God, C. S. Lewis, AND J. K. Rowling?: Christian Symbolism in Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia Senior Thesis by Ashley Nicole Whitehead ABSTRACT C. S. Lewis has placed much intentional, and quite obvious, symbolism in his series of children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia. There is another author that also has written a series of children’s books that may be interpreted in a like manner—J. K. Rowling is that author and her series is Harry Potter. Harry Potter and its author have received a great deal of criticism from much of the Christian community. However, there are, in fact, many elements her works that may be interpreted under a Christian lens, and these works are in many respects, very similar to Lewis’ Narnia. In each series, there are symbols of agape love, a good representation of Christ figures, and symbols of redemption. These symbols and the explication of such are the focus of this study. Click here to open or download .pdf file of Thesis Notes: This thesis was written for a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at Maryville College and received an 'A' grade. The author has asked for it to be made available as a .pdf file. Formatting has been changed to be more web and printer friendly. Original formatting made the document over sixty pages long. That number has been reduced to forty-five. Page numbering in the Table of Contents has been changed to reflect the pages in the pdf file. Ashley setup the Live Journal Community Harry and The Potter for futher discussion of symbolism. Can't open the file? This thesis should open with Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 and up. You can download the latest version of Acrobat www.adobe.com. Report problems with the file to comments@christnp.org

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