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J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(Bloomsbury, 2003)
Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw
It was an out of the way store and so we didn't have to wait as long as some customers did in more popular bookshops, but I lined up after 9am Saturday June 21 with other eager J.K. Rowling readers and purchased my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I even got one of the specially-marked `DO NOT OPEN BEFORE 21st JUNE 2003' book boxes as a collector's item. Before last Saturday 195 million copies of Rowling's Books I-IV had been sold in 55 languages across more than 200 countries. With Book V there is more Harry Potter around - much more with its 766 pages and some 13 million books already printed - one million of them in Australia.
In this latest volume of Rowling's planned 7 book saga, Harry Potter and his friends do yet another year at Hogwarts School. There is a new teacher to hate, new tricks and antics to get up to, and new spells, games and fun that will keep readers intrigued for hours. The book has the most involved battle scene in all of the five books (involving about twenty witches and wizards attacking backwards and forwards). What most captures the imagination, though, is the challenges of growing up. Harry and his classmates are up to their 5th year 'OWLs' (Ordinary Wizarding Level exams), and Harry struggles with adolescence, self-esteem, teasing, longing for affirmation from a mentor, trying to figure girls out, cramming for exams, and losing someone close to him. At one point Harry thought he should have been chosen for a special responsibility (rather than a friend) and he worried anxiously, `Did this make him as arrogant as Draco Malfoy? Did he think himself superior to everyone else? Did he really believe he was better than Ron?' (p.151) Some Christians criticise Harry's situational ethics, but his struggles over decision-making are those that young (and old) can readily identify with.
Apart from adolescent struggles, there was concern after Book IV that the books were getting more graphically evil. Rowling admits her portrayal of evil is getting darker, and that this is necessary to show the true nature of evil (as bad and to be fought against). However, I found Book V to be not as dark as Book IV, but it did deal in more depth with dying and grief. These themes of death, grief, emotional struggle and appropriate use of power are not always neatly resolved but are definitely worth exploring in conversation with our children and with young people around us.
A key lesson that came through is the importance of pulling together. Whether on the Quidditch sport field or in the battle against 'He who can't be named', unity is important. When Harry accepted his destiny, he went to Hogwarts to learn and equip himself for the tasks ahead. This year Hogwart's Sorting Hat adds to its usual start-of-term song this warning to stand together:
Though condemned I am to split you
Still I worry that it's wrong ...
For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes
And we must unite inside her
Or we'll crumble from within (pp. 186-187).
Professor Dumbledore and others who are pledged to fight evil band together and commit to one another in the Order of the Phoenix. The Phoenix is a mythological creature that rises to life from its own ashes, and is known as the `resurrection bird.' The phoenix in the Harry Potter series has saved the life of both Harry and Dumbledore. The bird and its potential for new life is an appropriate symbol of their common struggle for a better world.
As Christians, we gather in resurrection communities that could be called a kind of `Order of the Phoenix' but are more commonly known as churches. I'll be exploring the themes from this latest book with young people in our church, and lining up again next year for Book VI.
Reviewed originally in Zadok Perspectives No.80 (Spring, 2003), p.24,
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