Whispers of Christ in Deathly Hallows
Jul 27th, 2007 by Amanda
I can remember years ago scoffing at the idea that Harry Potter was a “type of Christ” whenever a more liberal than I evangelical would suggest it. But how close to the mark is the idea?
I would bet that Rowling had no conscious thoughts of making the series allegorical for Christ. But something happened during the course of the series - in the Hallows she quotes Scripture. We’ve always known that Lily’s sacrificial love - something Voldemort would never understand - was what saved Harry and defeated old Voldy the first time.
And there was at least one echo from the Scriptures in the Sorcerer’s Stone: Lord Voldemort, the Hitleresque dark wizard in J.K. Rowling’s fictional works, was defeated not by power but by love—by a young mother who sacrificed her life to save her young son. In Rowling’s world, that kind of love is stronger than any magic. It can even conquer death.
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Writers such as John Granger (hogwartsprofessor.com), however, argue that Rowling’s fictional world is loaded with Christian symbolism, but always in the background. In the books themselves, the only hint of Christianity comes in the form of Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather. Since he has a godfather, Harry was baptized as an infant. (Rowling said the baptism, or christening, was “a hurried, quiet affair” (books.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_858.php).
But Christ begins to whisper in the Deathly Hallows. A few pages before the flashback of the Potters’ death, Harry and his friends visit the last resting place of Lily and James Potter, in the church graveyard in Godric’s Hallow, on Christmas Eve.
First they see the grave of Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore, the mother and sister of the late Hogwarts headmaster. It bears this inscription: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (None of the characters seems to know that these words are from Matthew 6:21.)
Not far away is the Potters’ tomb, with a different inscription: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” The quotation is from 1 Corinthians 15: 26, part of a long passage about the resurrection. In Godric’s Hollow, Rowling begins to reveal that, like Narnia, her world has a “deeper magic.” Love, expressed as substitutionary sacrifice—choosing to lay down your life for your friends—has a power that Lord Voldemort, like the White Witch before him, is blind to. That blindness becomes his undoing—with the help of Harry and his friends.
When C.S. Lewis started out to write The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he didn’t have Christianity in mind. “Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something abut Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tales as an instrument, then collect information about child psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out ‘allegories’ to embody them,” Lewis once wrote. “This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all.”
“Everything began with images,” Lewis continued. “A faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sled, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t anything Christian about them. That element pushed itself in of its own accord.”
Something similar seems to have happened to J.K. Rowling. She began writing about wizards and quidditch and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and somewhere along the way, Christ began to whisper into the story.
And the whole world was listening.
my vote is for “far-fetched”. She quoted a book, just like I’ve been quoting authors for the last five weeks. I hardly doubt any of them is communicating with me, nor would I suggest that.
The crazy nut in Texas who killed a gay man said he was doing god’s work. He also quoted scripture. Was god speaking through him too??
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4968717.html
I doubt Rowling is purposely inserting Christianity into her books. However, we never escape the culture we live in. Even if someone does not claim to be Christian, or even hold any “christian” beliefs, osmosis of the biblical stories abound.
Writers write from a cultural point of reference, knowingly and unknowingly.
Well, JK Rowling probably is a Christian. She belongs to the Church of Scotland - I don’t know how committed she is, but she’s always said she believes in God. In one article recently she was quoted as saying something along the lines of ‘it’s good that nobody has asked me exactly what I believe, or they would be able to guess some of what happens in the last book’.
I’ve always thought there was a lot of Christian symbolism in the series - haven’t yet read Deathly Hallows (it only arrived today and my son has it first) but am looking forward to it.
You know, Mandy, I had some of the same sort of thoughts. In a sense, when Voldemort ‘kills’ Harry he is destroying himself, which is like the ’sin’ within Harry. Harry gives up his life, and thereby regains it. I am also struck by the fact that the entire chapter in the ‘afterlife’ is entitled Kings Cross, after the railway station—but also evocative of other things.
Then, in the final confrontation with Voldemort, Harry explains that what his foe has failed to understand about the ‘old magic’. Harry, by this understanding, was the true master of the Elder Wand, the old magic, and that allowed him to perform a new magic and best Voldemort. In the same way, Christ was the perfection of the old covenant, and this allowed him to be the author and finisher of a new covenant with mankind.
Now, I would not go so far as to say that Harry is a Christ figure or that the series is a Christian allegory. Rather, with one of the commenters above, I think that Rowling grew up in a Christian culture, and that has influenced her choice of symbols. But I think that as a Christian I can derive an anagogue from such details that heightens the pleasurable experience of reading such a book, whether or not specifically intended by the author.
That’s a good way to put it. Thanks, Scott.
[…] I was going to get everybody’s latest post, but this one at Imago Dei is worth going back a few days for: Whispers of Christ in Deathly Hallows. […]