A flashback to an author who was a struggling single parent and flat broke, soon to become a world renowned author because of a series of books they wrote, not expecting anyone to even like them. Sounds like your average run of the mill author right? Wrong. The author I am speaking of is none other than Joanne Kathleen "J.K." Rowling, the architect of the now famous Harry Potter series. The series has reached 200 countries and/or territories, been transcribed in nearly 70 languages worldwide with an eye-popping 400 million copies of the books sold worldwide. There, however is one issue that has been raised since the first book's inception: Whether or not the series is affecting children's minds in a negative way due to the consistent portrayal of witchcraft.
As I write this article, the question of how is witchcraft involved in the inaugural book becomes a hot button to discuss among parents. Well, for starters, a tabby cat is sitting on the wall seems normal enough, that is until that night, when said cat transforms into a grown woman, which certainly constitutes shape shifting, a mild form of witchcraft, which could lead to moral concerns among parents. The second instance of forms of witchcraft is when another character appears on a flying motorcycle, which again would certainly constitute witchcraft and maybe a subconscious fear of flying via the parents. The next form of "witchcraft" that we see is when Harry is at the zoo with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, and he manages to make the glass vanish without trying, while a subtle mention of witchcraft, hopefully parents were not up in arms over such a minor detail.
I could sit here all day and dissect every tiny bit of known witchcraft, however big or small, but that would be a mindless few paragraphs about the entire book itself. Right now, I want to move into whether or not the psychoanalytical factor of parents conscious and their subconscious minds interact at any point in time during the reading of any of the Harry Potter books. This has to be true as there have been dozens, if not hundreds of articles regarding the Catholic Church and Harry Potter because there certainly have been a number of parents who are pro-religion that have sworn by the fact that the series is evil, bad for a child's mind, etc. I will gladly cover everything good about the series in the next paragraph as it teaches so many moral lessons that many parents do not seem understand, however subconsciously.
What the series has taught us however, is that you can choose to be light or dark, there is no in between. Some examples from the series are: Harry, who though was born to a witch and wizard, was raised by rotten non-magical people, he could have been a rotten low life student, however, as many theories suggest, he takes after his mother in many regards. Another character is Draco Malfoy, as he was a sneering snob and flat out jerk all throughout, then in the penultimate novel, he shows a lighter side. How so? By be unsure as to whether it was Harry and Hermione when they were captured by Voldemort's supporters, perhaps due to him not wanting to witness anymore death and destruction, perhaps also a subconscious want to be at peace with the world. The other character that showed us light and dark, was Sirius who was deemed to be a murderer and insane, etc. However, as he stated that he would have rather died that betray his best friend shows with undeniable evidence that he was always a light with a dark background solely based on his family name.
With these factors in mind, one has to ask themselves: When do parents stop being so conscious about their own diminutive and narrow mindsets that only allow them to see the bad in the series and when does their subconscious take over and allow them, as Sirius said that there is only light and dark in our world. Because, in a nutshell, when it boils down to whether or not we believe in witchcraft in the realm of real and make believe,it doesn't matter when we see the good that can come out of such a compelling series that has captured the hearts and minds of a generation over. No matter how old or young we are, we'll dust off our nearest Harry Potter book, read it through a few times and come to realize that though our moral compass may be slightly dented, there is no reason that we cannot see reason and turn over a new leaf while fulfilling Sirius' comment about the fact that there is only light and dark in our world.
