Harry Potter Isn't Evil
Published Jan. 25, 2000, in The Monitor
Column by Matthew Webber
Some parents don’t want their children to read. Every few years, when their children finally peel themselves away from their Playstations because they actually want to read a book, these parents snatch the offending material away. Not only do these parents forbid their own children from enjoying a good book, they take it upon themselves to deprive other children from that same enjoyment. They seem to believe that their strict moral code should be everyone’s stifling value system and that they know what is best for every single child in their school district or state.
Here we go again.
The newest target for the scorn of “concerned” parents everywhere is an 11-year-old wizard named Harry Potter. Children are shutting off their TVs en masse to follow his adventures, speeding through one book and jumping to the next. The first three books in J. K. Rowling’s series have sat 1-2-3 on the New York Times bestsellers list for months. Elementary schoolteachers are reading the books to their students. There are rumors of a movie, possibly directed by Steven Spielberg. Children -- here’s something that hasn’t happened in years -- are actually recommending these books to their friends.
Everybody seems to love Harry Potter. Everybody except certain parents, that is. You know the
type: those overprotective parents who would ban Huckleberry Finn for its use of the N-word, censor the
F-word in The Catcher In the Rye and throw away a found copy of Forever for its racy scenes. The parents
for whom a PG-rated movie is hedonistic. These parents are railing against school boards to ban the book
from elementary schools in South Carolina, Georgia and Minnesota, among others.
The difference between the Harry Potter books and these (and other) classic books is that these classics
contain specific words or scenes that make them questionable (but which still do not justify the fascist
attempts to censor them) while Harry Potter, well... I read the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone and -- guess what -- I couldn't find a single evil, immoral or questionable word or scene in the entire book!
As silly as the previous challenges are, this newest challenge is the silliest yet. The Sorcerer’s Stone contains no foul language, sexual content or explicit violence. What it contains is -- oh no! -- witchcraft. And heaven forbid we let our children read about that!
Let’s hear from a parent. Colleen Allison, in a January 8 letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
wrote: “I question the motive and influence of an author who sugar-coats the occult and makes wizardry
so enticing to juveniles.” According to this rationale, if you’re going to write about the occult and
wizardry, you should make it as boring and un-enticing as you can so as not to corrupt juveniles. According
to this argument, the scene in Fantasia in which Mickey Mouse brings all those broomsticks to life is
“sugar-coating the occult” because of how enticing it is to impressionable youths.
In fact, if Allison objects to the wizardry in the Harry Potter books, she must also object to almost
every science fiction or fantasy book as well as many fairy tales and myths. That’s a lot of literature to
condemn. I wonder if Allison would object to C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, a Christian allegory that involves some -- uh oh! -- very enticing wizardry.
The wizardry in all these books is what makes the stories so captivating, especially in the case of
Harry Potter. Because of the hype, I was skeptical towards The Sorcerer’s Stone before I began to read it.
But the more I read, the more I forgot my skepticism and succumbed to pure enjoyment. There’s a reason the
Harry Potter books are so popular: they’re damn good. To censor them isn’t just un-American, it’s a huge disservice to Rowling’s talent.
When I get some free time, I plan on reading the next two books in the series. And no one’s gonna stop me from reading what I want.
