THE MIRACLE OF HARRY POTTER

Topping the best-seller lists for almost a year, the three Harry Potter books by the Scottish author J.K. Rowling are making publishing history. Millions of copies have been sold in hardcover around the world. These Harry Potter stories have captured the imagination of teachers, parents and children alike.

The miracle is that many children are choosing to be read to by parents or teachers, rather than watch TV or play video games. For once in recent years, words on a page are successfully competing with numerous other questionable distractions. There is a certain power in great writing that invites the reader to enter another world. Few children's books have possessed that quality. What comes to mind are the classics, the children's stories of EB White, and the fairy tales of Grimm and Anderson.

The late famous child analyst, Bruno Bettelheim, wrote an impressive book on the power of great fairy tales which have been carried forward to us from centuries ago to the present time. He points out that fairy tales are, for children, an introduction to the real world, a world of evil stepmothers, witches and wolves who eat children. Not that these witches and wolves are to be taken literally. Rather, they are abstractions to be taken figuratively. Evil stepmothers exist, but they don't possess demoniacal powers. Yet in the child's mind, mother has eyes in the back of her head. She has enormous power and the child feels what it is--- helpless, vulnerable, dependent, ignorant of the ways of the adult world.

Hansel and Gretel are turned out by an evil stepmother while a hapless and weak father allows this to happen. They become lost in the woods, a primal fear, but use their ingenuity to find their way back home. Meanwhile they must outfox a witch who likes nothing better for a meal than a succulent child. The child who listens to the story or reads it has the satisfaction that it is able to protect itself and survive the most drastic situations. The classic fairy tales do not hide the fact that there is evil in the world, and insist that these situations can and must be dealt with. They let the child know it has potential creative resources to surmount adversity. The fairy tales prove that eventually right will prevail because in the end they will live happily ever after.

To bring about this happy state requires patience, persistence and hard work. The good life does not come easy to fairy tale protagonists. They must survive many trials which may be at one time physically painful, at another time horribly scary. The child who is familiar with the classic fairy tales begins to take confidence in the belief that for the most part, it will emerge triumphant. If he or she can think it, it can be.

Such is literature--- the written word is our key to the outside world. The written word enables the wisdom of the ages to be passed down, so that each successive generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessors. The bible is full of magic and wizardry, but we accept this as The Word of God. The mysteries must be accepted by faith.

Curiously, some religious zealots are threatened by Harry Potter. They have been brainwashed to think the devil is always operative, always seeking to undermine what is right and good, that he is trying to establish an evil world based on man's predisposition to follow its instincts with free will. The wizards in Harry Potter are labeled 'pagan' as if that word condemns it. Will these same parents proscribe the Greek gods? Shall Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" be banned from school curriculums as full of pagan sorcery? What of Appollo and Zeus, Aphrodite and Prometheus? And what of Shakespeare's, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (real fairies, people turned into animals), "Hamlet" (seeing ghosts) and "A Christmas Carol?" (more ghosts).

Harry Potter and his classmates are in a school for wizards. As in ancient fairy tales, Harry is alone in the world, his parents having mysteriously been killed by some evil force. Children fantasize the death of their parents and wonder what would become of them. The Harry Potter stories say in effect that the death of your parents is a terrible thing, but he still survives by his wits and his learning wizardry. He uses a magic cloak to remain invisible while he can check out his enemies. What child doesn't enjoy the fantasy of being invisible, so that they can spy on things that are forbidden and curious?

It is too bad that a tiny percentage of religious fanatics are hell bent to prevent their children from being sullied or warped by these excellent modern fairy tales. They may forget this is FICTION. Not only do they question the value of the first Amendment, but they try to erode the value of the separation of church and state. These few should not be allowed to dictate curriculae or ban books.

Dr Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the Wayne County Medical Society. He welcomes comments at his email address--- vbloom@comcast.net.