A Clear Difference of Good and Evil

*******SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT READ HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS*******



The Harry Potter novels have been greeted with much enthusiasm by widespread fandom. However, there are still those who continue to believe the books have a hidden, even sinister, underlying message. Amongst the repeated themes of friendship and love, readers of various backgrounds have somehow found Satanic beliefs within Harry Potter. Because the book is set within the realm of fantasy, most would take the book as a fictional story and leave it at that, but parents are looking much deeper into the books before they let their children read the popular series. While the accusation that the books are leading their readers to satanic worship or the occult is as yet unproven, it is still very unlikely. One of the main reasons this is argued so heavily is that parents are concerned their children will not be able to tell the difference between good and evil because both sides use the same magical spells. But the main themes of the Harry Potter books are friendship and love, which is noticeably set apart from the magical elements of the series. Magic itself does not equal evil, but as with anything there are people who are going to use it for their own purposes, whether good or bad. The author of the series, J.K. Rowling, successfully defines Harry as good, and Voldemort as bad.

The biggest theme in the series is love. The evil wizard Voldemort grows up in an orphanage without friends or knowing anything about his parents. Never knowing love, he kills his father and grandparents simply because they had no magical ability. His mother died giving birth to Voldemort, but rather than feeling sorrow Voldemort decides she must have been pathetically weak if she succumbed to something as mundane as death. To get as close as he can to immortality Voldemort kills many people, including Harry’s parents and attempts to kill Harry himself when Harry was only a year old. Harry, the main character, manages to survive the dark wizard’s attack and grows up without friends or much of a family, similar to Voldemort, but he is against Voldemort so completely that it allows him to set himself on the good side and make the right decisions. He hates the dark wizard for killing his parents, and Harry is prepared to do whatever it takes to rid the wizarding world of Voldemort. Harry’s greatest weapon against his enemy is that he can feel love. Even though Harry and Voldemort grew up in similar situations, readers can identify Harry as the good character because he does not set out to kill someone simply because they lack magical ability.

A recurring theme in the books is friendship. Harry never learns what friendship is until he gets out on his own at the magical school called Hogwarts. There he meets his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, and learns the lengths he will go to in order to help them. The trio is fiercely loyal to each other, refusing to leave one another alone even in the face of danger. On the other hand, Voldemort has purposely disassociated himself from social contact with anyone. While he does have loyal followers, he has never had a true friend, nor has he ever wanted one. He chooses to work alone because he detests having to rely on someone else for anything. Even in this aspect good and evil remain separate. Readers side with Harry here because he is able to make friends and share experiences with them, whereas Voldemort cannot.

What most people find difficult to deal with is that characters in the books use witchcraft. Magic is seen by many people as being acquired from the devil, but the reason J.K. Rowling decided to write about a magical setting has nothing to do with religion. Although Rowling never targeted any particular age group when she wrote the books, they tend to appeal most to children and young adults, and the most popular genre among this age group is fantasy. Fantasy allows the reader to escape from their own lives into a realm that, most often, is impossible to achieve without imagination. Even in the Harry Potter series there are references to the real world, but the magical aspects help the reader see that this is indeed separate from reality. Magic also gives the author an easy excuse to sometimes leave out explanations, because the reason something works could simply be that it is magic. If Rowling had written the books without any magical element to it, it would likely be faced with much less criticism, but also with less enthusiasm.

Another reason people find the Harry Potter books questionable is some of the events that happen throughout the series that could be seen as Satanic. For example, Harry can talk to snakes. The ability to converse with snakes has long been seen as a trait that many associate with wicked people and events. A snake itself often symbolizes Satan, such as the snake in the garden of Eden. Even in the Harry Potter “world” people are wary about those who are able to talk to snakes. The reason Harry has this ability is because Voldemort can talk to snakes, and when Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby he mistakenly transferred some of his own powers into Harry. Voldemort uses this power to get snakes to attack other people, but Harry rarely uses it at all. Harry hates how much he and Voldemort are alike, so he only uses the power when he has to. However useful this power is, Harry finds it troublesome and sees it as yet another way he is different from everyone else.

Before the final book came out, another problem people had with the story is what Harry would have eventually had to do in order to get rid of Voldemort. In the end, he would have to either kill or be killed, which raises the question: Is it okay to kill someone if it means you are rescuing many other people? Many people say no, that killing is wrong period even if you are doing it to help. Those who are against the books used this as an effective argument because it meant that the hero of the story would eventually have to murder his enemy. This was a problem before the final book came out because once it was read you see how Harry gets rid of Voldemort. Voldemort tries to kill Harry again, but because Harry’s mother sacrificed herself in order to save Harry when he was a baby, Harry has a magical protection that causes Voldemort’s killing curse to rebound upon Voldemort himself. Voldemort dies, and Harry is still a hero without even having to kill the darkest wizard of the age.

The Harry Potter series does not encourage Satanism because the books actually present its readers with a value system that allows them to easily divide the good and evil within the story and side with the good. Parents who believe Harry Potter leads to satanic worship refuse to allow their children to read the books. Most of these people have never even read the books themselves, they just hear from others how bad the books are. The best thing they could do, if they really believed the books were bad, is to use the books as a teaching tool. Show their children how Voldemort is bad, how Harry is good, and how they are different. Because even though Harry and Voldemort are similar in many ways, J.K. Rowling does a very good job in separating the good and evil of both characters.