Recently I went to the newest Harry Potter movie, featuring the first part of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. However, as a hard-core fan of the books, I was thoroughly disappointed.
Important scenes were left out or altered in such a manner that their deeper meaning was lost. Nonsensical scenes were added for comic relief or gratuitous action so that any real message would be trivialized.
From the very first Harry Potter book written for a children´s readership and in the simple language which children would understand, J.K. Rowling made her intention of writing a tale on political philosophy quite clear.
When Harry confronts Voldemort at the end of both the first book and movie, Voldemort declares:
“There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it.”
Condensed in this single sentence is the political philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the ideological foundation of modern-day fascism.
And J.K. Rowling answers Nietzsche in the voice of little Harry when he declares:
“You´re a liar!“
To be sure you can´t expect the movie to ever fully cover the book it is based upon in all it´s details, that would be pretty much impossible. However a good adaptation does reflect the athmosphere of the book and the view of the world the author wants to convey.
And while the other movies got as well as could be expected the gist of with the earlier books, this last book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” seems to have been too hot for Hollywood to handle fairly. In it, Rowling confronts Nietzsche and his “Übermensch” (superman) ideology–so beloved by Hollywood writers–more directly than before.
In the course of the series, the Harry Potter books tackle the topics of torture and of mind control, of murderous political attacks blamed on the innocent, of political deception and self-deception, of the denial of reality out of fear, of media control by political powers, of a fascist overthrow of a democratic government, and the installation of a puppet government controlled by far more powerful actors behind the scenes, as well as the topics of racism, discrimination, and the deliberate forced impoverishment of an ethnic minority.
Rowling cleverly interweaves Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Greek mythology with images of other classics dealing with the subject of power, like “Lord of the Rings“ and the Bible, to make her points. And her main point is never hidden but is spelled out repeatedly by Dumbledore the wise, just as it is constantly ridiculed and disdained by Voldemort, the very un-wise.
The Harry Potter series is a fairy tale. And like any good fairy tale, it tells us a lot about the times in which it was written, about the problems and the conflicting values of those times.
There is, for instance, the issue of torture:
In the last book, Hermione–a teenage girl and the second main character, is being tortured nearly to unconsciousness while her friends Ron and Harry despair as they listen helplessly from their cell down below.
“Crucio” is the curse-word used to inflict pain, short for crucificio – I crucify.
(Remember one of the famous images of people- who like Ali Shalal were being tortured in Abu Ghraib – the picture of the hooded prisoner standing on the box in a Christlike position?)
Or could Hermione be a fictional representation of real women who are tortured in order to get at their menfolk?
- an image of women like Aafia Siddiqi 
intelligent and educated with a doctor´s degree in neuro-science, who taught little children‘s religious classes on Sundays, and who cared for the less fortunate, the poor and those in prison?
Her local cleric said about her:
“Aafia was an American girl and a good sister.” She also wanted her husband to use his medical skills to help the less fortunate. Despite her devout faith, “there was nothing radical about Siddiqui. She just seemed like a very kind person.”
And then she was abducted, raped, and tortured for five years. Her three small children disappeared with her, the youngest one is still missing and now presumed dead. And in the end, she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in prison for attempted murder without even a trace of any credible evidence against her.
British journalist Yvonne Ridley wrote about Aafia (known in the American army´s Afghan detention center Bagram as “Prisoner 650“) and about her ordeal of torture and rape:
“The cries of (this) helpless woman echoed (with such torment) in the jail that (it) prompted prisoners to go on hunger strike.”
Ridley called her a “gray lady (because) she (was) almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her…”
The Harry Potter fantasy series mentions other victims of torture, such as the parents of Harry´s friend Neville Longbottom, who were permanently institutionalized after having been tortured into complete insanity.
And just as in Rowling´s fictional settings, torture in the real world is rarely just about getting some information (which even the torturer knows would be unreliable at best). Torture is about breaking a person, mind and body, to the point where he or she can no longer ever fully recover.
Or as Dr Ruwan M Jayatunge writes in the Psychological effects of Torture
Torture is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination…
Torture has profound and long lasting physical and psychological effects. Torture is a form of collective suffering. It does not limit to the victim. The victims’ family members and friends are also affected.
Many of the events or characters in the Harry Potter books somehow mirror the real world within a simpler fantasy framework.
Especially fascinating to me were the house-elves, a race of enslaved little magical people.
On the surface, the elf-subplot is a comment on slavery. But when looked at more closely, those elves just aren´t like any “slaves” I‘ve ever heard of or read about, neither in ancient times nor in the last few centuries!
The house-elves not only accept their status, their oppression, and the often brutal abuse directed against them, but they fully identify with even their masters´ most deranged ideas of superiority, believing it an “honor to serve” them. Their masters, however, normally show nothing but disdain for their house-elves. The only exception among the elves in the books is Harry´s little friend Dobby, who is viewed by his fellow house-elves as some sort of a traitor to his race.
The elves talk about themselves in the third person. They follow every order without question, even the most self-destructive ones. And if they are ever unable to obey orders, they punish themselves physically.
As their uniform and sign of their status, the house-elves wear dishrags, and only a piece of ordinary clothing – presented to them by their masters – can set a house-elf free.
In the third book, compassionate and justice-minded Hermione launches a school campaign against elf-slavery. And in the last book, she explains the strange,often self-destructive and amoral mindset of the enslaved elves to her friends.
Only one group of people I know of have ever come close to the image of the strange little house-elves Rowling paints in her fictional universe:
Soldiers
Young military recruits relinquish control over their own lives the minute they sign up.
Right away they enter Basic Training—an experience filled with abuse, a steady flow of physical and psychological humiliation, and physical pain caused by a ridiculously strict exercise regime. For the recruit the pain he´s ordered thus to endure feels as if it is self-inflicted. Since modern warfare is conducted with transportation equipment and high-tech-weaponry, these exercises have little to do with preparing the soldiers for combat.
When the over-exhaustion from the painful physical training is combined with the verbal humiliation, it more closely resembles an instrument of mind-control not unlike torture.
Recruits for the US-Marines are also trained to refer to themselves in the third person and to submit themselves to sessions of real, though short and limited, torture as a training exercise.
Soldiers of all ages, in all times and all over the world have been required to follow orders without question.
They assimilate the ideology of their superiors as it is fed to them via simple propaganda phrases which are often mixed with outright lies and deceptions in order to demonize the chosen “enemy” and prepare the soldier to slaughter them.
And while often their orders will get them maimed or killed, soldiers are also trained to believe it is an “honor to serve and to suffer and die” for their superiors’ ideology without ever questioning the veracity of what they have been told or the reason behind the orders they have been given.
And only when the soldier is finally allowed to “retire” and permanently replace his uniform with civilian clothes will he be free.
As for their “masters”:
Henry Kissinger, one of the most important power-brokers of our times and acting for the elite Rockefeller family, was quoted by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in “their book: “Final Days” as referring in Admiral Haig’s presence to
“military men as dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
Isn’t it interesting that the name of the second most important house-elf in the Harry Potter books–initially a very unsympathetic character constantly spouting vile and racist remarks–is Kreacher…?
As I said, a good fairytale mirrors the times, and additionally it always contains a moral.
While the new movie implies, with its 1940’s-style clothes and Nazi-era imagery, that the last Harry Potter book is about Nazi fascism, the book itself makes it obvious that Rowling is actually writing about the steady move towards fascism in our times.
Indeed, in the last book, unlike in the movie, Grindelwald–the character symbolizing the old Nazi fascism–is actually depicted as a repentant sinner in his prison cell who protects Dumbledore´s secret from Voldemort by trying to prevent Harry´s enemy from gaining access to the special wand, the ultimate weapon of destruction.
And while most modern fantasy stories are told from an esoteric point of view, the ethics of Harry Potter are very much egalitarian and the symbolism is purely Christian, more so than the Narnia books ever were. (Narnia´s symbolism, with its Lion instead of the Lamb, and the greatest and only sin in need of redemption being an act of treason against the family, belongs far more to the Old than to the New Testament.)
In esoteric fantasy, an individual or a group of people with superior “powers” battles another superior individual or group to bring about a “Balance of the Force” while the rest of the people (the “inferiors”) are helpless bystanders or expendable foot-soldiers who are often slaughtered in large numbers as collateral damage. They are rarely ever protected from the consequences of the “titans’” battles, and their deaths, being seen as unimportant, are never mourned.
True, Harry and his friends have magic “powers“, but so too has everyone else in their society. The “magic” in the Harry Potter books is intended as a symbol for a high level of technology and knowledge and superior weapons power.
Muggle-borns like Hermione are the immigrants to the democratic wizard society which, while having diplomatic ties for emergencies, has laws against interfering with the nearby less-powerful Muggle culture.
Voldemort, like the wizard Grindelwald decades before him, intends to change those laws and start an imperial conquest against the Muggle society which he considers to be inferior. He also intends to permanently exclude the Muggle-born immigrants from wizard society.
But even though the Harry Potter books are mainly about fighting Voldemort and his ideas, the Manichean world view of dividing “good” and “evil” into two equal and opposing groups of people is utterly rejected in J.K. Rowling´s fantasy world .
In the fifth book and movie, for example, Harry´s godfather Sirius Black tells Harry and us that:
“The world isn´t divided in good people and Death Eaters. We all have light and dark sides in us. It is the part we act upon that defines us.”
All of the main characters battle inner conflicts and self-doubts at some point in their lives, when they are not sure of the right path to take and occasionally choose very wrong ones. Even Dumbledore, the wise and the good, wasn´t always such. In his youth, his feelings of self-importance, as well as a desire to take revenge for injustices done to his family, had tempted Dumbledore to entertain plans for wizarding-world domination with his young friend Grindelwald. Only the accidental death of his little sister–the result of a fight over those grandiose plans–brought young Dumbledore to his senses. A lifetime later, he explains to young Harry why he never sought political office in the “Ministry of Magic”, even when it was offered to him several times:
“I have shown that power is my weakness and I can´t be trusted with it.“
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely“.
Like Dumbledore, all the book’s characters are given the chance to turn their lives around, finding forgiveness and attaining redemption. In the end, even Voldemort is given one last chance, but he doesn´t take it.
Being a Christian myself, it seems rather odd to me that some Christians publicly denounce the Harry Potter books as anti-Christian. I question whether those people have actually even read the books. The manifold Christian symbolism is so obvious, as are the Christian ethics.
Let´s take family values, for instance:
One day one of Harrry´s favorite teachers, Remus Lupin, shows up offering to join Harry, Ron and Hermione in their quest to destroy Horcruxes. Lupin then confesses that his real reason for wanting to join the quest is that he regrets his marriage and getting his wife pregnant because he fears that their marriage may turn his wife into an outcast from his society, and that he has possibly passed on his werewolf affliction to his unborn child.
This triggers an angry outburst from Harry, who was deprived of his own parents when they were killed by Voldemort, and he shouts:
“Take care of your own kid;(…) parents should not leave their children unless they have to.”
And then there is Lily, Harry´s mother:
For Christians, the lily symbolizes simplicity and purity. The lily is the flower of the Virgin Mary.
In one scene of the sixth book a gift,young Lily once gave, is mentioned. It was a flower petal from a lily in a bowl of water that turned into a fish:
“Beautiful magic, wondrous to behold“
The fish was once the symbol of the early Christians.
It is Lily´s sacrifice of love that protects Harry from death and from the influence of evil. It is the memory of Lily and his love for her that gives Snape the strength to turn back, despite the fact that he had gone nearly as far along the path of darkness as had Voldemort. And subsequently Snape became an agent of Dumbledore and, as Harry declares in the epilogue, “the bravest man (he) ever met.”
And this is J.K. Rowling´s main point:
Love is stronger than any power, force or magic
–not the romantic Hollywood kind of love, but the altruistic kind, the Christian love as proclaimed in the Bible: the love for family and friends, the love of neighbour, and even love for the enemy.
It is symbolic that it is not Ginny, Harry´s romantic love interest, who stays with him throughout his quest to destroy Horcruxes, but rather Hermione, whom Harry views as a sister (as he explains to his confused friend Ron in the book, while the movie implies somehow a sexual tension between Harry and Hermione, even the hint of a love triangle). Hermione very often functions as Harry´s well-read adviser and sometimes as his moral compass.
The importance of love is mirrored by the emphasis put on the value of life.
Every death is mourned, and Harry and his friends seek as best they can to protect all lives, including those of strangers.
Several times throughout the books, Harry saves the lives of some of his enemies, and as a result, something changes within them.
Even his spoiled brat, bullying Muggle cousin Dudley, whom Harry saved from the soul-sucking Dementors, develops a kinder attitude and eventually, even family feelings towards Harry.
Wormtail, the betrayer of Harry´s parents whom Harry nevertheless had protected from the revenge of his parents´friends, shows a moment of hesitation later on, which gives Harry and Ron a chance to escape from the dungeons.
And Draco Malfoy, Harry´s archenemy from school, who was saved by Harry from a blazing fire, gets a chance for a normal life. This bad kid of the early books who turns Death Eater in the sixth book , is eventually tormented by fear and doubt about this cause into which he has been driven by his racist parents. He also tries to save his own unconscious friend from the fire, nearly costing him his own life.
There is an additional scene in which another Death Eater chooses to save the life of a comrade before pursuing his assigned task of capturing Harry.
And once again, it is Voldemort alone who shows no care for any life but his own. In the midst of a violent rage over some bad news, he kills and maims his own followers.
To make the series’ Christian leanings even more obvious, J.K.Rowling puts two direct Biblical quotes in one of the chapters of the last book:
The inscription on the graves of Dumbledore´s mother and sister is:
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”
This is from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 21.
In other words, men should not seek earthly riches, like wealth, power and glory (as did Dumbledore as young man) but rather treasures stored in heaven, gained by a life of good deeds.
And the epitaph Harry reads on his own parents’ grave says:
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
And once again, it is Hermione who explains to Harry that the point is not about avoiding death but about living on beyond the grave.
And later, in a near-death experience, Harry sees Dumbledore in a vision, explaining death as a mere threshold to another existence, or as “King´s Cross,” a London train station.
J.K.Rowling illustrates that some people’s obsession with earthly immortality can compel them to pursue their obsession at the expense of other people´s lives.
Voldemort´s Horcruxes, for example–the insurance for immortality on earth–are created by murder. And Voldemort himself is driven not only by a greed for power but by a pathological fear of death.
And yes, this obsession with earthly immortality of the fictional Voldemort and his Death Eaters, does indeed exist in the real world among the elites of power, wealth and science. Some call themselves “Transhumanists”.
See here or here or here.
In Harry Potter´s morality, nobody´s life is more important than anyone else’s, and nobody´s life is so unimportant that it may be sacrificed “for the higher good” by others.
The only sacrifice morally acceptable is that of self.
But in the newest movie, Harry and his half-giant friend Hagrid, while fleeing from Voldemort and his troops on a flying motor-bike, come down to earth on a Muggle highway. And then they proceed to drive against traffic, causing a massive accident with some overturned cars, which in real life would certainly mean people getting seriously injured or even killed.
In the book, the scene didn’t happen this way; instead, Harry, together with a number of Harry look-alike decoys, is pursued through the air by Voldemort and his followers. But Voldemort recognizes the real Harry NOT because of his pet owl (as in the movie), but rather because the real Harry uses a disarming spell instead of a stunning spell on one of his pursuers in order to prevent the henchman from plummeting to the ground and breaking his neck. Harry had recognized that this young man–not a friend but someone whom he had met only once–was under a mind-control curse.
In the end, Harry is ready to sacrifice his life for his friends, and Harry´s friends–not only Ron and Hermione, but also most of his classmates, their parents, and their teachers–are ready to do the same for Harry.
(Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends)
But despite the Christian imagery in the series, Harry Potter is not intended to represent Christ. Harry isn´t perfect–he is often conflicted and unsure of both himself and the way he should go, groping in the dark from time to time.
And neither is Voldemort the devil.
Instead, Voldemort represents the spirit of racism, supremacism, social Darwinism, militarism, and intellectual arrogance–all the ingredients of modern-day fascism.
Meanwhile, Harry Potter mirrors the spirit of democracy: young, weak, and sometimes faltering, and towards the end, even unarmed, tainted by a bit of fascism left right there under a scar. This alien piece must be removed before democracy can be whole, just as the “Horcrux” inside Harry under the scar on his forehead must die so that Harry can live.
And then there is Neville, the clumsy and ridiculed one, the child of the torture victims, who kills the giant snake. In Christian mythology, the snake is the symbol and tool of the devil, who is the Father of Lies. And Neville kills the snake with the sword of Griffindor, the sword from the house of the honest and the brave. Neville kills the giant creature of lies, the last vestige of Voldemort´s immortality and invincibility, with the sword of truth.
And the fascist revolution of Voldemort and his Death Eaters is repelled by a counterrevolution of nearly everyone else: from Hogwart´s students to teachers to parents; from shopkeepers to home-owners; and from a half-giant to centaurs and elves.
And Harry Potter does not need to hold any super-weapon in his hand to defeat Voldemort, for Harry´s antogonist is killed by his own back-firing curse.
And the magic words Harry uses to bring an end to Voldemort are not “I kill” – but “WE disarm”:
“Expelliarmus”
