Harry Potter and the Fear of Death

As a huge Harry Potter fan, I have been waiting for the right opportunity to blog about the beloved series, and it seems as though today is my day. Western culture, as was presented in the readings as well as in class, seems to have a fascination with death at the same time as fearing it greatly and thus creating almost a taboo out of speaking about it. In class, we discussed various monster themes and how vampires and zombies can teach us something about our humanity, and also can act as a catharsis to dealing with death.

As can be imagined, not all members of the Catholic Church have welcomed the story of the boy who lived with open arms for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include that calling Harry Potter the boy who lived implies a certain element of escape from death, which is not possible by anyone. Also, he who must not be named comes back to life after being stuck in a half living, half dead state. These are but a few reasons, along with the primary focus on being a story of magic.

In Harry Potter, which is considered a children’s story, we see the characters constantly in a battle with death (both literally and figuratively as Voldemort’s minions are called Death Eaters). Harry Potter and his group of companions always seem to conquer evil. Thus, even though some draw extreme parallels between Harry Potter and elements of Christianity (such as saying Harry Potter acts as a Christ figure), it is most basically a story about the constant battle between good and evil. This story is told in a magical world, and as I mentioned, the idea of witchcraft is not a friendly term to Christianity, and the thinking that magic is real is not celebrated by society, for the most part, either.

Regardless of the fact that Harry Potter is based on magic, one key element that stands out to me is that even with all the power that these witches and wizards have to repair broken glasses and drinks to make them temporarily look like someone else, never should one use these powers to commit a crime against nature; killing is wrong, and even more so is the idea of bringing someone back from the dead. Similar to vampires and zombies, once someone is passed they will never be able to live a whole life again, and are cursed to some form of a half-life, and in a world of magical creatures, it is still against nature to revive the past.

Voldemort was able to “live” his half-life because he committed an act against nature; by killing he split his soul into various parts in order to conceal them in objects and make them harder to destroy. In doing such, he is removed more and more of his humanity and furthers himself from ever living a whole life. He does these actions to make himself immortal, but as we can see in the readings and the discussion in class, this immortality often informs us of our humanity. Voldemort believed that to protect himself as the most powerful wizard he needed to raise himself to this half living state, much like one of a zombie or a vampire. Their souls are destroyed or non-existent, and therefore the life that they then face is never complete, lacking what is needed in humanity. What’s more is that only after every bit of Voldemort’s soul, something intrinsic to humanity, is destroyed will Voldemort face true death (and defeat!)

This is a clip where Professor Slughorn explains what a Horcrux (an object in which one hides a peice of their soul) is to a young Voldemort:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buJPwD5nW1g