The debates between author J.K. Rowling and gender-identity activists have to a degree overshadowed her Harry Potter series. This is a shame, as the books provide a fertile ground for reflection on a subject that deserves more attention in our current moment.
That subject is death.
It is an irony that a book series this popular can have at its core a subject that the broader culture would rather ignore. Some who criticize the books say the subject matter is inappropriate for children. It is only in recent decades that anyone believed children could be protected from encountering or thinking about death. Rowling has done an important service for the culture by giving readers the opportunity to confront death.
This gift extends to Christians, especially in the West, who have been tempted to follow their cultures into a denial of death. We of all people start from a very different place: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:19-20). We can look death in the eye and not blink. And Rowling has given Christians great food for reflection.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t read the books and don’t want to lose the surprise, stop here, go read them, and then come back.]
There are many images and allusions to death in the Harry Potter series. There are Thestrals, which only those who have seen someone die can see. Witnessing death changes you. Hogswarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is full of ghosts. All these ghost have stories to tell, often about some lack in their lives that now haunts them in death and binds them to a futile, disembodied existence.
Rowling incorporates the historical character of Nicolas Flamel, an alchemist reputed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone, which would bring eternal life. To possess it would be to escape death. The death of Aragog, the great spider and friend to the groundskeeper Hagrid, is an episode that harkens back to how even the death of a beloved pet can devastate us. The second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is a study in how a tragic death in the past can continue to influence events many years later.
At the heart of the series is the relationship between its two main characters, Harry and Voldemort, both orphans. Voldemort’s mother died after childbirth and his father left him to be raised in an orphanage. Voldemort kills Harry’s parents, and Harry is sent to live with an aunt and uncle who revile him and fear his latent magic. The baby Harry and Voldemort are set on a collision course when a prophecy says of them: “And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives.”
Harry, called “the boy who lived,” faces the consequences of how his mother died as she protected him. Again and again across the books, Harry is confronted with death. We see the wrestling match he wages with death. Again and again he must decide what he will do.
Meanwhile, we begin to learn that Voldemort has made plans from a very early age to beat death. It is no surprise that he seeks to kill Harry, as he believes Harry threatens his life. The depth Voldemort is willing to go is laid bare in his creation of horcruxes. A horcrux is a material object that contains a piece of your soul. The deeply evil thing is that it requires committing a murder to tear a piece of your soul off to place in the horcrux. Voldemort created six intentionally, and another resulted when he murdered Harry’s mother. He can only be killed when each has been destroyed.
In the wake of Voldemort’s effort to kill Harry, he is partially destroyed, and he has a parasitic, disembodied existence. He tries several ways to recover his body, finally succeeding when he desecrates both the living and the dead. This serves as another reminder of what he is willing to do to cheat death.
Harry, on the other hand, rejects using the philosopher’s stone. At another point he sees a figure at a distance that he believes is his father, but it turns out to be himself. His desire for his father to return from the dead nearly causes him to fail in an important task.
In a scene when Voldemort obtains a body, one of Harry’s school mates is brutally killed in front of him. Another death shakes Harry when he loses his godfather, Sirius Black, who was becoming a father figure to Harry. Harry is tempted to find ways to turn these deaths around, but he repeatedly must face the finality of death.
In a story introduced in the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, three brothers seek to cheat death. The first brother seeks a weapon of such power that he will be invincible, but the weapon lets him down and death collects him. The second brother wishes to be reunited with a dead loved one, and he is given a stone that will bring the dead back. He discovers, however, that only the image of the dead return, and in despair he kills himself. The last brother asks for a cloak that will hide him from death. He lives a long, fulfilling life, and in the end walks off with death arm in arm.
This story is a microcosm of the book series. There are three basic responses to death. One is to seek power over it. Another is to seek to overcome the results of death. The last way is to hide from death in pursuit of an ordinary life. Harry rejects the first two, and ultimately chooses the third, becoming willing to walk with death arm in arm.
Voldemort chooses the path of power. In this he represents the modern response. Our culture seeks power over death, either in a quest to control when it comes for us or in various technological efforts to transcend it. In this effort, both moderns and Voldemort deny the very humanity they wish to protect. Amid human efforts to have power over death, death will reign supreme.
Harry represents a faithful Christian way to grapple with death. He grieves, mourns, fights, and despairs. He is tempted to circumvent death. In the end, he gives up his life and finds out the truth of death.
On Harry’s parent’s tombstone is this verse: “The last enemy to be overcome is death” (1 Cor. 15:22, 26).
In the end, may we walk with death arm in arm, knowing that death does not have the last word.
When Charlie and his wife arrived in Colorado Springs in the mid to late 1990s, they joined an Episcopal church. Living in the South, with a Baptist church on every corner, Charlie was a Lutheran. Now living in Minnesota, with a Lutheran church on every corner, he is an Episcopalian.