The Moral Universe of Harry Potter

I came away from the ending thinking more of Frodo and Sam Gamgee than of Jesus. I also thought more of Aslan than any other Biblical figures (did you notice there were no lions in the books - at least I don't think there were)For all the reasons Card stated, the parallels to Jesus do not work. I think that was very intentional by Rowling, therby avoiding all manner of problems. Rowling borrowed more form Epic battles than from Biblical stories. The epilog, in 2016, summed many things up nicely.

However, I need a while for it to sink in. I only finished the book a few hours ago and I am still mourning the loss of Doby & Fred and Tonks & Lupin, among others. I am thrilled at Neville's role - I knew he had it in him! And thank Rowling that Hagrid survived!!

This was a fitting and appropriate end to an amazing series of books. By the way, do you suppose Rowling may be composing a collection of The Tales of Beedle the Bard? I hope so.

Mr. Card, I am a huge fan of yours. Obviously like so many others I loved the entire Ender saga but I've also read many of your other works, including your "Maps in a Mirror" collection of short stories and some of your non-fiction like "How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" (yes, I want to be a writer; no, I haven't yet gotten there yet). Also, I've regularly kept up with your blog on Hatrack River; your insights into politics and world events have always seemed to me to be thoughtful and mature, practical and solid. I find myself agreeing with you more often than not.

All that is to say that I for one am waiting with bated breath to read your follow-up to this post ... your answers to "what is going on in Harry Potter" will, I believe, be very interesting and illuminating. You nailed the Harry is a Horcrux position (and assorted details around that theory) long before I read it anywhere else, and, in my opinion, you seem to have a far firmer grasp on "what it all means" than most of us grognards. I guess the "inside baseball" part of your thoughts on HP is what would be most attractive to me.

Ergo, as a well-established writer of popular speculative fiction (with ever-present and strong social elements, something that has always set your work apart for me), you have insights into the work of Rowling, and the world of Harry Potter, that many of us miss.

For all of that I am grateful to be able to read your thoughts on these matters. Please enlighten us! Your thoughts, please? :-)

Why is anything to do with Harry Potter being put on the Christian page ? We choose, as Christians, to go into the Christianity page of Belief Net and I am confused as to why Harry Potter would be on any Chritian web page. It is in contradiction to what we believe. Please explain this to me.

Scott,
I truly appreciate your comments regarding the nature of a "Moral universe," not as a universe wherein EVERYONE acts morally, but rather, wherein certain actions are considered moral, while others are not. After all, if everyone within the universe behaved in a proper and moral fashion, there would be little (if any) cause for conflict, and then we would end up with, instead of epic themes of good vs. evil, good vs. not-quite-as-good, which really isn't as thrilling. I am curious, however, about your thoughts on what is essentially Hermione's mind-rape of her parents towards the beginning of the book.

Charlotte King, Barb,
I think that this is actually a very spiritually apropos discussion, regardless of one's faith. No religious belief exists in a total cultural vacuum, as it must address all aspects of a person's life. As a committed Christian myself, I have found that even while I do not particularly agree with all of the ethical/spiritual/moral tennets in a given fantasy universe, there nonetheless remain ethical/spiritual/moral truths that can be extracted from them. The authors involved in this debate are not talking about the actual practice of witchcraft/wizardry, but rather are engaged in a literary discussion about the moral and spiritual qualities of a fantasy series. These qualities have less to do with the substance of magic, and more to do with the human actions of individuals. Magic is just the window-dressing for what is at its core an attempt to say something about the human condition, for good or ill. Think of it as the spoonful of sugar to help the proverbial medicine go down.

This is my first post (Yay me!!!)

Ah. I love OSC. He always explains the things I want to, and in a much better way.

Barb, there are themes in Harry Potter that some feel could be allegorical to Christ's life. That's why it's on the Christian page.

Charlotte, it worries me that you feel that Christianity is so frail that a Christian blog becomes 'so-called' by the discussion of possible Christ themes in a controversal book. I know my faith in God hasn't been shaken from reading the Harry Potter books.

This is where I find people are less than reasonable. Let's face it. Had 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone' been marketed as a Young Adult 'Christian' book, everybody would be fine with it. The story wouldn't change, the cover would. They would slap on a line in the front saying 'Harry learns about the power of friendship and cooperation', and in the back it would have made a reference to Romans 12: 4-5 "Just as our bodies have many parts, and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has differnet work to do. And sine we are all one body in CHrist, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others."

The idea that older children are going to wave wands around and think that magic is real is unrealistic. And the idea that they will emulate those behaviors of Harry's that are less than desirable (Since he isn't perfect) is also in error. How many children fell away from their faith, because Susan did in 'The Final Battle'? And how many have absorbed all of Edmund's traits after reading 'Prince Caspian'? And how many have stolen a train after reading 'The Boxcar Children'?

If children do absorb any of these traits, it's clear that they are too impressionable to read those books, or any books for that matter! This applies to all fiction, and isn't limited to Harry Potter, or any fantasy book, or movie.

I have a great deal of sympethy with those who think that Harry Potter is inappropriate for Christians, because I used to be one of them. Given, I was much less rabid, but, still, that's what I believed. However, after being persuaded by a close Christian friend of mine that they were more than okay to read, I did so, and loved the books! It is not evil, but there is evil in the books.

There are people who are bad people who do bad things. Even the characters that are 'good' aren't perfect, and sometimes fall short.
I think that, perhaps, people don't have a problem with Harry Potter as much as they do with any fantasy book that doesn't have a 'heroic' protagonist. Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia, and even Earthsea are all okay, because they have characters we admire.

Harry Potter is a character that, although we admire him, is primarily there to be understood by us readers.

I think that that is the main problem people have with the books.

And, by all means, Harry Potter *is* inappropriate for those who are unable to understand that good people slip up. If not for the grace of God, etc.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. :~)

Beliefnet is not just a Christian site. It is a place for people of all faiths to come and discuss religion. Check out the menu under 'faiths and practices', you'll see what I mean. I'm sure there are plenty of exclusively Christian site you can go visit. Please do so, and let the rest of us who are strong in our own faith mingle freely.

The Harry Potter series is all made up. I really like the Harry Potter books, but I would never put him as Christ Like and Alubs as God. Harry just wants some justice and defeat the bad in the world. There are people in our towns that try to make it a better place for everyone to live and work and hopefuly we tell them Thank You, but we should not put them up whith Christ for they are a human being. Christ is different.
Christ answers prays, helps when we ask for it, but Harry can't do that.
To the person above me who wrote about the "The Boxcar Childern" books. To help you out- they did not steel a train they just barrowed a boxcar that was on the side of the tracks. I laughed so hard when you brough that. We have read a great many of thoes books:):):) in our family when the boys were younger. Good books.
Thank you, Sally

Thanks for your imput, Jestrfyl. I wasn't trying to be closed-minded (or presumptious), just wondering what other people got out of the story. Does it seem to you that Rowling was trying to make a judgement about what will "get you in" to heaven, or am I just reading too much into this?

To Caecilia:

I didn't get the idea that Umbridge (or the Death Eaters for that matter) would be going to some shiny happy afterlife, or even necessarily that the afterlife in the books was all one place (are the choices afterlife or non-existence, or different kinds of afterlives, i.e. a heaven/hell or other sort of set up?). I don't think Rowling really gives us much info on that aspect, probably purposely, but maybe it would be more of a C.S. Lewis, Last Battle, dwarves-in-the-shed kind of thing. Or maybe not, that's probably my personal association.

I'm not completely sure what the deformed baby-thing in the Kings' Cross station was supposed to be -- the piece of Voldemort's soul that died when Harry "died," or the piece of Voldemort's soul that was left in him (Voldemort) and because it was linked to Harry, was temporarily ... in suspension? Since it says that he too was unconscious/just recovering when Harry awoke in his body again, and because Harry says something in their final confrontation about "I've seen what you are, try for some remorse," I lean towards the latter. But even then I didn't necessarily get the sense that even Voldemort's soul was going to just disappear or not go to an afterlife at all -- only that it was so damaged and deformed that, wherever it went it would be miserable. I would be inclined to extend that to other characters -- perhaps murder results in the ultimate tearing of your soul, but other forms of evil must surely damage it as well.

Regardless, it didn't seem to me that there was any indication of letting other "evil" characters off scot-free. For instance, Harry didn't see Wormtail when he used the ring in the forest. (Nor even Snape, for that matter, but probably some of who Harry saw was determined by who he most wanted to see.) I didn't really feel that "George Lucas" moment coming, that OSC mentioned at the end of his Snape essay on Hatrack.

In other words, I interpreted that whole aspect differently than you. :) Anyone else?

It's been said (and rightfully so) that Harry Potter is a series depicting a struggle between good and evil, but as Mr. Card so eloquently details, Rowling's tale is one of many moral facets and shades. Characters with sick and twisted goals are motivated by equally warped but raw love (as in the case of Bellatriz Lestrange and her passion for Voldemort) and even the Malfoys love their son, in the end, more than Voldemort and his schemes. However, the characters' motivations and redeeming qualities together do not justify a morally relative world view but just reveal the basic human truth that people are not all good or all bad. The Malfoy parents' love for Draco, for example, does not "make up" for their sins against humanity, but their love is still pure, and Mrs. Malfoy's saving Harry's life by not revealing that he is indeed alive is no small act...Even if she had her son's life in mind more than Harry's, she saved Harry and that is a redeeming, powerful act. In the same way, Wormtail's life of cowardice and betrayal is every bit as immoral as it seems, but his moment of compassion at the end of his life that allowed Harry to live was a beautiful example of how, in all of us, there is still that impulse for good and for doing the moral thing. The people themselves are not moral or immoral, they are simply humans who make both moral and immoral choices. The sum of their choices is ultimately the sum of who they are.

It's tricky when the question of morality's constitution comes up, because if morality is indeed as relative as so many in today's world insist, it is impossible for there to be any true morality, any clear right and wrong, good and evil, at all. If motivation can justify atrocious acts, we would have no prisoners and no personal responsibility. Everybody has a story, and these stories, while serving to explain how humans could possibly do the terrible things that humans are, unfortunately, capable of doing, rarely excuse hideous behavior.

Therefore, morality has to be somewhat flexible, but it cannot be a malleable clay from which every person builds his or her own pillar of right and wrong. Self-sacrifice is, as the Harry Potter series shows so well, the ultimate good with the power of redemption and renewal. The opposite, Voldemort's self-seeking, ruthless, murderous ambition, is the ultimate evil. And within the huge crevass separating those two extremes of human behavior are all the motivations and choices drawing people in one direction or the other. Judging Wormtail or Bellatrix or the Malfoys is, ultimately, between those individuals and God because only He can take the sum of a person's life and determine his fate. (This is what Dumbledore is getting at when he tells Harry in the King's Cross Station in-between-world that Voldemort's wimpering, screaming soul is beyond their mortal help. In times of judgement, and in times of crucial human choices, only God and the individual can determine the course of events.) However, we humans can judge actions and with conviction determine that there are some motivations that do not justify certain acts, and some choices that are indeed good and evil. Just because somthing seems right, just because if feels right, doesn't make if morally right.

So what is the unwavering point of morality? And what is the gamut of motivations that may justify certain otherwise-immoral behavior? To what extend do the ends justify the means, or do they ever? And, the question Harry and Dumbledore themselved grapple with, how does "the greater good" figure into moral choices? It seems, in Harry's conversation with Lupin, that sacrificing oneself for the greater good is justified and moral while Dumbledore's youthful williness to sacrifice innocent, helpless individuals for the greater good is painted in the book, anyway, as not only immoral but Nazi-like in the magnitude of sinfulness. Actions with great motivation can be catastrophic in affect, and there are consequences to moral choices just as their are consequences to immoral choices.

All things considered, these are questions we all have to think about for ourselves and discuss as a society. It is part of the grand human experience, and the art of fiction, as Mr Card illustrates, to work out and ponder these moral dilemmas and form some concrete understanding of what is good and what is evil. Morality is influenced by situation, as all choices (both right and wrong) are driven by different motivations. However, the situation does not ultimately determine morality or else right and wrong would be nothing but gray and all efforts to ascertain the "right" choice would be in vain because individuals' varying wills would supercede all else. I'm just glad Harry Potter has gotten so many of us thinking and talking about this tricky topic.