I\u2019m at the end of my maiden voyage here on Beliefnet, and I\u2019ve had a great time.
\nIn addition to the fun I\u2019ve had chatting with Orson about the Harry Potter series, I\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the readers’ comments. Not only is there a high signal-to-noise ratio, but even when disagreeing, people are generally very polite. As a result, reading the feedback has turned into an unexpected pleasure.
\nIn fact, while reading the last series of comments about how different readers became disenchanted with books in the past, I realized that devoted readers and religious believers have something in common: Faith.
\nLlyralei suggested (very politely) that I was being a little lazy as a reader when I complained that Rowling\u2019s rules of magic seemed ill-defined, or contradictory, or, in some cases, non-existent. She encouraged me to use my imagination. The implication being that I should work harder to invent explanations as to why everything in the books makes sense.
\nIn general, I think this is good advice. It\u2019s the reader\u2019s job to take the pieces and put them together. The reader is supposed to draw conclusions and fill in some of the blank spaces in any story.
\nHowever, it\u2019s the author\u2019s job to make sure that there are enough pieces. And that they fit together. And that once they\u2019re assembled, that a sensible picture is revealed, and not just a bodged-together m\u00e9lange of Dobby-ex-machina.<\/p>\n
\n\u201c\u2026has anyone you known ever died?\u201d And that\u2019s it. It seems like the only person willing to suggest the possibility of life after death is the crazy girl who wears radishes in her ears and believes in the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. I\u2019m at the end of my maiden voyage here on Beliefnet, and I\u2019ve had a great time. In addition to the fun I\u2019ve had chatting with Orson about the Harry Potter series, I\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the readers’ comments. Not only is there a high signal-to-noise ratio, but even when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-end-of-harry-potter"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nLlyralei\u2019s comment is interesting to me, ultimately, because what she\u2019s really doing is encouraging me to have faith. She\u2019s suggesting that I have faith in the story, and by extension, faith in the author.
\nI believe all readers come to a book with a degree of inbuilt faith. We show up expecting something good. Hope springs eternal.
\nThen, as we read, two things can happen. Our initial faith can be rewarded and reinforced, or our faith can be abused and we become dissatisfied. Effectively, we can lose faith in the story.
\nI never appreciated the complexity of this interaction until I became a writer myself. Not only do all readers start with differing degrees of faith in your story, but each reader has different peeves they find intolerable to varying degrees. For some folk\u2019s its typoes. [Gotcha –Ed.] Or sentence fragments. Other times, a sentence ending with a preposition will turn a reader off.
\nThematic elements can do the same thing. Sexism, racism, classism, various flavors of politics or religion can make the reader give up on a story. Everyone has some sort of deal breaker. For my girlfriend, it\u2019s the abuse of a child. We sat down to start watching Battlestar Galactica together a few months ago, and 30 minutes in, one of the cylons kills a baby. She turned to me, gave a fierce, brittle smile, and said, \u201cI\u2019m done.\u201d Nothing in the world would convince her to watch another second of that show after that.
\nHowever, the main thing that builds or breaks the faith of the reader is the storytelling itself. Are the characters realistic, clever, and interesting? Is the world believable? Does the plot make sense? Is the tone of the story consistent and pleasing? There are a lot of ways for a reader to become disenchanted with a story. And if that disenchantment goes too far, the reader will eventually abandon the story.
\nThe same is true of religion. I\u2019ve known people who have gone through rough stretches in their lives. Times when terrible, nonsensical things have happened to them. Because of this they eventually gave up on the concept of god-the-author. They lost faith and decided that god was either nonexistent, or cruel, or inscrutable. Either way, they gave up on the idea that someone out there was going to bring everything to a good conclusion.
\nOnly now do I realize that they stopped going to church for the same reasons that I stop reading a book. Loss of faith.
\nWhat does this have to do with Harry Potter specifically? Two things.
\nThe first is this comic<\/a> that I read a while back. It seems to encapsulate this whole idea pretty tidily.
\nThe second is this. Most people are introduced to religion early in their lives. Similarly, a lot of folks started reading Harry Potter when they were young. What\u2019s more, many older readers picked up Harry Potter without ever having read a fantasy novel before, which makes them young in a different way.
\nFaith comes easier to us when we are young. We are less cynical, crotchety, and emotionally calloused. Sometimes the article of faith is simple: Harry Potter is a cool book.
\nSometimes the article of faith is more complex: there\u2019s an old man with a beard in the sky, and he wants you to be good. If you say the name of Amida Buddha you will be reborn into the Western paradise after you die. These things are easier to believe when we are children, because everything<\/em> is easier to believe when you\u2019re a child.
\nWhen I was a child, I thought as a child. But now that I\u2019m older, I\u2019ve sharpened my critical capacity and can\u2019t help but ask questions when things don\u2019t make sense to me. That goes for both religion and for books.
\nI once heard someone compare faith to a glass of water. They explained that when you\u2019re young, the glass is smaller and easier to fill. But as you get older, the glass gets bigger and the same amount of faith won\u2019t fill it to the top anymore.
\nAgain, I think this works for religion and for books. I know I\u2019ve gone back to read some childhood favorites and cringed at the storytelling. The book is the same; I\u2019m the one that\u2019s changed. I simply don\u2019t have same degree of unquestioning faith that I used to.
\nSo while I do have a certain amount of faith in the Harry Potter books, it\u2019s not blind faith. There is a difference. And while I trust Rowling\u2019s ability to tell me a story, each unanswered or contradictory element erodes that faith. Now, after so many of these things, I\u2019m having trouble fully enjoying the later books.
\nBut that\u2019s me. For others, obviously, this isn\u2019t the case. As with all matters of faith, it is a personal thing.
\nThe Atheistic World of Harry Potter<\/strong>
\nDuring the endless speculation about Harry’s potential death before Book Seven came out, I keep butting up against a question: What happens when someone dies?
\nIn the early books, the fact that this question isn\u2019t addressed wasn\u2019t a big deal. But later on it seemed increasingly odd that there wasn\u2019t more attention given to the subject. When main characters started to die, there still wasn\u2019t much discussion on the subject.
\nIt took me a while to realize the problem. What happens after death is a profoundly religious question, and, simply said, there isn\u2019t any religion in the world of Harry Potter. It’s conspicuously absent to the point where we know that the author must have intentionally left it out.
\nOrson made some very good observations in his most recent blog about this. He credits Rowling for leaving religion out of the books due to reverence. He suggests that rather than deal with it lightly, she chose not to deal with it at all.
\nThis proves that Orson is a better person than I am. My suspicion was that Rowling was avoiding religion because bringing it into the story would open up a very difficult, very messy can of worms. I like his thought better than mine, so I\u2019m going with him.
\nBut leaving religion out of the story has, effectively opened a different can of worms. As the books progressed, it was almost like someone had gone through and blacked-out the remotest hint of any sort of religion with a heavy marker, like those censored government documents you see in the X-Files.
\nFor example, during Dumbledore\u2019s funeral, we don\u2019t know if anything religious was said. The same thing is true of the wedding ceremony in Book Seven. The result is that there is an increasingly large hole in Rowling\u2019s world where religion would normally be.
\nAnd that means the questions religion is designed to answer can\u2019t be dealt with. What happens when people die? In the Potterverse, no one knows. No one speaks of it.
\nWell\u2026that\u2019s not entirely true. When Severus dies Harry does some asking around. He talks to Nearly Headless Nick. But oddly, Nick doesn\u2019t know anything about the afterlife.
\nWho is the only person who hints that such a thing exists? Luna. At the end of OOTP Harry asks her: <\/p>\n
\n\u201cYes,\u2019 said Luna simply, \u201cmy mother. She was a quite extraordinary witch, you know, but she did like to experiment and one of her spells went rather badly wrong one day. I was nine.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Harry mumbled.
\n\u201cYes it was rather horrible,\u201d said Luna conversationally.\u201d I still feel very sad about it sometimes. But I\u2019ve still got Dad. And anyway, it\u2019s not as though I\u2019ll never see Mum again, is it?\u201d
\n\u201cEr \u2013 isn\u2019t it?\u201d said Harry uncertainly.
\nShe shook her head in disbelief. \u201cOh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn\u2019t you?\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nWhile it might have started as reverent avoidance of a subject, at some point this omission became glaring. When Luna mentions seeing her mom again, Harry stutters and looks confused, as if the thought has never even occurred to him. It\u2019s almost like Luna has gone off-script and Harry knows if he uses a word like \u201cheaven\u201d in his reply, the censors are going to yank the film out of the camera and burn it.
\nThe Nature of the Soul in the Potterverse<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve already run long in this, my final blog post. Since I\u2019ve been so impressed with the comments people have been making so far, I\u2019m going to throw out a few open-ended questions about the nature of the soul for all you big thinkers out there to chew over when I\u2019m gone.
\n1. What is a soul?
\nWe know that souls exist. The Dementors threaten them. Voldemort tears his up and hides pieces of them all higgledy-piggledy over England. But we don\u2019t know what a soul actually is. Is it different than a person\u2019s mind? Is it different than a person\u2019s life-force?
\nC.S. Lewis said: \u201cYou don\u2019t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.\u201d Does this seem to be the case in Harry Potter? Is the soul the seat of being, or a just the piece of a person that doesn\u2019t die?
\n2. Are the ghosts in Harry Potter trapped souls?
\nNearly-Headless Nick claims that “wizards can leave imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod.” That seems to take soul entirely out of the picture. These aren’t spirits. They’re imprints.
\nHowever, Nick also says that “very few wizards choose that path.” What’s more, he says it somewhat mournfully, as if implying that becoming a ghost isn\u2019t a particularly wise thing to do, and that he regrets his own sorry state. If a ghost is just an imprint, the soul should be free. So why do wizards avoid doing it?
\n2b. How do the conscious portraits differ from ghosts?
\nThey possess the ability to think and reason, and they can act of their own free will. Dumbledore doesn\u2019t become a ghost, but he does continue to direct events from his portrait after his death. If it\u2019s really him, then does that mean a piece of his soul is trapped in the picture?
\n3. Do only wizards have souls?
\nOnly wizards can become ghosts. Only photos of wizards become animated. Only wizards can do magic. This seems to imply that either Muggles don\u2019t have souls, or, at the very least, that wizards\u2019 souls are way better.
\nIf that\u2019s the case, was Voldemort right all along? If not in his methodology, then at least in his assertion that wizards are a superior class of human being?
\nThat\u2019s all I\u2019ve got room for. Thanks again, it\u2019s been fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"