Sunday, August 05, 2007

Harry Potter and the Hallowed Death

Spoilers...







...





(for real)






...






Does anyone else think Rowling was going for a Christ story with the whole like-a-lamb-to-the-slaughter, taking-on-the-sins-(Voldemort)-of-the-world, dead-then-back-again thing? Or is it so obvious that my pointing it out is kind of redundant? I guess Hagrid gets the part of Mary Magdalene, then, when he notices Harry's body is missing.

The death scene actually reminded me most strongly of the "crucifixion" of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with all the bad guys gathered round in the woods and the Christ figure giving himself up so willingly and peacefully. Maybe Aslan and Harry can team up some day. Or fight, being as how Harry practices witchcraft and is therefore evil.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

haven't read HP yet, but i do remember literally gagging at the referenced section of lion/witch. c.s. lewis has to be very high on the list of overrated authors. i tried his science fiction--peralandra or something like that--nothing, absolutely nothing

AmyJane said...

I'm with you on the symbolism ....I was reading along and muttering to myself about types and symbols of Christ and my husband was shrieking at me to Shut Up Already, as I was about 400 pages ahead of him. Anyway, I have to assume it was intentional.

JB said...

Yeah, I was thinking the Christian symbolism thing, too. But, for some reason, that book had this constant laced-with-pushy-Christianity thing in it for me. I don't mind Christian symbolism, I even enjoy finding it once in a while because it's familiar and interesting to me, but there was something about that book that kinda bothered me the way pushy (especially Christian) evangelists do. . . Other than that, I liked it.