The Magic of Faerie Stories
\nClaudia Riiff Finseth<\/strong><\/p>\n\u2018Tis the season of fantasy. Films two of J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books are both on the big screen. <\/p>\n
With them comes the perennial debate on whether fantasy is \u201csafe\u201d for children. Now Christian writer Connie Neal has written books suggesting that, while she has concerns the books \u201ccould open readers to spiritual forces of darkness,\u201d she also sees \u201cBible lessons\u201d in Harry Potter (TNT 11\/16.) As a writer of fantasy and a Christian, all of this strikes me as terribly off the mark.
\nIt\u2019s true the Bible and Harry Potter share some themes. But most stories\u2014including biblical ones\u2014are made up of a relatively few themes. It is each story\u2019s unique variation on a theme that makes it wonderful in and of itself. <\/p>\n
Take, for instance, these themes in the story of the Garden of Eden: Prohibition and Banishment. In his essay on fantasy, Tolkien wrote: \u201cThou shalt not\u2014or else thou shalt depart beggared into endless regret. The gentlest \u2018nursery-tales\u2019 know it. Even Peter Rabbit was forbidden a garden, lost his blue coat, and took sick. The Locked Door stands as an eternal Temptation.\u201d <\/p>\n
That does not mean Peter Rabbit and the Garden of Eden are the same story. Tolkien says, \u201cIt is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.\u201d
\nThere is also the subject of symbolism in story. Symbols like floods and famine, light and darkness, hero and villian are in the Bible, yes, and the Koran and Jewish holy writings. Such symbols predate all three and fill contemporary stories. They are symbols as old as the human race, part of the warp and weft of all of story. <\/p>\n
On the other hand, the charge that fantasy might corrupt children seems groundless to me. All stories, religious and non-religious, realistic or fantastic, live on the same moral plane. Generally, cold-blooded murder is always wrong. Selfishness and cruelty are always bad, kindness and compassion, good. They have to be. Otherwise, the story will fail to ring true. <\/p>\n
The controversy surrounding Harry Potter seems further fueled by the misconception that, because Harry attends a school for wizards, the books encourage the occult, i.e. evil. In the classic witch story from my childhood, The Wizard of Oz, what I learned from the powerfully Wicked Witches East and West was to steer clear of evil, not seek it out. I never once thought, \u201cGee, that looks fun. Maybe I\u2019ll be a witch when I grow up.\u201d Not even Glenda, the good (and beautiful) witch, interested me in witchcraft. I actually found her rather boring. No, what I related to was the Scarecrow\u2019s desire to Understand Things, the Tin Man\u2019s wish to be Compassionate, the Lion\u2019s hope of finding Courage, and, most of all, Dorothy\u2019s longing for Home. <\/p>\n
In the same way, contemporary children relate to such themes in Harry Potter as Loyal Friendship, Finding Confidence, and Fighting Evil. I know this from my elementary and middle school age students at the summer institute where I teach. Hogwarts School of Wizardry is merely the imaginative vehicle, the framework, in which writer J. K. Rawlings explores these themes. <\/p>\n
Tolkien the devout Christian wrote: \u201cI do not think I was harmed by the horror in the fairytale setting, out of whatever dark beliefs and practices of the past it may have come. Such stories have now a mythical effect; they open a door on Other Time .\u2026\u201d He went on to say, \u201cI desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear.\u201d <\/p>\n
What few critics of fantasy seem to realize is that the villains of Hogwarts and Oz and Middle Earth have their own fears: fears of the light, the good, the hero, fears these things may be more powerful than their own dark powers, which, of course, they are. Good triumphs over evil. This does not go unnoticed by young readers. <\/p>\n
Fantasy is related to biblical stories in the same way it is related to folktale and myth and to all story, and in that also is it\u2019s value: it shows us something of the human condition. Afterall, each of us has our own Dragons to Fight.<\/p>\n
[This article first appeared in the Tacoma News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington, USA in 2002. Reprinted here by permission of the author.] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Claudia Riiff Finseth contacted us a while ago offering her articles on Tolkien, here is her second article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,153,35,38,37,152],"tags":[606],"class_list":["post-30347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fotr-book","category-tolkien-life","category-lotr-books","category-rotk-book","category-ttt-book","category-tolkien","tag-claudia-riiff-finseth"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-7Tt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}