Why Harry
Potter is not the Chronicles of Narnia
by
Krista Faries
In the first
chapter of J.K. Rowling's Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
the name "Harry Potter" is heard spoken in excited
whispers on the streets all over England. The name "Harry
Potter" is in the air—an apt image for the real-life buzz
over the bestselling Harry Potter books.
The British
children's series, three of which have been published so far, have
topped bestseller lists and broken records for children's book sales.
As of this writing, the three books are #1, 2, and 3 on the New York
Times bestseller list. The fourth book, not yet published, is already
#6 on amazon.com's bestseller list based on pre-order sales alone.
And these books aren't just being bought for kids. They are also
topping the bestseller lists on college campuses across the U.S. In
England, a separate edition, with a more subdued cover, was published
to cater to the adult audience. Recently, they narrowly missed being
picked for England's highest literary prize.
For a while it
seemed like everywhere I turned, someone was talking about the Harry
Potter books. But it wasn't until one person qualified her
expressions of delight by calling them "the new Chronicles of
Narnia" that I really became curious.
Early in The
Sorcerer's Stone, we gather from the excited whispering that Harry
Potter is "The Boy Who Lived" (as the first chapter is
intriguingly titled). Harry's parents, James and Lily Potter, are
killed by the evil wizard Voldemort, but when Voldemort turns on
their one-year old son Harry, for reasons that remain a mystery,
Voldemort's powers are dramatically weakened and he is unable to kill
Harry. This moment of Voldemort's downfall causes the lifting of the
former spirit of oppression he had caused throughout the wizard
community. Harry becomes a legend and the mystery of how Harry
survived is one of the questions that lingers throughout the series.
Harry himself
is both literally and figuratively scarred by the encounter.
Voldemort leaves his mark in the form of a lightning-bolt shaped scar
on Harry's forehead, a distinction that makes it difficult for Harry
to fade into anonymity. He also bears the psychological scars of the
encounter, and his struggles to face his pain and loss are an
important theme—perhaps the most important theme—of the books.
However, years
pass before Harry knows anything about what happened to him. After
his parents are killed, Harry goes to live with his Aunt Petunia and
Uncle Vernon Dursley, who are "Muggles" (Rowling's name for
non-magic people). His aunt and uncle embody unimaginative dullness
and excessive self-indulgence, typifying the worst characteristics of
Muggleness. And ever since Harry arrived on their doorstep, they've
not only made his life miserable, but have done everything possible
to hide his magical history from him, telling him his parents were
killed in a car accident. However, Harry has inherited magical
traits, which insist on bursting out at the most inopportune moments,
to their dismay and to Harry's bewilderment.
Just before
Harry's eleventh birthday, the truth finally comes out. Harry
receives notice that he is to enroll in the Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry, England's premier institution for the
training of young wizards and witches. He will spend the next seven
years there, each book in the seven-book series chronicling one year
of school.
Hogwarts
becomes for Harry his first real home—a place where he finally
receives the love and acceptance that he has always craved and a
place where he can begin to learn about himself and his past—through
a series of adventures that form the main plots of the books.
Junior
high in an alternate reality
Hogwarts is,
of course, a magical place. An immense castle with wandering
passageways, tall towers, and a centuries-old (it seems) history,
Hogwarts is a wide open door for the imagination and full of secrets
waiting to be discovered.
What is most
striking about Hogwarts, though, is how very human and ordinary it is.
Despite the
fact that Harry and his friends take classes like Transfiguration,
Potions, and Care of Magical Creatures, the teachers, the students,
and the classroom dynamics are uncannily familiar. This is junior
high (to put it in American terms), and all the players are there:
the class clowns, the bullies, the teacher's pet, the whiny kid, the
friends who stick up for you, the teacher who picks on you. Familiar
daily routines—science lab, gym class, the lunchroom—are
all there too, albeit in slightly different form.
The magical
world of Hogwarts turns out to be the perfect setting for a parody of
adolescence—with all its insecurity and fumbling—as well as
human nature in general.
Rowling's
satire can be witty and alert. She captures perfectly the voice of
the frustrated teacher, in love with his subject and convinced before
he begins that his students will fail to appreciate the magic
(figuratively speaking) of it:
"You are
here to learn the subtle science and exact art of
potion-making...As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many
of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will
really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with
its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep
through the veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses...I
can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if
you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to
teach."...Hermione Granger was on the edge of her seat and
looked desperate to start proving that she wasn't a dunderhead. [1]
For the less
faint-hearted, there are some truly vivid reminders of adolescent
humor—this is a world where jelly beans are really made in every
flavor (ear wax, vomit), and where a spell gone wrong causes Harry's
friend Ron to burp up slugs for days. And Harry, after a valiant
battle with a mountain troll, discovers large slimy troll boogers on
his magic wand.
A
psychological drama
Somewhere
buried amidst the humor (sometimes buried a little too deep) is a
serious story of adolescence—a classic coming-of-age drama,
revolving around Harry's struggle to learn about his past and learn
who he is.
For Harry,
being at Hogwarts is most significantly about gaining the tools he
needs to come face-to-face with his fears and the pain of his
childhood trauma. In this way the series becomes a kind of
psychological drama where magic is a metaphor for the power of the
human imagination to overcome obstacles and to heal the psyche.
The "moral
of the story" moments of these books often read like excerpts
from popular psychology. In a touching moment in the Sorcerer's
Stone, Harry encounters an enchanted mirror called the Mirror of
Erised, in which he is able to see his mother and father waving to
him. But Professor Dumbledore, the wise headmaster of Hogwarts, warns
Harry of the dangers of the mirror:
"It shows
us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of
our hearts....However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge
or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have
seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or
even possible.... It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to
live, remember that." [2]
In their third
year Defense against the Dark Arts class, Harry and his friends learn
how to overcome boggarts. Boggarts are shape-shifters that transform
into whatever someone most fears; the lesson they learn is ultimately
about learning how to face our fears with both courage and a sense of humor.
Harry's
boggarts, however, seem to be overwhelming him beyond what he can
handle. His childhood wounds are reopened by the appearance of
dementors on the Hogwarts grounds, and these dementors become what he
fears most. The dementors, prison guards from the wizard prison, have
been brought to Hogwarts to protect it against an escaped wizard
criminal. But far from being beneficient protectors, these guards are
enactors of despair, whose life purpose is to make the prison a hell
on earth. In the words of Professor Lupin, Harry's Dark Arts teacher:
"Dementors
are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth....they
drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even
Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near
a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked
out of you....You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences
of your life." [3]
Under the
tutelage of Professor Lupin, Harry goes into training to learn how to
ward off the overwhelming power the dementors have over him. These
sections read like hypnotherapy sessions, including flashbacks to the
terrifying moments just before his mother's death.
At the end of
each school year, Harry's personal struggles culminate in a scene
where Harry once again comes face to face with the enemy who killed
his parents. These confrontations are sort of like a final
exam—tapping on Harry's magic skills and the lessons he has learned
about strength of mind and character. And in each encounter, he comes
closer to unraveling the mystery surrounding what happened to his parents.
Satire and secrets
While reading
the first and second Harry Potter books, I smugly thought myself
resistant to their oft-told charms. By the end of the third book, I
was sneaking out to read during my lunch hour and checking the Web to
see when the fourth book is coming out.
So what is it
that makes these books so appealing to kids and adults alike?
First, there's
simply the appeal of the fantasy. Rowling creates a fantastical
world, with wonderfully imaginative things bursting out on each page.
For sheer creativity with language and plot devices, Rowling is
amazing. This is a world where it seems anything can happen and you
learn to expect the unexpected.
Add to this a
witty satire of adolescence and the best from the genre of kids'
mysteries (a là Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys) and it makes for
quite a fun read.
To top it off,
Rowling has a remarkable knack for hinting, frequently, at secrets
she's not going to tell us for a long, long time. By the third book,
she has raised the cliffhanger to an art form, and we're dying to
know what happens next.
Finally, as
with any story, the main reason we keep reading is because we've
grown to love the characters and just want to keep hanging out with them.
I personally
began to fall in love with the books, just a little, when they
introduced Hermione, a character that Rowling says is a caricature of
herself [4]. Hermione is a rule-abiding overachiever desperate to
succeed at everything she does and terrified of failure. For Type A
personality types like me, her character is both a much-needed laugh
at ourselves and a kind of redemption—despite her excesses, she
proves to be a likeable character and at times provides a needed
balance to Harry and Ron's more casual approach to life, using her
skills to get them out of scrapes and cleverly working out puzzles
that baffle Harry and Ron.
But they're
not the Chronicles of Narnia
Notwithstanding
their entertaining and endearing qualities, the Harry Potter books
are not the Chronicles of Narnia. In one sense, of course, this is an
obvious statement and an unfair comparison to make. After all,
Rowling is writing her own story, not C.S. Lewis's. But having heard
the books compared to the Chronicles of Narnia more than once, in the
news media and among acquaintances, I had begun reading the books
with hopeful anticipation that they would be more than just a good
read. In that, I was disappointed.
In trying to
name what it is that sets the Chronicles of Narnia apart from the
Harry Potter books, I kept coming back to two things. The first is
that the Chronicles of Narnia are transformational. The characters
grow and change, and so do we. And the second is, in a word, Aslan.
Descriptions
of Harry's dull and priggish Muggle cousin, Dudley Dursley, are
reminiscent of the opening of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where
Lewis describes the Pevensies' cousin Eustace (Rowling lists the
Narnia Chronicles among her childhood favorites [5], and you have to
wonder if this is where she got her inspiration). Eustace and his
parents are snobs of the first degree—"They were very
up-to-date and advanced people"—and Eustace delights in
nothing more than bullying his cousins, Lucy and Edmund, who have the
misfortune to be visiting for the summer. [6]
For Harry, the
story of the troublesome cousin ends when Harry leaves for school and
resumes for briefly irritating passages when Harry returns for summer
vacation. Eustace, on the other hand, gets sucked into Narnia by
accident (or perhaps not by accident) and Lucy and Edmund are stuck
with him for the duration. But Eustace, Lucy, and Edmund go through
some incredible adventures while on board the Dawn Treader, and by
the end they and their relationships have changed. Eustace's personal
story is, in fact, a powerful story of transformation and an allegory
for conversion that readers of the Dawn Treader do not soon forget.
Far from
reaching such levels of growth and change, Harry's sour relationship
with his relatives drones on and on like a broken record. The purpose
of these scenes is never clear, unless it's to serve as a backdrop to
make Hogwarts seem all the more special. In these encounters, Harry
frequently comes off looking bad as he stoops to their level in
retaliation. I was disappointed that Rowling chose to end her first
book with these final lines, where Harry implies that he's going to
spend the summer torturing his cousin:
"Hope you have—er—a good holiday," said Hermione,
looking uncertainly after Uncle Vernon, shocked that anyone could be
so unpleasant.
"Oh, I will," said Harry, and they were surprised at the
grin that was spreading over his face. "They don't know we're
not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to have a lot of fun with
Dudley this summer...." [7]
Even the story
of Harry's psychological healing is less about growth and change than
it is about self-realization and the discovery that he is special and
loved. It often seems that Harry can do no wrong, and that
affirmation of his self-worth—whether it be through the love of
his friends, triumphs over his enemies, or his success at the school
sport, Quidditch—is of the highest importance.
This
message—about the need for love and affirmation—tells a
certain truth, but it doesn't tell the whole truth about what
ultimately heals us. The deeper truth—that we are special and
loved and that we need forgiveness and change—is a more
difficult truth to reconcile, and a truth that few writers can convey
with the same power and subtlety that C.S. Lewis does.
In the Dawn
Treader, Lucy uses a magic spell that is supposed to "let you
know what your friends [think] about you"—and she is hurt
by what she hears her friend say. Soon after, she encounters Aslan,
who, with compassion, nudges her to think about her action:
"Child,"
[Aslan] said. "I think you have been eavesdropping."
"Eavesdropping?"
"You
listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you."
"Oh,
that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn't it magic?"
"Spying
on people by magic is the same as spying on them any other way. And
you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She
was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean."
"I don't
think I'd ever be able to forget what I heard her say."
"No, you won't."
"Oh,
dear," said Lucy. "Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean
we would have gone on being friends if it hadn't been for
this—and been really great friends—all our lives
perhaps—and now we never shall."
"Child,"
said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one
is ever told what would have happened?" [8]
The truth is,
we are susceptible to making wrong choices. And, as Lucy learns,
those choices—even those that seem too small to make a
difference—can have painful consequences.
Occasionally,
it looks like the Potter books are about take a turn towards such a
"moment of truth." After a series of disagreements with
their friend Hermione, Harry and Ron are having tea with the Hogwarts
gamekeeper, Hagrid. Hagrid broaches the subject of their strained
relationship with Hermione, concluding with these gently chiding words:
"...I
gotta tell yeh, I thought you two'd value yer friend more'n
broomsticks or rats. Tha's all."
Harry and Ron
exchanged uncomfortable looks.
"Really
upset, she was, when Black nearly stabbed yeh, Ron. She's got her
heart in the right place, Hermione has, and you two not talkin' to her..."
"If she'd
just get rid of that cat, I'd speak to her again!" Ron said
angrily. "But she's still sticking up for it! It's a maniac, and
she won't hear a word against it!"
"Ah,
well, people can be a bit stupid about their pets," said Hagrid
wisely. Behind him, Buckbeak spat a few ferret bones onto Hagrid's
pillow. [9]
Maddeningly
(and this is a recurring pattern in the books), the subject is
suddenly dropped—on this light humorous note—and never
picked up again. Eventually, the three friends are talking again, but
without ever addressing the problem. And Ron and Harry never seem to
feel remorse, or sadness, or anything else beyond the first brief
moment of discomfort.
Catharthis—transformative
power—is a hallmark of great literature, and the Chronicles of
Narnia have a catharctic power that the Harry Potter books do not. At
the heart of this catharsis is of course Aslan, a deep and rich
personification of God's love and goodness. Aslan's power goes beyond
mere transformation. For this transformation is a deep transformation
that not only clarifies our understanding of goodness and truth, but
awakens our sense of wonder.
In the Narnia
Chronicles, the battle against evil is inseparable from a belief that
goodness has an inherent power and evil an inherent weakness. And
while the struggle with evil and temptation may be painful and
confusing, Aslan always, in the end, brings truth and clarity.
In The
Magician's Nephew, the Witch tempts Digory to steal an
apple—believed to have healing powers—to take to his dying
mother. He struggles with temptation as the Witch weaves her
argument. In the end, with great sadness, he resists.
Digory never
spoke on the way back, and the others were shy of speaking to him. He
was very sad and he wasn't even sure all the time that he had done
the right thing: but whenever he remembered the shining tears in
Aslan's eyes [Aslan's tears for Digory's mother] he became sure. [10]
Later, in a
conversation with Aslan, the truth he knew deep down is confirmed by Aslan:
"...it
would have healed her, but not to your joy or hers. The day would
have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it
would have been better to die in that illness."
And Digory
could say nothing, for tears choked him...but at the same time he
knew that the Lion knew what would have happened, and that there
might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by
death. [11]
Digory is
forced to come face to face with his sadness, grief, and love for his
mother. In the end, Aslan provides a means for her healing—in
his own time and his own way, which is the best way.
In Harry
Potter's struggle against evil, it often feels like he is stumbling
through the darkness with very little understanding of his enemy.
Somehow, at the last minute, he always manages to stumble upon the
key to defeating his enemy, but it feels somewhat random—like he
could have just as easily not succeeded. There are some vague hints
that good triumphs over evil for a reason, but this is part of the
great mystery of Harry's past and Harry's destiny, not yet fully revealed.
Also, because
Harry's enemies are vividly conceived by Rowling and shrouded in
mystery, they become a powerful spectre—and easily have a
stronger hold on our imagination than the "forces for good":
a group of gangly—and sometimes petty and
insecure—13-year-olds who we can relate to on the most everyday level.
There is no
question that there is a darkness in the Harry Potter story. The
Narnia Chronicles lead us ultimately into hope, and awe and wonder.
They lead us to desire what is good and what is greater than us.
Reading the Potter books, on the other hand, it is easy to feel
frightened and confused and lost—with danger and terror and
despair lurking so easily in the halls of Hogwarts, no clear basis
for our hope that good will have the final word, and no clear sense
of what the substance of that good is.
Harry's story
isn't over yet; there are yet more secrets to be unlocked, more
mysteries to be unfolded. Since this is a serial drama, and the books
aren't all written yet, we aren't quite sure what this is all leading
up to. Will the conclusion prove the books worthy of all the buzz and
excitement? That, I guess, remains to be seen.
This
article appeared in Radix magazine, Vol. 27:3 and is reprinted by
permission. You can visit the Radix Web site at www.radixmagazine.com.
© 2000
Radix magazine
References
1. Rowling, J.K. Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Scholastic Press, New York: 1999, p.137.
2. Sorcerer's
Stone, p.213.
3. Rowling, J.K. Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Scholastic Press, New York: 1999, p.187.
4. Interview with J.K. Rowling in
Weir, Margaret., "Of magic and single motherhood." Salon
magazine (www.salon.com), March
31, 1999.
5. Ibid.
6. Lewis, C.S. The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
New York: MacMillan, 1952, p. 2.
7. Sorcerer's
Stone, p. 309.
8.
Dawn Treader, p. 135.
9.
Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 274.
10. Lewis, C.S. The
Magician's Nephew. New
York: MacMillan, 1955, p. 163.
11. Magician's
Nephew, p. 175.
