Monday, November 28, 2016

Week Seven: The Tale of Spiritual Education


For the seventh week I read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and watched some of the Harry Potter films. The novel started out kind of slow for me. It took a while to get into, but it was not terrible. I think that if one compared it to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, although there are some overlapping themes between the two of them, The Night Circus just pales in comparison. I just felt that the characters from the former are a little flat and underdeveloped. I mean with the latter series, the reader gets to actually “grow up” with Harry as the series progresses in a way that I think makes one have a stronger connection with those characters as opposed to the ones from this week’s novel. With that being said, there are some ideas that these novels share and obviously the theme of spiritual education and magic would be number one. Now one could argue that it is not really the same kind of magic because Magicians =/= Wizards but when defined as the art of producing a desired result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature, I think it applies to both. Another similarity between the two is the manipulation of the young student from their mentors. In both stories the mentors play their pupils play pawns for their own game. While some could say in Dumbledore’s case it was for the greater good, he still took advantage of Harry’s trust just as Prospero and Mr. A. H. use their mentees to continue their rivalry.

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