The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Does God Die in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”?

July 27th, 2007

My post’s title is inspired by a recent essay in TIME Magazine: “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God.” This post will not address the issue of anyone else’s death in the book. In other words, it’s SPOILER-FREE as far as details, though if you haven’t read the book and you plan to, I do discuss the overall tone.

I am happy to report that, unlike in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, God does not die in the last volume of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. This is for the simple reason that God has never existed in the world of Hogwarts. (And, actually, this is the point of the TIME article, which, despite having an interesting premise, makes me wonder if the author has actually read the Harry Potter books. Or The Lord of the Rings. “Frodo was last seen skipping town with the elves”? Yeah, the Grey Havens are a real escapist lark.)

Now, saying that God isn’t in the Harry Potter books is not the same thing as saying the books aren’t Christian myth. After all, God never officially appears in The Lord of the Rings, the most thoroughly Christian extra-biblical myth ever written—and one that’s all the better for not being set in an explicitly Christian universe. Has Rowling succeeded in creating this type of Christian myth? Some readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would say “yes,” including Meghan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal, who writes that Deathly Hallows “confirms something else apart from the well-thought-out-ness of Ms. Rowling’s moral universe: It is subtly but unmistakably Christian.”

Gurdon’s evidence? Some is thematic, involving “forgiveness and redemption” and “sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil.” Other proof consists of visual images of crosses and direct scriptural quotations that appear on two tombstones in a churchyard in Godric’s Hollow: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34) and “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Tolkien would of course revolt at the idea of using direct biblical quotation in a work of myth, but Rowling’s world, as it is set in both our own world and a fantasy world simultaneously, is not bound by these same rules. However, the quotations were a bit jarring as I first read them, since the series has made no previous explicit references to any sort of religious text or belief. Maybe they wouldn’t have the same effect on someone who didn’t immediately recognize their source. Harry and company certainly don’t seem to do so; Harry even voices concern that the latter quotation echoes the values of the evil Death-Eaters (and, as usual, Hermione sets him straight on that score, though without referring to the Bible).

There are also patterns of action in the book that call to mind the central myths (and by “myths,” I mean narrative arcs, and not “untruths”) of Christianity, and probably deliberately so on Rowling’s part. I don’t disagree that she intended to create a subtly Christian myth. But even her overt references to Christian symbols show a limited understanding of Christianity. (I am not commenting on the quality of Rowling’s belief, because I am no fit judge of that—I’m merely speaking of her works.)

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what’s missing. For Deathly Hallows actually shows some improvements in the ethics of Rowling’s world: Harry must make several crucial decisions that involve self-control on his part, and, for the first time in the series, he chooses rightly. There’s no nonsense here about how following his heart can save him, even if he makes an immoral or unwise decision. So maybe, given that he finally wises up, I should forgive Harry for all his prior stupidity—especially since forgiveness is apparently a theme in the book (I have to admit that I don’t see much of it there).

I’m pleased that Harry learns greater wisdom. However, something still doesn’t click. Part of the difficulty of analyzing myth-stories is that they either hit you or they don’t. Beauty-and-truth-together strike you so hard in the sternum that you lose your breath for a moment. There’s a sense of rightness, a feeling of “yes, that’s exactly the way the story had to go,” and part of that satisfaction is that it leaves you with a longing ache for more. Not “more” in the sense that you wish the author had written more or even in the sense that you’re sad the book is over, but “more” in the sense of being so close to the ultimate Beauty-and-Truth that the myth is pointing to.

Harry Potter has never hit me. I greatly enjoy the books, and I might even be pleased that Rowling has tried to create a myth at least consonant with Christianity, but my sternum remains untouched. I have no longing for whatever it is that Rowling’s books are trying to point to. (And, incidentally, a book does not have to be by a known-to-be-Christian writer in order for me to feel this pull. Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy does it for me quite nicely.)

Part of the problem may actually be a lack of imagination in the creation of Rowling’s world. I do not believe in authorial creation ex nihilo, but I do believe that humans are called, as beings made in God’s image, to be co-creators (or sub-creators, to use Tolkien’s term) with God. I’m not sure Rowling feels complete license to claim her identity as co-creator. Much of her material is derivative, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A story doesn’t have to be told for the very first time in order to be compelling. But so many things in this last volume, more than in any of the other Potter books, seem pale shadows of Lewis and Tolkien.

In spite of my lack of sternum-response to Rowling, I will give her credit for creating, in Deathly Hallows, a vivid example of the intersection between history and myth. Tolkien always insisted that the two categories were not mutually exclusive, which is how orthodox Christians can accept the Bible as both history and myth simultaneously. To say that the Bible is a mythic work is not to make a comment one way or the other about whether it is factually true. It is simply to claim that the story operates at that grand and beautiful sternum-whacking level. That it is also factually true makes it that much more impressive.

So, while I’m not comfortable comparing Harry Potter to Christ, I will compare Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to the Bible . . . in one, very limited sense. For me, the most compelling thing about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is how it makes World War II into myth. Again, this is not to say that Rowling is denying the real horrors of World War II. As in the Bible, history and myth are not incompatible. (There. Comparison over.) Rowling’s skill in myth-icizing World War II is indeed impressive. She does not make Voldemort into a symbol of Hitler, or anything that facile. Harry is not Churchill. But the whole book is permeated with the aura of that historical moment: at one point, Harry and friends even try to tune in to a secret “Resistance” radio station that must continually change its access password. As one might expect, the Purebloods’ hatred of Muggle-born Wizards has overtones of the early Third Reich, though again, this is skillfully done, in a way that does not deny the particularity of the Jews’ suffering.

The World War II aspect Rowling captures most successfully is probably Britain’s self-identification as the only nation really standing up to Hitler and also paying the cost of that stand. The book’s extended battle scene, which is far more satisfying than any of the climactic scenes in any other Harry Potter book, has that sense of desperation that binds a community together in bravery. And there is a cost to be paid. But that cost is a very human cost, even when the story takes on some of the trappings of Christian myth.

In his “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God” article, Lev Grossman argues that the revolutionary aspect of Rowling’s novels is that “magic comes not from God or nature or anything grander or more mystical than a mere human emotion”—this “mere human emotion” being love, in case you missed the theme of Dumbledore’s sermons in every single book. In other words, Rowling’s world is supposedly more human, and therefore less supernatural, than those fantasy worlds of her predecessors.

To me, however, Rowling’s world is not human enough—and that’s actually why it’s not supernatural enough. Think about the real World War II, which, along with World War I, shook Western Enlightenment confidence in the goodness of rational men. Yet, in the World War II-influenced landscape of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling seems to want to throw us back into a world where good people are good and bad people are bad, for no other reason than that the “good” people don’t torture or kill others (though sometimes, actually, they do). Anyone living in the world with half a conscience knows it’s more complicated than that. Imperfect human nature is a mix of twisted desires and stunningly selfless goodness, and no one is completely without either.

Yet, again and again, Dumbledore tells us that Harry is “innocent,” when we all know very well that he’s not. None of us are. He may not have parceled his soul out into Horcruxes, but, if he’s human, his soul is already divided. Many readers know this, in spite of what Dumbledore and the narrative voice insist. In fact, I think it may be why so many of us are more intrigued by the figure of Snape, who, at least, the novels acknowledge as having a complex—that is to say, human—nature.

Jenny Sawyer has an interesting piece in The Christian Science Monitor, in which she attempts to explain Snape’s appeal in both moral and narrative terms. She writes, “Rowling has publicly expressed mystification over her readers’ fascination with Snape, even suggesting that his appeal is simply ‘the bad boy syndrome.’ Instead, her readers, whether consciously or not, have tapped into something that Rowling herself may have failed to recognize.” That something, for Sawyer, is the “need for a protagonist who genuinely struggled to define—and do—the right thing”; I don’t agree with that exact diagnosis, but I do think she correctly identifies Snape-ophilia’s roots in the issue of struggle. However, I would say that Snape is a more satisfyingly human character than most in the Potter-verse because his inherent divided nature is acknowledged, rather than pushed under the rug, as it is with Harry, even in this last tome.

Once again in Deathly Hallows, after all Harry has been through in the way of temptations, clumsy exposition informs us that he is “selfless” and pure and loving and wonderful. Any hint of evil in him is suddenly due to external causes.

God does not die in Harry Potter. But the messy glory of human nature sure takes a hit.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized