What Is The Theme Of We Grew Up With The Boy Who Lived

We grew up with The Boy Who Lived. We waited for our Hogwarts’s acceptance letter when we turned 11, and we stayed up all night for the release of the next book and movie premiers. While Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has been read by people aged six to ninety six, the question remains: is this series literary fiction or pop fiction? Pam Belluck’s article, “For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov” defines popular fiction as “the author is in control, and the reader has a more passive role.” The Harry Potter Series, in my opinion, fits into both categories of fiction. Rowling explains everything in minute detail so that her smallest readers can enjoy her masterpiece. However, she captures the attention of adults by telling a different, more hidden story beneath the words. Between the biblical references to the famous lightening scar on

In the first book of the Torah, Genesis, it is said, “’if anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.’ And the lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.” Just as Cain’s mark protected him from danger, Harry Potter’s lightening bolt-shaped scar protects from Lord Voldemort and his evil Death Eaters. In chapter seventeen when Professor Quirrel tries to attack Harry, “Quirrel could not touch his bare skin, not without suffering terrible pain” (295). At the end of the series, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling references Jesus Christ’s cross and resurrection when Harry spends time in limbo at “Kings Cross Station” and after Voldemort announces Harry’s apparent death, Harry “sprang to his feet… and watched at Voldemort fell backwards, arms splayed, the slit pupil of the scarlet eyes rolling upward.” Through the series, Rowling references the Bible, Cerberus – the guardian of the entrance to Hades, the riddle-telling Sphinx, King Arthur, and may more well known