Course: Fantasy & Religion
Lecture #12: Harry Potter III
NOTE: Text in Highlight is Optional
Why The Potter Books Are So Popular
In conclusion, to understand the meaning and popularity of Chamber of Secrets, 'Remember Cedric Diggory!' As with C. S. Lewis's Narnia and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Rowling's Harry Potter books enjoy such remarkable sales and popularity because of:
1) The Need for them: Lewis described the aims of education in modern times as 'irrigating a desert' i n contrast t o the popular belief that it is 'to cut down jungles' or clear away delusions (see The Abolition of Man, page 24, for the allusion and The Last Battle for its illustration in story). The desert that needs water i s both spiritual and mental. Soft heads and hard hearts long for truth, beauty, and goodness even though they have been taught to despise or disregard these as subjective or sentimental qualities. Maslow said a capacity i s a need", our denied or misdirected spiritual capacities have created a nearly irresistible craving and need for Inkling quality reading.
2) A WOW! Story: Whatever the demand for edifying literature, if it isn't engaging and entertaining as story it cannot have the desired effect. Ms. Rowling's detailed, magical world allows and invites head first immersion and suspension of disbelief. Her readers identify with Harry and are rushed to a catharsis i n spirit with their hero via the imagination. They absorb, consciously and unconsciously, just sentiments, heroic virtue, and Christian doctrine while loving the adventures in which this moral education is wrapped.
3 ) The Christian Meaning: The Harry Potter books do not offer a generic 'good over evil' message. Ms. Rowling writes the powerful, spiritual answer i n story form to mankind's larger questions in the only language even a post Christian culture can understand: she writes in the symbols and doctrines of the Christian faith. Harry Potter fans enjoy a resurrection experience in every book and are awashin word pictures and images o f Christ and souls i n pursuit o f perfection i n Him. Without this specific meaning, Rowling could not have achieved her unprecedented popularity in a culture that only knows o f God i n these forms.
4 ) "Past Watchful Dragons": Lewis was aware o f how repugnant anything "churchy" i s t o most people and especially t o children. He once explained that his Narnia books were written to sneak 'past the watchful dragons' that guard our hearts against the Christian meaning o f life. Harry Potter is s o popular precisely because n o one has stirred these dragons. Rowling, by means o f her cinderella story, the cover of being anti-Christian, our cultural misogyny, and because she too i s considered t o be writing only harmless children's fantasy, has been able to bypass the much more ferocious and watchful dragons of our day. Her disguise (as 'welfare-mom Wicca-cultist') does the concealment job more effectively than wearing both Frodo's ring and Harry's Invisibility Cloak