Well, you know, in all this talk of Harry Potter being "stolen" from Tolkien, I don't think anyone's mentioned that the phrase "join the Dark Side" occurs in the very first book. Now there's stealing for you!:eek:

Seriously– my own reservations about the HP series have nothing to do with (supposed) theft. It's more that I think Rowling's pretty limited as a writer, and that the ambitiousness of the later books only serves to highlight this. Obviously the real fans aren't going to agree with me here, but I just feel she ends up biting off more than she can chew.

100% agreed.

(no, I won't start a rant listing the HP series' faults)

Various Epics
 

My sister generously loaned me a book a while back, God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction In An Ivy League Classroom The Amazon.com review follows.

The Author does know both the Potter books and Christian theology... at a post graduate level. One can illustrate many of the basic questions in Christian theology using illustrations from the Potter books.

The big question is whether you can get more than a few chapters in before choking and gagging. I couldn't.

Well, you likely know me by know. I find many scholarly readings of Tolkien somewhat pretentious. I find scholarly readings of Potter far more so. Still, there is enough there that I can see how Reverend Danielle takes her efforts as seriously as many contributors to this forum. The chapter titles in the book do reference basic Christian themes like Sacrifice and Faith. You can take the great questions various philosophers and priests have been debating for centuries and find themes based on these questions all over the Potter books. A Potter fan might find the book a solid short cut introduction to formal Christian theology.

Ugh. I kind of enjoyed the Potter stories as stories, but can't take them seriously as a source of Truth or Wisdom. Of course, I'd say the same thing about Lord of the Rings or the Star Wars movies. Fantasy, especially when you take it towards an epic level, explores Good, Evil, Sacrifice, Faith, Heroism and similar stuff. If one immerses one's self in such sub creations at a young an impressionable age, such stories might well help shape one's values. The nuns at my Saturday School sure used similar stories and parables found in the Bible to that end.

Middle Earth, that galaxy far far away and Hogwarts are to me primarily excellent yarns and entertainment. Various folks are attracted to one more than the other. Various people will take one or another of them seriously. Color me dubious.

For all Gods and Goddesses' sake, blantyr, I meant nothing of the kind. I see Rowling alluding to a Christian myth, not writing a "christian creation" or, Danu forbid, a theological allegory. It's just rather ironic considering all the hullaballoo made about the series by hordes of Harry-hating Christian fundamentalist muggles.

And fully d'accord about Rowling's limitations, Nerwen - she's a competent and entertaining writer, but nowhere near e.g. Tolkien's league. There is at times a painful disharmony between the schoolboy story background with
its classroom comedy and obligatory Quidditch match in every volume and the darker theme of the gradually increasing struggle against evil, and the way everybody (including, at times, the author) is doting on Harry would be unpalatable if we didn't have Snape.

EDIT: PS.- You know one thing that irks me greatly about the end of the story? We have the Hogwarts motto "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus", and we have a character named Draco. In my book, when you include a coincidence like that in your story, you have to do something with it. I always expected Draco to turn against Voldemort in the end and do something real flashy (like saving Harry's life or what do I know), so I could brandish the book at the ceiling and cry out, "I knew it!" That lukewarm not-quite-conversion Rowling wrote for him was a huge disappointment.

I would add that Rowling made too many and too complex "rules", so many that she can't even follow them herself sometimes. She focuses on the rules instead of depth of character and feeling. And when she attempts feeling, instead of giving it depth she just writes all these gushy love affairs, or simply increases the death rate.

An exception to that is the Sirius-Bellatrix-Molly thing. I find it satisfying that Molly "avenges" Sirius in a way.

One thing that I could say in her favour, though, is her use of Latin. Many HP fans that I've talked to are annoyed by it, but I see it as positive thing, and I love deciphering the spells.

She borrowed from Latin like Tolkien from Finnish and Anglo-Saxon. She sisn't steal the idea, but it's a similarity.

No one's allowed to tickle a sleeping Draco. :p

(But doesn't that phrase ring a bell? ;))

The thing that irks me is that Voldemort is completely destroyed. (I know I'm weird...)

Speaking of sacrifice, I don't see Gandalf's and Dumbledore's sacrifices on the same level (or maybe we're not talking about the same events, me having read HP only once). Gandalf sacrifices himself when facing the Balrog, again when he marches with others to the Black gate. Dumbledore, on the other hand, though finding a gagillion uses for dragon's blood (poor dragons), didn't see the Ring as cursed until it was too late. He then burdens Snape's with his murder/ euthanization and harry with finishing what should be an adult's task.

And regarding King's Cross, being a 'Merican, I know nothing of geography or allusions, but methinks that Rowling was just getting all of those fundamentalist haters back, showing that reading HP was not demonic. ;)

King's Cross is simply the London station which London trains depart from for the North so Rowling would have used it originally because Hogwarts is meant to be in Scotland.

However I suppose these names may still have significance.. Churchilll when overseeing plans for his own state funeral (such things are planned, prepared and even rehearsed way in advance of their subject's demise) was insistant that the French delegation and de Gaulle should arrinve at Waterloo rather than Victoria which was the normal station for the boat train.

For those interested, there was a discussion here regarding possible parallels between the Ring and Voldemort's Horcruxes.