I have to agree with Wendell Wagner. I love the Harry Potter books, and will the buy the next one as soon as it comes out, but the wizards’ culture just doesn’t make any sense. How can wizards and witches be so isolated from muggles, and have so little knowledge of them? Remember, Hogsmeade is the only all-wizard town in England. Most wizards and witches live in the muggle world, but are oddly ignorant of it, to the point where many don’t even know what a “gun” is. (Remember the public notice when Sirius Black escapes.)
That having been said, I would think that the wizards and witches are whatever religion the general public is. There has been no evidence otherwise. Rowling has been careful to avoid any occult overtones in the books. Notice that they don’t use pentagrams for anything.
Most of the things that Arthur Weasley is completely fascinated by in Muggle culture are electrical or plumbing based. This is because magic has totally eliminated the need for suc things to have evolved in their isolated world.
Now, obviously there is a small percentage of people from Muggle origins that are invited into the world, but after 20 years even they will be out of touch with how the muggle world operates. If they had been 10 years old in 1980, they may still think digital watches are the coolest thing ever, or have no clue what a computer is, or would never have seen a microwave oven.
I think we can assume that most of the wizards and witches are multi-generations of people who have never stepped out into the muggle world at all, and so their approach to religions will be steeped even more in tradition than Muggle religions, and are probably more likely to be based around Wicca than Christianity, though probably there are crossovers from both.
Although we do have Dumbledore telling of frantically searching for a loo in the middle of the night.
As for the relationship between the wizard and Muggle worlds, one would expect odd isolated points in common, while most of the culture is different. Some of the common points are simply because both are human, and there are some things you can’t change too much within those bounds. Wizards and Muggles alike need to eat, and sleep, and educate children, and mediate trades of goods and services, so you’d expect them to have food and beds and schools and money. The rest of the similarities are due to the occasional Muggle-born like Hermione or Lily being assimilated into wizard culture. As for the differences, well, wizards don’t really have day-to-day interaction with Muggles. I don’t see why wizard culture and Muggle culture should be any more similar than, say, the cultures of the USA and India.
To the OP: I was baptized along with my sisters, but we had no godparents present. Years later my mother just declared our closest family friends (a married couple) to be our godparents. I have known other families for whom the title was used to signify close family friends or the children’s legal guardians in the event of the death of the parents, and had little or no religious significance at all.
I think much of this can be explained by presuming that the ignorance is largely deliberate. It doesn’t seem logical because it’s not logical, it’s the result of cultural prejudice and fear. Remember, Arthur Weasley is thought of as something of an eccentric for being so interested in the Muggle world. If many “purebloods” still look down on Muggle-born or half-Muggle witches and wizards, you can bet they’ve done their best to isolate themselves from actual Muggles.
Most children raised in the Muggle world probably had happier home lives than Harry, but may have experienced bullying in school for being “different”. (This might be even more true of children of mixed marriages, as their wizard/witch parent would probably seem pretty weird to other kids.) They all seem happy to come to Hogwarts, and may choose to put the Muggle world behind them.
Not that Harry Potter witchcraft has anything to do with Wicca, but some Wiccans & other neo-Pagans do indeed have rites to dedicate their children to the Lord/the Lady/Whoever.
And heck, when a Wiccan friend realized she had C’tian leanings & wanted me to baptize her baby, I did- full C’tian rite.
For that matter, I live in the United States and throughout my life have been the first Jew many people have met. When I lived in a more southerly state, I often (yes, often) met people who believed that Jews had horns. How many non-Jewish people know how to wrap tfillin, even in cities with huge Jewish populations? So the insularity of the wizard world does not surprise me.
Let me give one example of the way that wizard and muggle culture is similar in a random, pointless way that would have to mean recent, direct influence. At Hogwarts, the exams are the O.W.L. (the ordinary wizarding levels), given when a student is 15 or 16, and the N.E.W.T. (the nastily exhausting wizarding levels), given when a student is 17 or 18. This is obviously parallel to the O levels, given at 15 or 16, and the A levels, given at 17 or 18 (for all English secondary school students. (The tests have a slightly different name now, but this is what they were called when Rowling when young.) Why should the school examination system be just like the one in English schools (and closer to the ones twenty-five years ago than the ones now) when in other ways the wizards claim no knowledge of recent muggle culture? Why does so much of Hogwarts otherwise look just like an English public school in about 1910? Why does the racial and sexual mix of the school look like an English grammar school of the past ten years? The background of the Harry Potter books makes no sense. It’s O.K. if you want to say that it doesn’t matter, since it’s just a novel and the background isn’t supposed to make any sense, but don’t pretend that it makes sense.
Where in the books do the wizards claim no knowledge of recent Muggle culture? (Not that twenty-five or more years ago is really very recent.) A large part of Mr. Weasley’s job is investigating cases of enchantments placed on Muggle-made products, so there must be a fair few wizards sufficiently interested in Muggle culture to seek out their consumer goods and attempt to enhance them. There are also mixed marriages between wizards or witches and mortals, and the Ministry of Magic has some relationship with the British government. The magical world obviously has access to information about the Muggle world, and just as obviously many wizards and witches choose to ignore it.
Given what we’ve seen of the way Hogwarts works, the current examination system could have been the brainchild of a single person. One of Harry’s classmates is a Muggle-born boy who was, IIRC, “down for Eton” before he received the admission letter from Hogwarts, so there’s no reason to believe that all wizards would be ignorant of the way Muggle school exams work. It would only take one in a sufficiently high position who thought the system sounded good to institute something similar at Hogwarts. Or maybe Hogwarts came up with the idea first and it’s the Muggles who were influenced.
Outside the story world, it’s a parody. A burlesque of the British school system. It’s meant to be funny, and appeal to readers who might have liked their own school well enough but sometimes wished it were stranger and more magical. By Order of the Phoenix Rowling is obviously also engaging in a bit of satiric commentary about modern education.
*Are you talking about the movies or the books here? Either way, the culture of the wizarding world isn’t portrayed as completely unrelated to the Muggle world so much as the Muggle-influenced bits are far behind the times. This can be attributed largely to self-imposed isolation plus the way that magic seems to interfere with electronic devices. Rowling hasn’t shown us much about the history of the magical world, but I don’t remember that anything she has shown us contradicts the possibility that there was more Muggle-to-Wizard cultural influence a century ago, before the “Electronic Revolution”.
*Magical ability apparently manifests itself in children without regard for race or sex, and magical children can be born into Muggle families. Magical children born in Great Britain are invited to attend Hogwarts. Given this, the student body at Hogwarts should be reflective of the general British population.
*It makes about as much sense as it needs to, and more than plenty of other fantasy novels. Heck, compared to real-world history, the culture of Rowling’s magical world doesn’t seem all that much more improbable or contradictory than that of, say, Japan during the Edo period. Perhaps it’s still not up to your exacting standards of literary realism, but if that’s the case I don’t know why you’re bothering with fantasy novels at all.
There are many parallels between the muggle world and the wizard world because it makes for a much more enjoyable read for the intended audience. Any searching for consistancy within the books to explain various things is just a fun way of explaining a story-telling ploy. If some readers find that these inconsistancies bother them, then they should probably read different books.
I think that the whole religion issue may have been carefully left out to maintain a broader audience. Or it may have been innocently left out because the author just doesn’t think about religion much (probably less likely, given the subject matter of the books). I have the perception that religion is a much bigger issue to Americans than other western nationalities.
My overall feeling is that wizarding itself carries no particular religious ties, and that they all have whatever remnants of religion handed down through their own family.
I think one thing we’re forgetting is that wizard children have to attend school before Hogwarts, which means that they’re either home-schooled or attend muggle schools. I’m not clear on the status of home-schooling in the UK, nor do I think it’s relevant to the HP books, so I really have no idea why I just wrote this sentence.
Also, the wizard economy can’t be totally self-sufficient. Many of the adult wizards in the books are mentioned as being employees of the Ministry of Magic (Arthur Weasley, Barty Crouch). Some are idle wealthy with their wealth going back hundreds of years (the Malfoys). A smattering of others appear to be merchants. But as for the rest…? I’d say that there are a fair few with jobs in the muggle world.
I think they must primarily be homeschooled or educated by private tutors. Even the Weasley kids don’t seem to have attended Muggle schools, despite their family’s lack of money and their father’s unusual fondness for all things Muggle. It would probably be too risky to send young children reared in a magical environment off to Muggles school all day. A child’s blatheting about Mummy and Daddy doing magic might not be taken literally, but it could raise concerns about mental retardation or child abuse that would lead to inconvenient home visits by teachers and social workers.
*This is a topic Rowling hasn’t addressed, but I’d guess there must be some wizards (perhaps the ones less gifted at magic) who pursue mundane jobs or at least spend part of their lives in the Muggle world. Mixed marriages aren’t unheard of, and those witches and wizards have to be meeting their Muggle partners somewhere.
No, it is very much not O.K. The fact that it’s fiction, and fantasy fiction at that, does not mean that it doesn’t need to make sense. This is the fatal flaw of the HP books, that the background is not sufficiently worked out. Good fantasy actually needs to be more logical and self-consistent than “realistic” writing, and children’s fantasy even more so.
> It makes about as much sense as it needs to, and more than plenty of other
> fantasy novels. Heck, compared to real-world history, the culture of Rowling’s
> magical world doesn’t seem all that much more improbable or contradictory
> than that of, say, Japan during the Edo period. Perhaps it’s still not up to your
> exacting standards of literary realism, but if that’s the case I don’t know why
> you’re bothering with fantasy novels at all.
Lots of fantasy novels have backgrounds that make more sense than the Harry Potter books. As I said, “It’s O.K. if you want to say that it doesn’t matter, since it’s just a novel and the background isn’t supposed to make any sense, but don’t pretend that it makes sense.” I have no problem if you want to say that making sense is basically irrelevant. The appeal of the Harry Potter books, as far as I see, has nothing to do with the consistency of the relationship of wizard and muggle society. It’s obvious that Rowling is making it up as she goes along. A lot of her explanations in the later books sound like she’s just trying to fix up the world she developed in the earlier books with a more consistent background.
Never did I remotely say that a consistent background was the only thing that appeals to me in fantasy novels. I think that the “Alice in Wonderland” books are the greatest fantasy novels ever written, but I freely acknowledge that the backgrounds there make no sense whatsoever. But (and this is the important point) that’s not what the OP was about. The OP did not ask us to critique the literary quality of the Harry Potter books. What was asked was if we could make any consistent sense out of the fact that Harry Potter had a godfather. My reply is that you can’t. Like much about the background of the book, it’s not consistent.
Excuse me for getting so angry about this, but where did you get the idea that I was addressing the literary quality of the books in anything I said about them in this thread? The OP was about the consistency of the background, so I quite deliberately didn’t address the literary quality of the books. I’m sorry, but it makes me really angry when someone mistakes my words in this way.
Let’s not forget that Hermione’s parents went shopping with her on Diagon Alley for her Hogwarts supplies. That’s a fairly significant intersection between the wizarding and muggle worlds.
In fact, you’d think the existince of muggle-born kids at Hogwarts would imply quite a bit of crossover. What, you think the parents of that kid who was “down for Eton” wouldn’t want to know a fair amount about this school they’ve never heard of that their kid wants to attend? Sure, special efforts were made for Harry to get him into school over his guardian’s objections, but he’s a special case – they surely can’t make similar efforts for every muggle-born kid at Hogwarts. Surely they have to do some explaining to other parents.
But since we’re on the subject – something that’s always bugged me is Hermione’s terribly emotional reaction to being called a “mudblood.” I mean, sure, she could have been told it was an insult, but having grown up in the muggle world where the word isn’t commonly known it certainly wouldn’t have the same visceral punch. After all, a tribesman from central Africa would certainly have a very different reaction to the “n-word” than would an African-American, right? Centuries of cultural baggage make the word a much graver insult to the latter than to the former. Without that baggage, why meet the insult with anything more than irritation?
Because Hermione is an adolescent girl, and adolescent girls aren’t known for their level-headedness?
Besides that, Hermione obviously knew more about Hogwarts and magic and yada yada than just about any wizarding kid there. Undoubtedly she had come across the word “mudblood” in her pre-Hogwarts studies. That’s my WAG, anyway.
But I don’t want to say that. I want to say that I expect some degree of sense, and that Rowling has provided what I consider to be a sufficient amount. It’s okay with me if you want to say you still don’t think it makes enough sense, but don’t pretend that it’s utter nonsense. We know that many wizards are deeply prejudiced against Muggles, we know that the wizarding world has been following a kind of isolationist policy, and we know that magic can interfere with the operation of electronic devices. That’s all the explanation I need for why wizard knowledge of contemporary Muggle culture is uneven. The internal consistency problems you’ve mentioned in this thread strike me as being based more on your interpretation of the text than the text in and of itself. Again, I don’t recall anything in the books to support your assertation that “wizards claim no knowledge of recent muggle culture”. Some may have effectively isolated themselves, but others (especially at the MoM) appear to be relatively up-to-date on things.
*You probably can’t make any consistent sense out of the fact that I have a godfather then, but I do. There’s nothing in the text to indicate that Harry wasn’t baptized. Just making Lily’s side of the family happy would be a good enough reason even if wizards normally don’t engage in the ritual. Or perhaps the title “godfather” is being used in a looser sense than “a man who sponsors a person at baptism”; it is, after all, used that way in my family and in many other real-world families.
*Where did I say anything about literary quality? I don’t see the word “quality” in any of my posts in this thread at all. In the passage you quoted I said “literary realism”. I certainly don’t consider realism the sole component of literary quality.
Well, *somebody’s *got to polish all those wands. Seriously, though, somebody’s got to scribe all the books in the libraries, or at least oversee their magical production. Someone’s got to brew the butterbeer, and feed the flobberworms, and erase Muggles’ memories, and mend cauldrons, and manufacture hideous plates with gamboling kittens. Presumably there are religious leaders, or psychotherapists, or holistic healers, or others who do work that is not tangible.
The OP and subsequent discussion about the use of the term “godfather” illustrate that even Muggle cultures may not know some basic facts about each other. I am a Jew. I have a godfather. I am a godmother. All the Jews I know have godparents. None of us are baptized. If some among us do not know that this is a possibility, and that Christians are not the only people with this custom, why would it be surprising that wizards do not know certain facts about Muggles?
Again, how many of you who are not Jewish know how to wrap tfillin? Jews all around you are engaged in this activity constantly. Are you aware of it occuring? Would you know it when you saw it? What does it mean? What is that incantation that goes along with it? What is its importance in Judaism? To a person of majority culture, my point about my own culture may seem like a small detail, but it would be very Muggle-centric of us to assume that the aspects of our culture that we consider important or obvious are of any interest or even signify to most wizards.
Kind of with you here. On one hand, kids do like make believe, and you don’t want to be a spoil sport, especially as JKR herself probably didn’t start out thinking that her work would be scrutinized by anyone much above the 12 y.o. level. On the other hand . . . kids are just the sort of people to get hung up themselves on “picky” details. So I’d allow Rowling some conceits, and especially those in the tricky area of trying to layer a fantasy world over a real world. (Cf. Pullman’s books, where everyone had an animal as a familiar – am I the only one to wonder how the guy with, say, a leopard familiar dealt with ducking into a phone booth or public toilet or whatever (I know those are anachronistic examples, but you get the picture). It’s easier to realize a compelling, seamless world when you completely divorce it from the one we know (cf. LOTR, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books). So I give JKR a pass on the “interface” issues, which I don’t think she handles terribly consistently.
But the OP issue is one of those that is not necessarily specific to the magical interface, so I think it is open to challenge (cf. “Why couldn’t the impoverished Weasleys simply borrow some of Harry’s massive gold deposits?”, from a young relative of mine). Some of these kids lived in the real world, some encountered religion, some had godparents, but . . . JKR simply chooses the elements she wants, and ignores the others (including any that would be too complicated).
Which is an author’s prerogative. But as an inevitable result, the books are a pastiche, not a unified, self-coherent narrative. I know, that’s true of any story written by someone who’s read other people’s stories, but especially of JKR. She’s a good storyteller, but she’s cobbling it together on the fly, and the joints show sometimes. English public schools? Great story setting back to Tom Brown; we’ll take part of that. Rainbow coalition student body? That’ll allow me to make my rather heavy-handed '90s P.C. allegory about “tolerance” as between pureblood and mischling wizards even more obvious to the kids. A bit of the old sporting blood? Sure, kids like sport, even if Quidditch is a fundamentally idiotic concept for a game, rather evidently dreamed up by a lady who hadn’t watched much sport herself. And . . . the concept of a godfather is a neat and familiar one, and especially attractive to kids horrified by the concept of Harry being all alone in the world (which is one of the emotional notes Rowlind sounds again and again). So, she uses it, and fair play to her, but I don’t think even she could explain the nature of the godparent relationship. And I agree with those who say that’s in part because she has punted on religion, in order to keep her pastiche from getting bogged down in heavy issues (other than the ones she chooses).
I guess the test is whether, if you’re kid asked you “But how can he have a godfather,” your reply of “It’s only a story” (a legitimate reply in many situations) proves satisfactory.
