Esther Sims
Staff Writer
THE NOTRE DAME Center for Ethics and Culture debuted its Fall 2007 lineup last week with a colloquium titled “Harry Potter and The King’s Cross.” Three panelists presented on the seventh and final novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The theme of the night was discovering Christianity and God in Harry Potter. By the end of the question and answer period, a receptive audience could see both God and Christianity in the novels and received the tools to discover much more.
The panel consisted of Dr. Rebecca DeYoung of Calvin College, Dr. John O’Callaghan of Notre Dame’s Philosophy Department, and Emerson Spartz ’09, creator and founder of MuggleNet.
DeYoung’s exposition on Harry’s courage hinged on two main points. First, she claimed he acted on a love greater than his own love for life, and second, that he did so in community. Quoting St. Augustine’s definition of courage as “love bearing all things for the sake of the beloved,” she emphasized the notion of “bearing all things,” which transforms courage from a type of aggression to an endurance. She emphasized this difference by distinguishing Harry’s courage from that of the archetypal action-adventure hero.
DeYoung recognized that the adventure hero’s courage is true courage. He is, she said, “willing to suffer, risk himself, his life, put up with injury, and face his fears in order to achieve a good end.” The worrisome aspect of the model though, is that the action hero’s means to this end are stereotypically aggressive. He relies on human power, sometimes supplemented by arms, to achieve his end – and he does it alone. According to DeYoung, this is problematic. “We should be wary of a hero who never needs anyone else, who expects to be able to conquer evil and evade death on his own strength and on his own terms.”
DeYoung also contrasted Harry’s courage with Voldemort’s incapacity for the virtue, stating, “Courage is the virtue that enables us to stand firm against our fear … for the sake of a good end that transcends us.” Voldemort’s greatest good is himself, there is nothing that transcends the value he places on his own life. Consequently, he can never overcome his fear of death until he becomes the master of death. This mastery “eliminates the possibility and the fear of death altogether.” This elimination negates the possibility for courage.
DeYoung explained that Harry’s courage is “rooted in love” and that “courage without love is merely gritted teeth, and facing death is frankly pointless.” Harry’s courage is different from the adventure hero’s - his courage “does not use force or violence against evil, it rather takes the form of laying your life down in self sacrifice.” The courageous hero does not seek death, nor desire it; rather he endures it out of the love that transcends love for one’s own life. DeYoung referenced Aquinas and Augustine again, likening Harry to the Christian martyrs who also endured death out of love for a greater good.
DeYoung saw in Harry’s reliance on his friends and, in the end, on the communion of saints, the sources of his courage. “In his death … it is crucial that he claims the power of the communion of saints by using the resurrection stone to surround himself with all those whose love has forged his courage.”
Harry accepted and chose his fate, but, quoting the novel, “their presence was his courage.” DeYoung ended her talk commenting that “we flourish in solidarity, not in solitude” and that perhaps a better title for Harry would be not “The Boy Who Lived,” but rather, “The Boy Who Loved.”
DeYoung’s lecture was followed by Dr. John O’Callaghan, director of the Jacques Maritain Center and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame. His focus was on the deeply symbolic structure of the novels that show “once you go beyond the basic levels of meaning, God is everywhere.” He referenced Ludwig Wittgenstein’s quote, “only when one knows the story, does one know the significance of the picture.”
O’Callaghan argued that “the larger story of western culture, particularly a symbolic culture, primarily understood against the background of medieval symbols” is the symbolic backdrop of Harry Potter. Reading the novels in this light, allows the reader to see God.
O’Callaghan explained that there are three types of symbolism in The Deathly Hallows: names, objects or animals, and scenes. He broke down names and objects, gave their etymology and thus provided a much richer understanding of the place of these names and objects in the novels.
His exposition on the final death scene was particularly striking and moving. He broke down the name “horcrux” to “dreaded cross” and showed that the symbol for the “deathly hallows” is quite similar to the all-seeing eye of God. At a deeper level, Harry “picks up his cross” when he chooses the horcruxes over the hallows. DeYoung notes that Harry did not use the power of God to escape his fate, but rather embraced it, and became a Christlike figure.
Using the resurrection stone, Harry raises the communion of saints to walk with him to his death (far from the zombie-like army Voldemort fantasized about), and after being cursed by Voldemort, wakes up at King’s Cross Station. O’Callaghan argued that Harry is consistently a Christ-like figure or symbol, although he also emphasized that Rowling’s use of symbolism does not translate into allegory in general.
O’Callaghan concluded with a meditation on the difference of blood forcibly taken and blood freely given. In the first novel of the series, Harry sees a unicorn slaughtered by Voldemort, as unicorn blood grants the drinker immortality. In that novel, Dumbledore tells Harry that the blood of a murdered unicorn curses the drinker. O’Callaghan drew a symbolic parallel between Harry and a unicorn, as unicorns are often symbols of Christ. He compared Harry’s death march as a unicorn voluntarily offering up its own blood – granting life to those for whom he is sacrificing himself.
Emerson Spartz, Notre Dame undergraduate and founder of MuggleNet, an immensely popular Harry Potter fan site, gave the third and last talk. He did not have a formal presentation prepared, but rather graciously enlightened and amused an enthusiastic crowd with anecdotes from experiences derived from his MuggleNet notoriety.
Stories ranged from unexpected phone calls from J.K. Rowling herself, tours of the Harry Potter film sets, meet and greets with thousands of Harry fans, and tours of Rowling’s mansion in England.
A question and answer session rounded the night off. Questions ranged from the philosophical, to the personal. In the end, the colloquium could have been seen as a symbol of the novels: edifying, while wholly entertaining.
Esther Sims is a Senior Philosophy major who enjoys good conversation and literature and does not understand the meaning of “succinct”. Contact Esther at esims@nd.edu.
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