Harry Potter and the Battle for Gun Control
I am not sure I fully buy the analysis presented in this article, yet I find it very interesting, especially in light of J. K. Rowling’s twitter support of the kids and their cause. I’m going to simply put it up here for you to consider.
Considering that this is posted at a web site for a publisher of SF/Fantasy, not normally political at all, I have to say the moderators there have my sympathy.
Voldemort shouts the Killing Curse over and over, and every time he expects that he will win.
And every time, Harry moves to disarm.
The March For Our Lives was this weekend. I didn’t bring a sign, just a body that could be counted in a tally. This isn’t for me, I thought to myself. It’s for the children around me. Children who are standing with parents and friends and doing their best to still smile and laugh and make the day triumphant. That’s what we expect of children. That they must continue to be children in spite of everything. They must maintain some semblance of innocence, no matter how callous the world has become.
These children were raised on dystopia, we are told. They are growing up with Resistance fighters in Star Wars and superheroes who avenge. With Katniss Everdeen’s love for her little sister. With Maze Runner and Divergent and Uglies and The Giver and Shatter Me and Unwind and… That quote from G.K. Chesterton comes up now and again: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
But sometimes the parallels are so exact that they’re not comforting in the least.