The popular fictional series of J.K. Rowling offers valuable lessons for life, along with ominous warnings about human nature. What might we learn?
Harry Potter: Our kids grew up with Harry Potter, the hero of Rowlings’ famous literary series. Beginning in 1997, I looked forward to reading a chapter (or more!) to my kids for bedtime. From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (book one) all the way through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (book seven), our nightly ritual brought angst and laughter along with sweet life lessons of honesty, loyalty, goodness and the power of friendship.
David Jordan
Along with Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger, we became intimately acquainted with a host of other fascinating friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We also learned to despise the unpleasant, vindictive characters inhabiting the Slytherins, one of the four school “houses” named after the founders of Hogwarts.
Salazar Slytherin consistently was remembered as a clever but dangerous part of those early four. Subsequently, the members of Slytherin House that would bear his name bore striking traits.
They were unsavory personalities, sometimes cruel, always unhappy and usually vindictive, callous, exclusive and small-minded. Humor and laughter came only at the expense of others. Bullying and belittling animated the psyche of Slytherin House.
The trajectory of these spiteful Slytherin characters migrated over the course of the story in the direction of Voldemort. In the author’s artful telling, he ultimately becomes their malevolent cult leader and a personification of evil. He cares for no one, uses all those around him and is concerned solely with his ultimate power.
Rowlings’ playful but sharp insights into human nature and her deep assessment of what a strong, highly influential personality might do remains highly instructive.
The real Salazar: Antonio de Oliveria Salazar was the dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. His legacy of corruption, cruelty, paranoia and secret police control echoes still throughout that lovely country.
Antonio de Oliveria Salazar (Wikipedia)
Rowling spent significant time in Porto, Portugal. She wrote much of her first installment of the Harry Potter series from that scenic city overlooking the Douro River. Her insights into the dynamics of Salazar Slytherin, those in his house and Voldemort are not just creative imaginings. Real stories from real people filled her notebooks with traumatic remembrances of what the actual Salazar did throughout his 36-year rule.
Present day Portugal: My wife and I enjoyed a recent vacation in Portugal. Taxi drivers and restaurant workers, museum docents, business owners and lots of other ordinary folks often volunteered accounts of family members still traumatized by the Salazar years. Even students at the University of Coimbra (founded in 1290 and the model for Hogwarts student attire of capes, along with the much of the architecture and rituals of Hogwarts) shared how accurate Rowlings’ depiction of Salazar Slytherin and his Hogwarts legacy was to what they had heard about those authoritarian years.
She eerily mirrored in words the tragic realities regular folks had heard or seen from their mothers, fathers or grandparents.
Only in the last decade has Portugal begun to recover adequately. Yet lingering effects of poverty, widespread and untreated PTSD, lack of teachers, poor education and long-delayed infrastructure improvements still ripple throughout the land.
The dictatorship’s realities: For the real Salazar, honest education was to be feared. Only indoctrination with happy propaganda related to his New State (Estado Novo) policies could be allowed. He crushed the free press, repressed the well-educated, arrested “outsiders,” tortured those with “subversive” thoughts and normalized oppression.
His largest investment was in foreign military interventions, forcing more than 200,000 young Portuguese men into appalling, intractable wars in Angola, Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau) and Mozambique. The country lost countless lives and much needed treasure, while creating chaos, resentment, horrors, appalling loss of life and dire poverty abroad.
Salazar’s end: Like most dictators, it was predictable. His severe rule reduced a beautiful country to ruin, causing years of dysfunction and laborious recovery. His final two years of life were from a bed where aides printed out a special newspaper for him.
This pretended “real” news told of great accomplishments and what they thought he wanted to hear. Each day as he lay dying, his lackeys fed him the very lies and propaganda he forced on his country.
Standing for the good: Parallels to our time rise from these gloomy aspects of an autocrat’s legacy. However, like Harry Potter and his friends, we can stand for the good, keep telling the truth, work passionately for justice, live out compassion with openness and kindness. And we can do so with expanded friendships, deepened humility and a healthy sense of humor (to laugh at ourselves along the way).
We can still make a difference.
Who knows? Maybe the Slytherins in this current administration’s orbit won’t have to end their days reading fanciful accounts to their former leader disconnected from reality. But they might.
David Jordan serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga.