{"id":18,"date":"2007-07-25T15:24:44","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T15:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/the-moral-universe-of-harry-po.html"},"modified":"2007-07-25T15:24:44","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T15:24:44","slug":"the-moral-universe-of-harry-po","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/the-moral-universe-of-harry-po.html","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Universe of Harry Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Orson Scott Card<\/a><\/strong>
\n(I\u2019m assuming that anyone reading this essay has already finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” If you haven\u2019t, stop reading now, and get back to J.K. Rowling so you\u2019ll know what I\u2019m talking about, and I won\u2019t spoil the story for you.)


\nUntil this seventh book, the answer to \u201cIs Harry Potter a Christ figure\u201d has been \u201cno.\u201d


\nAnd even now, despite the obvious similarity, I still say a qualified no.


\n\"hp7_voldemort2.jpg\"<\/a>
\nYes, Harry does voluntarily go to his death in order to save, not the lives of his fellow war fighters (for no one believes that Voldemort will actually keep his word), but rather the future of the human race, from domination by irresistible evil. And he does so knowing that his \u201cfather\u201d\u2014Dumbledore\u2014wishes him to do it.


\nYes, after being slain by the evil enemy, he spends a short time in a sort of nonce world and then returns to life. In a sense he has already beaten Voldemort, but there is yet a final battle between them, in which Potter is triumphant and the world is saved. Not only that, but he continues to bear, not the stigmata, but still a stigma\u2014the lightning scar.


\nBut these similarities are relatively very slight, and such hero-sacrifice myths are common to many cultures.


\nLet\u2019s take just a moment to note the huge dissimilarities:<\/p>\n


\nHarry returns, not as a resurrected immortal, but as a mortal being who will marry and have children and live to raise them.


\nHarry is not a figure of divine power or wisdom. He is far from being the best wizard alive, nor is he the cleverest. Nor is he even the bravest, or the purest. In no sense does he approach divinity.


\nHarry was conceived in the ordinary way, and his mother, while lovely, was not of immaculate conception. (Please don\u2019t start theorizing to me about \u201cMuggle-born\u201d bearing some resemblance.)


\nHarry\u2019s \u201cresurrection\u201d didn\u2019t resurrect a single other soul. In fact, he specifically rejects the opportunity theoretically offered by the Deathly Hallows to gain power over death. Since gaining power over death was an essential part of what Christ was doing, this is a glaring dissimilarity.


\nHarry\u2019s sacrifice gave him no power of redemption. Sinners will still bear the consequences of their sins and Harry will have nothing to do with saving their souls. The only soul that Harry saved is his own.


\nBut…the similarities exist, and the differences exist.


\nSome will say that what matters is what Rowling intended. Did she mean<\/i> us to think of Harry as a Christ figure.


\nBut I say, so what if she did? Or didn\u2019t?


\nWhen you say that a literary character resembles Christ or fulfills a christic function in a story, what does that actually mean? How is the story\u2019s effect on the reader changed by such a thing\u2014except insofar as the reader notices<\/i> the christicity of the character and is distracted from the story by wondering if the writer is committing the sin of allegory?


\nWhatever Rowling intended, here is what she did<\/i>: She made Harry so real, so detailed, so believable, so completely himself, that if we are reading properly, we do not experience the last book analytically, we experience it emotionally. What matters to us is not that someone resembling Christ is going through these adventures, but rather that Harry Potter<\/i> is.


\nThe moral, as the aesthetic, quality of a work of literature is not seriously influenced by what other works of art or real-world events or artifacts the story might call to mind.


\nHow Fiction Works, Morally<\/b>


\nIf a storyteller is doing a good job, readers immerse themselves in the tale. Readers allow the storyteller to fill their minds with memories. If the storyteller can lead the readers to care about and believe in the tale, and if the tale is clearly told, then those memories will be vivid.


\nThe readers will remember having lived through the events that the author depicted. Those memories become part of the deep store of mindlore that shapes the readers\u2019 perception of the real world. While the readers\u2014the sane ones, anyway\u2014will, at a conscious level, never forget which events were imaginary and which were real, at an unconscious level the brain makes scant distinction.


\nThat is, when you remember a story that you read, you don\u2019t remember gripping the pages of the book, decoding the marks on the paper. You remember the images that came to mind, the choices the characters faced, the decisions they made, the price they paid, the rewards or punishments they gained. You remember the sequence of events.


\nAny part of the reading process you do<\/i> remember (standing in line to buy the book, having your father read it to you in a moving car, talking about it with your friends) remains a separate memory, associated with the story but not part of it.


\nThe key differences between fictional memories and real ones is that you understand, in the fictional story, why things happen. Not only that, but whatever the author ends up saying about causality remains true forever\u2014within the story.


\nIn the real world, we never understand why people do the things they do, or why the world works the way it does. People offer \u201chelpful\u201d ideas\u2014\u201cIt must be part of God\u2019s plan!\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s in our genes, there\u2019s no escaping it.\u201d \u201cLife sucks my friend, and that\u2019s all.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s karma; what goes around, comes around\u201d\u2014but we know that they don\u2019t know<\/i> what they\u2019re talking about.


\nThey aren\u2019t even trustworthy when telling about their own motives. We aren\u2019t even trustworthy when we tell ourselves<\/i> about why we did the things we\u2019ve done.


\nHaven\u2019t we all had the experience of doing something for perfectly clear reasons, and then\u2014days or months or years later\u2014realizing that the real<\/i> reason we did it was completely different?


\nBut in fiction that never happens. When Huckleberry Finn does not turn in Jim as a runaway slave, it would be absurd for some critic to write that his real<\/i> reason for this was because he hoped to get a better price by selling Jim downriver in New Orleans.


\nSuch a critic could offer no proof\u2014no newspaper clippings, no eyewitness accounts, no newly-discovered documents\u2014because Huckleberry Finn does not exist.


\nThe very fictionality of fiction means that whatever the author says about causality within the story is final. The author is the only authority.


\nThat doesn\u2019t mean that by reading a book you will come to believe absurd things, just because the author says so.


\nObviously, sane adults don\u2019t come out of Harry Potter believing that there are really wizards and witches secretly confunding or imperiusing us and getting us to do their bidding. But then, the author does not intend us to believe that. Rowling keeps the boundary line between the real world and the fantasy world clearly drawn. We have entered one of the many lands of Faerie; it is an imaginary place.


\nBut within that place, she has created clear rules. Magic functions according to set principles.


\nIn the real world, the distinction between wands of different manufacture is meaningless. If you wish to make a wand like Harry\u2019s, then your problem is finding a phoenix feather, not<\/i> dealing with the magical hijinks that will ensue once you have found it.


\n\"hp7_harrywand.jpg\"
\nBut in the fantasy world, it matters whose wand it is, what it\u2019s made of, and who your opponent is. And when Rowling says that the Deathstick or Elder Wand only confers its powers on its rightful owner, and the rightful owner is not<\/i> the one who kills<\/i> the previous owner, but the one who disarmed<\/i> the previous owner, no matter which wand he took away \u2014 well, it\u2019s not as if we can argue with her. She has the final word on that.


\nYet she also has no intention of persuading us that this is how the Elder Wand really works<\/i> because wands don\u2019t really work.


\nThe place where the causal chains of fiction apply in the real world is specifically in the realms of human motive and moral analysis\u2014and these areas are inseparable.


\nMotive Is Everything<\/b>


\nEvery child knows this, as does every parent. When daddy catches you with your fingers under the lawnmower or pointing a gun at your brother, he will, at some point, look at you with consternation and say, \u201cWhat did you think you were doing?\u201d To which the child will say, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d


\nThe real question is: Why were you doing something that you knew to be stupid and dangerous? And the answer is: I was tempted to do something perilous; I ignored the consequences because the attraction was greater than my resistance to it.


\nFive-year-olds don\u2019t talk<\/i> that way\u2014nor do fifteen-year-olds (and they\u2019d probably get grounded if they did). But that\u2019s the moral situation that\u2019s going on.


\nThere\u2019s a judge, holding someone accountable for their choices, good or bad. But in making just judgment, motive always plays a role.


\nWhen daddy says, \u201cWhat did you think you were doing?\u201d if the child says, \u201cI made sure the gun was unloaded, just like you taught me, Daddy. But Jimmy had stuck his finger in the barrel and his finger\u2019s so tiny it got stuck. I had just barely managed to get it unstuck when you came in, and the gun was still pointing at him.\u201d


\nIf that story is consonant with what the just judge (daddy) witnessed, then chances are very good that junior will get off. In other words, what seemed a sin ceases to be a sin when the motive is right.


\n(And if someone is going to accuse me of situational morality, I will simply reply that there is no other kind. Cain would have been fine killing Abel if he had done so to keep Abel from killing Seth. Only the fact that Abel was innocent of wrongdoing and posed no threat to Cain or anyone else makes the killing a cold-blooded murder.)


\nIn the real world, there is no just judge. We\u2019ve certainly had enough examples in recent years of innocent people being convicted of crimes and sentenced to death. And which of us has not judged a friend or family member harshly, only to discover later that we simply did not have enough information, so that what seemed a just judgment was unjust after all?


\nThat goes both ways, of course. We will often judge someone to be honest and bestow our trust, only to discover, when more information comes, that he was a liar from the start.


\nIn fiction, characters can (and do) go through the same process. Harry idolizes his father. Then he discovers that his father was a bully, every bit as cruel to Snape and others he deems his inferiors as Snape has ever been to Harry Potter himself.


\n\"hp7_snape.jpg\"<\/a>
\nAs for Snape, Harry has hated him, and in book 6 it seems clear to Harry that Snape has proven that Harry was right about him all along, when Snape seemingly kills Dumbledore in cold blood. There are hints (which some of us wrote about at great length\u2014see my essay \u201cWho Is Snape?\u201d at www.hatrack.com<\/a>) that Harry is wrong about Snape\u2014but he\u2019s wrong because he has insufficient information, and no motive to try to get more. It is, to him, a settled question.


\nSo Harry is an unjust judge, and some readers might have been as well. But the novel is not over; the writer is not finished.


\nWe are given more information, very near the end of the final book. At last Harry gets full access to all the relevant parts of Snape\u2019s story, and realizes the reason why Snape has hated him and yet been unable to leave him alone. He even understands why Snape wanted to die while looking directly into Harry\u2019s eyes.


\nAll is transformed. Harry not only understands why Snape killed Dumbledore, but also why Snape was unable to judge Harry fairly and misinterpreted everything that Harry did, assuming motives for him that were not there. For Snape was doing just what Harry, in his ignorance, wished\u2014he was linking the son to the father, and thus the sins of the father were visited upon the son.


\nOnly when the story is complete and all that we are ever going to know is known can we ascertain the moral flow of the story.


\nAnd, except where the author has explicitly raised the issue (as with Snape\u2019s motive for killing Dumbledore), we are rarely aware of what the moral statements of the fiction are.


\nThe author will show certain characters as admirable because of certain actions taken for certain motives. We will either agree or disagree\u2014but not consciously! If we are comfortable with the moral universe of the story\u2014which things are admirable, which despicable\u2014then we will scarcely notice it. But if it makes us uncomfortable, we rarely understand that our response is a moral one.


\nMost people think \u201cmorality\u201d in fiction means whether people do bad things. But morality in fiction means why<\/i> people do bad things, and whether we are expected to admire or despise them for it. When an author makes us live in a moral universe that is too different from our own to bear it, we may say, \u201cI don\u2019t believe the story,\u201d or \u201cI just lost interest and never finished it,\u201d but rarely will we realize that our rejection is actually on moral grounds.


\nNor, when the story takes us outside our previous moral framework and we like<\/i> it, will we recognize that we are being morally transformed\u2014that our moral worldview is different now, because this story is a part of our memory.


\nThere is, of course, a third response, neither accepting nor rejecting the moral contradiction: We simply edit our memories so the story does<\/i> conform with our previous moral worldview. I have had readers of my work swear up and down that a character did something which, in fact, I never had the character do. They will remember events that are not in my book, or forget events without which the rest of the story makes no moral sense at all.


\nBecause reading is not passive; it is not a one-way transaction. Our stories are laid into minds that have a preexisting moral framework. Our readers are quick to embrace stories that reinforce what they already believe about human behavior, and when the story is different from what they believed, they are more likely to reject the story or edit their memory of it than to change, at a deep level, what they believe is wrong or right.


\nBut still…they change often enough, especially in response to stories of great emotional power, that some literature goes a long way toward shaping a culture, rather than merely reflecting it.


\nWith all of this as groundwork, then, we come to this: The moral effect of the Harry Potter series has little to do with Harry as a king-sacrifice or Christ figure or whatever other category you want to push him into, and everything to do with which acts are evil and which good, which motives are worthy and which not, and above all, how it is that good overcomes evil, and what the good life turns out to be.


\nSo before I tell you my answers\u2014what I think is going on in Harry Potter (or rather, a small part of what I\u2019ve noticed<\/i> is going on)\u2014think about it yourself. What is it that makes good good, and evil evil? How do you end up ranking the evil of Lucius Malfoy, or Narcissa Malfoy, or Draco? How good is Harry? Dumbledore? Snape? What motives excuse bad actions; how much do good action redeem bad ones? (Wormtail\u2019s momentary hesitation in the Malfoys\u2019 dungeon, for instance\u2014hardly enough virtue to save him, but enough to save Harry!)


\nThink about it, and check back with me in a day or so.


\nMeanwhile, I\u2019ll also look at Patrick\u2019s response to the book and, if he dares to disagree with me on any point, I\u2019ll sic the Dementors on him and suck out his soul. That\u2019s just the kind of guy I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Orson Scott Card (I\u2019m assuming that anyone reading this essay has already finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” If you haven\u2019t, stop reading now, and get back to J.K. Rowling so you\u2019ll know what I\u2019m talking about, and I won\u2019t spoil the story for you.) 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