The Culture Beat

This may be the last you hear from me here about Harry Potter for a while. Now that the last book is out, the epic 7-volume story has been told and, as Jo Rowling has said of her work, history will judge whether it is a classic for the ages. I didn’t review Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because I figured anyone who hadn’t been keeping up with the series up to the end wouldn’t care or understand anything much I would say and those who had didn’t need to be convinced of the merits of the final book. I will instead comment here about the whole series as I see it. And this is a discussion of the books themselves, not the films which can only offer extended illustrations of the books’ general plots rather than the richly detailed and complex texts.

My earlier pre-publication commentary on the themes and Christian nature of the work was borne out in Hallows. Reading through each chapter, it was like a reunion tour of elements, characters and places from each of the preceding books–not in a forced way to bring them on stage for an encore appearance but seemingly because it had always been planned that way–every plot thread and many characters and places were being traced to their fulfillment in the last culminating volume. If, as Thomas Carlyle said, “genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” Rowling’s creation and execution of the Harry Potter series is at that level. Rowing had conceived of the story of the boy wizard in 1990 and spent over five years outlining the progression of the seven books–they weren’t sequels in the cinematic sense of being made up as she went along. Thus there is a marvelous and perhaps unique coherence and unity to the series that gives them enormous narrative force. Like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Rowing’s magical world is a true subcreation wherein she may explore her themes of sacrifice, courage and character. This world has internal validity, complexity and solid rules by which its characters must operate and it’s the consistency of these qualities that make the books so satisfying.

Thus there is a deep sense of contentment upon finishing the last book–she pulled it off, she knew from the start where she was headed and she took us there with no disappointing is-that-all-there-is-to-this? sense that some popular stories on film, television or print leave you with. That itself is a huge gift in a popular culture that hypes it’s tales beyond their achievement.

Rowling pulled off the very big challenge of spinning a tale of good and evil in which the good characters are actually more interesting that the evil ones. It’s said that a hero is only as good as his antagonist–this is true but we know how often bland heroes pale besides more compelling villains–they’re more interesting usually because writers follow the advice to “write what you know,” and we know our sinful side better than we know and love goodness. The Harry Potter books don’t shirk from showing shades of grey in their many characters; it’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the stories. As that exemplar of goodness, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore reminds us, no matter what our proclivities to evil might be, it’s our choices that matter and that’s why Harry is good, loving and heroic. Although Voldemort and his Death Eaters are terrifying enemies to Harry and his friends and bring about horrific destruction to the world, they are not fascinating as so many “popular” bad guys are (think Hannibal Lecter). If for no other reason than it has heroes who are actually make goodness look good, the book series is a treasure.

Finally, as I’ve said elsewhere, the magic in the books is anything but a seductive ad for the occult–magic as a literary device shouldn’t be confused with a literal affirmation of witchcraft–it’s merely the imaginative hook that all fairy tales have which draw the reader in and frees the imagination to entertain Rowling’s great themes. There can be no doubt to any open-minded reader of the books that these are profoundly Christian books. The mainstream review that I’ve read which best points this out comes from the Wall Street Journal. The crucial paragraphs:

It has been widely observed that J.K. Rowling owes a creative debt to Christian fantasists J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (apart from their fondness for initials). It’s odd now to remember that, at the same time, some parents have objected to the magic depicted in the Harry Potter books as a glorification of satanic practices. For “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” confirms something else apart from the well-thought-out-ness of Ms. Rowling’s moral universe: It is subtly but unmistakably Christian.

The principal Hogwarts holidays have always been Christmas and Easter, but it took five books before Ms. Rowling really began tipping her hand. In Book Six, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” she addressed concepts of free will, the power of love, and the sanctity of the soul. But in the final volume she gently lays it all out. The preciousness of each human life; bodily resurrection after death; mercy, forgiveness and redemption; sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil — strip away the elves, goblins, broomsticks and magic wands and these are the concepts that underpin the marvelously intricate world of Harry Potter.

There are clues throughout. At one point, Harry is led to a weapon that will enable him to destroy the Horcruxes when he finds them: “The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross . . . “

Two unattributed New Testament quotations recur in the story after Harry sees each on a tombstone in the village where he was born and his mother and father died. He discovers on the Dumbledore family tomb “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” from I Corinthians. And on the grave of his own parents, he finds this, from Matthew: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” On seeing it, Harry feels momentary horror: Does it imply a link between his parents and Voldemort’s followers? Hermione gently sets him straight: “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry. It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.”

Many readers may not even notice these intimations of Christian spirituality. There’s nothing finger-pointingly didactic here; the story is too well-made to insist on anything so obvious as a proselytizing message. (The same is famously true of Lewis and Tolkien.)

The epic tale of Harry Potter is, as my wife points out, a parable of Jesus’ words that he who tries to save his life will lose it and he who takes up his cross and loses his life will save it–the paradox of the Christian life and the deepest magic there is.