Week 7 Reading and Movies: Harry Potter (Movies), City of Lost Children, Time Bandits

THE NOVEL OF SPIRITUAL EDUCATION

FINALLY. HARRY POTTER WEEK. I'm just joking! While I like Harry Potter, I'm far from a an expert or fanatic, all I know is that people who are call me "a total slytherin". Anyway, the way moral and spiritual challenges are presented in Harry Potter are pretty loaded. The theme of good and evil are played with a lot in these books, and the idea of nurture vs. nature is also a big theme in the book series. The ability to talk to snakes is considered bad because it's a rare ability that the most evil wizard of all time possessed, so it's considered in the magic world a tell-tale sign of a evil being. Despite this, Harry Potter has this gift and he isn't evil, so that means abilities aren't innately evil. If so, the most evil wizard of all time wasn't evil just because of how he was born, right? Harry Potter has a great way of introducing the idea of circumstance and grey area in which everything in life resides, just waiting to be pushed to one side or the other.