Done with HP7!

[amethyst73]

Minor incoherent discussion behind the cut - I'm looking forward to real-time conversations with many of you, and now I can *finally* go back and read people's LJ comments about it!!!!

I must admit to being slightly puzzled that a search in Google Images for 'harry potter crucifix' didn't turn up any fan-art - or am I looking in the wrong place? 

I started seeing serious Christ parallels when Harry went back to Hogwarts and was received in triumph by the D.A.  "We're gonna fight, right?"  Ohhhhhhh, serious parallels to Jesus' entry to Jerusalem immediately prior to his crucifixion. 

Also peeved that Benedict claims that the HP books are the work of the devil, or something along those lines.  He *clearly* hasn't read the last one!  [EDIT: I was not correct on this one.  I glanced at the results of a Google search, and was led to the wrong conclusion because I didn't actually follow the links and read the articles.  Thank you, shoutingboy and feir_fireb for pointing this out to me!]

Wondered partway along when the trio seemed kinda stuck: Hey, Harry grabbed Mad-Eye's magic eye from Umbridge's office - why not use it to peek inside the Snitch?  When in doubt (or when you're out of ideas), after all, it's always a good idea to poke through your inventory and see if you've got an item that could help you out.

We were interested to see how many of our guesses (admittedly, not all of them were original with us) that we made prior to reading the book happened to be true.  Here they are:

• Harry himself may be a Horcrux (not original with us)
• Snape will redeem himself by doing something noble by the end of book
• Draco might switch sides (this was the only one that one can clearly argue did NOT happen)
• Neville will do something heroic,
• As will Luna, or at least something cool
• A member of the Weasley family will die
• Harry will not die
• Neither will Ron or Hermione
• Victor Krum will reappear
• R.A.B. in the locket note is Sirius’ brother Regulus. (also not original with us)

I started writing summaries of chapters, and keeping track of guesses and whether they were proved correct/incorrect.  I kept up with it for a while, and finally quit after Chapter 22.  It was clear that it was just taking way too much time.  I did have fun writing some of the chap summaries, and will post the more amusing ones here later.

I imagine there's huge amounts of fanfiction out there.  How exactly did Remus and Tonks meet their deaths?  What are all the grownups doing as jobs at the close of the books?  Further adventures of Harry's generation?  Way obviously, adventures of Hogwarts: The Next Generation?

Comments

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

'Also peeved that Benedict claims that the HP books are the work of the devil, or something along those lines.'

Did he really say that? Somehow it doesn't match my impression of him. I don't suppose you have a link? (I've seen him taken pretty badly out of context a few times.)

I assume we're talking about Pope "J-Rat" Benedict 2⁴, not some other Benedict.

[feir-fireb.livejournal.com]

No, he didn't. It's clear that he wants people to be cautious about reading books that involve lots of magic and occult and that he thinks that this includes Harry Potter, but after doing a little research I couldn't even be sure that he'd read any of the books. What is clear is that some Vatican official made some comment about Harry Potter being okay and there was a religious media firestorm about the Vatican approving of witchcraft and the occult. A German anti-Potter author sent the Pope a book and some warnings and he wrote back:

It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.

This is hardly a formal pronouncement, and Popes are generally pretty laissez-faire about anything that isn't really formal or deeply entrenched (this is a major cultural difference between our rule-of-law culture and, well, Italy). It's also not entirely clear on what level he's engaging Kuby. My guess is the more important point is that the pope is worried about Kuby's specific (and ramped-up) claims that unsupervised kids who become enamored of make-believe witchcraft could pursue the real thing (which it makes sense for a pope to take at least somewhat seriously) and the lack of any substantial, overt references to a religious or spiritual life (which has been one of the pope's driving concerns with regards to the religious denuding of Europe). Given very limited data and the fact that the pope hasn't made any speeches about it, I wouldn't infer anything more than that. For all we know, he hasn't actually read the books.

Pope-watching is a very subtle business, and even the people who do it a lot and very closely tend to get a fair number of things wrong This is especially true for Benedict. JPII was a trained actor (literally) who knew how performances would play on stage. Benedict is an academic by profession and I think naturally assumes people will work with more intellectual subtlety than they (especially the media and the papal rumor mill) often do. The Italian press especially tends to make the most outrageous speculations based off of the tiniest hints and second-hand rumors and pronouncements.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

You are right; I'd made my comment strictly from glanced-at headlines that came up from a Google search for 'harry potter christian' or some such. If you do a search for 'harry potter pope' you'll see where I got my misinformation.

Thank you for pointing out my big mistake on this one!

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

See the other comment to this post, and my response to it

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See the other comment to this post, and my response to it <a href="http://amethyst73.livejournal.com/31873.html?thread=44161#t44161"here</a>. I got my misinformation from glancing at the results of a Google search, not by following any of the actual links. If I had, I would have known better.

[feir-fireb.livejournal.com]

It's not that big of a mistake. It just takes an unfortunate amount of effort to sort through the cloud of misinformation that constantly surrounds the pope, particularly on contentious issues that the pope probably doesn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it! One of the priests at my Episcopal church just did two sessions of the Adult Religious Ed class on Harry Potter. I attended the one on images of Christian Love in the books, but missed the one on redemption. He said though that he's surprised by the lack of comment on the images of Christian love in HP over the past few years. He explained it by saying that the folks who would likely comment on it were busy with the Da Vinci Code and so haven't gotten to it yet.

I'm surprised by the number of people who denounce HP relative to the lack of criticism of Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The latter is actually actively anti-theist. I'll be curious to see what happens when the movies start coming out.

[nhradar.livejournal.com]

The movies, by all reports, have avoided specifically calling TPTB the church, so it will likely be a lot more subtle until the end of the trilogy.

Assuming said priest is who I think he is, he also worked Harry Potter into the homily at our wedding. :)

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is who you think it is. For our dear host in this LJ, keep your eyes open for aticles oh HP from Fr. Andrew Blume. ;)

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised by the number of people who denounce HP relative to the lack of criticism of Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The latter is actually actively anti-theist. I'll be curious to see what happens when the movies start coming out.

The main thing I can think of is that Pullman's books aren't nearly as popular as Rowling's. They've always gotten a lot less press, and haven't generated as much babble (though heaven knows *I* was really really looking forward to Amber Spyglass, and sat and started reading it right there in the library as soon as I spotted it.)

I've also heard that the movies will minimize the religious overtones... I hope that they're not incredibly bad as a direct result of that. For me, the religious stuff was part of what made the books so interesting!