A Review of Reviews

Since I seem to be varying from my standard format, I'll sneak in this post. I ran across a pair of Harry Potter reviews from earlier this year that address two opposing Catholic viewpoints of the books. Unsurprisingly, I completely agree with the positive essay by Paolo Gulisano, which talks about the book's emphasis of weakness over strength and the central theme of death and what lies beyond. I was somewhat startled, however, to find that although the final conclusion was flawed, the negative essay by Edoardo Rialti rose to meet the story on its own terms and made several good points along the way.

Ironically, both essays use Tolkien and Lewis as the epitome of excellent fantasy, but while Rialti claims that "There is no hero more antithetical to Harry Potter than Tolkien’s young man Frodo", Gulisano points out that Rowling's use of small (or sometimes very large) acts by unlikely characters is very reminiscent of Tolkien. Gulisano wins the point in that debate, I'd say. Harry was always meant to be more of an Aragorn than a Frodo anyway, both were laden with more destiny than they knew what to do with.

However, if we're going to pick at how Rowling falls short of the Tolkien ideal (not just LOTR, but Tolkien's definition of a transcendent story, see "On Fairy Stories"), I would say the real problem is that the magical world of Hogwarts and wizards was not far enough removed from the real world. The purpose of fantasy is not to frown upon real life, but to see the magic that is already there. Because we kept running into the Durselys and the likes of the muggle Prime Minister or the Riddles, anything muggle comes across as ridiculous or tedious, despite all the main characters' defense of the non-wizarding world.

This not-quite-separation is the real cause of what Rialti calls "a deep and serious lie, the . . . . temptation of joining salvation and the truth with a secret knowledge". It is not the magic itself that causes the problem, but its placement so close to the mundane world. In fact, the main problem I have with Rialti's essay is that he over-emphasizes the significance of magic in the overall theme of the story. He claims that the real heart of the story is witchcraft: "proposed as a positive ideal; violent manipulation of things and persons thanks to occult knowledge . . . . the ends justifies the means, since the wise, the chosen, the intellectual know how to control the dark powers and turn them into good". I found this claim to be interesting because Rialti is describing a real, tangible danger. Tolkien called it a "morbid illusion" and Lewis a "spiritual lust", but it basically boils down to the same thing--a desire for secret knowledge, for elevation above the masses that was once embodied by alchemy and sorcery, but can be built on anything from new-age spirituality to science or even selective faces of religion.

The fundamental problem here is that Harry's magic is not gained through occult knowledge or a pact with dark forces, it's simply a talent that certain people are born with. If you are not born a wizard, no amount of study or knowledge will change that, and even with no knowledge of magic whatsoever, it is possible to perform it. The inclusion of the non-magical world is a flaw that opens the door to the real danger that Rialti warns of, but not a fatal flaw because of the way it's handled throughout the story. In the world Rowling created, magic is a plot tool and a hook for the real story of love and self-giving that follows it.

I once knew a boy who really, truly thought that magic could give him power. He had a very difficult home life, was bullied or excluded at school, and thought that a circle of salt or the right words said at midnight on a full moon would give him the control and revenge that he so desperately wanted. In between other attempts to dissuade him, I tried to get him to read the Harry Potter books, thinking that the magic would interest him enough to pick up on the story's deeper, more valuable lessons--but he wasn't interested in the slightest. There was nothing he could use in those books, nothing that fed his desire for secret knowledge and power. Any time someone mentions how dangerous the Harry Potter books are, I think of him, and how much good it might have done him to read them.