The end credits begin to roll across the screen and the lights come on. Three people begin to stretch. They have attended a Harry Potter movie marathon at the local library, and despite having been awake for seventeen hours and needing to use the bathroom, they have more important topics on their minds. Friedrich Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis, and T.S. Eliot have insight that they want to share. When they all gather to discuss the films, Nietzsche immediately starts sharing.
Nietzsche: The philosophy behind the movies makes me sick. You can clearly see how delusion spread through the resistance. After all, the Deatheaters were merely attempting to exert their will and show how the notion that all wizards are equal was insanity. One cannot be faulted for trying to exert his will, even if he does not triumph.
Lewis [ponders Nietzsche’s statement]: I have to disagree with you because I believe the roles to be reversed. The situation is similar to what happens on Thulcandra, and “I may tell you that our world is very bent” (120). Voldemort is like the corrupted Oyarsa of the Silent Planet because both are power hungry and have instilled false ideals into the minds and hearts of men. Voldemort led the Deatheaters astray just like Oyarsa corrupted humanity.
Nietzsche [rolls his eyes at the rubbish Lewis spouts]: Voldemort and his Deatheaters aren’t evil. They’ve simply identified a problem within the wizarding community that the rest fail to see, which is the superiority purebloods are mixing with lowly muggles. The Deatheaters are the intellectually superior who have been shut out from the world because the people do not see the truthfulness of what they offer (127).
[While the two men are bickering, Eliot has been listening with his eyes shut, absorbing the conversation. He slowly opens them and adds his thoughts to the argument during a break in the conversation.]
Eliot: I wonder if you both are missing the point. Sure, the story is about a war between good and evil, but there’s more to it than that. If you examine it closely, you can see that it also discusses different types of death. The Deatheaters died to their sense of morality, giving them the ability to mercilessly slaughter their kind. If it weren’t for Voldemort’s teachings, they wouldn’t have been lead to that death. Dumbledore’s army, on the other hand, was willing to sacrifice themselves to ensure that the former kind of death did not spread.
[At this comment, Nietzsche’s face becomes the color of a fresh tomato. He cannot believe the foolishness of Eliot’s words.]
Nietzsche: Missing the point! More like you are. The authority in the wizarding community suppressed the truth so much that the Deatheaters had no choice but to resort to violent means, which they rightfully could, since they needed to to show that purebloods are superior. They knew that they needed to strengthen their community. In fact, the rebellion is a prime example of how poisoned with false doctrine their world had become. It reminds me of ours, in fact, so full of falsity thanks to that lie called Christianity. “I look around me: there is no longer a word left of what was formerly called ‘truth’” (161-162). Both the real world and the fictional world of Harry Potter both have been deceived, and some have taken it upon themselves to try and fix it!
Eliot: You seek for knowledge and for correcting the wrongs of the world because, to you, it is crumbling around you. Indeed, in some ways that is true. “The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank” (11.173-174). However, I believe that saving others is difficult when you yourself are dead. You fail to see that what the Deatheaters brought was not redemption for a lost world, but darkness, misery and death.
Lewis: Well said, Eliot. Nietzsche, you wish to blame the problems you see in life on Christianity as a result of your ideals. However, while you think others are misled, I say that it is actually you who is the one who has been led astray. The bent Oyarsa seeks to take what was good and right and twist it for his own purposes. Similarly, Voldemort took the twisted belief that all wizards are not equal and decided to kill for it.
[Nietzsche, at this point, is starting to not think straight, and he despises how his words are falling on seemingly deaf ears.]
Nietzsche: “We [the Hyperboreans] have discovered happiness, we know the road, we have found the exit out of whole millenia of labyrinth” (127). I am attempting to show you the way, yet you refuse to take it. Why can you not accept that my intention is to lead you to the light, like how Voldemort tried to show the magic community that muggles poison it?
Eliot: Are they really so different? Sure, one group has more magic blood than the half-bloods and muggles, but they are all subject to the same ailments and all physically die in the end. Death comes for us all, even if we do not expect it. “Gentile or Jew / O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you” (16.319-321). He did not see his death coming, just like Voldemort, but it still did. In the end, despite their beliefs, they will all perish.
Lewis: So, Nietzsche, if you do not see value in people it’s perfectly acceptable to toss them aside like scum? It’s similar to what happened in Out of the Silent Planet with Harry. The villain believes sacrificing him is acceptable because he’s “[i]ncapable of serving humanity and only too likely to propagate idiocy” (21). What happens if everyone views someone else in that light? Then all of humanity is viewing itself as garbage and the world becomes a more dismal place due to the diminishing of joy.
Nietzsche [stands up and slams table in frustration]: I’m done with this conversation and I have had enough of both of you. Why did I ever think seeing Harry Potter with both of you was a good idea? I’m leaving!
As the three authors departed ways, all experience different emotions. Lewis is saddened by the fact that Nietzsche has been led so far from the truth. Nietzsche cannot believe the obliviousness of the other two and storms off. Eliot, well, he likes how well the films portray different kinds of death and wishes to not be involved in another disagreement between the other two.
CURTAIN
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