In my previous article,
I pointed out that J. K. Rowling’s making the standard arguments
for euthanasia the motivation for Severus Snape’s accession to
Albus Dumbledore’s request that Snape kill him amounted to advocacy
of euthanasia. I stand corrected. What I had not realized was that
this conversation in which Dumbledore appeals to Snape’s compassion
for a sick old man was in the context of a doctor-patient
relationship (Deathly Hallows, pp. 680-681).
Indeed, Professor of Potions Snape has a detailed knowledge of
healing potions and incantations with which, for example, he saved
Draco Malfoy from bleeding to death when cut up by Harry’s
Sectasempra curse in the previous book. Dumbledore only
regains consciousness after Snape pours “a golden potion down
Dumbledore’s throat” (p. 680). And after giving him the bad news
that he has no more than a year to live, Snape lectures his patient
in true doctorly fashion: “‘If you had only summoned me a little
earlier, I might have been able to do more, buy you more time!’
said Snape furiously.” So Rowling is right on the cutting edge of
the issue of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) as it is playing out
in Europe and the United States.
Rowling’s brilliant portrayal of the defects of UK (and
American) politicians and bureaucrats through the medium of the
blindness, ruthless ambition, and incompetent arrogance of the
bureaucrats of the Ministry of Magic shows her to be an incisive
critic of the political scene. She cannot be unaware of the
political tendency of the moral arguments she is instilling
into the minds of unsuspecting children.
This is why we cannot treat these fantasies as fictions
unrelated to life. The greatest moral teachers and the greatest
demagogues have always used stories to teach either their moral and
spiritual truths or their lies. These are children’s books that are
forming the unconsciously absorbed worldview and morality of
millions of children.
From the perspective of orthodox Christians, whether Roman
Catholic, Orthodox or Reformed (my perspective); a murder-suicide
pact cannot be justified by any hoped for result (e.g., preserving
Snape’s double-agency) because it violates a clear commandment of
God. As another British literary artist put it, God has “fix’d his
canon ‘gainst self-slaughter” (Hamlet) and other forms of
murder. Parents need to know it when an author of children’s books
justifies such law-breaking in the minds of children.
The issue comes down to this: Are your ethics based on an
end-justifies-any-means morality or on an objective and unchanging
code? Rowling along with the media and academic elites of the
modern West opt for the former; many conservatives and all orthodox
Christians for the latter.
