If you trust Hollywood to tell you the story of Harry Potter, you’ll be like a blind man who has been told how to describe a sunset. J.K. Rowling is clearly a master of her craft. She creates a compelling story that will capture your imagination, and uses the magical world as a device to examine the real one. Her use of language is simply beautiful. Whether your a parent, a child, or something in between the Harry Potter series will awaken the part of you that loves to wonder.
As you read the Harry Potter series you’ll find that the books become progressively more dark and serious. As Harry and his friends mature, so do the themes of the books. Accordingly Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the darkest and most mature of the series. It raises questions ranging from the political to the spiritual; and ultimately lead us to consider the implications of personal responsibility.
When Good People Do Nothing
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows teaches a valuable lesson to citizens of all ages. Throughout the second half of the series, the rise of the Dark Lord Voldemort goes largely unnoticed. Democracy does not collapse in a cataclysmic explosion; it dies a slow death… one necessary evil at a time. Slowly, the world we have been falling in love with for six books is torn apart. In the dark happenings of her final book, Rowling shows us the terrible price of apathy and cowardice.
Wizards and Nazis and Fascists.. Oh My!
Intentional or not, the plot models the rise of race-based politics in Nazi Germany. This is effective because in the back of our mind we know that the Death Eaters have a point. Consider the predicament of the magical world:
- Witches and Wizards are generally born with magic in their blood.
- Because of the ignorance of muggles, magic-users must always live in secret.
- The Ministry of Magic will imprison citizens for endangering this secret.
That seems a little unfair. Why shouldn’t Wizards and Witches be free? The books tell us of a war in the 17th century which resulted in the International Statue of Secrecy. The magic-users won the war, but lost the right to live their lives in the open. For 400 years this simmered until eventually, as the politics of the magical world matured, a group of racial-purists decided to restore the natural order. Now follow the Death Eaters’ argument:
- Muggles are only in-charge because magic-users were morally opposed to ending the last war by extermination (or enslavement) of the muggles.
- Magic-users have naturally occurring abilities that surpass those of muggles.
- Magic-users are therefore inherently superior to muggles.
- Magic-users shouldn’t have to hide, and let the ignorant muggles run the world.
- If the magic-users run the world, the muggles will be better off. There will be less pollution and less need for manual labor.
- Therefore magic-users have a duty to seize the government in Britain by force, and any casualties are those who died in ignorance of The Greater Good.
When phrased this way, the parallel with the Nazi narrative of how Real Germans had been culturally suppressed by the Jews becomes clear. In this way Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows provides a taste of the evil logic that dominated the Nazi party. It is lazy and dangerous to write-off the Nazis as insane; they were in fact a people seeking to reinstate a idealist vision of a lost time.
The Greater Good
The Greater Good
is a named theme of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is an extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily dangerous idea.
The Greater Good
is the basis for all that is good in the world. We might argue that all virtue comes from recognizing that there are things larger than one’s self. The Greater Good
is therefore the root of selflessness and altruism.
On the other hand, if one is willing to sacrifice one’s self for The Greater Good
shouldn’t others as well? If its for The Greater Good shouldn’t we be able to make them sacrifice themselves? If others are sacrificing their lives, shouldn’t we be willing to sacrifice a little privacy?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows makes us constantly ask: “What is The Greater Good?” and “Who are we to impose it?”.
The Final Battle
Six books worth of an underlying conflict before J.K. Rowling draws the battle lines. Everyone must choose their side. There they stand, each convinced they stand on the side of the The Greater Good
. The climactic end will leave each reader with something different. The Harry Potter Series gave me many hours of incite and imaginative fun, but for me it ended with a warning: That The Greater Good
is powerful and dangerous idea, without this idea nothing good would be possible and nothing evil would be necessary.