c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) I had never read a Harry Potter book until three months ago, when a hopeful editor buttonholed me with a plea: Would I, the newspaper’s religion reporter, write about religious imagery in the series?
We reporters don’t freely turn down editors’ assignments, so a force-feeding of all six books ensued. After 3,362 pages and 12 weeks of very late nights, I can say I liked the series. I get the hype.
I even understand the intrigue that’s leading real people to bet real dollars on the ending _ specifically, on whether the young wizard Harry lives or dies in the last volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which comes out July 21.
It’s true, Agence France Presse has reported: Gamblers wealthy or odd enough to wager on fiction have put down money with bookies. The prevailing bet? Potter to die. (In Seven.)
His death will be a noble one, it is prophesied in the blogs, a death both sacrificial and necessary to save the world from the satanic Lord Voldemort. I agree with this line. I also expect Harry’s death to show that his character’s path is modeled on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’, and, more significantly, that the link between him and wizardry-school headmaster Albus Dumbledore is patterned on the most essential relationship in the Christian Bible _ that between Jesus the Son and God the Father.
I never much enjoyed literature lessons on Christ imagery. I felt them too presumptuous of what authors were thinking, and I didn’t like that they effectively telegraphed the readings, if only in retrospect. Still, critics have long enjoyed noting similarities to Jesus in classic fictional characters _ from Santiago in “The Old Man and the Sea” to Aslan in the “Chronicles of Narnia.”
By the second Harry Potter book, I began to think the relationship of Harry and Dumbledore was underpinning the narrative in a supernatural, and distinctly Christian, way.
That author J.K. Rowling’s series is based on a battle between good and evil is so obvious it’s hardly worth mentioning. There’s Harry and Dumbledore against Voldemort; the House of Gryffindor against that of Slytherin; even, symbolically, Fawkes the phoenix against Nagini the snake.
A more profound, if subtle, moral interplay is found between Harry and Dumbledore, who effectively lead the joint forces of good. Harry is a boy wonder, revered and reviled for his special powers by the respective forces of good and evil at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Headmaster Dumbledore is the best wizard there is, a seemingly omniscient force for good who rarely reveals his powers in full and who closely observes others’ courses of action.
Dumbledore knows Harry plays a unique and indispensable role in the battle against evil, and outwardly helps him from time to time. Yet for most of the series, Dumbledore keeps Harry unaware of their relationship’s depth, of the goings-on known or orchestrated by Dumbledore involving the bigger picture. In the course of his young life, Harry often feels Dumbledore is ignoring his personal needs.
A well-known, heart-wrenching passage in the Bible, from an anguished Jesus on the cross, captures their relationship well: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”
When Jesus says that, he feels abandoned by God. We know from earlier in the Gospels that he understands the special role he is afforded by God the Father in the Bible. But at that moment, it’s as if he feels separated from God or doesn’t comprehend the metaphysics of God’s plan to redeem the world through his sacrifice.
Harry Potter, too, knows he is special, that he is the only good wizard or person ever to survive a curse from Voldemort. He has a special scar on his forehead, a remnant of that battle.
Harry has followers who are devoted to him even if they don’t always understand him, and other fair-weather fans who probably don’t know what to make of him half the time. And, of course, enemies.
Sound familiar?
Dumbledore, for his part, is a benevolent, godlike presence at the school. He doesn’t seem to want to show all his powers, perhaps to avoid exerting pressure that would impede others’ freedom of choice. This often means allowing satanic, Voldemort-inspired forces to maneuver at will. Ultimately, though, Dumbledore believes in the eventual triumph of Harry.
The most poignant part of the series, in this regard, is a chapter near the end of Book Five in which Dumbledore divulges to Harry vital information about Harry’s own background and about the battle ahead with Voldemort. Ultimately, Dumbledore discloses, either Harry or Voldemort will die at the other’s hands. (The Bible, incidentally, includes no similar conversation between Jesus and God the Father about Jesus’ mission for the world.)
My analogy is imperfect, I admit. Harry sometimes seems un-Jesuslike. He is not immune from selfish thoughts, gets some bad grades in class, and, despite his great skills, suffers through occasional ungodly performance at sport. Sometimes, the series’ dominant paradigm is not Harry’s Jesus to Dumbledore’s God the Father, but Harry’s Alvin to his friends’ “the Chipmunks.”
Dumbledore, for his part, seems to invest wrong-headed faith in evil wizard Severus Snape, and actually dies in Book Six when Snape casts a dreaded killing curse his way. Could he be on the losing side of such things if he were such a heavenly presence?
Actually, maybe he could. After all, Dumbledore had said death is not the worst fate that can befall someone. And perhaps his own influence can transcend his death: “I will only have truly left this school when none here are loyal to me,” Dumbledore says in Book Two, when his job as headmaster is threatened by a cadre of Voldemort’s followers.
But what about Dumbledore’s trusting Snape, and his allowing Snape crucial access to Harry? Well, in the Gospels, Judas is allowed access to Jesus, and is allowed to alert the authorities to his whereabouts. God the Father didn’t prevent this. In fact, Christianity teaches that the crucifixion following Jesus’ capture was necessary to redeem the world. Dumbledore repeatedly says he trusts Snape, but what does he mean by this? Might Snape’s apparent evil success in Book Six somehow prove necessary to save the world from Voldemort in Book Seven?
Could be. In any case, here’s why legions of Harry Potter fans are betting Harry will die, according to Agence France Presse. They believe Book Seven will reveal Harry’s body is a “Horcrux,” an object that mystically helps Voldemort survive. Harry’s letting himself die or be killed, the theory goes, would thus help defeat Voldemort. In death, then, he would save the world.
(Jeff Diamant writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)
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