Alan Rickman Interview about his "old friend" Snape (SnitchSeeker) 

"The Harry Potter novels are more useful than a law: they encourage kids to read, they teach for example that there are moral and political choices that you have to make in life, giving priority to the common good than to one's individual selfishness."

I love Alan even more after reading these few lines he said during the interview. I cannot but concur with him. The common good over individual selfishness : so true. Sometimes, as an adult, I can see the way things are managed today in our societies and I cannot help thinking about Voldemort as an embodiment of that very selfishness, individualism, the struggle of all against all.

Of course, there's a level of reading in those books, a political/societal level, that says a lot about what school, teaching and society should be. How our choices define our society. Exactly what Alan explained in this interview. What JKR wanted to convey us readers in a sense. That money, arrogance and power are not to be the real purposes in life. That love and frienship are important, that life and death are part of our existence. I thoroughly enjoyed that deep level of reading.

My fav book of the series is OotP, because of the very description of how a government, whatever it can be, can interfere with school and schooling to achieve its (not always altruistic and more than often manipulative) ends.

Pity that not the whole interview in Italian had been translated into English. Really interesting too. (I can read Italian but just that and I have an Italian-speaking husband, so I could understand more or less what Alan said.)

Thanks for posting the link to that gem !

I totally agree with what you said you covered it all Lady Nottingham