File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0305, message 176


Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 19:39:51 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: [fyi] Harry Potter on the couch


HARRY POTTER'S OEDIPAL ISSUES

by Kelly Noel-Smith

--------
     "Lily, take Harry and go! It's Him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off-".

     The sound of someone stumbling from a room-a door bursting open -
     a cackle of high-pitched laughter.

     "Not Harry! Not Harry! Please not Harry!".

     "Stand aside, you silly girl ... stand aside, now . .

     "Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-Not Harry! Please ...
     have mercy ... have mercy". (Rowling, 1999, pp. 134 and 178).
--------

The Harry Potter books are extraordinarily successful. In May 2000, each of the
first three books by J. K. Rowling occupied a place within the top five of The
Times' best-sellers' list. The first edition of the fourth book, published in
July 2000, was the largest ever for children's books: a million hard-back
copies were published in the UK and 3.8 million in the US. The books are
equally successful elsewhere, having been translated into more than twenty-five
languages. The phenomenon of their success has generated debate: in Britain,
for example, Anthony Holden, a Whitbread book prize judge, threatened to resign
in June 2000 if Rowling received the prize for Harry Potter and The Prisoner of
Azkaban instead of Seamus Heaney for his translation of Beowulf; Holden wrote a
scathing article in The Observer in which he claimed Rowling's 'story lines are
predictable, the suspense minimal, the sentimental cloying every page (Did
Harry, like so many heroes before him, have to be yet another poignant orphan?)
(The Observer, 25 June 2000). Holden' s comments triggered one of the largest
collections of written responses to an article ever received by the Observer.
In America, too, the books' success has provoked reaction. Some American
parents have suggested that the Harry Potter books should be withdrawn from
schools because of their content: they believe that identification with Harry
Potter and his experiences of death and magic will encourage children to
explore violence, murder and the occult.

Full text: http://human-nature.com/free-associations/harrypotter.html

This paper appeared in Psychoanalytic Studies 3: 199-207, 2001.




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