Some “professional critics” are doubtless chagrined by J. K. Rowling saying in a recent interview: “How we react to death, how much we fear it. In many ways, all of my characters are defined by their attitude to death.”

It is good Rowling said this for the record because critics are often those without an original thought or the talent to do the things they criticize. Ray Bradbury was quite rightly incensed by the supposed literary critics telling him what he really meant in “Fahrenheit 451” as though they were better qualified to tell him what he really meant. And how many people will use a remark when addressing someone seeming not to realize they are telling the other person what that person “really” thinks and believes, or worse, what they should think or believe.

How many a great writer and artist must turn over in their graves if they knew how some critics and university professors are telling others what these great writers and artists “really meant.” At least Bradbury and Rowling are alive to set them straight about what they meant. Most others are not so fortunate.

While I greatly appreciate the genius of Rowling and the enormous contribution she has made in stirring the imagination of so many children, encouraging the rightful domain of magic and fantasy belonging to children I would never have presumed to tell her what she really meant in her stories. I am just grateful she is speaking out about what she really meant rather than leaving this to the critics.

Life and death are the two greatest mysteries confronting humankind. Science cannot define either of these apart from “something” animates the clay, and that same something departs at death. Perhaps Oscar the Cat could explain it, but “meow” doesn’t translate into human speech. However, Rowling’s comment concerning an “attitude to death” certainly speaks directly to the issue, and it is not an issue we can avoid since we will all die; and in many ways our lives are defined by our attitude to death. It would be trite to reply it’s our attitude to life that really counts, since life is not permanent. Death is. And it will be our attitude to death that defines our attitude to life. For some it is “eat, drink, and be merry,” for others it may take the form of asceticism or religious beliefs. But it is an attitude to death that predominates even among those that practice the Golden Rule, the belief that to live well toward others is to die well.

A lady friend and I got into a conversation yesterday when the subject of the USS Indianapolis came up. She had just seen the Discovery Channel episode of this tragedy and was deeply moved by it. But the really striking thing to me had always been the fact that if the ship had been sunk on its way to Tinnian Island that atomic bomb would not have been delivered. The loss of hundreds of lives compared to the many thousands that were to die as a result of that bomb, who can make sense of such seeming contradictions to any “value” of life? I’m left wondering, who is keeping score?

Henry Thoreau commented on the profligacy of life, that Nature would spread thousands of seeds knowing the most would die but some few would survive to carry on. But it’s a most uncomfortable thought that God may be so profligate of human life in the same manner. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground” comforts my mind, but Nature red in tooth and claw, the wars of men, the untold millions that seem to be born to no other purpose but suffering and dying give me pause to wonder.

I have real confidence in the beginning chapters of Genesis; that behind the fables are the facts that gave birth to the stories. But the only conclusion so far to my mind is we can’t expect God to intervene in the things that are our responsibility, whether it is the safety and welfare of children, the care of our planet, the wars of men or whatever. And it is our attitude to death that defines us and will determine how we live our lives in respect to those things that are, after all, human responsibility.