The life, death, and resurrection of Harry Potter

In this title, Killinger examines all seven novels and observes how Rowling adheres to the Christian narrative. Examining all the Harry Potter novels, John Killinger points out the consistent way in which author J.K. Rowling follows the story of Christ in the Gospels with Harry as a Christ-figure. Rowling managed to keep this idea a secret to the end of the series, but was in fact following the Christian narrative from the beginning, which readers will recall involved Harry's being delivered amid extraordinary signs and wonders, following the death of his parents, to the home of his maternal aunt. Raised among ordinary mortals (or Muggles, as Rowling calls them), Harry doesn't discover the extent of his true powers until he attends Hogwarts School, where he is taken under the wing of headmaster Dumbledore, who is a sort of supernatural father to Harry and has an extraordinary scarlet and gold phoenix (representing the Holy Spirit) who periodically rescues Harry. The Potter stories appealed to young people all over the world with descriptions of witches and witchcraft, which outraged Christian moralists, who claimed that Harry was a poor example because he often behaved like a real schoolboy, cutting classes, telling little lies, and sometimes acting deceptively. Little did they realize that Rowling was actually following the outline of their own sacred story, a fact made clear in the final volume, where on Christmas Eve a stone statue in Harry's home town turns into a tableau of Harry and his parents (the Holy Family).