WEEK SEVEN: Spiritual Education and Harry Potter

Harry Potter

Although I have read the stories of Harry Potter, it was a sweet reminder to be able to read them again. The entire series follows the story of Harry and his friends as they go through Hogwarts. They grow up together, finding themselves through their classes and discovering what it means to be wizards as well as adults. In the context of this class, I feel like these stories were a nice fit along with the other texts. Harry Potter is iconic. It stands to the test of time and to other texts that fit alongside it. It represents a different type of fantasy literature and is, in itself, so powerful and impactful. There is nothing else that represents fantasy literature as well as Harry Potter does. 

I think that JK Rowling created something that has changed the lives of so many people. The scope of her writing has become a very important thing in a lot of people’s lives. We follow the education of Harry and his companions as they grow up in all of their own rights. While Harry matures with his friends, his friends mature alone.

My favorite part about the in-class discussion was hearing about how the "good" characters in Harry Potter were more aggressive than the bad characters. I had never really considered that before the discussion but now that I’ve been thinking about it, it all makes sense. Harry himself is the most aggressive and crude character in the entire series. His actions prove that to a “T.”

I found an interesting article that well describes this notion, http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/harry-potter-stats-good-characters-more-aggressive/ , and in it, they discuss everything that we were going through in class. The author’s opinions were well put and describe the notion that perhaps those whom we consider to be the most perfect characters may in fact be the most flawed. Harry, for example, made more hastily wrong actions towards others than any other characters in the story. That came as a shock to me at first, and I wanted to stay in denial, but it makes sense. Even though I want to stand by his side, I realize now that his character isn’t as glorious as I made it out to be.