Fairy Tale May Say Best What's To Be Said Summary
In his essay, The Fairy Tale May Say Best What’s to Be Said, Lewis discussed his intentions to incorporate Christian mythology into fantasy works in order to make religion more appealing to the younger generation,
“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm… But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make …show more content…
I thought one could.”
Lewis uses the fantasy genre and the device of magic to introduce Christianity to Children in a way that he wished he had when growing up. The role of myth in The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe is to educate Children on themes in the Bible and allow them to draw connections between the two texts.
Magic is quite obviously a major plot device in the Harry Potter series. An example specific to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the inclusion of animagi. Animagi are wizards who have learned how to shapeshift between human and animal form. Harry learns that his father and his friends, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew had illegally taught themselves how to transform into unregistered animagi during their time at Hogwarts so they could provide company to their werewolf friend, Remus Lupin, during a full moon. This is a key plot point in the text as until now it has been believed that Black had betrayed Harry’s parents and murdered Pettigrew, when in fact it had been Pettigrew who had turned over Lily and James Potter’s whereabouts to Voldemort, who had then taken his animagus form of a rat to fake his own death. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling also makes
“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm… But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make …show more content…
I thought one could.”
Lewis uses the fantasy genre and the device of magic to introduce Christianity to Children in a way that he wished he had when growing up. The role of myth in The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe is to educate Children on themes in the Bible and allow them to draw connections between the two texts.
Magic is quite obviously a major plot device in the Harry Potter series. An example specific to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the inclusion of animagi. Animagi are wizards who have learned how to shapeshift between human and animal form. Harry learns that his father and his friends, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew had illegally taught themselves how to transform into unregistered animagi during their time at Hogwarts so they could provide company to their werewolf friend, Remus Lupin, during a full moon. This is a key plot point in the text as until now it has been believed that Black had betrayed Harry’s parents and murdered Pettigrew, when in fact it had been Pettigrew who had turned over Lily and James Potter’s whereabouts to Voldemort, who had then taken his animagus form of a rat to fake his own death. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling also makes