[erianne]

Has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance between Voldemort and Hitler? Voldemort- half muggle, but wants to kill all muggles and all half-bloods who aren't "pure" wizards. Sounds like Hitler, who was half Jew himself but was bent on their extermination anyway. Voldemort also wants to take over the world. Can this all be coincidence?

[FitzChivalry]

Hitler had some jewish great grandmother or something, he wasn't really half jewish.

[Shehzad]

Plus I'd rather not go there - there's always the danger of over-analysing a book.

[Sammie]

I always thought you were a 'whole' jew if ur mother was a jew, and if she wasn't, you weren't. Is this wrong???

[James Barclay]

Nasty villain, wants to kill those he sees as inferior and take over the world. Hitler is one example only of such a fairly common storyline.

Don't read into it what almost certainly isn't there and if there are similarities are almost certainly unconscious on the part of the author.

[Steven Savile]

Don't read into it what almost certainly isn't there and if there are similarities are almost certainly unconscious on the part of the author

_____________________________________________

Or conversly, don't neglect the possibility that there is more to a children's book than meets the eye. There is every possibility that JK Rowling deliberately decided that Potter could be used to educate the children in a way that school often fails to when teachers lack the spark to fire the imagination. Remember, boys love HP as much as girls, and traditionally boys just don't read, so I wouldn't be so quick as to dismiss the similarity. All characters have a base somewhere. I must confess I've never read Potter, so I could be wrong, but you never know where the inspiration came from, or what influences she's allowed to flower, it would be a disservice to the author to say that the intention was almost certainly not there, or purely unconscious. JK Rowling has proved herself time and again the most popular with all age ranges. I have a feeling very little of what she does is subconscious...

[This message has been edited by Kane (edited September 20, 2001).]

[Alucard]

Hey Kane, if you haven't read it, I reccomend you give The harry potter Books a shot. I was about as skeptical as can be when my friend lent it to me, figuring it was going to be like sweet valley high with wizards(or something along those lines....), but even going into the books thinking I wouldn't be interested, i really enjoyed them, each novel more than the last. This is quite a feat considering that I was starting the books practically looking for reasons to put it down and call it crap, but I kept reading it, not even really realizing it. It was, without a doubt, the biggest literary surprise in my life, so i reccomend you give them a try. Might just surprise you too....

[James Barclay]

Kane, I'm not doubting that JKR will have introduced themes entirely deliberately - good vs evil, the evil of repression of the weak, not taking what you see at face value etc...

I'm just concerned at the preciseness of the comment on Hitler. And also that it is assumed by some readers that writers always hide meanings, allegories, or include metaphors for society in their work.

I wrote a short story years ago. It concerned birds flying around houses and was fun but frivolous. It was analysed by an exam English classs who decided it reflected half a dozen core aspects of British society and was indeed an allegory of that society. It wasn't. It was about birds flying around houses. If you want to know what's beneath a story, the only way to know is to ask the author.

[Barbarossa]

For the record Hitler had no Jewish Grandmother. Ian Kershaw discusses the subject intensivly in his fairly new Biography of Hitler.

The story came up because Frank, the governor of Poland during WW II told his American jailors before his execution, Hitler's grandmother went to Graz as a young girl and worked as maid for the family of a Jewish butcher, she then got pregnant from his son or the butcher himself.

True is that Hitler's father was a illegitimate child, not unusual in that rural part of Austria. But there was no Butcher with a name mentioned by Frank or a similar name living in or around Graz at the time, and Jews were not allowed to live in that part of Austria at all at that time. The Matrikel laws restricting the freedom of choice where to live for Jews were repelled only several years after Hitler's father was born.

Back to the real topic:
I wouldn't put too much into the books but there are a few allusions, for example it's mentioned in passing once that one of Dumbeldore's greatest deeds was the deafeat of a dark wizard with a German name in 1945.

[FitzChivalry]

Barbarossa, good to know.

I agree with what was said here, some people have the need to find a statement or saying about our real world and our real life in works of fiction, some authors do that, but some really don't.
An example is Tolkien who after hearing the LoTR being analyzed as an allegory of the Cold War said that it was a nice analyze but he just wrote a nice story.
The national poet of Israel, a guy named Bialik also said something like that when he visited a school and saw how his poems are being analyzed.

I don't know really what it means about the people who have to look for a link to our real world in whatever they read... being unable of real escapism maybe? being more occupied with "real life"?

[This message has been edited by FitzChivlary (edited September 21, 2001).]