AmericanPapist Comments
Interesting. Michael O'Brien has written similar comments.
http://studiobrien.com/site/inde...task=view&
id=21
Great minds thinks alike, I guess. :)
When I first read the title, I thought, Harry Potter has a wife named Melanie? I need to re-read that last book...
I've read the links and I can't say I agree. I may be mistaken, but I do seem to remember him getting into trouble for things he had done wrong even though the outcome was good. If I'm correct, then a large portion of the arguement would seem to lose validity.
I'm with Shane... Harry's errors more often then not have negative repercussions. Does he get punished for them by Dumbledore? Not usually, but that's after the natural consequences of his actions already work out their effects.
For another take on the HP series, I heartily recommend the book _Finding God in Harry Potter_ (by Eastern Orthodox layman John Granger) and the podcast series "The Secrets of Harry Potter" by Dutch priest Fr. Roderick Vonhogen. Granger argues that Rowling writes in the Inkling tradition, and hence puts the books in the neighborhood of _The Lord of the Rings_ and _The Chronicles of Narnia_.
Without wanting to get into the whole argument (I would have to reread the books) a lot of adults/parents are concerned because Harry frequently acts as if it is him vs the adults. If he were a real child who had spent 11 years with a hostile foster family, how much trust would he have?
Harry makes mischief in book 5 because he has a "saving people thing" and - spoilers ahead - his godfather ended up dead. Harry's father James made Snape's life [even more] miserable in his schoolyear, which left Snape hating him, which resulted in the long term in the James's and his wife's death. So much for no repercussions.
Harry usually breaks school rules, not state law nor much less moral law. Usually.
I think I just discovered a new reason to hate the Time Turner thing in book 3: not only was it anti-climatic and clichéd, but morally ambiguous (read: immoral) as well! But then Harry didn't know what he was doing; he was just following Dumbledore's order (who of course knew full well that using the Time-Turner like that was illegal). Hermione did know, however. And speaking of Hermione - what she did to Marietta in book 5 was horrible and unexcusable, not to mention ineffective since it didn't stop Marietta from spilling the beans. I read an essay which said that Hermione was becoming more and more like Umbridge, and therefore had punishment coming her way, as Umbridge got.
I think that we must wait 'till the last book to lay down the verdict. And also, we must keep in mind that Rowling never intended this for children; rather, she wrote something she herself could enjoy.
And in case you're interested, that essay is here: http://www.mugglenet.com/editori...ower/
nt43.shtml
Is it immoral to break the civil law to save an innocent person from dying/having their soul sucked out by a Dementor?
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