Orson Scott Card: July 2007 Archives

By Orson Scott Card

Spoiler alert: This post reveals the ending of Book Seven.

So we’ve lived in J.K. Rowling’s moral universe for a decade now, seven volumes worth. Where did she take us, and to the degree that we have been reshaped (or reaffirmed) by that moral universe, what has she made of us?

What hath Harry Potter wrought?

In a response to my previous post, Janet Zuk wrote: “I also do not think that Harry truly represents a "Christ" figure in the books, and more especially in Book 7. I do however think that there is much evidence that the characters act in the spirit of Christ.”

Zuk then makes a sound case for this. And we could speculate for a long time about just how much Christianity permeates the moral universe of J.K. Rowling.

One does not have to be a Christian, or a believer of any kind, to have a strong influence from the public religion of the culture one grew up in. Unlike Philip Pullman, for instance, who is so obsessed with Christianity that he spent the third volume of His Dark Materials making savage, one-sided attacks on a religion very much like the good old C of E, J.K. Rowling seems to ignore Christianity itself, including only the superficially Christian aspects of Christmas — the gift giving, the decorations, the bangers, but not much in the way of mangers or angels.

In fact, though, one can see in this, not hostility, but rather a kind of reverence.

If Rowling thought of Christianity as a quaint cultural phenomenon merely, she might have been tempted to have funny stuff from Christian folk culture as well as pre- and extra-Christian European folk culture.

For instance, I can imagine a version of Harry Potter where, right along with the castle ghosts, all the students had funny little guardian angels paired with devils trying to turn them toward right or wrong.

And along with the portraits on the walls, the Virgin Mary might be popping up in sightings everywhere — in woodgrain patters on furniture, in figurines found by schoolchildren on the Hogwarts playing field.

There could be a professor of hagiography, teaching students which saint to pray to for particular miracles to counter spells and curses.

Do you see how easy it would have been? Now, one could speculate that Rowling’s motive in not literalizing Christian folk beliefs in the Harry Potter universe was to keep from alienating Christian readers. But considering how some Christian readers responded to the book as it is, one could only conclude that any such aim was only partially successful.

In fact, though, there is no reason to posit some venal motive for Rowling’s choices here. She knew that for most of the worldwide anglophone culture (for she certainly was not thinking of translations of her first book when she wrote it and was thrilled with a 500-copy first printing), witches and magic were part of the cultural memory but not a matter of serious belief.

Witches were part of Halloween, or of long-past superstitions. It was fun to for her to explain just when the Wizarding World went “underground” and show wizards and witches as living among us yet blissfully unfamiliar with our ways. Her story was funny and scary by turns.

Yet she never even approached the line between these lightly-held beliefs and the more deeply-held beliefs of Christianity. This says nothing about what she herself believes about particular doctrines of Christianity, but it says much about what she treats with respect.

The result was that most readers were immediately comfortable in the world of Harry Potter and stayed that way. Only a few people in our culture really believe in witches of the Halloween or Salem varieties (and those mostly condemned the books). So she could redefine them how she wished.

I have had people ask me why, as a believing (nontraditional) Christian, I didn’t show God taking action in the worlds of my science fiction. My answer was simple enough: I don’t take sacred things and make light of them. When I take stories from scripture, I treat the source material with great respect; and, above all, I do not invent cool stuff for God to do in my stories.

As with Lord of the Rings, there might be an offstage purposer (Gandalf’s assertion that certain things were “meant” to take place), never named or seen; but his hand remains invisible, and the mortals are left to work things out pretty much on their own, with no certainty about what was “meant” or even fated to take place.

Rowling keeps about the same distance from God that Tolkien did in his great fantasy work. That is, she is willing to have quite astonishing confluences of events that lead to fortunate outcomes. Cynics might call them coincidences, but not so, or not in the pejorative sense. If Harry had just happened to get the want that was the twin of Voldemort’s, we might groan; but instead we are told that the wand chooses the wizard, so the confluence of events is not random coincidence, it is instead the natural outcome of what has gone before.

When Rowling first told us that it was “love” that saved Harry Potter from Voldemort’s killing curse, I almost gagged. Oh, no! I inwardly cried. She’s going to sink into maudlin banality!

By Orson Scott Card

It has truly been a pleasure to converse — or at least take turns speaking — with Dr. Mohler. His attitude of quiet analysis is a refreshing change from the vitriol and slander that I’ve seen from so many of his denomination when they talk about my religion.

His final message is reassuring in many ways. First, his assurance that Mormons can be good citizens and should not be deprived of their right to an equal place in the American political scene should be adopted as the guideline for people of all denominations.

It is hard to think of any religion that is not persecuted somewhere. The world is full of religions because people do not agree about the nature or even the existence of divinity; yet America was founded on a commitment to the idea that differing opinions about God should not be factored into a person’s eligibility for public office.

When Dr. Mohler quotes Paul’s warning that the Church of Christ should reject “a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you,” we Mormons wholeheartedly agree. We believe, and history supports, that the “traditional Christianity” that Dr. Mohler so able explicates is remote indeed from the gospel that Paul taught.

So I am happy to accept the formulation suggested by Dr. Mohler’s last sentence: “Mormonism is not just another form of Christianity — it is incompatible with ‘traditional Christian orthodoxy.’”

Amen! Absolutely correct! We send out missionaries to every country that will allow them to enter precisely because we believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is incompatible with “traditional Christian orthodoxy.”

By Orson Scott Card

(I’m assuming that anyone reading this essay has already finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." If you haven’t, stop reading now, and get back to J.K. Rowling so you’ll know what I’m talking about, and I won’t spoil the story for you.)

Until this seventh book, the answer to “Is Harry Potter a Christ figure” has been “no.”

And even now, despite the obvious similarity, I still say a qualified no.

Yes, Harry does voluntarily go to his death in order to save, not the lives of his fellow war fighters (for no one believes that Voldemort will actually keep his word), but rather the future of the human race, from domination by irresistible evil. And he does so knowing that his “father”—Dumbledore—wishes him to do it.

Yes, after being slain by the evil enemy, he spends a short time in a sort of nonce world and then returns to life. In a sense he has already beaten Voldemort, but there is yet a final battle between them, in which Potter is triumphant and the world is saved. Not only that, but he continues to bear, not the stigmata, but still a stigma—the lightning scar.

But these similarities are relatively very slight, and such hero-sacrifice myths are common to many cultures.

Let’s take just a moment to note the huge dissimilarities:

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's Note: This blog post reveals plot points in the first third of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Good people doing bad things — or rumored to have done them.

Bad people doing noble things — or were those people ever really bad?

I got the book at eleven this morning, and now, at nine-twenty, I’ve read through page 273. So if you’ve read farther than I have, good for you, and remember that I don’t know all that you know; if you haven’t read as far, then I warn you, I intend to speak candidly, and I might tell you more than you wish to hear.

Though truth to tell, I know little more than I did when I started reading. Rowling is doling out new information only in small bits. Considering how many horcruxes Voldemort created, she is spending an awful lot of time on collecting a single one of them. It is hard to believe at this point that she can possibly end this volume, let alone the series, in the number of pages she has left.

Then again, there’s this I know as a novelist: When you near the end of a massive work, if you’ve done your preparation well enough, then things can happen very rapidly indeed. Without the need to explain things, you can simply let events unfold.

And now that I think about it, Rowling has done quite a good job, in the first third of this book, of reminding us of the key events of the previous books — the things we must remember and keep in mind for this story to make sense.

But books are not just a process of preparing us for the ending. Every chapter, every scene, should have a purpose in itself. What has Rowling put into our memories in the first 273 pages of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"?

If you haven’t read this far, then stop. I’m not reviewing this book to decide whether to recommend it or not. I’m discussing it critically, to talk about its effects. I’m assuming that anyone who reads what I’m writing here has already experienced the first 273 pages. If you haven’t, then behave yourself and stop reading my essay and get back to Rowling’s novel where you belong.

It’s All About Trust

Harry thinks he’s searching for the truth, but that isn’t really it at all. He keeps being frustrated because other people speak to him as if he should choose what to believe about Albus Dumbledore. Though he knows that Rita Skeeter’s stories are all half-truths and distortions, he also knows that Skeeter does seek a core of truth in her reporting. Her Quill may write down a souped-up, soap opera version, putting the most scandalous possible spin on everything — but the thing she’s spinning does have a core of truth.

So Harry feels that he must find out the truth about Dumbledore. Why was his younger sister imprisoned by his mother — or was she? Why would Dumbledore tolerate such a thing — or did he? Skeeter is accusing Dumbledore of perhaps having something to do with the death of his sister — did he? Why did Dumbledore fight with his younger brother, who broke Albus’s nose at their sister’s funeral? Why didn’t Dumbledore defend himself magically against the blow?

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's Note: This blog post does not reveal any plot points in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

"Jane, you ignorant sl--..."

Oh, wait, I'm showing my age. Just because I'm in a two-person debate in public doesn't mean I should make a connection with Dan Aykroyd's and Jane Curtin's parody of Point/Counterpoint on Saturday Night Live. Who could possibly think that was funny?

In fact, even when that sketch first appeared on SNL, I didn't fully get it because I had never seen Point/Counterpoint. I knew they were making fun of something, but I didn't know what. I thought it was funny, but mostly because of Aykroyd's deadpan delivery of a semi-shocking word -- a personal attack in the midst of the news.

Humor is hard to bring off, and parody is harder. Which brings me to Hermione and the house elves.

More Serious? Or Less Funny?

Patrick makes the case that the Harry Potter series has been getting more serious in the later books, perhaps leading toward tragedy -- even, possibly, the tragedy of Harry Potter's own death.

But I'm not sure the series itself has become that much more "serious."

Patrick's impression is correct -- the series has become markedly less funny. But is that because Rowling is leading us toward tragedy? Or because she simply ran out of funny stuff to do?

Let's not forget how grim the series has been from the start. Even though the Dursleys were played as a satire on suburban propriety (gee, a writer who's an underemployed single mom -- could she possibly have come to resent people who have a husband, wife, and fat little boy in their suburban house?), the fact is that Harry Potter is an orphan living with a heartless uncle and aunt.

Why? Because, we discover, his parents were murdered. A cheery start -- shouldn't all children's books begin that way?

By Orson Scott Card A few days from now, J.K. Rowling will bring the Harry Potter series to an end. Well, actually, she brought it to an end months ago. But by the end of this week, we will finally...

By Orson Scott Card There is a sort of comfortableness that can settle in with majoritarians. A complacency that allows one to be picky and exclusive. I remember getting this feeling when I lived in Utah. I moved to the...