{"id":1131,"date":"2007-07-06T12:15:43","date_gmt":"2007-07-06T12:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/07\/will-harry-potter-die-should-he.html"},"modified":"2007-07-06T12:15:43","modified_gmt":"2007-07-06T12:15:43","slug":"will-harry-potter-die-should-he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/07\/will-harry-potter-die-should-he.html","title":{"rendered":"Will Harry Potter Die? Should He?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"HarryPotter070706.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/HarryPotter070706.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"167\" style=\"float:right;margin: 5px\" \/>Harry Potter mania began long ago&#8211;or, rather, never stopped&#8211;and while I am not personally a Potter fanatic, I am married to one and work with several others, so it&#8217;s impossible not to be caught up in the predictions, analyses, and anxieties swirling in the Pottersphere in anticipation of July 21 release of the final book, &#8220;Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.&#8221;<br \/>\nOf course, most of the chatter revolves around this key question: Will our hero survive the series that bears his name? Most Potter fans are, naturally, rooting for Harry to prevail, alive, and are devastated&#8211;pre-emptively&#8211;at the thought that he might die. At least one brave soul, however, has spoken out in support of young Harry&#8217;s death: Father Joanathan Tobias, an Orthodox priest, writes that Harry <em>must<\/em> die. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/202\/story_20287_1.html\" target=\"_blank\">the Beliefnet article<\/a> about this lonely stance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;There is little decent tragedy around&#8221; in modern culture, said Tobias, at his &#8220;Second Terrace&#8221; weblog. &#8220;There is a lot of irony, where a non-heroic central character is pitched into the abyss of ambiguity. There is a lot of farce, where burlesque mummers traipse around in varying degrees of moral undress.<br \/>\n&#8220;But tragedy? No&#8230;. We do not see the sense of the pollution of evil, and its uncleanness. We have no immediate feeling of the necessity to fix or to cleanse. And we haven&#8217;t seen much of a fable where the story demanded, clearly, the surmounting and cleansing of evil&#8211;even at the cost of real, hard sacrifice.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230; &#8220;Part of being a hero is to have a great love and to be willing to make a great sacrifice for that love,&#8221; [Tobias] said. &#8220;It seems to me that Harry Potter has been walking down that same road. &#8230; It&#8217;s just hard to see him going home and settling down. He&#8217;s been through too much.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/202\/story_20287_1.html\" target=\"_blank\">whole article here<\/a>.)<br \/>\nWhat do you think? Will J.K. Rowling kill off her own creation? <em>Should<\/em> Harry Potter die?<br \/>\n<strong>More on Harry Potter:<\/strong><\/p>\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/116\/story_11681_1.html\">Is Harry a Christ Figure?<\/A>\n<li> <A href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/170\/story_17089_1.html\">Is Harry Fated to Kill or be Killed?<\/A><br \/>\n<lI> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/32\/story_3205_1.html\">Why Some Christians Reject from Harry Potter<\/A><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harry Potter mania began long ago&#8211;or, rather, never stopped&#8211;and while I am not personally a Potter fanatic, I am married to one and work with several others, so it&#8217;s impossible not to be caught up in the predictions, analyses, and anxieties swirling in the Pottersphere in anticipation of July 21 release of the final book,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-entertainment","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Will Harry Potter Die? 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