There are two or three questions that always come up at these events: I’m always asked if I’ve met Ms. Rowling, and I’m asked whether she herself told me the things I had just explained. I know why this sort of question comes up. Readers who love the Harry Potter novels, but who missed the allegorical, mythic, even religious meanings that I point out, are profoundly skeptical that anyone else was right in having seen it, short of a direct confession from the author. Frankly, I understand this skepticism. It isn’t every author who deserves such serious digging. Every story has surface hooks, story formulas, and narrative drive—and all of the stories written in the past forty or fifty years have a postmodern moral or two. But allegory and beyond? Believe me: Very few bestsellers reward a look under the hood in search of their hidden political criticism and philosophical meaning. The original title of Ms. Rowling’s first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the American publication.
