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“The
Theology of Harry Potter”
William
Sasso
July
18, 2004
Preface:
I want to try to discuss the Harry
Potter series. Since I suspect that many of us, but not all of us, have
read one or more of these books. I will do my best to try to talk about
these books in as concrete a manner as I can without giving
“too much” away in terms of how any of the stories actually come out.
One
teenager I spoke with mentioned that, aside from anything to do with
magic, Harry and his friends experience the same trials and tribulations
that every teenager faces: the transition to a new school, making new
friends and being hassled by non-friends, trying to figure out one’s
relationships to the many adults in one’ s life, trying to get a handle
on one’s developing sexuality, trying to figure out who one might become
as an incipient adult. And these books do have a power to draw the reader
in, a power that one young member of our community described in these
words: “The book seemed so real and yet impossible. An artist enters
your head painting a picture. The urge to read on is unstoppable. It’s a
fascinating story.”
Throughout
the five books, Harry Potter is part -- an important part --
of a conflict between the “good wizards,” led by Albus
Dumbledore, Headmaster of the
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the evil wizards, led by
Lord Voldemort, often referred to as “He Who Must Not Be Named.” At
the beginning of the first book, Voldemort is in hiding, and his many
followers are laying low. Over the course of the four books, Voldemort and
his forces -- the “Death Eaters” -- regain their powers, and by the
fifth book they are quite active. Since the Ministry of Magic, the
“wizard government,” so to speak, remains in denial of Voldemort’s
return, Albus Dumbledore re-activates the “Order of the Phoenix,” a
league of witches and wizards who have committed themselves to act with
Headmaster Dumbledore and against Voldemort and the Death Eaters.
Much
of the discussion of good and evil tends to be personified: Voldemort is
evil embodied, and Dumbledore is good. Harry Potter and his friends are on
the side of good, and Harry’s arch-rival Draco Malfoy and his associates
are on the other side. But what are the issues? To clarify what “good”
and “evil” mean here, let’s think of the “Death Eaters” and the
“Order of the Phoenix” as political parties, and ask what are the
issues that differentiate them? What these wizards fighting about, so to
speak?
One
of the central issues is diversity. In ways that remind me of
segregationist views on race, Voldemort and the Death Eaters prize the
purity of the wizarding species, and propose discrimination against
wizards who come from mixed families. The Order, on the other hand, stands
for the equal rights for all wizards, irrespective of their parentage.
Closely
related to the issue of diversity within the world of wizards is the
question of attitudes towards the “Muggles” -- that is, the non-wizard
humans -- and towards other non-wizard species, both those we know and
other magical species which abound in the stories. Goblins, house-elves,
centaurs, dragons, and many other magical species of plants and animals
are present, and the Death Eaters feel no reason to respect the rights of
any of these species. The Order, on the other hand, appears to have some
sense of the importance and connectedness of the interdependent web of
life, as a Unitarian Universalist might put it. Nonetheless, among many
members of the Order, there is a
sense that many of the other species are there primarily for the use of
the wizard species. Some other species, the centaurs would be a good
example, do not agree that the wizards are the “alpha species” and
resent the wizards’ actions and assumptions accordingly.
The
forces of good and evil also differ in their attitudes toward respect for
autonomy versus control over others, and in the techniques they are
willing to use to achieve their aims. Albus Dumbledore would likely agree
with Gandhi that a worthy end can never be achieved through an unworthy
end, while Lord Voldemort is all too willing to control anyone -- even his
closest followers -- through fear or in any other way that he can.
So
if I were to try to sum up, in a single sentence, the distinction between
good and evil that the Harry Potter books present, I’d state it like
this: Evil comes from fear of others, and focuses solely on the
enrichment of the self, while good comes from love, and attempts to enrich
the world as a whole.
And,
on the other hand, while there do seem to be a number of pure evil
characters on the Death Eater side, it is sometimes hard to be sure. For
example, consider Severus Snape, the Hogwarts Professor of Potions,
who appears initially to be one of Harry’s most active persecutors and
who is identified as a member of the “Death Eaters.” During a
competition, Harry’s friends realize that Professor Snape has his eyes
fixed on Harry and is continually muttering a charm of some type. They
conclude that he is trying to cast a spell on Harry to harm him, but more
as additional evidence arrives, they realize that they were mistaken --
Snape was working to defend Harry. Similarly, when Harry arrives at the
headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, he is astonished to realize that
Professor Snape, once a Death Eater, is now a
member of the Order. Yet the ongoing antipathy between Harry and
Severus Snape creates an ongoing question in Harry’s mind about how far
he can really trust Snape. In the fifth book, Harry learns about some of
Severus Snape’s experiences as a teen-age student at Hogwarts, and he
(Harry) achieves some understanding of why he and Snape have a difficult
relationship. And it is Snape who, at the conclusion of the fifth book,
picks up on an encoded cue from Harry and calls the Order to Harry’s
defense as he and some of his schoolmates engage the Death Eaters and Lord
Voldemort himself.
If
Snape is a character who often appears evil but is (at least somewhat)
good underneath, there are others who appear to be on the side of good but
turn out to be evil. An example would be Peter Pettigrew, also known as
Wormtail, the real identity of “Scabbers,” the pet rat of Harry’s
best friend. At the end of the third book, Scabbers turns out to be the
accomplice of Voldemort who betrayed Harry’s parents, and who has been
waiting in hiding to betray Harry when the time is ripe.
Most
significantly, over the course of the five books to date, Harry achieves a
growing realization that he has both good and evil within him. He is on
the side of good, but he is integrally linked to the leader of the other
side, and he occasionally identifies strongly with that other side. For
instance, in The Order of
the Phoenix, Harry encounters several brief but compelling desires to
attack Headmaster Dumbledore, whom he loves and to whom he owes his very
life. He recognizes that there is, present within him, a dormant element
of evil. This leads him to the conclusion that he cannot take his own
“goodness” for granted. Rather, he must work, actively and
intentionally, to maintain the goodness within him.
The Meaning of Death and the Experience of Grief
In
the first book, we learn that Harry’s parents -- both considered young
and promising wizards at the time -- were killed by Lord Voldemort because
they opposed him and the Death Eaters. Voldemort attempted to kill Harry
at that time, but Harry’s mother had protected him with charms that
caused Voldemort’s magic to rebound from Harry back onto Voldemort,
weakening him very seriously
but not quite killing him, and leaving a lightning flash scar on Harry’s
head. So Harry grew up an orphan, cared for (in the loosest sense of the
phrase) by his mother’s non-wizard sister and her family, the Durselys.
So
Harry had suffered a very significant loss even before we meet him in the
first book, yet because he was so young, an infant, there was a sense of
abstractness to his loss. He is curious about his parents, and since the
Dursleys will never tell him anything about them, he seeks out information
about them wherever he can. His search to know his missing parents is an
ongoing sub-theme in the books.
But
in The Order of the Phoenix, Harry suffers the actual loss of
someone close to him. Worse, he feels a deep sense of responsibility for
that loss, since he was tricked by Voldemort -- I’m trying not to give
away too many of the details of the story here -- and Harry’s friend is
killed coming to Harry’s rescue. They are together, in the same battle,
when the one close to Harry dies, and Harry’s reactions include some of
the standard elements in the process of accepting a death. In spite of the
fact that Harry has seen the death, he attempts to deny it. He calls out
for his friend to return and re-join the battle. When that doesn’t
happen, he gets angry: angry at death for taking his friend, and angry at
his friend for submitting to the power of death.
As Harry relives the experience, he begins to blame himself, for if
he had not been duped into the trap, his friend would not have been killed
attempting to rescue him. And then, Harry searches for a way to
re-connect, either through the technological capacities of modern
wizardry, or through the return of the one close to him as a spirit or
ghost. He considers, too, the possibility of some form of an afterlife, in
which he and his friend may be re-united. Is there a place beyond the gate
of death, where all who die come to a different form of life? Harry
doesn’t know, but in the pain of his loss, he certainly wants to believe
there is.
And
finally, through a process of grieving and some degree of reconciliation
with the fact of death, he realizes that he is not alone in his grief.
Others, in their own ways, share the sense of loss that he feels. The
power of community -- the certainty that one is not alone -- makes a
difference to Harry in his time of pain.
In
The Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling introduces a new type of
magical creature called “thestrals.” Thestrals are a type of flying
horse, with the interesting quality that only those who have lost a person
very dear to them can see them. I don’t believe in thestrals (these
flying horses), but I do believe that the experience of a significant loss
does force us to see the world in new and different ways. Some things,
such as the value of the importance of close relatives, may be more
clearly visible to those who have just lost a parent, friend, or relative.
Near
the end of each of the Harry Potter books, there is a scene in which
Headmaster Dumbledore attempts to express some lesson that Harry can learn
from the year that is ending. In my previous Harry Potter sermon, I
summarized the closing lessons of the first four books in these terms:
-
-
It is the choices we make, rather than the abilities we possess, that define us as individuals.
-
We can never know with certainty the complete implications of any action, so we must choose to act as seems most appropriate to us in the moment.
-
Remember the examples of those you respect in making your own decisions.
And
the lesson of the fifth book, I would suggest, is this: when we feel
deep pain at a time of loss, it is a proof that we have loved, and a
reminder of the power of love.
