Harry Potter Explores Life's Big Questions

[Democrats_win]

http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-5954-harry-potter-explores-lifes-big-questions.html

Thursday, July 7,2011

Harry Potter explores life's big questions
By Ari Armstrong


Parents who take their children to see the Harry Potter films enjoy a fun family night. But unless they dig deeper into the stories, parents miss a great opportunity to explore life’s biggest issues with their children.
Start with psychology. J.K. Rowling publicly discussed her struggles with severe depression. She contemplated suicide and feared for her daughter. In her novels, depression takes the form of the ghoulish dementors. To fight them, one of Harry’s professors explains, one must invoke “the very things that the dementor feeds upon — hope, happiness, the desire to survive.”

Or consider the Boggart, a magical creature that takes the form of one’s worst fears. Rowling offers another rich metaphor in the scar that the villainous Voldemort gives Harry — a scar that gives Harry some of Voldemort’s powers and sometimes links their minds.

The psychology of the novels could consume an entire college course. So could the politics. How should citizens organize government, and what happens when government goes bad?

After Voldemort’s return to power, first the Ministry of Magic grows corrupt, ignoring the threat and attacking Harry’s allies instead. The Ministry turns to censorship, intimidation and deception. Finally Voldemort takes over the Ministry, rising to Hitler-like dictator, complete with inquisitions of “half-blood” wizards.

The political background includes a wizard government that has long oppressed other races, like making elves into slaves. Yet the government also serves the critical function of protecting wizards from violence. Readers of the novels may question the legitimacy of enforced segregation of the magical and non-magical worlds; the novels clearly criticize tyranny but leave many day-to-day political problems unresolved.

The novels do emphasize that bad journalism feeds bad government. The stories feature the corrupt journalist Rita Skeeter, who makes up quotes and unfairly slants her stories. But through the character of Hermione, Rowling also shows that journalism at its best tells the public the truth and challenges abuses of power....

(emphasis added)

edit for spelling

[NewJeffCT]

1. There is also a point in "Goblet of Fire"

the fourth novel, where Dumbledore tells the students that they need to choose between what is right & what is easy.

[Demeter]

2. Oh, please!

Children will learn these things soon enough. If anyone needs that education, it's the parents.

[MedicalAdmin]

4. And if they get it by either reading to their kids or...

... by being dragged to the movies then I am perfectly fine with that.

And speaking only for myself, I am more interested in winning hearts and minds. Better the little blighters are reading Harry Potter than Atlas Shrugged, no?

[Demeter]

6. Absolutely!

[damntexdem]

3. Do you mean this question: why can't the overwhelmingly-powerful superhero get the girl?

;-)

[SolutionisSolidarity]

5. There isn't a superhero in Harry Potter's universe.

Dumbledore is close, but he dies before the final confrontation between Potter and Voldemort. HP is all about ordinary people, (ordinary for wizards, anyway), working together to take on powerful tyrants and their sycophants. Hermione is the only powerful magic user of the core group, while Harry Potter and Ron are competent at best, and often not even that. Harry is consistently impotent against Voldemort, and survives only through the sacrifices of others and luck/fate.

[MedicalAdmin]

7. In a way it is a rehash of the British WW2 story...

And in a way it is more...

Good writing for a freeloading librul. (sarcasm)