I recently started an account over at Quora, which is kind of a Q&A social networking site. People ask questions, and then provide answers. You can follow certain broad topics (such as Harry Potter, for example) and then questions about that topic show up in your feed. You can also decide to follow individual questions. About half way down my feed I saw this question, asking "In Harry Potter, does J.K. Rowling use lycanthropy as a metaphor for HIV/AIDS?". The answer, surprisingly to me, was yes. I thought I was a pretty big HP fan so the fact that I never knew this surprised me. Am I the only one who never connected the two? Anytime I would hear anything of the sort I would brush it off as internet rumors. however, she states quite clearly in this transcript that is it so. Just CTRL-F H.I.V and see for yourself.
Well, first Mr. Vander Ark does occasionally give the meaning of the names I've given to my characters. I would think this is a very, very obvious one to explain. Generally he does go to the obvious ones. This is a double allusion to the fact this character is a werewolf, so there is Remus, who is one of the brothers who was raised by wolves in Roman anthology, and Lupin, which comes from "lupine," wolf-like. But there was more on Lupin. And again, it should have been easy to anyone writing a -- genuinely attempting to write a guide. I know that I've said publicly that Remus Lupin was supposed to be on the H.I.V. metaphor. It was someone who had been infected young, who suffered stigma, who had a fear of infecting others, who was terrified he would pass on his condition to his son. And it was a way of examining prejudice, unwarranted prejudice towards a group of people. And also, examining why people might become embittered when they're treated that unfairly.
