2nd
Watched Half-Blood Prince.
“Ms. Rowling is creating a masterful alchemical drama, satire, manners-and-morals fiction with components of detective stories, epic journeys, Arthurian romance, and Christian fantasy. Her readers are not looking for the “edifying entertainment” peddled by an industry “Christian youth” and “Family” marketplace that Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, and Williams could hardly have imagined (if Narnia and Middle Earth are now the show pieces and touchstones of this industry). She is not writing to the audience that is looking for pious distraction or “literary faith-buttressing.”
What she is doing, however, is drawing from the depths, height, and width of the English literary tradition, a Christian tradition beyond commercial conventions, to write stories that affect her readers profoundly. She may not make the spiritually lame walk but her readers with good hearts are encouraged, even heartened by their engagement with her stories and their identification with the heroes they find there. Experiencing vicariously in the imagination Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s struggles, changes, and their transcendence of prejudice, magical mores, personal failings, even their fear of death, through their love, sacrifice, and moral courage, readers of Harry Potter are different and better people after their time spent at Hogwarts.”
