Answering the Rumors

Reality: This rumor seems to have really gotten around but so far I haven’t located any print or web source that mentions it. This may have gotten started by Rowling’s statement that Harry is growing up and will be discovering girls. This is only natural. In the fifth book Harry will be 15 and yes, high schooler’s do think about girls a lot. In the fourth book Harry gets his first crush, but he hasn’t gotten a date with her yet. I’m not sure where Rowling’s will go with all this but in the books it is very clear that there is to be a separation between the sexes. There is clearly a school rule that says that no one is allowed in the opposite gender’s dormitories. While Harry may break other school rules there isn’t a hint that this one should be broken. Even Harry’s friend Ron enforces it when their mutual friend Hermoine tries to come into their room on Christmas morning to open presents. So far there has been only one boyfriend-girlfriend couple in the books and that’s with Ron’s older brother Percy. He was caught kissing his girlfriend one day by his younger sister and tried to hush the whole thing up until after he graduated. Apparently such things are looked down on at Hogwarts.

I have read that the fourth book introduces sensuality with the veela. (Veela are mythical creatures who are shape-shifters but are usually seen as beautiful women, but they are as dangerous as sirens and quite temperamental). Harry is initially dazed by the veela and almost throws himself at them. However, when they get angry Harry realizes that their beauty fades. Later he meets a French girl who is quarter veela. While he is initially drawn to her beauty he later comes to look past that and see her and her sister as sweet people on the inside. If nothing else the fourth book teaches that people are only as beautiful as the way they act.

Reality: This statement is more a matter of taste. On the whole I am rather unsure what is meant by this. Perhaps because they see it as addictive to large amounts of people. The Harry Potter books are a worldwide best-selling phenomenon but this can easily be attributed to the fact that the stories are a rather charming fairy tales that appeal to all ages. It could also be used more sinisterly to imply that the books should be avoided at all costs and that those who have read them are sinners. Altogether, this has the effect of making people rather ignorant of what they are ignoring, which may be the goal since just about everybody who has seriously read the books without any preconceived notion of their evilness has enjoyed the books immensely and found nothing debasing in them. But all of this is rather unfair to something that is, by definition, literature, and fantasy literature at that.

Reality: Well, not really. It is true that Harry uses things like wands, cauldrons, and a flying broomstick. He also studies spells, potions, herbology, astronomy, and astrology. Modern Wiccans also do some of these things (except play Quidditch) but one can be certain that the religion of Wicca has, historically speaking, little to do with what was thought to be magic in the Middle Ages which was actually little more than ancient superstition practiced by illiterate peasants. It is this medieval form of “witchcraft” that believed in lucky stars, the medicinal properties of mandrakes, and the practice of alchemy that the Harry Potter books utilizes. Modern Wicca has no direct connection to this witchcraft. Instead, it is a rather nature-based religion based upon imaginative retellings of the stories of ancient Druids. (The Druids were Celtic priests who were pretty much wiped out when the Romans conquered the Anglo-Saxons, which is rather ironic since all of the spells in Harry Potter are derived from Latin). Many practices distinctive to modern Wicca, such as celebrating the equinoxes or casting spells in the nude under a full moon, are completely absent from the Harry Potter books.

Perhaps the strongest opposition to the books comes because Harry has a class in Divination. At first glance this can appear to be a strong reason to condemn the books. However, to anyone who has seriously read the books this argument is absolutely hilarious. Harry does learn about reading tea leaves, palms, and crystal balls and figuring out his horoscope but these things, and the professor who teaches the class, is a long-standing joke. The professor’s vague predictions are routinely laughed at by Harry and his friends, and by quite a few of the other professors at the school as well. In fact, Harry’s friend Hermoine, easily the smartest person in the school, drops the class because she finds it so stupid. Harry and Ron almost always make up their astrology homework, including predicting their own death five times in a single month, because they really can’t figure how a moon of Jupiter is going to have any impact on them whatsoever. The only real astrologers are the centaurs, but they have always been known for that and you would be very lucky to find one of them and get a straight answer about your future from them. So far from teaching kids divination Rowling’s takes on it’s most popular form, horoscopes, toys with it, exposes its fraudulent nature, and then shows it to be worthless.

As a side note, we should remember that the Magi who visited Jesus where astrologers. The star of Bethlehem wasn’t some huge cosmic event, Herod would have known where Jesus was if it was. Instead it was probably an ordinary looking light, only noticed by those who made star-gazing their life’s occupation (and in that day that meant figuring out horoscopes). And it’s from “magi” that we get our English word “magic”.

Reality: Inquiries to Wiccan groups may have increased in the past years, but links from this to Harry Potter have only been speculative. One can also cite the growing trend to spiritualism and ecology as equally viable reasons. One Wiccan leader said that most of these inquirers were teen girls, which brings to my mind shows like Sabrina and Buffy that show witches as cool girls who cast spells to attract boys, not books like Harry Potter that are about a pre-teen orphaned British boy and his penniless or nerdy friends. Also, the magic in Sabrina and Buffy is done in the everyday world by otherwise normal people. In Harry Potter it is clear that magic should only be used at a school that can be reached by traveling on an enchanted train that can only be reached by walking through a solid brick wall (or by flying an enchanted car, but that‘s not recommended). And even then magic is limited to only those people who were born with the ability, which is somewhat genetic but not always, kind of like the Jedi. Even if some people have become wiccans because of Harry Potter this is an illogical reason to declare the books themselves evil. I have read on the web the testimony of a witch who first became interested in magic after reading The Chronicles of Narnia. Does this make Narnia dangerous and Lewis evil? No. It just shows that people make of fiction whatever they will. Personally, I love the Greek goddess Athena. I cheer every time shows up in the Iliad to kick some major Trojan butt. Could this lead me down the path to joining a wiccan convent so I can worship her? It‘s possible. Is it likely? Not at all. I enjoy Athena for the character she plays in a story that is for me, literarily speaking, right up there with Tolkien and the rest of the fantasy genre. The only danger I can possibly see in the Harry Potter books is that since they are so enjoyable they have caused children to read who have not read much before, much less anything in the fantasy genre, and they may not be able to draw the line between reality and fiction easily. If this is the case then the entire genre needs to be eliminated, including Narnia and Disney fairy tales. However, it may be more beneficial to teach children how to properly use their imagination. Whatever the case may be, we can rest assured that all legitimate Wiccan organizations do not accept converts under the age of 18, so the confused children who think Hogwarts is a real place have a lot of time to figure out reality.

Reality: Whether or not it is too scary is really up to the individual child. There is death and bloodshed, culminating in the fourth book with the death of one of the students. However, these deaths are always in conjunction with Voldemort, which only illustrates how evil he is and why it is so necessary that Harry try to stop him, which isn’t very gratuitous. As for death itself we can’t just force our children to ignore it in hopes that it will go away. In this messed up world we live in children are often confronted with people dying, whether it be a grandparent or a peer, and are ill-prepared for how to handle that. On the other hand, many children who never thought about death live life as though they were immortal and make some very dangerous choices. In the books Harry realizes that there is evil in the world that will harm anything that comes in its way, even the innocent. He also realizes his own mortality, but is unafraid to stand up for, and die for, what is right. The end of the fourth book may be too intense for small children, but if they are old enough to read the first 600 pages of the book by themselves then they are probably old enough to handle the ending.

Reality: This rumor is rather unusual because anyone who even looks at the books will realize that the cover is nothing more than a full color illustration in regular children’s illustration style that spans the front and back covers. Perhaps it is the title in a banner or the fact that “Harry Potter” is in a font that looks like it was etched in stone. Do real spell books have these too? I don’t know, but I don’t think its necessary for me to track down a real one to see how silly this is.

Reality: Again this probably came from a misunderstanding of what Rowling’s has said. Rowling’s has said that she researched a part of the books. The important thing is to remember which part she researched. Rowling’s has a degree in literature which included a lot of mythology. Anyone familiar with Greek and Roman mythology (which very few people are any more, especially Americans) will find reference to it on almost every single page of the Harry Potter books (except for the parts about Quidditch of course, Rowlings verifiably made up that one). Three-headed dogs, magic wands, magic potions and the like are all there. On top of that many names for the characters are things like Minerva, Remus, Sirius, Hermoine, and Argus that are straight from mythology and perfectly describe their characters. Rowling’s has also drawn on mythologies outside the Graeco-Roman world. Things like veela, banshees, invisibility cloaks, elves, goblins, and so forth comes from Celtic, German, and Nordic mythology. Rowling’s is hardly the first British author to do this, Lewis and Tolkien did the very same thing. The idea that Rowling’s is a witch probably comes from the article made up by The Onion. Rowling’s has stated she is a moderately active member of the Church of Scotland, which is rather strict Presbyterian.

Reality: Maybe. It is true that no one in the book is perfect all the time, except for maybe the headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, but he’s perhaps half-mad and lets Harry break all sorts of school rules. But the reality is that nobody is perfect all the time and Rowling’s has made her books reflect this reality is her characters. It is these real characters who have faults, hubris, and Achilles heels that make the books so endearing. Harry does break school rules but almost always because he wishes to help a friend or stop the evil Lord Voldemort from regaining power. Sometimes on the way to doing these things he is caught breaking a rule and punished with a detention. There is some swearing, sometimes by Harry’s friend Ron who tends to lose his temper, but these are almost always characterized as being rude or obscene and is never imitated by the other characters. Harry’s friend and professor, Hagrid, gets drunk about twice in every book but it only shows how too much to drink causes you to say or do things you shouldn’t. There are characters who look bad but who are actually good (like Snape) and characters who look good but are bad (like Quirrel). Some say that this teaches children that what is right is wrong and vice versa. I say that it simply teaches children that you can’t judge someone’s character by how they look or act initially. This also reinforces the command that one should never trust a stranger, no matter how harmless they look. Literarily speaking the books themselves are full of irony, so it should come as no surprise that the characters violate their stock norms.