When J.K. Rowling announced that the Harry Potter books had intentional Christian images, I was getting ready to write on the topic. It was interesting to hear her thoughts, but she had already written seven books full of Christian images.
Her announcement added nothing to her books, but only confirmed that her use of such images was intentional, which any careful reader already strongly suspected. Books and reading them are my life’s work . . . and so any way to provoke thought on how to read a book is good!
I was going to write a post warning that a text was (once out there) more than just “author’s intent” (and to take less joy in a throw away interview than in good reading habits of hundreds of pages of text) when another Potter story came to my attention. It had a much better “hook.”
I chose the topic that was getting all the Internet buzz (by the time I got around to blogging): her announcement that Dumbledore “was gay.”
No.
He is not, at least in the books.
He is also not heterosexual. As a reader and interpretor of the text, I am given no textual reason to care or to identify his sexual preference.
As I said at the end of my last, Dumbledore is simply not presented in that way. Other characters are (Snape). He is not.
Rowling made her choice.
My simple point was that a reader has a book, some information regarding the author’s intention, and background information about the culture (amongst other things) to use in reading the book. Author’s intention about a finished book is important, but so are other factors (such as language, cultural baggage, unintended meanings, and editorial choices).
It was too late for Rowling to “out” Dumbledore.
I would have said the same thing if Rowling had written books where the Christian themes were very hard to see or had been totally left out . . . despite a deep desire on Rowling’s part to think of the books as Christian.
If the Christianity were as hard to see as the homosexuality, I would be just as dubious.
In the case of Christianity, she was confirming what anyone could have known (or at least very strongly suspected) who reads a great deal of mythic or magical literature.
In the case of Dumbledore, she was announcing something not even Christian critics of the book (the extreme and dubious kind) had noticed: Dumbledore was gay.
(Most of the evidence presented is consistent with non-sexual friendship. Some friends are lovers, as I am with my wife, but most friends are not.)
This failure to include a thought she had in the book will be interesting to those wondering about Rowling’s psychology or the state of Western culture in the early twenty-first century, but it doesn’t help much with interpreting the canon.
Of course, the fact that she cannot now declare Dumbledore gay (unless she writes a new book) does not mean he is heterosexual. We know no more (and care no more) about his interests in this area (as far as the Rowling canon goes) than we do about his preferences in Muggle politics.
Is Dumbledore Labor?
Write fan-fiction if you must imagine an answer, but the canon does not care.
Common Comments: Christian Images
Now whenever I comment on the Christian ideas in the Harry Potter books, more skeptical readers often advance one of two types of arguments.
First, some skeptics believe Christians see Christian images too easily in literature. This is probably true, just as (in my experience) feminist readers see women’s issues everywhere, queer theorists see gay rights issues too easily, and Republicans think everything is about their brand of politics . . . if we are not careful we see our own beliefs or concerns mirrored everyplace.
But surely everyone will concede that the West has been immersed in the Christian religious tradition for centuries. It is true (I celebrate it!) that the “dying god” theme is found in many cultures. I am familiar with it in Greek, Norse or Egyptian literature, but the overwhelmingly pervasive image in the West of a “dying god” is Jesus Christ. There is a Christian cross looming over most town centers in the West and not a shrine to Baldar.
A skeptic may be right (though I don’t think so) that Christianity owes its motifs (all of them) to other faiths, but we are the faith that spread the motifs (in the forms they exist today) most widely. There are after all one billion or so Christians and not so many followers of Apollo today.
Some readers are so Christophobic that they cannot see what is obvious: Western art, literature, music, and other high culture is super-saturated with Christian themes and images. Folk react to it, reject it, but cannot escape it. A fairly secular university such as Oxford is full of buildings and art that remind students with sermons in stained glass and stone of the Christian myth.
If someone tells a story about a death on a cross, set in modern times, he is doing so in a culture where the cross carries an overwhelming Christian sub-text. To pretend he can ignore it is naive in the extreme . . . and the very vitriol poured on Christianity and Christians is a sign of it. It does not mean Christianity is true, just that it cannot be easily ignored.
Anybody who simply dismisses the importance of the Bible or Jesus to Western culture with an insult or an aside is ignorant. Anybody who writes in the West about a dying god either knows he is playing into a pervasive and powerful cultural myth or he is a fool. Anyone who reads a story about about “King’ Cross”, death, and coming back to life and does not at least wonder about Christian themes is so Christophobic that he cannot be trusted to see the obvious.
Common Comments II: Liking Pagan Books
Second, a certain kind of skeptic assumes I like Potter books only because I think they contain many Christian ideas.
I don’t know many people who pick their light reading by ideology and cannot enjoy a book or blog from another point of view, but most of the ones I do know are the types who are angered to the point of profanity and insult by written Christianity.
Since I am Christian, I am cheered by the Potter book’s Christian content, it has taught me a good bit, but that is not the only reason to like the books.
The Potter books would be a ripping good read whether or not they contained Christian themes and images. I grew up loving Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” series. I still like them a good bit and I have never suspected them of being Christian or depending (at least very directly) on Christian themes or images. In fact, it is easier to see them as opposed to traditional Christianity.
Susan Cooper’s books are pretty good (in some ways better than Rowlings). They are also less Christian. If Cooper suddenly announced that Will Stanton was actually a closet pro-life activist on the side, I would not care in terms of my interpretation of Will as a character in the series.
I am pro-life, but who cares about Will’s politics. They just don’t impact Cooper’s story.
So it is not that I don’t like what Rowling said (about Dumbledore) and so am not listening.
I am listening, I just think it too late to add to books already written.
I am interested in all of Rowling’s opinions and narrative about how she wrote her fascinating books.
Author’s announcements of what they wrote can, however, be tricky.
Tolkien and Rowling
I know from studying Tolkien’s letters that an author is not always consistent (as Tolkien was not) in how he remembers his own process of creation. I think Tolkien wished (in later life) that his work were more Christian, but the explicit Christian imagery of LOTR is not overwhelming.
(It is much stronger in Rowling.)
Tolkien was a Christian who wrote a book that springs from his Christian world-view and is compatible with it, but does not rely on it directly very often. (I am only discussing works in the LOTR series.)
I don’t love the LOTR any less as a result . . . nor do I pretend that there is overwhelming direct Christian imagery in the books. It is easy enough to discuss the “myth” of LOTR without knowing much about Christianity . . . though deeper discussions will come to Tolkien’s Christian assumptions about the world in the end.
(Much to the irritation of the Christophobic . . . )
I like Tolkien better than Rowling, but Rowling has more direct Christian literary/mythical references than Tolkien. (Oddly, I would contend her deep theology is less coherent than Tolkien’s. . . but this is for another discussion.)
Socrates and Dumbledore
For some reason a certain sort of Internet skeptic thinks all Christians only read and enjoy books with which they agree. I enjoy “The Clouds” (Aristophanes) and have laughed out loud reading it (something rarely done reading blog posts on Harry Potter!), but don’t agree with any of it. In fact, the illiberal and anti-intellectual attitudes in it may have contributed to the death of my hero, Socrates.
Which brings me to homosexuality and heroes . . .
My third favorite book of all time (to read and teach) “Symposium” has Socrates expressing homosexual desires. He does not act on them, but he has them. That is plain from the text. One does not need Plato to have left a private letter to point it out, it is part of his work. He did not censor out the homosexuality.
I don’t have to agree with everything a man does . . . and especially am in no position to judge anyone’s desires (!). . . to think him a hero. If Dumbledore had been gay (as Rowling now describes him), my thoughts about him (as a fictional character) would be unchanged.
Socrates was a great man. Dumbledore (as a fictional character) was a great mentor and friend to Harry Potter. He is a good example (as I have written elsewhere) for good character and is an appealing person.
He is my favorite character in the series and would have been so if Rowling’s recent “revelations” had been put in the book.
Rowling made a different choice than Plato.
Plato made Socrates’ sex desires part of the story. Rowling did not. It is too late (unless she writes another book) to change this.
As any study of the life of King David will demonstrate, this ability to love and admire people with whom one has serious disagreements (disapprovals and disappointments) is a long term Christian (gained from Judaism) ideal.
Finally . . .
What most disturbs me about authors who keep revisiting their work?
It is the thing that irritates me about Lucas going back and reworking scenes in Star Wars IV (much, much more irritating than anything Rowling has said) and then acting as if this is the only “Star Wars.”
Lucas made his movie. He is free to make a second go . . . revising anything he did not like in the first. I do not dispute his right (or Rowlings) to make any number of changes, revisions, or additions. This does not mean that we have to go with the “new version” or forget the old one.
In the first version of Star Wars, Han was a tougher, less ethical (from a Judeo-Christian) point of view, man but that was the film as we had it. Lucas was in his rights to make the second film, but viewers are in their rights to prefer keeping the first vision over the second.
In that case, I prefer (dramatically) the less noble Han (the first one who shoots first and talks later) to the “better” one.
Even if Rowling writes or revises her books, we are still free to prefer the old ones. It is not that we are not listening to Rowling . . . we just prefer her books as she wrote them.