Eschatological Echoes: Reading The Bible and the Harry Potter Series

Authors

• Athira Mohan Dr, Independent ResearcherFollow

Document Type

Musing

Abstract

Death has been a major topic in children’s and adolescent literature , which has invited scholarly discourse over different ages. While death was very commonly featured in the puritanical texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was also deemed to be a subject too sensitive for the genre of children’s literature in the early twentieth century(Aries 1975), due to a combination of factors such as lowered child mortality rate and heightened concern for childhood as a special social category. However, contemporary children’s and adolescent literature focuses on death as an important part of human life, and invites discussions on handling emotions associated with bereavement and death.

My paper is focused on inspecting the element of death in the popular children’s/YA narrative series, Harry Potter. Each succeeding year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry presents Harry Potter with more macabre adventures, making him more aware about the possibility of death. I am interested in the Biblical overtones related to death in the novels, which quite understandably influence the Western literary corpus, which is heavily influenced by the Judeo- Christian philosophies. However, I argue that there are several areas where the Biblical eschatological thoughts are overturned or deconstructed; which offer a deconstructive take of simultaneous affirmation and rejection, where the protagonist adopts a messianic aura, while rejecting the Biblical claims of death.

Recommended Citation

Mohan, Athira Dr (2026) "Eschatological Echoes: Reading The Bible and the Harry Potter Series," Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dialogue/vol13/iss1/3