Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone;
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
By J.K. Rowling
(both Bloomsbury, £4.99 paperback)

This is the month I review the Turner Art Prize, which I usually find fascinating; but the main contender this year has gone well beyond my personal pale. If you want an analysis of her stained and stinky bed, currently heavily tipped (in every sense), you'll have to find a less fragile critic than me.

Instead, I have been reading the biggest children's book phenomenon for a very long time: Harry Potter.

It's been a pleasant surprise. The writing is skilful and unpatronising, making all the right demands on children and giving adults a very enjoyable read too. The series has been compared to C.S. Lewis's Narnia cycle; Rowlings' stories of the boy who finds he comes of wizard stock and begins an eight-year course at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are even superior to Lewis in some (technical) ways; not least the perfectly maintained authorial voice - Lewis occasionally addresses adults over his child reader's head.

It would be interesting to know what other authors she has been reading. The stories are full of resonances. Enid Blyton, certainly; Hogwarts is a bit like Malory Towers, and similar moral fables are enacted there: the nasty swotty girl who becomes a nice girl, the arrogant young man from a rich family who mocks others' poverty, and so on. T.H. White (who was also good on owls) and Terry Pratchett are both lurking in there, and the Magic Academy is a common theme in computer and fantasy games. There are echoes of Wind in the Willows, lots of Alan Garner, and, in the second book, a very Gollum-ish (and very well drawn) elf, making one suspect J.K. Rowling is a Tolkien fan. Narnia, too: Dudley Dursley is almost an extended exposition of Eustace Scrubb.

Plagiarism isn't an issue here; the author may never have read any of those authors. For Rowling's achievement is to contribute to the rich vein of children's fantasy literature, using stock devices and standard elements (just like Homer did, and Shakespeare), with literary skill and the captivating power of a born storyteller. The twist at the end of the first story is a common device, but not all pull it off with such style. Terry Brooks, Neil Garman and others have portrayed the magical-world-in-the-midst-of-the-everyday; Rowling does it too, excellently, with her wizard's shop and goblin bank in London and the Hogwarts Express leaving from King's Cross (admittedly it leaves from platform 9 3/4, reached by walking through the wall between platforms 9 and 10).

But Rowling has plenty of originality, for example, her many genuinely comic creations, like the manic Whomping Willow and the gloriously insufferable Gilderoy Lockhart.

Some Christians are likely to be dismayed by the subject-matter: witchcraft and the magical arts. In South Carolina, for example, some Christians have campaigned for the books to be banned.

The best summary of Rowlings' moral and spiritual position comes at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in a discussion of good-and-evil versus power. Rowling is by no means articulating Christianity, but she is clearly on the 'right side'; magic, presented as morally neutral, is nevertheless shown to demand morally responsible handling. In Harry Potter asnd the Chamber of Secrets she sharpens the focus further, and evil takes tangible and frightening shape and is appropriately loathed. All to the good; too many modern children's stories trivialise evil, and a criticism of Rowling's first book is that she makes magic a kind of game; clearly the book's spiritual dimension, it is a war that is largely irrelevant to ordinary humankind and the foe is unconvincing. The villains of the sequel are worthy of one's fear, and that's no bad thing.

Yet I'm left with some doubts. Is Rowling contributing to the general trend in most modern fantasy, to make the supernaturally evil into harmless entertainment? In this sense she follows the disturbing Demon-Headmaster, Vampire-Next-Door, Wickedest-Witch tradition that makes children comfortable with the occult. But there are real witches in this country who believe passionately in what in Harry Potter is part of the wallpaper; probably there are actual Magic Academies of a kind; and there are certainly a significant number of people who take broomsticks very seriously indeed. And there's a worrying bleak dark side to the humour: the ongoing theme of mandrakes is simply very nasty indeed. Kids will love it - but should they?

Everybody involved with children should look at these books. Asked recently how I would feel as a Christian parent about them if my children were under ten years old again, I had to confess I wasn't sure. They touch elegantly on profound matters, but don't really tell you what to do with them after the book is finished.

Maybe that's where the role of the Christian parent is most crucial; as in most areas of children's recreation today, Harry Potter's excellencies don't come without problems requiring careful thought and some considerable prayer. I haven't read the third Harry Potter yet, but I do wonder where this series is heading.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

David Porter

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