Some Thoughts on the Harry Potter Series

Lifecenter ^ | Michael O'Brien author of "A Landscape with Dragons" and "Father Elijah"

[Aquinasfan]

Thank you. Heartwarming. I'll try to find the passage I mentioned from the fourth book. Do you know it?

[Aquinasfan]

Highlights from Book 2:

"Second-year Students will Require: The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2...Travel with Trolls... Voyages with Vampires...Wanderings with Werewolves". (page 43-44) 

"Harry took a pinch of Floo powder and walked to the edge of the fire. He took a deep breath, scattered the powder into the flames, and stepped forward; the fire felt like a warm breeze; he opened his mouth and immediately swallowed a lot of hot ash". (page 48)

  "A glass case nearby held a withered hand on a cushion, a blood stained pack of cards, and a staring glass eye. Evil-looked masks stared down from the wall, an assortment of human bones lay upon the counter, and rusty, spiked instruments hung from the ceiling".  (page 49)

"Draco paused to examine a long coil of hangman's rope and to read, smirking, the card  propped on a magnificent necklace of opals, Caution: Do Not Touch. Cursed-Has Claimed the Lives of Nineteen Muggle Owners to Date." (page 52)

  "Harry felt a hot surge of anger.-and as you see, certain of these poisons might make it appear-" (page 51) 

"The aged witch stood in front of him, holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole fingernails. She leered at him, showing mossy teeth. Harry backed away". (page 54) 

"For a few horrible seconds he had feared that the hat was going to put him in Slytherin, the house that turned out more Dark witches and wizards than any other-". (page 77)

  "We'll be repotting Mandrakes today. Now who can tell me the properties of the Mandrake"? (page 91-92) Mandrake causes hallucination and is poisonous. 

"Of course , Mother was slightly disappointed, but since     made her read Lockhart's books I think she's begun to see how useful it'll be to have a fully trained wizard in the family..." ( page 94)    

"And a few of you need to read Wanderings with Werewolves more carefully-I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic people-". ( page 100)

  "Alicia shrieked, 'How dare you!', and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulled out his wand, yelling, 'You'll pay for that one, Malfoy!" and pointed it [wand] furiously under Flint's arm at Malfoy's face". (page 112)

  "And  then Harry heard it...rip...tear...kill...Listen! said Harry urgently, and Ron and Hermione froze watching him...kill...time to kill...The voice was growing fainter". (page 137). Harry was now hearing voices  (page 137) .

  "Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket". She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring". (page 139) 

"No, said Ron, without hesitation. Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world'. (page 145) Harry is hearing voices? 

"For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated". (page 150)

"He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy". (page 150)

   "Sir-what exactly do you mean by the 'horror within' the Chamber?" ( page 151) 

"Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm-that I'm-" "Already dead, said Ron helpfully".  ( page 156) 

"Regrowing bones is a nasty business". (page 174) 

"The holidays would be the perfect time to use the Polyjuice Potion and try to worm a confession out of him". (page 185)

  "I think I'd  better do the actual stealing". (page 186) 

"Potions lessons took place in one large dungeon...Twenty cauldrons stood steaming between the wooden desks, on which stood brass scales and jars of ingredients". (page 186) 

"Then they raised their wands like swords in front of them". (page 190) 

"A jet of silver light hit Malfoy in the stomach and he doubled up, wheezing". ( page 192) 

"I'm a what? said Harry. 'A Parselmouth!' said Ron.  'You can talk to snakes!". (page 195).

  "That's why the symbol of Slytherin House is a serpent". (page 196)

"It's not possible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them said Harry'. (page 200) 

"I'm sure I've done everything right said Hermione, nervously rereading the splotched page of Moste Potente Potions . It looks like the book says it should...once we've drunk it, we'll have exactly an hour before we change back into ourselves". ( page 215)

"Yeah... said Malfoy. Luckily, they didn't find much. Father's got some very valuable Dark Arts stuff. But luckily, we've got our own secret chamber under the drawing-room floor". Ho! said Ron". ( page 224)

"You'd be surprised, said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated-Dad's told me-there was one that burned your eyes out". (page 230) 

" Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion!".  (page 236) 

" I wish he was mine, he's really divine, The hero who conquered the Dark Lord".  This was a singing valentine for Harry". ( page 238)

  "It's never too early to think about the future, so I'd recommend Divination". ( page 252) 

"Kill this time...let me rip...tear... He shouted aloud and Ron and Hermione both jumped away from him in alarm. The voice said Harry...I just heard it again-didn't you?". (page 254). 

"Let me at him [Malfoy], Ron growled as Harry and Dean hung onto his arms. 'I don't care, I don't need my wand, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands".  (page 267).

Ron here has 2 weapons-his wand and his "bare hands". "A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark Magic-" (page 329)

[Aquinasfan]

see above

[Aquinasfan]

I'd be interested in the take of someone who's come out of an occult or witchcraft experience.

[Mercat]

Hello.... I've read the books two times so you don't have to quote them to me like I'm an idiot. It's fiction. If some kid reads this and becomes sucked into some evil cult, I'm sorry but he/she is already messed up and is going to find some cult to get into anyway. Good triumphs over evil. People are not always what they seem. Friendships are formed. Courage and loyalty are rewarded. I used to play cowboys and Indians but I never became one or even really wanted to. I would like to see some stats on kids who start out reading the Harry Potter books and then move on to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Narnia series. Oh, another example, my kids and I loved the Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH but we never wanted to become super intelligent rats. Lighten up.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

O'Brien's "A Landscape With Dragons" is superb. After reading O'Brien's "Plague Journal" I decided to take a cue from the lead character and read Tolkien to my kids. We got the TV out of our house 5 years ago, so my little ones love to read and be read to. I finished reading them "The Hobbit" 2 weeks ago, and we bought a one volume copy of the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy last week. We're 140 pages into that now, over nine hundred to go still. Usually my oldest, my 9 year old son, is the only one of the three that listens much to it. The 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son aren't as interested yet. But it is wonderful time together none the less, and I haven't read Tolkien since I was a teen. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Obviously, mine will not be reading Harry Plotter or watching the movie.

Thanks for posting this.

[Dan Day]

In fact, I was given so much crap to read in high school that I began to associate reading with psychic pain. Upon graduation I vowed that I would never read a book again. When I was in my twenties, I used to brag to my friends, "if it's a book, I haven't read it."

Well *that* certainly explains much...

Forgive me if I prefer not to give much weight to the book reviews of someone who has proudly renounced reading.

[Dan Day]

Obviously, mine will not be reading Harry Plotter or watching the movie.

I've got a better idea -- why don't you, unlike "Aquinus", actually read the Harry Potter books before declaring them unfit for children?

Unlike him, I've actually read them, cover to cover. I find them entirely wholesome and charming. So do a great many Freepers.

There's far more truly "occult" material in "Lord of the Rings" than in "Harry Potter", and in LotR it's presented far more seriously and frighteningly (which isn't surprising, since LotR was aimed at a more mature audience than is Harry Potter).

If you consider The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to be acceptable, I fail to see how you could object to anything in Harry Potter. Plus, Harry Potter contains a great many good lessons on the virtues of honesty, loyalty, hard work, respect for authority, not judging a book by its cover, and so on.

I have no reservations about recommending them for children, and I have yet to read any anti-Potter review (including the one that started this thread) that didn't strike me as either the work of someone who hadn't even bothered to actually read the books (e.g. Aquinus), or a frothing lunatic who could likewise denounce The Wizard of Oz as a work of anti-capitalist propaganda.

Please -- check it out and make up your own mind, don't let others do it for you.

[Dan Day]

Yeah? So?

Is there any special reason you obsessively typed in several dozen random passages from the book?

It's hard to tell just *what* in the heck you think you're trying to prove here, especially when one of your "examples" is a *singing valentine*. Oooh, horrors!

Yeah, magic happens in the book. Ooh, big surprise! And a big whoop-de-doo.

Look, if you're one of those nancies who thinks that any mention at all of "magic", even clearly fictional, playfully presented magic, is somehow *EVIL!*(tm), then fine, we get it, you're not going to like Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings, or the Wizard of Oz, Macbeth, the Odyssey, or a lot of other classics. Good for you, go off and enjoy your fringe opinion.

But if you think that most of the rest of us are going to fall quivering to our knees because you merely quote a book that mentions werewolves and magic wands, you're sadly mistaken.

[Richard Kimball]

That leaves a question which must be answered. Where were Mom and Dad?

I'm responding to you, but there are dozens of others on this and similar posts making the same argument, and you're engaging in circular reasoning. The original author claimed there were problems with the Harry Potter books because of the witchcraft aspects. While I haven't read the books, I did watch a fairly lengthy interview with the author, in which she acknowledges studying witchcraft and using actual spells in the books that were in witchcraft books, written by wiccans. She goes on to explain that although she is not a witch, and does not believe in witchcraft, she uses actual spells and incantations to give the books authenticity. When someone points this out, you (and many others) call them the Taliban, accuse them of being bookburners, claim they're trying to reinstate the Meese commission, and fall back on the tried and true bumper-sticker one size fits all retort, "don't we have more important things to worry about?" (I realize you have been far more restrained, but if you look through these and similar threads, you will find all these more extreme statements made)

Then, when someone writes about cases where young people have gotten involved in witchcraft and there have been serious negative consequences, you write "where were the parents?"

First you slam parents for being concerned about the type of literature their children are reading, then you slam parents for not being concerned about what their children are exposing themselves to.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

I've got a better idea -- why don't you, unlike "Aquinus", actually read the Harry Potter books before declaring them unfit for children?

How do you know I haven't read them? I read the first two, with a critical eye. I enjoyed them. I would probably allow my children to read them as later teens. Not now.

As far as Potter versus The Lord of The Rings, go read O'Brien's "A Landscape With Dragons." You clearly are not properly grounded in the critical analysis of children's literature from a Christian standpoint to make such inane comments as you did here about Potter versus Tolkien/TLOTR.

[Richard Kimball]

I have yet to read any anti-Potter review (including the one that started this thread) that didn't strike me as either the work of someone who hadn't even bothered to actually read the books...

Is there any special reason you obsessively typed in several dozen random passages from the book?

Let's see, first you slam people for not reading the book, then when they type in passages from the book to make their points, you call them obsessive. Sounds like you've got it all sewn up.

[malakhi]

And Mein Kempf is just a book.

Congratulations! You, at post #27, have just equated Hitler with Harry Potter. You lose!

(The unwritten Freeper debate rule is that the first side of an argument that brings up the Hitler comparison loses.)

[Richard Kimball]

I think you've done an excellent job of making your case. I'm going to throw in one more argument I've seen from the "anyone who questions the value of any writing or video production is a member of the Taliban who burns books and wants to outlaw everything but the Bible" crowd.

I listened to the Beatles, Black Sabbath, Grateful Dead, Alice Cooper and the Mothers of Invention, dropped acid 60 times, got busted four times for pot, shaved my head and cut a swastika into my cheek, raped three girls, knocked over a bank, shot a police officer making a getaway from a liquor store robbery, and am serving twenty years for attempted murder, and I turned out all right!"

[Professor Jim]

"Coupled to this message is the gross characterization of traditional families . . . ."

This is complete nonsense. There are good families (such as Harry's best friend's) and Harry's original one. The main bad family is a foster family with a kid (Harry) off at school (orphan Harry's relatives)--not what I would call a traditional family. It would be more accurate to say that the book pushes traditional families at the expense of one bad foster family. Harry's fondest wish is to see or be with his dead mother and father.

This particular Catholic writer's comments and stories that he believes must sound awfully superstitious to people of other religions. His plea is hardly for high rationalism.

I have no doubt that there is both good and bad in the kind of high mysticism that many religions and the Harry Potter books embrace.

Taken literally, the books don't teach Catholic doctrine--so what?

[Dan Day]

Let's see, first you slam people for not reading the book, then when they type in passages from the book to make their points, you call them obsessive. Sounds like you've got it all sewn up.

Look, typing in random passages from the book, without bothering to say what, exactly, the he objected to about any of them (presuming that even *was* his selection criteria), is not "making a point". It's being a stuttering fax machine. It's obsessive to spend lord knows how long typing in pages of text verbatim from the book, without having a single bit of reflection to add to the duplication effort. It's like the hundred typewritten pages of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" from the movie "The Shining".

What makes this especially ludicrous on his part is that he's the same person who has admitted not actually reading the book. So he can't even be objecting to these passages in context, because without reading the book he doesn't even understand what they're in reference to, or how they relate to anything. Nor does he care, it would seem.

He clearly just flipped through the book at random, and typed in any passage that mentioned anything at all "magical" (including a singing valentine!), as if that itself somehow made any sort of point that any of us would find lucid. Yeah, there's magic in the book -- BFD. No one is disputing that point.

I'd love to see what he would do with a copy of "The Wizard of Oz".

If he was actually trying to "make a point", he might want to actually discuss his snippets next time, instead of mechanically spewing them en masse as if seeing random parts of the book again (which I myself *HAVE* read) is somehow going to suddenly make me see it "Aquinasfan's" way instead of the way I saw it when I was actually reading the bloody books myself.

It's not even like he was offering them in response to any particular query which would have explained what he was trying to show by playing cut-and-paste -- he pinged multiple people with them.

Maybe you're impressed at his ability to do what any four-year-old could do given a copy of the books, a pair of scissors and a jar of library paste, but I'm not. If he had an actual point to make with his "book in a blender" post, he failed to make it in any coherent fashion.

[Spyder]

Isn't there a joke regarding taking snippets here and there out of context?

About the guy who asked the Bible how he should make decisions and run his life?

He closes his eyes, opens the Bible, and the first text his eyes land on is, "And Judas went and hung himself."

Thinking that couldn't have been what God intended, he decides to try again... "Go thou and do likewise."

Third try's the charm, right? "And what thou doest, do quickly."

[Richard Kimball]

I understand where you're coming from. My concerns with the Potter series are primarily from interviews I've seen with the author (I noted them in my post #111.)

I struggle, as I think any person should, with not only what my children should be exposed to, but what I should expose myself to. There are some things I don't think kids should be exposed to, and it can't simply be summed up by the subject matter covered, but must also consider the viewpoint from which it is covered. You, unlike some others, have made specific statements that indicate you've read the books and don't think the subject matter is covered in a way that is negative. I appreciate that, although I may not agree with your assessment. I have read all of the Rings books several times, and have read them to my daughters, along with the Narnia books, and several other fantasy pieces. OTOH, I didn't want my children to see "The Craft", because after viewing it, I concluded that (1) the people who created it were probably involved in witchcraft, and (2) that the movie tried to make a case that witchcraft and the occult were a way to overcome the insecurities of adolescence. You may disagree with that assessment, but that's where I'm coming from. As a Christian, I'm supposed to avoid such things. Other people are, of course, under no such prohibition.

Also, I don't think the topic for this type of discussion is "should the book be banned?" but rather, "is it appropriate for the age group for which it was intended?" As a parent, I really have a tough time with this issue. A few years ago, when the Police Academy movies were popular, and I was superising some young boys (ages 10-11), I had to deal with the fact that on one hand it was Three Stooges type humor, while on the other hand, I couldn't, in good conscience, allow young children to watch a movie in which a porno star performs oral sex on a man giving a speech, and there are strong suggestions of homosexual rape.

[Dan Day]

How do you know I haven't read them?

I didn't "know" that you hadn't, I made no such assumption. But your post left open the possibility that you had rejected them on the basis of the review that started this thread instead of on personal examination (since you thanked him for the review and said "obviously" your children wouldn't be reading Potter, with no other reason given), so I suggested that you should read them if you hadn't before making up your mind.

I read the first two, with a critical eye. I enjoyed them. I would probably allow my children to read them as later teens. Not now.

I can understand that, the books are definitely geared more towards a teen audience than children your age. But that's different from the impression I got from your first post, wherein you said "mine will not be reading Harry Potter", which sounded like a permanent injunction. Sorry if I misread that.

As far as Potter versus The Lord of The Rings, go read O'Brien's "A Landscape With Dragons." You clearly are not properly grounded in the critical analysis of children's literature from a Christian standpoint to make such inane comments as you did here about Potter versus Tolkien/TLOTR.

I'm on the verge of telling you to do something physically uncomfortable to yourself...

If you have any enlightening observations to make, or specific objections to any comparisons I've made between books to offer, why don't you do so, instead of just insulting me?

If you'd get off that high horse, you might realize that my comments about Harry Potter vs Lord of the Rings were clearly meant in a more general sense than the manner in which you have chosen to deride them.

Next, Mullah Omar will undoubtedly pop in to call my book reviews "inane" because they are not "properly grounded in the critical analysis of children's literature from a Islamic standpoint"...

If you want to do a specific "critical analysis from a Christian standpoint", feel free, but I think you're out of line if you beleive you have a right to call me "inane" for choosing to make an analysis which happens not to be narrowly "from a Christian standpoint".

I am not familiar with O'Brien's books (as you correctly surmised), and barring that there was nothing else in your post which would signal, "warning, Christian discussion ongoing here, any response not built directly on Biblical principles will be summarily insulted as inane and ungrounded."