Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Spirituality Analysis

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a lesson for children on family, fear, death, and standing up for your morals. The Deathly Hallows has both direct similarities to Christian teachings and general spiritual principles that can touch its nonreligious readers. The Harry Potter series seems to either inspire spiritual strength or cause people to dust off their pitchforks and accuse it of being Satanic. Many varieties of Christians have fought to have the book banned from schools on a technicality since it promotes witchcraft, which is a government-recognized religion, and so violates the separation between church and state. But more interestingly are the people who find that the series supports their Christian religion and that it works in harmony with their beliefs and teachings.

Harry is, plain and simple, a Christ figure, and in this last book his role as savior and conqueror of death comes to a climax. He is described as the “true master of Death” (720) and has ever held the moniker of The Boy Who Lived. The circumstance and purpose of his death is unique to anyone else’s as he realizes that “this cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery” (692). Harry isn’t a martyr or a sacrifice, dying for jumping in front of a curse meant for someone else. His death is completely on his own agency, and therefore holds more power, just as Christ’s own choice. Harry’s death would “not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort” (692), who is a stand in for evil and Satan. Even though he is scared, Harry endures to the end in the name of those he loves, which is the true lesson of his story. Harry’s spiritual strength despite his knowledge that he had a horcrux, a piece of the devil, inside him inspires children who have a desire to do good but know that they are capable of bad. Even after his resurrection, Harry invisibly casts Shield Charms to protect his unknowing friends from curses shot their way, solidifying his role as a savior and protector that largely goes unrecognized.

 

There are other parallels to Christian theology that stand out starkly if you search for them. For example, after Harry dies he appears naked and physically perfect in a white landscape that eventually becomes King’s Cross. It’s only after he sees the shameful manifestation of Voldemort’s/Satan’s soul that he becomes aware of his nakedness and “for the first time, he wish[es] he were clothed” (706). Rowling’s language and imagery evoke the Garden of Eden and its role in knowledge of evil and creation of agency. In their final battle, Voldemort shouts that Harry has only survived by accident, but Harry replies that he didn’t decide to fight back (in book 4) by accident, or that his mother died for him by accident, or that he returned from the dead that night by accident. Harry’s belief in agency and a greater force driven by love encourages a spiritual outlook on life, rather than Voldemort’s cold, calculations of only the facts.  

Harry’s struggle against Voldemort is a struggle of light against dark, moral against immoral, and love against hate. Rowling isn’t a capital “C” Christian writer and doesn’t set out to convert others to her faith, but she is a moralistic writer who hopes to get her “kidult” audience to think about the hard questions and establish tolerance as a core moral in their lives. Rowling claims that her books preach that “love is the most important force” against “bigotry, violence, [and] struggles for power” (Gibbs) and take a spiritual approach to bravery and love. The magic spells, curses, and powers of The Deathly Hallows make the spiritual tangible and the Christian morals more accessible. In a philosophic time where if something can’t be proven on paper, it doesn’t exist, the magic and imagination of Rowling’s books assure children of the legitimacy of their intangible feelings and beliefs, just as Dumbledore reassured Harry: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" (723)

 

Works Cited

Gibbs, Nancy. “Person of the Year 2007: Runners-Up J.K. Rowling.” Time 19 Dec. 2007. Web.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Scholastic Inc., 2007. Print.

The Iron Giant - Critique Analysis

Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is set in 1957, when Cold War tensions were high and Sputnik was circling the Earth. However, it’s set in this time not to rehash the old fears of communists or the Soviet Union, but to contextual the fears of today and to act as a mirror of our times. The Iron Giant is a stand in for our modern fears of nonconformity, trigger-happy military policy, and ambiguous governmental power.

The Iron Giant uses a certain amount of melodrama and spectacle to help children identify the contradictions of the self-professed “protection” of the government and their role as the “bad guy” in the film. Hogarth repeats the phrase “guns kill” throughout the film in order to encourage the giant to be a good guy, yet the government’s first instinct is to turn to guns as a solution. The political message of anti-gun violence is strong, but in the name of promoting peace and thoughtful response (as opposed to reactionary lashing out) rather than an assault on the second amendment. After discovering that the giant is peaceful, Hogarth starts talking about taking him to experts, but then stops himself and remembers that “people always wig-out and start shooting when they see something big like you.” The film critiques how willing people are, and the government in particular, to turn to violence in the face of anything that doesn’t fit into their description of “normal.”

Hogarth is an outcast like the giant, bullied at school for skipping a grade and for “thinking he’s smarter than everyone else.” In his espresso-induced rant, Hogarth expresses his frustration with being viewed as a smart show-off when really all he does is the homework that his classmates don’t bother to do:

 

Not to mention that his single-mother family contradicts the American suburbia model of father, mother, and obedient children, adding to his feelings of not belonging. This combined with the vulgarly-happy atomic bomb instruction videos critiques the public school system of overly-patronizing children and ignoring their needs and social realities.

This outcast model applies to the giant, Hogarth, and Dean respectively, but in the giant’s case, he is a Christ-type outcast. His direct comparison to Superman in the movie also directly compares him to Christ as a savior, the misunderstood who came from another world (heaven, Krypton, etc.) in order to sacrifice his life to save others. Even though he physically resembles Hogarth’s comic book villain Atomo, Hogarth encourages him to be Superman, the hero who always uses his powers for good. The giant is also dies for the sins of the people he protects, especially for Kent who screams for the missile to be launched directly at the city. Kent believes in the philosophy that if “we didn’t build it and that’s reason enough to assume the worse and blow it to kingdom-come!” By making the giant a Christ figure, the film promotes charity and peace in opposition to violence and close-mindedness.

The Iron Giant is a children’s film that addresses serious themes of nonconformity, outcasts, and government policy in a non-patronizing way. It refrains from using musical numbers or even cutesy, anthropomorphic animation in order to encourage their young viewers to exercise their critical analysis and actively participate in the film’s dialogue between peace and violence, art and guns, and good and evil.

I Wish - Family

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film, I Wish, gives a voice to two inseparable brothers who have been separated by their parents’ divorce. Koichi, older and wiser to the worries of the world, lives with their mother who is preoccupied with responsibility. Ryunosuke, younger and constantly beaming, lives with their free-spirited father. The high-speed bullet trains become a physical manifestation of Koichi’s wish for their family to be united again as the trains connect their two cities. It is rumored that the energy released when the two trains pass one another will grant the wishes of those who witness it, and Koichi’s wish comes tantalizingly close to reality.

What I found most moving about this film is that was realistic rather than the fanciful wishings of two children. Though it is a little fairytale-ish that both Koichi and Ryu gather enough money to skip school and find one another halfway between their cities, at the moment they have to yell their wishes to the passing trains the brothers acknowledge the reality of their situation. The film shows why Koichi wants the family to be united as we see a picturesque family picnic, but it also shows why the separation benefits Ryu, who is still a child. During a fight at the dinner table, Koichi dives in to stop the yelling between his parents, while Ryu removes himself from the situation, eating his rice and unable to emotionally handle the situation. Later, Koichi says that he chose the world over his own family, marking his passage into adulthood with the realization that his parents wouldn’t get back together, even if the city was drowned in lava and ash.  

I Wish lingers on the everyday events that make up a child’s life, emphasizing the importance of family in those events—school assignments interviewing fathers, making karukan cake with your grandfather, calling your brother after a long day of school, having your dreams of being an actress acknowledged by your mother. I Wish gives an insight into the joys and pains of the childhood experience and the role family plays in the coming-of-age of children. 

I also thought it was very touching that Kiochi and Ryu were played by real-life brothers, which is really incredible given the incredible acting done by both, with Kiochi’s gravity and Ryu’s infectious happiness. I liked how I Wish finished off our trilogy of family-centered children’s media of “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts” as a family history/heritage story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a cautionary parental tale, and I Wish as a broken family/coming-of-age story. I know that my siblings have been (and still are) an inseparable part of my upbringing and identity, and I couldn’t imagine having to accept being separated from them, let alone entrusting a parent to them.