Potter Reread

Very, very rarely do I find books that I want to bother rereading. There are so many books in this world that I need to read, there is no way I can possibly live long enough to fit ‘em all in. (Lucky for me I have extremely good eyesight-even too good eyesight- so hopefully I will keep my vision long enough to be able to read more than if I had regular eyesight. If only my brain holds out and I don’t go senile too soon. Which the forecast on that issue ain’t lookin’ too good, let me tell ya.) Anyway, back to the books. When I was young I used to reread “Black Beauty” and “Call of the Wild” over and over. Of course, the Anne of Green Gables books need to be reread. Every couple of months I get in the mood for Jane Austin and I reread one of her novels.

Over the last few days I have started to learn something and it’s that the Harry Potter series is even better the second time around! So, as I work my way through year two at Hogwarts once again, I decided to take a break and talk about Harry Potter for awhile. You would think that after my last Harry Potter blog, which was like 6 pages long on Word before I copied and pasted it onto myspace, that I would have said all I had to say about it. Turns out that I have not!
Can you believe that some people don’t even like Harry Potter!?!?! How can that even be possible!? They surely haven’t read them at all! JK Rowlings has to be one of the greatest writers of our time, if not the greatest. I know one thing that people don’t like about her books is that sometimes the kids in the book break the rules, and then don’t get punished for it, or they will even get rewarded instead. I have a few things to say on that subject. First of all, it is a true observation and I don’t deny it. I think there are a couple of reasons that Rowling does this. One of those reasons is that she is writing from the perspective of a humanist. So, that is going to affect her writing to at least some degree.

Another reason that I believe Rowlings does this, is that it’s a literary decision. I feel like this kind of situation pops up more in the earlier books, when the kids are younger. The situations are used to show us the personality of the characters who do the rewarding or punishing (the teachers at Hogwarts). Hey, don’t all schools have the “mean teacher”, the “nice teacher”, the “push over teacher”, the “boring teacher”. The lack of punishment is just used to show which teacher is which. And it goes even deeper, because these books cover a very long period time in these people lives, their growing up years. By the end of the books, the kids and readers are faced with the job of deciding just what kind of person these people were. In other words, Snape was the “mean teacher” as far as the kids were concerned, but by the end of the book, we learn he was a hero. Remember, in the early books especially, our perception of the teachers is coming from the perspective of young children. Anyway, I don’t think I am saying this in the best way possible, but maybe you got my idea.

Usually when the kids are rewarded for doing wrong, it is because they have been faced with a really tough decision, and decided to break the rules in order to save the day. Do we want our children emulate them? I don’t know, I don’t imagine that there will be very many times that they are faced with the same situation.

It is not too often that they will be warned to stay off the 3rd floor, because it will bring certain death, and they will have to decide to break the rules because they have reason to believe that someone is going to steal the Sorcery’s Stone, and bring Voldemort back to power, putting the whole Wizarding World and even the Muggle World in certain danger. I also don’t think that they will have to enter as Chamber of Secrets that was built and enchanted by an angry, dark wizard who didn’t want any “Mudbloods” or “Squibs” to go to their school, in order to save the life of a sister/friend who is in mortal danger from a basilisk. Harry and friends were rewarded for breaking rules, because they broke rules in order to save lives, and they saved the day. And if you really want to get to the details, in Book 1, Neville was rewarded the mostin the end, because he stood up to his friends who were breaking the rules!

Something I notice that the naysayers seem to forget about the Harry Potter books is that not only do they sometimes get out of punishment and/or rewarded for breaking the rules, but they also sometimes get punished, or lectured, or nearly punished for things they didn’t do, for things that other people did, or just unfairly punished in generally. I also notice that situations such as these occur more and more in the later books, or in other words when the kids are older. There comes a time in our lives when we must all learn that life isn’t always fair, and the Harry Potter characters had to learn this fact, too. I notice that especially in book five, this fact is just drilled into the minds of Harry and his friends. Harry is punished over and over, unfairly, unjustly, and just really horribly in book 5. Book 5 is filled with examples of people, who shouldn’t be in power or control of things, gaining power by abusing the law. Umbridge gains control of Hogwarts by twisting the “Wizarding” laws to her own advantage. Then she uses a dishonest, sensationalized media in order to trick people into following her.

When teaching, Professor Umbridge even abuses her position of teacher to teach the kids a Ministry of Magic and Umbridge favorable curriculum. She teaches just enough to try and gain obedience from the kids, and not enough that the kids are able to learn how to protect themselves when needed. Harry and his friends decide that learning the truth is more important than following the rules, and they use a hidden room in the castle to conduct their own classes and learn what they need to know. You know, Hitler said, “Give me the schools, and you will give me the country”. Don’t we want our children to learn that a really good, education, where we are learning truth and not lies is important if they want to keep their inalienable rights? Of course we do! And I think that this book gives an excellent opportunity to teach kids about this. It is so well done! Rowling does an amazing job of creating the Umbridge character and the News Reporter (I can’t remember her name off the top of my head). On the surface, Umbridge seems like a harmless, little person, she has a small voice. If you were going on appearances, she would seem like a nice, little, old lady. But she is really a tricky dangerous snake! Such a great example of how appearances can be deceiving and cause us to let down our guard. Also, I would like to note that the crisis in the beginning of the book (Harry and Dudley being attacked by dementors, and Harry having to break the law of “Underage Magic Restrictions” in order to save Dudley’s life.) was all set up by Umbridge in order to catch Harry breaking the law and get him expelled from Hogwarts. Many times people who take control of a government will use crisis situations that they set up themselves, for that purposes of gaining control and bending circumstances in their favor. It is just TOO COOL that Rowlings was able to create this whole imagined world, filled with hundreds of such well-written characters in order to address actual situations that we face every day! Now that is good writing, in the likes of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Braum, and CS Lewis!!!

So, Rowlings doesn’t think it is good to break the rules, but she also knows that sometimes we have to break rules, or go against the norm in order to do what is right. There are Christians in different parts of the world who give out Bibles & witness when it is against the rules. There are Christians that who worship in hiding because they don’t have the right to worship Christ in the countries where they live. They break the rules, bravely so they can serve the Lord. Today, there are homeschoolers all over Germany who are fighting against rules in their country that say that they cannot educate their own children in the way that they believe is the best for them. Finally, if it weren’t for breaking rules, the United States of America would never have existed. When you are talking about rules, that were made by man- who is not perfect- (I am not talking about laws that are given to us by God, i.e.- The 10 Commandments), well, sometimes man makes rules that are just morally wrong. And as Dumbledore says, “Someday we all have to choose between doing what is right and doing what is easy."