Chapter 15: Harry Potter and Hunger Games

We've done it! We've topped 1,000 views! Big thanks to everyone for continuing to read the blog and please continue sharing it with your friends like Miss "Zestee" Everman did.

So what do we do when we top 1,000 page views? We celebrate by talking about what Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Hunger Games have in common! The "girl on fire" and "the boy that lived". 

Happy reading! And may the odds be ever in your favor!

- V. B.

The Goblet of Fire

After the first two books, Rowling (ironically) takes a much harsher view of the press in her books.

In this book, Easter is celebrated, and at Christmas, one of the suits of armor is singing “O Come All Ye Faithful”.

More Eros

In this book, the characters are in middle adolescence. Hormones are running high and so is eros. Harry likes Cho, and Cedric does too. He’s cooler than Harry and can tell Cho how he feels. Ron is also dealing with it; he’s upset that Hermione’s gone to the ball with his former hero, Victor Krum. He’s very jealous, which means that he likes Hermione, but he doesn’t do anything about it. Hermione is frustrated with Ron because she’s waiting on Ron to grow up. Passion is a very powerful force, and it can deceive and confuse you.

On this subject Dr. Poe said something along the lines of, “Being kissed by a dementor is not half as bad as not being kissed at all!”

Resurrection and Death

Voldemort’s resurrection is nothing like the resurrection of Harry and especially the resurrection Christ. The power of love is much more powerful than any dark power.  A clear contrast is made between the good news of grace, the gift of life, and the sacrifice of Christ compared to the ghastly, self-centeredness of Voldermort’s perpetuation. The United States has an overwhelming fear of death. Rowling wants this contrast to have an impression on the reader, so that their opinion is developed. But rather than lecturing about the fact that death need not be feared, she weaves it right into the story. When you have to have a lecture to explain it, that’s not much of a story.

When Cedric Diggory, Harry’s parents, and Voldemort’s victims appear as the wands connect, this reflects the cloud of witnesses and communion of saints in Scripture.

Harry Potter and the Hunger Games?

Rowling is attacking some of the fundamental, materialistic assumptions running rampant through our culture. The theory of natural selection and materialistic evolution that says that my genes are competing with your genes, and my genes want the advantage; I’m competing against you. I want the odds in my favor. The very idea of sacrifice and sharing has no place in the kind of universe that is materialistic. It goes against the theory. The materialistic understanding of what’s going on is that people will gang up on others, get rid of them, and then turn on each other. That’s not what’s going on with Harry, and that’s not what’s going on with Cedric. Rowling is supporting a supernatural value system in which people have worth and value and that human life is worth more than personal achievement. 

The gospel in Goblet of Fire is very evident in the Triwizard Tournament. It is a environment of natural selection. A competition between people, against each other. This is the same sort of theme that Suzanne Collins uses in the Hunger Games. People are fighting each other. There is no room for love in this competition. But just like Katniss refuses to kill Peeta, Harry supersedes the system and tells Cedric about the dragons, saves Fleur’s sister, and takes the Wizard Cup WITH Cedric rather than blasting him out of the way.

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:5-11) This also comes into play when Sirius tells Ron to treat his inferiors with the same respect as he treats his equals. This is all packed into the idea of what should my attitude be to other people? Our value system, as Christians, is based off of our actions toward other people.

It also plays into the fact that everyone is afraid to say Voldemort's name. Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. But God has a name that is above all others, therefore, we need not fear anything. 

Multi-Cultural Wizards

or

Voldemort and Hitler

It never occurred to Harry that there are wizards throughout the rest of the world and that there might be other schools in other places. We see Harry’s coming of age throughout the series because he’s incredibly naïve. God’s kingdom is incredibly diverse and includes all sorts of people with different tongues and cultures. Christianity is very multicultural, which you don’t find in any other culture in the world. There isn’t very much mixing of ethnicities in other places. You don’t find mixing (religions, tribes, etc) in the Middle East. The genocide in Central Africa was an incredibly unnerving example of this. 

Multiculturalism is not natural to human nature. Multiculturalism and the acceptance of people who are different is not natural; naturally, we are suspicious of those who are different from us, and to accept them we have to have some sort of basis to connect with those different people. Our connection is the Creator God, but without God, we have no basis to sustain it. In Europe right now, they’re going to outlaw different kinds of behavior of Muslim people. This has to do with fear of the outsider in a country that is no longer Christian. So many of the values that Western liberalism, such as the tradition of the free spirit, takes for granted has to be rooted in something. If it’s just a material world, then Hitler can kill as many Jews as he wants to by playing on human fear of those who are different. If there’s no higher authority or value he’s violating, there is no right or wrong. "There’s only power and those too weak to use it." Later in the books, she fights the “higher/greater good” mentality of Umbridge. She’s not writing theology, but she is creating a context in which values don’t work unless they come from something greater than ourselves.

House Elves

Rowling raises difficult questions and points out flaws, but doesn’t give any easy answers. Hermione defends the house elves, and yet Dumbledore keeps more of them than any other person in the world. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he talks about the Holy Spirit and freedom because Christ has set you free. You don’t find the subject of freedom in any other document in any other religion.The Bible is one of the only books of the time to talk about “freedom,” because "freedom" was a foreign concept at the time.

Dobby is no longer a slave, and much like Harry lays down his life for his friends. It takes a long time to become the norm, permeate the culture, and go through the dough. Dobby is a revolutionary. What Dobby does to rescue those in captivity are the same things Harry does to save people. 

House elves aren’t human, but they are a different form of life. So what ethical issues does that raise?·      Dobby is not a human, but house elves are not animals, and there’s this debate going on in the wizarding community of where they fall. When Ron wants to go save the house elves from Voldemort, this is when the love between Ron and Hermione blooms fully. Dumbledore also said that Sirius never appreciated that house elves had feelings like people. Rowling is relying on a kind of fiction that Tolkien and Lewis brought forward. C. S. Lewis and Tolkien have non-human races in their works as well. It’s a convenient way to ponder about how you think about other people. 
Angels and demons aren’t human, but they are still a life form. Humans are LOWER than angels even! Satan’s problem with the human race is that we’re made lower than the angels, yet Christ has crowned us with glory and stepped into the world and become one of us! That’s why he tries to knock Jesus off while He’s in that form. Satan figures that when God turns himself into a person, he can take over because Jesus is at his weakest. Jesus defeats him easily.

Cornelius Fudge and Self-Awareness

Fudge doesn’t want to acknowledge that Voldemort has come back (or even could come back). Self-awareness is one of our biggest problems in today’s society. Many parables are about people who don’t want to deal with their own problems and situations. When the prodigal son was finally down and out and eating with the pigs, he came face to face with himself and saw himself as he really was. Fudge, like a lot of politicians, believed his own propaganda, which is deadly. You must know yourself; otherwise you can’t have a confession. Though we have Harry, constantly getting into trouble, he’s also constantly confessing and coming face to face with himself. When Harry and Ron weren’t speaking, both of them needed to grow up, see themselves, find out what the problem was, confess it, and get rid of it so that they can move on. Fudge will never confess his shortcomings, but Harry is coming face to face with his failures.

Harry and Sin

Rowling slips the word “sin” when Harry looks in the pensive. When Harry stumbles upon the pensieve, Dumbledore tells him "it’s not a sin to be curious." The very idea of sin is a powerful idea that you don’t find in every culture. In post-WWII Japan, you find no other culture dealing with their god resigning. The emperor of Japan was god, the same way pharaoh was god, and it’s the same kind of religion that Moses faced in Egypt. Japan’s emperor was the son of the moon goddess, and it was in his name the Japanese did everything that was done. McArthur said the emperor could remain on his throne, but he must resign as god. If the emperor is not god, who is? It was a huge cultural crisis, and the Western world sent missionaries to Japan. From a very young age, we’ve always heard the basic story of the gospel and have all this background. If you don’t know the story and someone tells you “God died for your sins and you can go to Heaven when you die,” yet your culture has no concept of sin or heaven because they teach that you don’t die but are reincarnated until you become enlightened and cease to exist. That’s hard to take in. If you don’t know the gospel story, it doesn’t make any sense. Our culture is becoming like the Japanese culture, in which people no longer know the story, who Jesus is, or how it makes sense. It’s almost lost. Western culture had a firm background built on the ideas of sin, God, and heaven, but we are losing that foundation.

Chapter 14: Dementors, Depression, and Divination

After Spring Break was over, Dr. Poe returned to class without a word about what he had been up to or where he had gone. But he did show us his collection of "dragon eggs" and informed us that he had to battle a banshee in order to get the Horntail egg. He did point out that since breeding dragons is still illegal in these areas, he will be making no attempts to do any breeding, but the collection was nonetheless impressive. 

- V. B.

Prisoner of Azkaban

Dementors

We meet a lot of new creatures in this book. The worst creature is a dementor, a creature that sucks all the joy out of you. John Bunyan writes about a similar thing in Pilgrim’s Progress, only his creature is the Giant Despair who traps Christian in the Castle of Doubt.

Depression is a horrible thing. We all go through it, some more and some less, but we all deal with depression and doubt at some point in our lives.

To get rid of a dementor you just use the Patronus Charm. This ties Harry with his father (same patronus animal) but he also has to think of the most joyous memory in his life. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.” (Philipians 4:8) “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) We will all be visited by dementors in life, so we must remember that “…the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4b)

New Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher

Professor Lupin is a werewolf. He wasn’t born that way, but rather he was infected and has to deal with now. It is the way that Lupin deals with his condition that makes him different.

He is the first Dark Arts teacher that actually knows what he is talking about. He introduces the class to a boggart, a creature that takes the form of your worst fear. Lupin teaches them to overcome their greatest fears. Lupin tells Harry that because he is afraid of dementors, Harry really just fears Fear itself. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

To get rid of dementors (depression) you think of something happy, and to get rid of fear, you laugh at it. Lupin also shows us that chocolate is a wonderful way to get rid of depression and when Dr. Poe pointed this out all the girls in class agreed heartily.

Divination

We are introduced to divination in this book. This falls into the category of magic that the Bible, McGonagall, and Dumbledore condemn. There is also an astronomy tower at Hogwarts, and this is important because it is not an astrology tower. Astrology has its roots in medieval synthesis of theology, Platonic philosophy, and science, but over the centuries it lost its science and was taken over by the occult.

Hippogriffs and Time Travel

Not known to appear before the Harry Potter series. Spawned from a griffin and a horse. Griffins originate as far back as Babylonian times.

To save Sirius Black and Buckbeak, Hermione and Harry must time travel. Time travel is a big part of the science fiction genre. Rowling sets up the time turner from the very beginning of the book.

What is time? How can time change? Eternity is outside of time and space. When God created space, time was made. But God is outside of time. He is the time ender, and time beginner.

Did Dumbledore know that Sirius is innocent? We know that Dumbledore talks to Sirius and that he can read minds, and Jesus could read minds too.

Chapter 13: Dr. Poe Disappears! (but class goes on)

I am not a superstitious person in anyway, but it is interesting that on the 13th class day that Dr. Poe seemingly disapparated without a trace. We entered the classroom and were greeted by a young woman whom none of us had before seen within the vicinity. We were not told where Dr. Poe was, but we all knew that he must have been called away on a top secret wizarding mission of some sort or other. 

In the meantime, we were to be instructed by the young woman whose name turned out to be Erin Boswell. So after putting away our quills from the quiz that we took at the beginning of class, Mrs. Boswell informed us that she too had been a student of Dr. Poe's not all that long ago and now had joined the Ministry of Education by continuing to serve at the school that she had grown to love so much. She had been chosen to speak to us in Dr. Poe's absence by the doctor himself because she was indeed an avid fan of the Harry Potter books and had written many rolls of parchment on the subject. In fact, her thesis had been on the topic of comparing Harry Potter with other children's literature. She then set out to speak with us on the topics on which she had written and to promote conversation.

Admittedly, our time with Mrs. Boswell was indeed short and unfortunately the formate of our conversations were not very conducive to note taking, but nonetheless, I shall set down here what valuable information I could garner for your enlightenment.

- V. B.

Children’s literature often has more moral issues because they are boiling down truth.

The Issue of Choice

What does Harry choose to do? His first big choice is that he does not want to be put in Slytherine.

He also tells Malfoy that he can chose his own friends.

He also makes choices to tell the truth even when Umbridge punishes him for telling the truth.

Right and Wrong

Harry and Voldemort are easily the embodiment of right and wrong, but Harry has to choose between doing what right or doing what is wrong (even if doing the right thing doesn’t really pay off as quickly).

“If you are a good guy in a story, you shouldn’t go around killing other children!” - Mrs. Boswell

He chooses to use the Marauder's Map even when it is a bad idea.

Sacrifice

Parallels Narnia and Jesus. Both with Lily Potter’s sacrifice, and Harry’s death and resurrection. Harry does not know that he will ever come back from the dead, and yet he is still willing to lay down his life.

Snape sacrifices himself every single day in order to protect Harry.

Ron sacrifices himself in the chess game.

Death

Our society is trying to find ways to stop death, but then Rowling shows that death is not something that needs to be feared the way our culture portrays it. It also introduces the theme of death to children at a young age and confronts it head on. 

Chapter 12: Harry Potter and the Four Kinds of Love

I must tell you before hand that despite the title, Dr. Poe only had time to talk about three of the types of love (Storge, Phila, Eros, and Agape) and also a great big thanks to Alice of Rabbiton for generating most of the content for this post. I almost don't have to post sound bites anymore because of her semi-verbatum note taking. 
Without further ado, lets talk about love!


- V. B.


Love

"Love is most powerful when it is absent" - Dr. Hal Poe

C. S. Lewis vs. J. K. Rowling

C.S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves. The English language uses the one word love to describe four different experiences, and he compares it to the Greek language that has different terms for different experiences.

We keep seeing the theme of love in the Harry Potter series, and it’s considered one of the most powerful forms of magic. This is also why Voldemort will ultimately be defeated. Rowling keeps coming back to love, and we see it in subtle ways.

Storge

The first kind of love Lewis talks about is storge. This is a mother’s love; it’s the kind of protective, affectionate, nurturing, caring kind of love, and we also see this kind of love with animals.

- Mrs. Weasley loves her children ferociously, and she’s expresses her love through anger with her boys for taking the enchanted car. She was worried about their safety, and a mother’s love sees every possible scenario (which drives her crazy). She just cares, and we see it over and over again. Her reaction is a barometer of the depth of the storge, as to how a person reacts to any given situation. Love manifests itself in different ways. She seems to be constantly “nagging them” but it is showing a close relationship between the mother and the children.

- Lewis says there is a falleness to three of the loves as well, and a mother’s love can turn wicked and obsessive. Petunia is this sort of mother. Her kind of affection is creating a dreadful person in Dudley. This highlights the "darker side" of love.

- Lily Potter shows the ultimate expression of the mother’s love: to die to protect the child. 

- In that sense of the storge being the affection, the nurture, the caring, we also see Hagrid manifesting this in the stories. He’s generally this way to all students, but specifically towards Harry. This also extends to animals and the care of magical creatures.

- Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy love Draco tremendously. We see Narcissa playing a critical role in the entire series. Without her and that particular plot, Harry would’ve been discovered alive and Voldemort might never have been defeated. Anyone can manifest this trait. Adolf Hitler had selective storge, for he loved children and animals. Lewis says storge is selective since there are mothers who can care for their own children but not the children others. Unlike the Wesleys, the Malfoys they do not nurture their son they just expect results from him. They give him what he wants, but not the love that he needs.

-  McGonagall and Dumbledore deeply care for the students. McGonagall has this hard exterior, and we sometimes see it crack. She’s so gruff, but things happen to melt her. At the very beginning of the story, she is the one who doesn't want to leave Harry with muggles. She’s also always the first one on the scene. The movie doesn’t do this right, but when Hagrid lays down Harry’s dead body, McGonagall is the first one to cry out.

-Dumbledore is seen as a defense. Nothing’s going to happen while Dumbledore’s here. The students keep talking about the rage and anger Dumbledore had when the dementors try to harm Harry, and this is a new side of him they’ve never seen.

- It is said that Snape did not grow up in a good family situation and was not “well cared for.”

- Compare the Weasley family and the Malfoy family:

·      The Weasley’s have a lot of children, while the Malfoy’s only have Draco.

·      The Malfoy’s are rich, while the Weasley’s are poor.

·      The Weasley’s are always nurturing and caring for their children, while Draco is seen as an extension of Lucius and must live up to his expectations.

- Compare the Potter family and the Riddle family:

·      Harry and Tom are both orphans.

·      Harry’s parents loved each other, but they didn’t like each other in the beginning. Lily thought James was everything Serverus said about him. She thought that because it was true, and we see James change as he grows up.

- The Grangers are muggles, as were the Evan’s family (Lily’s parents). Snape’s mother is a witch, but his father was a muggle. The Evans and the Grangers are supportive of their daughters doing something different. The Snape family situation is quite different; Snape doesn’t grow up with a happy home life. We don’t see any sign that Snape had the kind of nurturing that Hermione and Lily had. In fact, we see in the pensieve that Snape had the appearance of a child that hadn’t been cared for. This is a big dynamic because it has to do with one of her biggest concerns: How you raise your children? 

This is a key concern for Rowling because she is a single mother who has to raise her daughter and provide for her. The whole business of the family is a huge matter. Rather effectively, she’s planting the idea in the hearts her readers of what a family should be like, even when it’s no longer portrayed in other medias because they are too caught up in what families do look like. The books were taken to the heart of a generation, and they create the strong expectation of what should happen and what we can do to make the world a better place.

Phila

Philia is the second kind of love. It’s considered brotherly love or friendship. Friendship is a huge issue in our culture, and school is a self-selecting society. People who are interested in the same things you’re interested are easy to find and eager to be your friends.

- Harry had no friends when he went to King’s Cross Station in his first year. He had Hadgrid, but the generation difference makes him a different kind of friend.

- Friendship is profoundly important, it starts in the first book, and it continues all the way through to the end. This eases us from the first stage of adolescent development into the second stage of friends. Harry has no parents, and he must move from the dependent relationships to the independent relationships. The kind of friends you have and the quality of those friends kind of determines how that transition will be.

- Ron and Hermione are Harry’s close friends. Lewis talks about different levels of circles of friends. He has close friends, then he has Neville, Seamus, and Dean Thomas. It’s a growing circle, and by the end of the book, we know who the larger group of friends are. There are certain names, however, that keeps reoccurring.

- When we get to the Order of the Phoenix where we see Dumbledore’s Army. Luna says that Dumbledore’s Army is almost like having friends; this implies that she’s never had friends before. In the Deathly Hallows, her room is decorated with pictures of her friends and the word "friend" written on the wall.

- Christ tells the disciples at the Last Supper that they are his friends, not servants. If you want to do something for God, develop the capacity to befriend people.

 In comparison to friendship, we have the dark side of it. We have the “unfriend”, which is a mock corruption of friendship.

- Crabbe and Goyle are not really Malfoy’s friends, but his servants. This comes to a head in the Deathly Hallows in the Room of Requirement. There’s rebellion, and they don’t listen to him anymore. They’re not really friends, and quite frankly they don’t really know how to be friends.

- Wormtail is a pathetic attempt at being a friend. He’s a betrayer, a Judas.

- Voldemort has no friends, and this is an indictment of his incapacity to love at any level. He uses people, and he is subhuman. There is no quality of friendship when it comes to the death eaters.

- Lewis wrote about the "inner ring." Sometimes you sacrifice true friendship to be in the inner ring.

Eros

The erotic form of love and passion is Eros.

- Ron’s regard for Hermione is growing. Initially, it doesn’t have to do with her, it just arises when someone says something about her. The relationship is still just pals, but Harry doesn’t react in defense of Hermione the same way Ron does. This sort of gives Ron away.

- As the books continue, the trio gets older. Those seven years pretty much encompass sixth grade through twelfth grade. In the books, we see the sudden changes with people over the summers. Romantic love finally enters in to the series, and we begin to see it in the Chamber of Secrets. Percy was caught kissing Penelope Clearwater, and Ginny has a huge crush on Harry.

- Harry and Cho Chang soon develop a relationship. There are all these things going on at the end of early adolescence, moving into middle adolescence.

- Ron soon grows jealous of Hermione’s relationship with Victor Krum. It then progresses another kind of level, where Harry and Cho kiss each other. This is “tame sex”. Rowling is setting the boundaries of what you do, and she’s reigning in the expectations, how far you go, and what is normal/how you should feel about it. What is appropriate, when is someone being overbearing, etc. In a weird way, she’s setting sexual morals, which no one else does. She’s redefining what’s normal, in its absence. 

(Although I see what Dr. Poe is getting at here, I can't agree with him completely. Even though kissing might be considered "tame," I personally can't agree that having high school sophomores kissing is an acceptable "norm" to say is ok. Of course I know that some high schoolers are up to much worse than kissing, but at the same time I don't think that kissing is an envelope worth pushing. My first kiss will be at my wedding, and I'm proud to say it! - V. B.)

- Ginny soon has a different boyfriend with each book, sometimes two or three. Snape had a crush on Lily the way Ginny had the crush on Harry, and he never, ever got over it. This goes from Eros to something deeper because it’s not just desire; she was also his best friend, and his only real friend. That’s a powerful, powerful combination.

- James and Lily had an ambiguous relationship. Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson are (according to Dr. Poe) engaging in hanky-panky. Ron and Lavender Brown have a "strictly snogging-based" relationship.

Chapter 11: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Narnia. What's the difference?

Today we had our quiz over Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And after studying everything from major plot points down to what the Gryffindor common room password was, I quickly realized that I have over prepared. For our “quiz” today we were asked to do two things. Draw our favorite scene from the book, and add a caption so that Dr. Poe could actually tell what it was…

I started drawing a very bad picture of Harry slaying the Basilisk, but Dr. Poe stopped us before I made it any worse than it already was. We'll see what kind of grade I get on that quiz...

- V. B.

What do we see when we think of Harry Potter?

Some novelists spend two or three pages describing a blade of grass. Rowling doesn’t do that. As far as the landscape is concerned or what Hogwarts looks like, Rowling doesn’t really give a concrete description of things. This is a clever trick because the reader has to participate in the story to fill in those mental images. The reader must imagine what these look like. How many windows does the great hall have? Does it have oaken beams? Some of the greatest writers employ this technique. Rowling puts her emphasis on the internal issues and describes the characters through their actions; however, she doesn’t give you all the details on how it looks. She gives you some things, but then your mind takes over. This is where the movie kicks in; we carry over images from the movies to the descriptions she gives. If you go back and reread the books, there’s so much in the later stories that’s left out of the movies.

Almost the entire first book made it into the movies. By the time we get to the fourth book, they really had to hack away from scenes due to the book’s length. The scenes that make it to the movie may influence our imaginations, but there’s still so much we have to paint for ourselves.    

Transportation

We’ve seen magical trains, flying cars, and a lot of different ways to get back and forth, but in this book we get the Flue Network. But who invented the Flue Network? St. Nicholas! Santa is the first person to travel through fireplaces and chimneys to deliver presents to good boys and girls.


Harry gets to Diagon Alley, and he lands in Knockturn Alley at Borgin & Burkes.
- Tom Riddle worked there, and that’s were other vanishing cabinent resides.
- We see the vanishing cabinet twice in the Chamber of Secrets, and we see it later in the Half Blood Prince. Peeves does a lot of damage to the vanishing cabinet at Hogwarts, and Harry hides in the one at Borgin & Burkes. This is how Rowling set up the way for Dumbledore to be murdered.
-The cursed opal necklace was on display in the shop; Draco purchased it to curse Dumbledore, but it wound up hurting Katie Bell instead.

- The Hand of Glory was for sale, which we see later in the series.    

Fawkes

The pheniox has an “unearthly song” which is another way to say “heavenly”. The feature of the phoenix’s tears is healing powers; there’s a metaphor in Hark the Herald Angels Sing about the rising of a phoenix (describing the resurrection of Christ).

C.S. Lewis’s Allegory of Love (his first scholarly work) is about the development of medieval, allegorical, courtly love poetry. For 500 years, this was the main show in town. It is also the predecessor of the modern day chick flick. Romantic love was invented in the eleventh century, and it was viewed by culture as a bad thing. Women were business deals, not lifelong partners. 
How in the world did Christian literature begin writing about the gods? We find it all the way through the medieval period to the modern period, and it’s full of references to the Greek and Roman god and goddesses. Believers weren’t the only ones to write Christian literature, but it was also written by priests, monks, etc. Lewis believed that gods and goddesses are written about because no one believes in them any more.
When they talked about Mars, god of war, he became the representation of the emotion of rage. He was always raging, violent, and conflictual. In the old stories, he had a whole range of emotions.

 We can event see this in Paul’s Mars Hill encounter with the statue to the unknown god. Once no one truly believed in them, they simply became metaphors and symbols.
Bacchus was the god of wine, and in the allegories, he’s always drunk. He becomes the personification of this state, but in the old stories, he had a full range of emotions and qualities.
As the culture ceased to believe in the gods, they became a literary ornament or device. When they no longer believed, they were no longer a theological issue, and they became a metaphor/simile for whatever was being discussed.
Thus, the phoenix can be appropriated as a symbol of the Resurrection.    

The same is true of Rowling’s Harry Potter. The Christian community didn’t react to The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, the way they reacted to Harry Potter because no one believed in magic back then. But by the end of 20^th century paganism had a resurgence than C. S. Lewis thought would never happen. It was a product of New Age philosophies. Because of this, Harry Potter got a reaction that older books and stories never had to face.


The interesting thing about the kind of magic Rowling uses isn’t taken from paganism, druidism, or voodooism, but she takes it from the Bible. When she has other kinds of magic, it’s things like flying brooms, and she can have that because no one believes in them. However, when she arrives at the kind of magic forbidden by Scripture, such as Divination, her device is to have it ridiculed in a way much stronger than a legal prohibition; she has the figures we trust the most not accept it or really stand behind it. The power of ridicule is a powerful device she uses to discredit these things being practiced. The Bible never says divination is fake, it tells us not to do it. Demons are real, and they’re not to be consulted with because you can’t control them. 

Magical Creatures

Hagrid takes care of Fluffy, Aragog, Norbert, the unicorns, and all sorts of creatures.

• The unicorns were important creatures in the medieval period.
• Fluffy, a three-headed dog, has a background as Cerberus. He guards the gates of Hell for Hades in Greek mythology, just as he guards the trapdoor in Sorcerer’s Stone.
• The Basilisk, a beast of antiquity, and the ancient serpent are present in most cultures.
• The centaurs were also in Greek mythology.
• The dragons were present in the cultures of China, and the Leviathan was in the Old Testament.

Ployjuice Potion

Hermione has a plan to discover if Draco is the Heir or knows who the Heir is.

She makes the polyjuice potion, and they have to steal from Snape’s personal stores to gain the necessary ingredients.

We now know that Snape is a legilimens, and he knows when Harry is lying. Hermione, however, is the one stealing this time.

Moaning Myrtle is a ghost that haunts a girls’ bathroom. This bathroom, also the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, is where they brew the polyjuice potion. This bathroom also reoccurs in later books.

• The plan: Harry and Ron must incapacitate Crabbe and Goyle, get specimens from them, rendezvous with Draco, and discuss the subject of the Heir of Slytherin. Hermione mistakenly turns into a cat.
• Rowling is recognizing that she has a problem with her plot, which is stepping outside the bounds of probability with its many contingencies. She uses this device in a number of stories (ex.: how to get in to the Ministry of Magic.) She has the characters say that this is a problem, one of them asks if they have a better plan, and when they say "no" we just follow along from there. She draws our attention to the problem, and by pointing it out, we ignore it, and we go along with it. It helps draw us into the story. She deals with this very cleverly.
• As we go into the Slytherin common room, we notice Ron’s growing uncertainty with his relationship with Hermione. We also see it when he rushes to Hermione’s defense when she’s called a mudblood. Malfoy is talking about the Heir killing mudbloods, and he predicts she’ll be the first to go. This is where Harry and Ron almost lose their cover. We have this growing, suspicion of a love interest.

When is Harry Potter happening?

She never gives us a straightforward time of action.

What year did Harry celebrate his eleventh birthday?

She does give us clues to know when things happen. Dumbledore dueled Grindelwald in 1945, when Hitler’s Germany was defeated. She has these background events to associate with that sometimes have nothing to do with the action, then she gives us these relative dates.

Tom’s diary purchased fifty years ago during the war; we know how old Riddle was when he used the diary and when he opened the Chamber.

By the time we get to the end, we know when things happened.    

Expelliarmus!

Harry’s standard spell is expelliarmus. When we get to the Deathly Hallows, they can identify Harry by this spell. Lupin warns him against letting people realize he uses this one fallback spell. When Harry tried to teach Dumbledore’s Army this spell, they didn’t think it would  hold up against Voldemort, but Harry used it to save his own life.
Harry got the spell from Snape. Snape uses it to disarm Professor Lockhart in the dueling club. Snape also uses it a lot in order to disarm but not harm his enemies. 

Godry Lockheart

The man with the most charming smile. 
Gilderoy Lockhart’s favorite trivia is his award winning smile. It’s “the most charming.”
Charms is taught by Professor Flitwick; it’s a branch of magic that’s associated with romance.
Tom Riddle said he was always able to charm the people he needed. It’s a bit related to flattery; you suck people in with falseness.

Chapter 10: Halloween, Death, and the Occult in Harry Potter

First things first! Today (March 1st) is Ron’s 32^nd birthday.

Now that we have that out of the way, I have some exciting news of my own! We now have another individual contributing to this blog! My fellow student, Alice of Rabbiton, has graciously allowed me to use her notes as well as my own on this blog. Thus, together we shall strive to give you a fuller and more wholistic view of this class.

Enjoy! And spread the word!

-Victor Bennet

Death

Where do we encounter death in the books?

- Lilly and James are murdered by Voldemort. What is Voldemort’s attitude towards death? He is afraid of death but will kill anyone without hesitation. And yet he gives Lilly a way out of death if she chooses it. Harry miraculous escapes death.

- Killing animals is a bit different. Killing a unicorn is especially wrong. There are different levels of “bad.” (5-)

- Ghosts are all over Hogwarts. Prof. Binns is even a ghost. Professor Binns, the History of Magic Professor at Hogwarts, died one day; he continued teaching as a ghost. The ghosts of Hogwarts stayed at the castle after their deaths, and they play an important part in the stories. They also reflect a certain opinion of death.

- Did Harry kill Quirrel? He tries to stop Quirrel from killing him, but he does not mean to kill Quirrel.

- Nicholas Flamel is going to die because the Philosopher’s Stone will be destroyed. Dumbledore says that “To a well organized mind, death is just another great adventure.”

- Dumbledore’s attitude towards death: death is an adventure, and there are far worse things than death. Dumbledore erected the tombstones in Godric’s Hollow, and he chose the inscriptions upon the stones. The last enemy to be defeated will be death.

- Hagrid tells Harry that Voldemort doesn’t have enough left of him to even die.

- Ron, Harry, and Hermione were willing to risk it all to take on the defenses guarding the Philosopher’s Stone, no matter the cost, to keep Voldemort from returning to full power.

Rowling subtly explores a lot of attitudes in our culture towards death.

Neville

Neville is an orphan and an only child. And he has no family of his generation or his parent’s generation. His family isn’t well off, but they are “comfortable”. His grandmother berates him and tries to make Neville live up to his fathers legacy. It is only when Neville is able to do his own thing that he thrives, and yet he loves his grandmother and she loves him. Neville is receiving the brunt of his grandmother’s grief for her son, Neville’s father. Neville is forgetful and very uncoordinated. When we meet him, it is because he lost his toad.

Therefore it is clear from the very beginning (in Dr. Poe’s eyes) that Neville will be a hero of the story.

Part of Neville becoming a great hero, is that you have to feel the great change take place within Neville as a sense of spiritual transformation. She draws you in, makes the case of future change and growth, and she intrigues you with the way things could be.

She doesn’t denounce Neville’s grandmother, but by the end of the story, the grandmother has seen what was in Neville all along. Neville and his grandmother adore each other completely, but Neville gains the confidence to do what he’d enjoy rather than just what she wants him to do.

Edger Allen Poe & Art.

Art is at the center of a culture and is an artifact of a culture; it represents the core beliefs and values of a culture. There were so many struggles with art over the centuries because the cultures were collapsing. Rowling took a great stand, as many movie makers did in the twentieth century, and she managed to create a sustained effect. Part of that is how she wants you to feel when you read her novels; she’s not trying to lecture you to teach you something, but she’s trying to get you to feel something.

“Before you can have art, there has to be entertainment.”

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

We meet Dobby for the first time. Harry goes back to the Dursley’s for the summer, and over the summer, a new character is introduced: Dobby the House Elf. He just pops up in Harry’s room, and he’s going to get Harry in trouble. Harry doesn’t like Dobby’s method of protecting him.

Harry doesn’t understand or like what Dobby is doing to try to save Harry’s life.

The mysteries of this book are why Dobby is trying to save Harry, who is the heir of Slytherin, and where is the Chamber of Secrets? Harry is the most likely candidate to be the heir of Slytherin because he can speak parseltongue. Harry doesn’t know he can speak Parseltongue, and there’s never been a witch or wizard who was a Parseltongue that didn’t end up becoming a dark sorcerer. When Moses cast down his staff in the court of Pharaoh, God transformed the staff into a serpent. This instance, like Harry’s ability, shows serpents in a somewhat better light.

Eve is the first parseltongue, but it runs in the family. Thus, we’re all Parseltongues, we’re all sinners, and we all have our little chats with Satan. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

The whole idea of the serpent explored here takes us to the idea of the animagous. The first great animagous was Satan, but the greatest animagous is Jesus Christ. The Lord of Glory, Creator of Heaven and Earth, should empty himself and become a servant? That’s even more important than turning into animals. Jesus is the greatest one because He is God and yet able to become human. 

Halloween

In all of the books, there are important days. There are never any birthdays celebrated, though we do know of Harry’s. However, Sir Nicholas’s deathday is celebrated, which elaborates a little more towards the attitude toward death (opposed to birth). There is also Halloween (All Hollow’s Eve). On Halloween in Harry’s first year, the troll is let into the dungeon and vanquished by Harry and Ron. Halloween = All Hallows Eve (Deathly Hallows), All Saints Day celebrates all Christians that have died for their faith. This day celebrates the martyrs and those who have vanquished evil with their deaths. On Halloween, Lily and James Potter died, and Voldemort was also vanquished. On All Saints Day, evil is vanquished, but you’re not protected from dying.

On Halloween during Harry’s second year, the saints are under attack. Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave the deathday party, and the first attack has occurred. In order to have a martyr, someone has to die, and we see the first attack on this Halloween.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Christmas

Another holiday celebrated at Hogwarts is Christmas which is meant to celebrate the incarnation of God. There’s a breakdown in the passing on of the faith, and today is a culture that knows almost nothing of Christianity. That’s why, though they celebrate Christmas, Christianity, as a religion, is never mentioned in the books. All these elements are subtle. These books are very much intended for a secular audience.

“Christianity is one generation away from extinction.”

When we get to the last book, “for the greater good” is a vile and despicable philosophy that is prevalent; this means that someone’s going to get shafted so that others do all right. She teaches a generation that it’s not okay by writing for her culture’s feelings and brute reactions.

Dark Magic and the Occult in Harry Potter

Harry and Ron get to Hogwarts by means of a flying car, land in a Whomping Willow, and the car goes rogue. The car, like Riddle’s diary, can think for itself; it throws them out and heads off into the Forbidden Forest, yet it rescues them in their time of need.

Riddle’s diary is also considered occult. Wesley says “never to trust anything that thinks for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.” Whenever we get into the occult in the books, there is always a warning. McGonagall and Dumbledore warn about divination, Wesley about Tom Riddle’s diary, and so on.

What’s the source of power for the occult? Like an Ouija Board or Tarot Cards, this is an aspect of the occult powered by the demonic. Rowling recognizes this, points to it, and she critiques it; you don’t dabble in things like that, even if, like voodoo, they’re a form of religion.