Acceptance and Religion in Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Chapters 1-4
Acceptance
Surbhi, I have to disagree with you here. I don’t think that the Durseleys believe that if people find out their secret it will hurt them. I think they are just worried that people would think that they are weird. That family is just obsessedwith fitting in and being normal. The book described Mrs. Dursley’s day as, “…a nice, normal day.” (6) And on page four a quote says, “Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning.” Another thing that I got from the text is that Mr. Dursley clearly does not accept people that are different from himself. When he went towork and saw all the strange people in cloaks, he had very bad thoughts about them.
This is why I disagree with you, I feel that the Dursleys are more worried about people thinking that they aren’t normal then that finding out their secret will put them in danger. They clearly don’t know much about the wizarding world, as shown when Hagrid so pleasantly enters
the house in the ocean, so they probably aren’t afraid of things that could potentially
be a threat to them from the wizarding world. And what could the muggles do?
Most likely no one would believe them; I would think that their society would just
set them aside as the not normal, crazy ones, just like Mr. Dursley did to the cloaked people.
I think that it is possible that one of the reasons why people want to ban this
book is because of the acceptance problem in it. Our society today is generally
accepting, and we are getting more and more accepting as time goes on. Having a
book like this takes us back to a time when America was completely unaccepting,
like the black and white controversy, and the gay marriage controversy right
now. Lately, children are being taught to accept everything. Books that
students read can completely change their views of thought. Like in Fahrenheit
451, they banned books because they made people think and question what is
right and wrong. The problem of acceptance in Harry Potter could be a huge
reason why these books would be banned.
About the religion you were talking about, I read that Christians believe that Harry
Potter is wrong. As a Christian, I believe that God is above everything, and
that he deserves all power and glory. Magic kind of disturbs that, giving off
the illusion that magic is more powerful then god. This is why a lot of
churches want the books banned.