies that Harry and Snape's love is not worldly, but transcendental.

The implicit validity of Harry and Snape's love is implicitly pointing-offstage at some transcendental, presumably divine, source of validation - whereby disinterested and sacrificial love is worthy and admirable.

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Also, implicitly, is lurking the idea that Harry's and Snape's whole lives are made not just purposeful but also meaningful (that is to say their lives are redeemed) by their love (this unrequited love); and therefore that the love of specific persons can be a proxy for the love of God (since how else could their love be a saving love?).

The redemptive nature of sacrificial love is particularly obvious in the case of Snape who is a mostly-wicked man redeemed by only two virtues - Courage in pursuit of Love: but these virtues are enough.

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So, even the Harry Potter movies - which have substantially deleted the deepest (and Christian) stratum of the Harry Potter books - are predicated on a vision of human life and behaviour in terms of unconditional love -- a perspective that is (to say the least) unfashionable; and would indeed be regarded by mainstream modern morality as at best incomprehensible, more likely pitiful, and at worst frankly deluded.

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Note: In the movies especially, the workings of disinterested sacrificial love are much more obvious and focused for Snape than for Harry (Harry has several other motives for his self-sacrifice, many of them straightforward and mainstream; such as helping his friends, appeasing Voldemort, trying to prevent suffering etc.) - and I suspect that this clarity and singleness of motivation accounts for much of the widespread fascination with the character of Snape.

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I am actively reading both Charles Williams (the Inkling) and JK Rowling's Harry Potter chronicles - including John Granger's superb 'How Harry cast his Spell'...

when I suddenly realised that Rowling's book, across the whole series, is about the best possible illustration of C.W's distinctive ideas of co-inherence, substitution (including substituted love) and exchange.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-charles-williams-co.html

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It was the following passage, from the end of the first book of the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - Dumbledore is speaking to Harry:

Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort cannot understand, it is love.

He didn't realize that love as powerful as you mother's for you leaves its own mark.

Not a scar, no visible sign...

to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever: It is in your very skin.

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This is pure Charles Williams! Not that I think it derives directly from Charles Williams - rather it indicates that JK Rowling has independently worked-out the same implications as did C.W. - implications which are orthodoxly, traditionally Christian yet somehow neglected or de-emphasised.

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He saved others: himself he cannot save - this was said of Christ, indicating the reality of co-inherence - and the same could be said of Harry Potter.

Throughout the book he is saved from death, again and again, by the love of others - especially by sacrificial love, up to and including acceptance of death for love - such love as a kind of real but immaterial and permanent protection... It is operative even when (as in most instances) 'the person who loved us is gone'.

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And in the end, in The Deathly Hallows, Harry demonstrates that as we are saved by the love of others; so it is our task to save - not ourselves but others.

Harry sacrifices himself (allows Vodlemort to kill him) from love of others; and the effect of this act of sacrificial love is seen immediately because after Harrys death and rebirth the pupils, Professors, parents and friends of Hogwarts are rendered immune to the curses and magic of Voldemort and the Death Eaters - there are no more casualties from the Good side in the battle.

So, because of the effects of Harry's invisible love, the evil cannot (for a while, anyway) harm good.

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Yet all this happens without the Hogwarts defenders or the death eaters being aware of it - only Harry (and Dumbledore) know what has happened.

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So this is love that is real (not a psychological trick, not effective because people believe it is effective - but effective even without awareness) love as a real 'substance', but immaterial...

Rowling's is a description of love that is totally in contradiction to the mainstream one in our society - where love is seen as a type of pleasure; something wholly subjective, one-way and temporary.

For moderns, A loves B, and the love is something happening in A's brain. When the brain state changes, or the brain dies, then love dies and leaves nothing behind - unless it has influenced another brain state, which is equally evanescent.

Indeed the modern cliche idea is that love is a short term brainstorm, maybe pleasurable or maybe miserable - but inevitably disappearing like snow in sunshine to leave no trace. Unrequited or one-way love is seen as pathetic, undignified, a waste of time.

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Rowling's is a concept of love that saves - as it saves Snape, an almost-wholly nasty man, but who is wholly and gloriously redeemed by his love for a long-dead woman - married to someone else and who eventually disliked him - and the courage this love enables.

And of course, via Lily his mother (who is long since dead, but not 'gone') Snape's love saves Harry, many times - even despite that at a superficial level Snape loathes Harry (and the feeling is mutual).

Snape is a classic 'loser', in love but not loved; making sacrifices - his whole double-agent life is a sacrifice and he is sacrificially killed by Vodemort; except that this is not mere infatuation but real love, as proved by his sacrifice - hence its effects are real and permanent.

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And CW's definition of the worst thing - the exclusion of love - is almost a literal rendition of Dumbledore's and Harry's explanation for Voldemort - a man who deliberately lived without love, and therefore became a kind of demon.

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So the Harry Potter books can be seen as an illustration of Charles Williams web of exchange, substitution - people doing the work of salvation for each other - and only indirectly for themselves; this enabled because of co-inherence - that we are members one of another (contain a bit of each other) and unified by Christ (contained by and containing).

Love always working in both directions, and across the divide between life and death.

Love as real, effectual, permanent - the only answer to death.

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It is very difficult for modern people to understand 'love' (agape) and how it is central to Christianity.

But the Harry Potter series does not just explain Christian love, it shows agape in operation such that readers can experience it for themselves.

For moderns, Rowling's use of love in her plot is extraordinarily strange (so much of it being love between the living and the dead) and it is remarkable that this very obvious and repeatedly emphasized fact is apparently unnoticed - at least consciously.

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Somehow, the fact has eluded secular culture that Rowling's mega-bestselling seven volume book is, at a deep level, a precise and completely unambiguous depiction of agape in action, in multiple acts of exchange and substitution, crossing between this life and the next.

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Before I understood the deep (and Christian) level of the Harry Potter novels, in other words before reading the Deathly Hallows, I found his relentless focus on his dead parents either unconvincing or pathological.

After all, his parents were killed while he was a baby, and Harry had no memory of them (until the memories were re-awakened by various magical means - such as the Dementors - later in the series).

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The surface (sentimental?) explanation for Harry's growing fixation on his dead parents (exemplified by the Mirror of Erised episode in Volume 1) is that his adopted parents (the Dursley's) are horrible people who are deliberately mean to him.

But this explanation 'merely' implies the self-interested idea that Harry thinks he would have been more kindly and generously treated by his natural parents. This is almost certainly true, but not enough to bear the moral weight of a seven volume series.

If Harry's strong feelings about his dead parents really was based on the comparative nastiness of the Dursley's, then it would be, at bottom, 'merely' a desire for comfort and pleasure on Harry's part; which, while understandable (don't we all share it?) is not exactly admirable.

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A deeper, but as it turns-out incorrect, explanation is that Harry has a kind of pathological, fantasy fixation on his dead parents - presumably as a consequence of having been-lied-to about them, or as a projection onto them of unrealistic levels of perfection.

There series of novels would then be seen as a progress away from over-idealised imagination towards a real understanding of his parents.
This would make the Harry Potter saga into a psychodrama of personal growth. But Harry is the hero, and it does not make sense for him to be motivated by something that is so purely personal. A hero saves his community - not only himself, and Harry's feelings for his dead parents are bound up with this.

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The deeper picture which emerges over the course of the whole saga is that there are strong elements of destiny and heredity at work.

Harry begins by identifying with his father - for his exploits in Quiddich, his magical skill and as a dominant 'gang leader'; but ends by recognising that his father was also a spiteful bully and that the best in Harry comes from his mother: specifically his mother's exceptionally loving nature which has both affected Harry and been inherited by him.

This is symbolised by the fact that Harry looks almost identical to his father, except that he has his mother's eyes (and therefore, it implied, soul).

The people who best understand Harry (e.g. Dumbledore, Lupin and Snape just as he dies) recognise that Harry is 'his mother's son', but the people who misunderstand Harry (e.g. Snape until he dies, and Sirius) see Harry almost as a reincarnation of his father.

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The stunning revelations of Deathly Hallows (prefigured in the graveyard at the end of Goblet) include that Harry's dead parents are not dead, gone and extinguished, but continue to live another existence 'beyond the veil' - aware of Harry, with some possibility of communication, and even able to provide some kind of support to him.

The deep metaphysical, and Christian, message of the Harry Potter series is that love has permanent effects: love affects everything and everybody forever.

Love may be overcome by evil, but is never destroyed by it.

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That the Harry Potter series of novels was inspired - and not a product of JK Rowling's unaided motivation and imagination - has seemed increasingly obvious since I was first able to appreciate the marvellous qualities of the books, and contrast them with the air-headed-ness of the author's public persona.

Indeed, before I engaged with reading the books, I was for many years put off by having seen interviews with Rowling, from which I concluded that someone like her simply could not have written anything worth reading.

But the books are a wonder - hence the necessity of acknowledging that they were indeed inspired (a fact confirmed by seeing what talentless and soul-draining bilge she produces when she sets Harry aside and is thereby bereft of that inspiration: I refer to her recent 'adult novel').

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Thus we get the fascinating clashes between the traditional Christian belief system which underpins the Harry Potter books, and the anti-Christian, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-Good nihilism of Rowling's real-life bureaucratic Leftism.

So, while I have seen no reference to Rowling's views on the topic on the the bearing of weapons by subjects or citizens, I would be extremely confident that she would be against it (and in favour of sustaining and extending the current UK situation of mandatory Eloi-ism; in which only violent criminals and feral youths are tacitly 'permitted' to carry and use weapons; and the decent and physically weak are rendered helpless, and harshly prosecuted for any attempt - or any possibility of any attempt - at self-defence).

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Yet the Harry Potter novels, from the Prisoner of Azkabahn onwards, and especially the Order of the Phoenix, are brilliant depictions of precisely the form of tyranny which exists in the modern West.

An inverted reality  in which the existence and badness of baddies is excluded from public discourse, and the goodies become 'the problem'.

A world in which aggressors are relabelled as victims, and victims are blamed for provoking aggression against themselves.

In which the mass media, government policy, administration and regulation, and enforcement are all unrelentingly focused upon the past, present, and potential future, actual or extrapolated or invented, transgressions of decent people.

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You may recall that Hogwarts classes in 'Defence against the Dark Arts' are made wholly theoretical (all practical defensive training being abolished), and focused on elementary, harmless and useless responses; meanwhile the fact that Voldemort has returned and is preparing for war is ignored and denied.

Because nobody want Voldemort to have returned, Voldemort has not returned. Because effective defence against Voldemort carries risks, there must be no effective defence (and those who insist on preparing are taking needless risk). Because to prepare for disaster is scary, there must be no preparation for disaster (and those who do prepare are terrorizing the ignorant, for their own selfish or deluded purposes).

Because any form of organization outwith the state might resist the state, then all forms of actual or potential organization outwith the state are forbidden - and therefore organized resistance to Voldemort is severely impaired; and therefore resistance is scattered and individual, and may be officially portrayed as eccentric or revolutionary.

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Instances of aggression by the Death Eaters and their minions such as the Dementors are unmentioned, denied, or claimed to be propaganda from the disaffected, stupid or crazy - and contradiction of this line is punished by shaming and ridicule in the media (which almost everybody believes, even against the evidence of their own direct experience and common sense) and by increasingly sadistic sanctions against those who continue to speak out.

And whatever happens is made into a justification for more Ministerial control.  

In other words, life in England under the rule of JKR's close personal friend Gordon Brown, and its continuation under the current 'Conservative' 'coalition' government.

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I found this interesting post and comment on the topic which Americans call 'the right to bear arms':

http://everything2.com/title/Harry+Potter+and+the+Right+to+Bear+Arms

In which the thought processes of (more or less) common-sense tradition versus Leftism are set-out clearly, and the Potter versus Rowling oppositions comes through with force.

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It is fortunate that so many millions of Harry Potter novels have already been sold and dispersed beyond all possibility of recall - since I am sure that if it were possible for them to be rewritten as politically correct tracts by the post-inspired and now evil-allied Rowling, then she would do this.

But as it is, I think Potter has broken free of his mediator, and he is no doubt at work on behalf of God and the Good (and against JK Rowling) - in a subliminal fashion - in the minds of many millions...

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I shall try to review this book without spoilers - by focusing upon its form and the impression it made upon me, rather than the specific content.

Overall, I would say that the book is OK; but unimpressive and underwhelming - I was never at any point grabbed by it, and had to push myself to continue reading.

(This was not because I am unfamiliar with reading plays in script form - in contrast I have read hundreds of modern plays, for my own pleasure or interest - e.g. nearly all of the canonical plays of the British theatre from Shakespeare's time, including all of GB Shaw, and most of the mainstream published British plays from about 1945-80.)

Like most popular theatre throughout history, the script for Cursed Child is at the level of farce and melodrama; and did not at any point rise to comedy or tragedy. The prose is merely functional (considerably below the quality of the Harry Potter novels), and never poetic - and it is only by poetic qualities to its language that a play (qua play) can rise above farce/ melodrama.

Aside, the vast majority of plays achieve their higher or deeper qualities by factors of the production rather than by their words - i.e. the special qualities of acting and stagecraft (plus topicality and novelty) - or by the working of music, in the case of musicals and operas.

In sum, the most impressive factors are usaully extraneous to the writing. and confined to the live performance situation and thus do not long survive -- Which is why the permanent literary canon of plays is so slender compared with that of poems or novels; and also compared with the vast number of plays that are - for a while - a popular or critical success.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/drama-is-nearly-all-ephemeral.html

The best way to approach reading The Cursed Child is to think of it as a dramatised Soap about Harry Potter et al; or as a canonical Fan Fiction - because its focus, scope and nature is most like FanFic. I mean by this than FanFic is mostly about 'shipping' or relation-ships, and takes a strategy of getting the characters and making them a different age, or putting them into a different setting, or taking minor characters and making them protagonists - which is what Cursed Child does.

The Soap aspects are dominant because Cursed Child is utterly without the underpinning spiritual, indeed religious, aspects that raise the Harry Potter novels to the level of works of a work of genius.

The highest point to which Cursed Child rises, is the level of interpersonal relationships considered from a 'utilitarian' ethical perspective - of that being best which makes the  most people happiest for most of the time, and especially that which minimises suffering. From this angle; there are several heart-warming moments - as well as several more unconvincing, contrived and clunky male-male interactions.

The 'moral' of the two play cycle (as it came-through to me) is superficial and implausible: that evil is caused by childhood loneliness. In other words, the plays have a very secular, modern 'psychodynamic' kind of ethic (whereas the moral of the HP novels was very traditional - that the most important virtues are Love and Courage; and their importance goes beyond mortal life).

So - should you read it? That depends.

If, like me, you found the Harry Potter novels to be a deep experience, then probably better not to read it; because this book may tend retrospectively to trivialise and 'poison' some of the best aspects of the novels (in  the way that a movie of a book more often does).

If, on the other hand, you regard the Potter novels as mainly about human relationships and intricate plotting, then the plays would probably be of interest.

And if you are a Potter FanFic writer or aficionado, then you will probably be this play's ideal audience. 

The original Harry Potter series of seven books, completed by the superb "Deathly Hallows" volume, is probably the major Christian fantasy fiction since the Lord of the Rings; because (as well as its many incidental delights) it has a deep moral structure, and this deep plot concerns depicts matters of primary and transcendental importance for Christians.  

By Christian-Fellow-Travellers I means those primarily political (e.g. conservative, reactionary or libertarian) political intellectuals who approve-of Christianty (they may even self-identify as Christians) without adopting a Chriustian perspective... I mean people like Roger Scruton or  Jordan Peterson, who are the examples here.

By contrast are people who are primarily Christian, and from-that derive their political views - my examples here are Jerram Barrs (a Calvinist) and John Granger (an old-calendar Russian Orthodox).

The test I propose is to consider the reaction to the Harry Potter books among those who actually like the books - who find something to admire in them.

If you can be bothered  to watch these four videos - I think you can see that the Christian-Fellow-Travellers miss the Christian-point of these books; and this comes as a consequence of their primarily political persepctive.

So what is my point here? It is that there is a world of difference between being a 'Right Wing' Christian-fellow-traveller, and being an actual Christian - and that difference includes the persepctive from which you view and interpret the world... including the Harry Potter books...

I should add that since publishing the Harry Potter books, and in her public persona and pronouncements; their author JK Rowling gives every appearance of having apostatized from her Christian faith, and indeed is in-effect an influential anti-Christian. Nonetheless, the Harry Potter books themselves tell a very different story.
 

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One of the many extraordinary things about the Harry Potter series is the way in which the celibate and unrequited love of Severus Snape for Harry's mother Lily all-but usurps the main plot - and forms (for a sizable minority of fans) the centre of the whole series.

In other words, for some fans, Snape - rather than Harry - is the most interesting and sympathetic character.  

This was clearly unplanned by JK Rowling - who has stated that she regards Snape as a nasty character redeemed only by his love (for Lily) and the courage which this inspires - but otherwise very deeply flawed - almost to the point of sadism.

It is a remarkable thing in a modern context that Snape should take on this role; especially as he is portrayed in the books (big nose, greasy hair, awkward loner).

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Of course, the casting of Alan Rickman in the movies may have something to do with this, since Rickman's screen persona is intrinsically attractive to women of all ages, regardless of his role.


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That aside; I see this phenomenon of Snape-mania as yet further evidence of the benign subterranean influence of the Harry Potter series - that Rowling has made the permanently unrequited love of an unattractive social reject (albeit one of great magical powers) for a 'popular' beauty into a morally-admirable thing for tens of millions of readers.

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This fact is only understandable in terms of the other-worldly backstory of Harry Potter - the immortality of the soul, and life beyond death.

Snape is indeed brave in life - but from a this-worldly perspective his unyielding love for Lily can only be seen as a pitiful delusion. The fantasy life of a 'sad' man.

Yet that is not how Harry Potter readers experience it: they see Snape's love as being - not requited - but validated (or redeemed) beyond the grave.

This in the context of the biggest publishing success of the past generation!

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I say it again: remarkable...

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JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has a grown-ups novel coming out next month called The Casual Vacancy.

Will it be good?

Well, now is the time to make a prediction, before I have read it.

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I don't like the title, I don't like the plot summary, I don't even like the idea of her doing a modern adult 'literary' novel (which is a dead genre, IMHO)... so I am having a hard job looking forward to reading it.

But, being in the midst of sequentially reading aloud the whole of the Harry Potter series (currently nearly half way through the Half Blood Prince) I must rationally set aside my fear and dread, and have confidence that she will pull-off this improbable venture, and will be publishing another triumph.

The Harry Potter books are just so good - and the fact that she wrote the last five under immense and intense and indeed unprecedented public scrutiny is a hugely impressive feat - so she could do it again, I think.

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How good are the Harry Potter books?

I think they are in the same league as, at or above the level of, the Narnia Chronicles in terms of Childrens' fantasy (below Lord of the Rings, of course, because everything is) - and in terms of novels as such they are at the level of Thomas Hardy or Anthony Trollope (which is second rank by the strictest criteria).

As novels they have many virtues, too many to list; most importantly including deep moral seriousness and genuine heroism - but their partial defect is in the sheer quality of the prose, which is considerably below the highest level.

There are also some fairly serious structural implausabilities in Prisoner, Goblet and Phoenix, upon which hinge major aspects of the plots: viz: the excessive power of the Time-Turner, the unbelievable sustained impersonation of Moody, the unexplained self-distancing from Harry by Dumbledore - why unexplained?, the notion that Sirius - a powerful wizard and animagus - was unable to leave Headquarters for months...

So they are not first rank - but their rank is very high, and probably higher than anything else in recent decades.

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Can she do it again?

Well, why not?

As a person, JKR has never struck me in her public interviews and speeches as very smart, or very interesting, or very impressive - her personality seems poorly-integrated, her extensive facial plastic surgery (starting from about 2003) and embarrassingly juvenile dress style seem like evidence of lack of unrealistic vanity and shallowness

- but then all geniuses (especially women geniuses) are odd, so that does not make any difference, really.

I shall have a hard job getting myself to read Casual Vacancy - and maybe I will need more than one attempt - but in the end I expect to won over by it.

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One of the places where imagination can thrive in the modern world is in Fan Fiction. The idea of this is that a group of people who are mad keen on something - like Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Tolkien, My Little Pony or indeed almost anything - will collaborate to write stories about this 'universe', post them online, and usually get them read and commented on.

(Another aspect is cross-over fictions, in which someone takes their favourite universes and combines them - for example Dr Who and My Little Pony.)

The number of such fictions online is absolutely staggering; and since there is no quality control, the average quality is of course poor - but the peak quality is as high as any other kind of fiction that gets written.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/question-of-pengolod-superb-numenorean.html

The point is that Fan Fiction can be a world of Imagination - in which a world that has been created by others can be repeated, extended, developed by readers for whom that world is real. Certainly, I would have been very keen to participate in a Fan Fiction community when I was in my teens and had discovered Tolkien.

Fan Fiction is surely one of the best aspects that characterize that (mostly good) phenomenon known as  Geeks or Nerds .

So, I would regard this world and phenomenon as one of the hopes for the world; in the sense that individuals may strengthen their Imaginations through participation, creation, commentary in a large and active group which is probably not available otherwise. And then they will probably carry this through the rest of their lives, as a touchstone of possibilities.

Of course, the forces of darkness are in there too, trying to wreck this world-building with satire and mockery, or simply by dragging it down to sex, especially non-traditional sex (e.g. 'slash' fiction); and 'shipping' which refers to Fan Fiction type activities focused on relation-ships; which may be the same relationships as in the original work, may be speculative, and many be 'kinky in some way.

Shipping can be funny and clever, up to a point - trying to Imagine how certain relationships came to happen, what would happen in them etc; but in general it is a trivialization and a stripping away of Imagination - it is taking something special and good, and removing everything about it which gives quality and distinction; to reduce it to the mass media level of celebrity gossip, or the 'recreational fiction' level of passing time in some diverting fashion.

So, to take Lord of the Rings and write up the Aragorn-Arwen romance has a strong tendency to miss the whole point of the book - to miss what it is that makes Tolkien's world worth writing-about in the first place - and when it starts being about Aragorn and Legolas then this has tipped over into subversion, and an attempt to ruin Tolkien's world, to make it something else which is not Tolkien and much less.

Likewise Harry Potter. As the books were being written and serially published, a large and vigorous 'Shipping' community arose to speculate on whom Hermione would end-up-with - Harry versus Ron (or someone else).

Of course this could be harmless diversion, but if persisted-in for long it must have the effect of utterly missing the point of what the Harry Potter books are about - and I think it had exactly that effect on many people. After not very long, the Shipping becomes a matter of mathematical permutation, and exercise in shock, a tearing-down not a building-up.

It is, in fact, a species of Hijacking - it takes a community doing one thing, and by exploiting inter-personal ties, points it at another thing altogether.

Instead of being Imaginatively enriched by these remarkable books, and developing a secret, vivid and real world of the mind; a mutually-stimulating community (indeed many communities) was created which simply 'used' Harry Potter as a disposable but convenient tool to pursue interests which are part of the mainstream mass media.

I actually saw this happen on a major blog called The Leaky Cauldron, which reduced the books by conflation with the much lesser and lower world of the movies; reduced the movies to show-biz gossip about the actors; and then successfully hijacked this community by enlisted them in the political campaign to 'redefine marriage' and extend the sexual revolution.

I have seldom encountered a more extreme and clear (and successful) example of the New Left tactic of cultural and institutional infiltration, subversion and takeover.

Anyway, and despite all of this; the world of Fan Fiction should not be neglected in terms of its great good potential and achievement. In a mainstream culture which offers nothing for Imagination to work upon; Fan Fictions may start with an appealing, magical, meaningful world (from novels, movies, TV, comics, video games etc) and keep a person's Imagination alive, make it stronger, and even grow it.

In sum: The importance of Fan Fiction is that, while very few people can (like Tolkien, Rowling etc) primarily create a meaningful, purposeful, participative Imaginative Universe - a much larger number of people can take such a universe and secondarily create within it; can incrementally extrapolate, interpolate, combine it with other such Universes, deepen and extend characters from it, make new plots using characters from it - and so forth.

Even tertiary participation - via reading and discussion of Fan Fictions - can be a creative activity; comparable to writing essays or participating in seminars. But better than most essays and seminars; in the sense that Fan Fiction is (mostly) amateur and done for love and from self-motivation; while most essays and seminars are professional and done to get educational credits and in obedience to external pressures.

Since this secondary creativity is typically done within a better 'world' than the self-hating mainstream secular-alienated-nihilistic world of modern public discourse; and since the world of Fan Fiction is a part of a person's life; this can serve to make a person's life more meaningful - which is to say Fan Fiction can make a person's life not just better but deeply better. And it has done, for very large numbers of people.

Not a trivial achievement!

I've just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I have read many times before. It really is a superb novel - especially for a Christian. 

The other six preceding Harry Potter novels are all good, in different ways - but there are many people who would find the Deathly Hallows a powerful, even transformative, experience - but would would find it unenjoyable to hack through the earlier (more child-orientated) HP novels to reach it. 

If so - do not be put off! You could do as I did and read plot summaries (or, if you prefer, watch movies) of the earlier books and then begin straight-in on the Deathly Hallows - or else (as I did) read summaries of the first five and start with book six (Half-Blood Prince) - which is the first fully adult novel and narratively-continuous-with Deathly Hallows.   

Christians who appreciate fantasy fiction should set-aside most of whatever they have heard about Harry Potter or JK Rowling, and at least have a look through Deathly Hallows. 

It might be one the great experiences of your reading life, as it was for me - as it was for Jerram Barrs. 

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I re-watched the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II last week - which confirmed my early view

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/07/moral-message-of-harry-potter-at.html

(i.e. Flawed, but more importantly contains perhaps the most moving sequence of scenes I have ever seen in any movie - viz from the death of Snape up to include Harry's own death and the King's Cross limbo scene.)

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The HP franchise movie's most serious weakness is their deletion of the deepest, and Christian, moral or message from the books.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/07/soul-in-harry-potter-and-deathly.html

This leaves the movies somewhat incoherent, and lacking in profundity.

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But watching this time I noticed some attempt to replace the Christian core with a modern secular moral.

This moral is a version of the idea that - while there is no real immortality - and nothing truly survives death, the dead continue to 'live' in the minds' or hearts, of those who loved them.

(Yes, I know that this is nothing more than a play on words, but it is what passes for high minded and inspiring spirituality nowadays.)

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There seem to be two key moments when this morality is given quite explicitly, and where the text of the novel has been changed.

In the chapter The Forest Again, Harry finds the resurrection stone inside the golden snitch left him by Dumbledore, and recalls from the dead ghostly - but real - images of his parents, Lupin and Sirius, who will accompany him through the forest repelling the dementors.

Harry asks Sirius, "won't they be able to see you?" and in the book Sirius replies no - "we are part of you, invisible to anyone else".

But in the movie, Sirius is given the line: "No, we're here you see" - and on the word 'here' he points a finger at Harry's heart.

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In the book, Neville runs forward and tries to attack Voldemort and Nagini, and because he is a 'pure blooded' wizard is is asked to join the Death Eaters.

In the book, Neville replies "I'll join you when hell freezes over... Dumbledore's Army!"

In the movie Neville is given a set-piece speech (which made me cringe) in which he delivers what I felt was intended to be the moral:

"Yeah, we lost Harry tonight (pause) But he's still with us - in here!" Pointing to his own heart on the word 'here'.

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My interpretation of these added and visually/ verbally linked scenes in the movie, is that they were an attempt to provide a secular and non-denominational equivalent for the excised Christian morality - and they were about as effective and convincing as such attempts always are - which is to say, hardly at all...

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When reading John Granger's excellent exposition of the underlying spirituality of the Harry Potter series - How Harry cast his spell - I was struck by his use of the traditional (although now regarded as obsolete) division into Heart, Mind and Body; and by his equation of these with the characters of Harry, Hermione and Ron.

Granger points out that the Heart is properly the leader of the trio; and when Harry follows his Heart he almost always makes the right choices and does the right thing and the trio do the right thing (even when the Head says it makes no sense or is suicidal and the Body objects because it generates immediate unhappiness and suffering).

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Harry is the hero because he is quick-witted, self-sacrificing and brave. And he is a good hero because he is motivated by love not power. Harry is certainly not stupid (although slow on the uptake) but neither is he a brilliant intellectual, nor an abstract thinker, nor a magical expert, like Hermione.

But Harry cannot behave with instinctive spontaneity and naturalness like Ron - he cannot 'lose himself' in parties and feasts and celebrations, always standing somewhat apart; instead Harry continually pursues aims which diminish his happiness and comfort (something which Ron does only seldom, and under the inspiration of Harry's leadership).

Harry is, indeed, a natural Gryffindor - the House of leadership (being characterized by courage and loyalty and having chosen love over power - hence rejecting Slytherin), but Hermione as a single person is a natural for Ravenclaw, while Ron is clearly a Hufflepuff - except that he is not hard-working. Presumably, however, the Sorting Hat somehow recognized that the three needed each other for the greater good - and needed therefore to be in the same House...

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'Yet' Harry is the proper leader, and the times when he (and the trio) go wrong are usually the times when Harry follows Ron or Hermione's lead against his own Heart, or when the trio is broken, hence unbalanced.

Things work best when Heart, Head and Body are present and in harmony; but the Heart must lead.

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This difference between the three can be seen in terms of attitude to the magical creatures House Elves.

Ron simply accepts the subservience of the House Elves and simply takes them for granted, regards them as a ludicrous joke, or regards them as inferior and beneath consideration. He would like his family to have House Elves simply because they would make life easier, pleasanter and more comfortable.

Hermione, on the other hand, adopts a politically correct attitude to House Elves, that sees them as if they had the same ('equal') nature as Wizards; and presumes they want the same things as Wizards. She forms the pressure group SPEW (a title which she stridently asserts is 'not funny!') - the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare - and sets about 'freeing' House Elves as a matter of principle, and despite their own wishes. Indeed Hermione goes so far as to try and trick the Hogwarts Elves into freedom without their consent and against their expressed wishes, by hiding objects of clothing where Elves might accidentally pick them up and thereby become magically freed. Hermione thinks she knows better than the House Elves what they really want. House Elves have, she implicitly believes - although not using this vocabulary, been indoctrinated with a 'false consciousness' that makes them act against their own interests - and therefore require to be liberated for their own good by a quasi-Bolshevik revolutionary vanguard of enlightened Wizards, in the form of SPEW (of which she just happens to be founder and leader). A typical modern intellectual, in other words...

Harry sees the House Elves as individuals, and recognizes the unusual - perhaps unique - case of Dobby who is a House Elf who really does want to be freed. On the other hand, he acknowledges the tragedy of Winky who is freed against her wishes, and is completely lost, and takes refuge in perpetual drunkenness. Harry's attitude is that House Elves are different and should be treated differently, according to their nature, and should properly be treated kindly, politely and respectfully.

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When considering this division into Heart, Head and Body; and the natural and proper heroic leadership of the Heart with the subordination of Head and Body - I was struck by the fact that it is the Heart which has been abolished from modern mainstream socio-politics.

Modernity as it has unfolded has given us leadership by the Head but pandering to the Body - and the Heart is absent.

We have rule by intellectual abstractions and indulgence of bodily appetites - but the heroism of the Heart is regarded as irrational nonsense from one point of view, and foolishly puritanical killjoy-ism from the other.

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We have an elite of politically correct and intellectually-gifted Hermiones leading an army of comfort- and sensation-seeking Rons, but Harry is nowhere to be seen.

Yet it was Harry who saved the world - ultimately by his faith and self-sacrifice; neither Hermione nor Ron could, nor would, have done it.

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Traditionally, for Christians, Good and evil are understood in terms of the 'unseen warfare' or 'spiritual warfare' between (one the one hand) God and the angels and (on the other) Satan and his demons - humans are the location of this warfare, rather than its instigators - and the main decision of each person is which side they will take.

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At the same time, some people are mostly nice, while others are mostly nasty.

And there need not be much or any correlation between Good-nice and evil-nasty: indeed, the character type of Good-nasty is a favourite in literature.

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A recent example of Good-nasty is Severus Snape - who is probably the most interesting and moving character in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.

Yet, the lack of a framework of spiritual warfare means that the secular perspective misinterprets Snape as a 'morally ambiguous character'.

Snape is not morally ambiguous - he is nasty, as is abundantly demonstrated throughout the series. However, like Harry, he has Rowling's prime twin virtues of Courage and self-sacrificing Love - and these mean that he has chosen the side of Good, as it emerges near the very end of the seven volumes.

Throughout the series we should not be in doubt that Snape is nasty - what we are unsure about - and what the novels mislead us about - is the answer to the question: What side is Snape on ?

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In the Harry Potter series, the background of unseen warfare between God and the Devil is only hinted at - and superficially replaced (for much of the series) by Dumbledore versus Voldemort: nice versus nasty, kind versus cruel.

Yet in the Deathly Hallows we recognize that Dumbledore is sometimes nasty, has several nasty traits, has a history of cruelty.

At the secular level, this subverts the moral clarity of the novels - but not if a backdrop of spiritual conflict is acknowledged.

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The real conflict in Harry Potter, and in Lord of the Rings and in the Narnia books, is between God and evil - and the bottom line evil is not cruelty but heresy: evil wants to be worshiped as God.

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This is clearer in Tolkien and Lewis - but there are sufficient hints in Rowling that this is 'The Dark Lord's ultimate purpose: to be worshiped as an immortal god. Voldemort is, of course, cruel - but it is his indifference to others (e.g. killing Cedric Diggory as 'the spare'), his treating them merely as a means to his end, which is portrayed as his worst sin. They exist only to serve and worship him.

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My point would be much clearer is there was a nice but evil character to mirror Snape as nasty but Good - however, I don't think there are any.

Indeed, this is a major deficiency in most modern/ recent literature and narrative art: the way that nastiness and evil are conflated.

Evil people in books, movies, on TV always turn-out to be nasty (cruel, sadistic etc) whereas in real life many of most devoted the servants of evil are (mostly) nice, and not especially cruel.

Can anyone come up with a good example of a genuine, clear cut nice-evil character from art?

Or life?

Somebody really nice, and really evil?

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From Nevill Coghill and C.S. Lewis I learn of four levels of allegory as described in medieval times; which I understand as follows (and this is my made-up shorthand terminology). 

1. Primary. The literal level of what is described.

2. Referent. That secondary literal meaning which is encoded in the first level.

3. Moral. Any underlying moral point or message.

4. Ultimate. The ultimate level of understanding the human condition - usually spiritual or religious, but perhaps some other non-religious ultimate.

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(In what follows, I am blurring the difference between allegory and symbolism, in order to emphasize the layering. Often the allegorical interpretation is optional, subordinate or may be denied by the author. Strictly, though, the allegorical layers ought to be deliberately and consciously encoded in the text - as William Langland did with Piers Plowman.)

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So that Animal Farm by George Orwell has the primary literal level of being a story about animal and farmers, a referent literal level of being about the Russian Revolution, and a moral level of being about the tendency for revolutionary ideals to be corrupted. It does not have a substantive Ultimate level (at least, it does not for me).

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Another, fuller, example might be Robert Frost's poem Nothing Gold Can Stay:


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

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1. A poem about leaves.
2. Referring to Life in General ('dawn goes down to day')
3. Moral. A poem about the evanescence of beauty ('hardest hue to hold') it should be cherished while it lasts.
4. Ultimate. That this is the Christian human condition ('Eden sank to grief')

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The fourth 'ultimate' level of religious meaning may be implicit: a matter of 'pointing offstage', as throughout The Lord of the Rings.

Or it may be depicted partially but inexplicitly - as in the Harry Potter series with its ghosts, talk of souls, the 'Veil' (dividing death from life) in the Ministry of Magic, and the King's Cross limbo' chapter of the last book.

Or there may be an explicit description and explanation of the Ultimate level, as with the last of the Narnia Chronicles.

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The Death Eaters in Harry Potter are an obvious three level allegory of Nazis - with Muggle hating representing anti-Semitism in a literal fashion, and the third layer of an egalitarian morality of tolerance also  very obvious.

What makes the Potter series so much richer than this is that the fourth and ultimate moral layer is Christian, supernaturalist, traditional; with multiple allegorical pointings to the Christian story, with its sacrificial theme, death and rebith etc, and moral principles (esepcially the centrality of Love in the sense of 'Charity' or Agape).

So that Death Eaters are ultimately evil not because they inflict pain on others (Harry does that), or because they are snobs; but because/ insofar as they reject Love and worship Voldemort, who is a false god.

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And what of Political Correctness?

Clearly much PC art can be interpreted as having the first three levels of allegory - but not many PC works go so far as to provide an Ultimate level of allegory.

The ultimate level for political correctness, as I have argued in this blog passim - is a this-worldly perspective of human life as regulated by abstract rules that are 'inverted' - i.e. non-spontaneous, non-natural, and with a utilitarian justification (i.e. optimizing happiness for the greatest number - but especially minimizing suffering).

PC allegory might also has characteristic themes such as diversity/ multi-culturalism, egalitarianism, peace and so on.

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The best example that comes to mind of a PC work of art which depicts the Ultimate level of allegory - the 'sprituality' of PC - is the recent movie Toy Story 3 which I reviewed last year:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/toy-story-3-superb-depiction-of-best-of.html

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Of course Toy Story 3 has the first three levels of allegory since it is

1. Literally about toys,

2. Referring to humans - each toy being a recognizable human type,

3. Has a moral message/s concerning the importance of friendship, courage and loyalty (i.e. the pagan virtues of Natural Law) - and also PC themes of egalitarianism (all toys equally deserve equal gratification, hierarchical command is characteristic of evil), diversity (inclusive of all types of toy), anti-cruelty (evil toys are cruel, good toys are non-violent) etc.

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But in addition the resolution of Toy Story 3 strikes me as a depiction of a kind of paradise of political correctness.

The toys voluntarily choose to accept an egalitarian, multi-cultural and diverse life (inclusive of all the different toys of different types) - by sharing equally both pleasures and duties, and accepting that it is all going to end in destruction; yet accepting destruction as the essence of life: sweetened by friendship.

The ideal life as a kindly mutual huddling against the indifference of the universe.

I see the denouement of Toy Story 3 as being an acceptance of the ultimate PC reality of life as governed by abstract rules - rules whose face value is utilitarian - but in a world where utilitarianism (a life of gratification equally and for all) lacks further validation.

It also has the ides that 'meaning' comes wholly from relationships, despite that relationships are inevitably short-lived.

It is a tragic ultimate view of life, a fusion of pagan and PC, beautifully done. But having seen this ultimate and participated imaginatively in it, the deep current of hopelessness in modern life is entirely understandable.  

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