Gregor the Overlander is a Calvinist

We've been reading this series aloud as a family for a few weeks now and everyone has been enjoying it. It's a fantasy novel set under New York City where humans founded a city named Regalia in the 1600s. They share the underland with giant rats, the bad guys, giant cockroaches, giant bats, giant spiders, etc. One convenient aspect of these creatures giantism is they speak English too. We are reading book 3 right now, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods , and there is an extended vomiting scene, which confirms its a book aimed at boys. But I have 2 daughters who also enjoy the stories, they like picking up earthworms too. This title was provoked by a scene early in the 3rd book when Gregor is trying to figure if he should return to the Underland as prophecied and go on the next quest. His grandmother tells him that the prophecy will find him even if he refuses the quest.

"I'm in another prophecy, Grandma," Gregor said, and showed it to her.
"Then you got to go. You can run away, but the prophecy will find you somehow," she said.
"That's how it seems to be working out," said Gregor. (p. 61)

Each book is set up with a prophecy cryptically describing the quest Gregor must go on, which gets fulfilled to the dot. In contrast to Gregor, Harry Potter is assured by Dumbledore over and over again that he has choices to make. Again i turn to the Hogwarts Professor,

Choice and Prophecy, Fate and Free Will
Ms. Rowling brings up the importance
of choice twice in HP6 and again in her interviews with MN/TLC the night after
the book’s publication. The first Harry/Dumbledore discussion is an aside in
chapter 13 (Scholastic, page 262) in which Harry is amazed that Tom Riddle’s
mother, Merope Gaunt-Riddle, chose to die:
“No,” said Harry quickly, “but she
had a choice, didn’t she, not like my mother –“
“Your mother had a choice
too,” said Dumbledore gently. “Yes. Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son
who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly
weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother’s courage.”
The
lengthier and more profound discussion is at the end of chapter 23. This
discussion is more than four pages long (Scholastic 508-512) but the end is
Rowling’s answer to the fate and free will dilemma. We all have a destiny or end
but it is our choices that bring us to it – and most important is the choice to
pursue and live out this destiny or fate by conscious decision and with our
will, freely exercised.
“You are free to choose your way, quite fee to turn
your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy!
He will continue to hunt you… which makes it certain, really, that –“
“That
one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.”
But he
understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he
thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to
the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people,
perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but
Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and
so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.

And this difference in approaches to the world and fate and destiny and free will play out over and over again. Does Harry live in an Arminian world and Gregor in a Calvinist world? It's a little more difficult to read a fatalistic story to the kids. As I read to them i wonder if they belive that there are no choices for them. Gregor is definitely less likely to interrupt everyone's sleep than Harry, so only the oldest has read several of the Potter books, up through the Goblet of Fire, and heard with me some of The Order of the Phoenix on tape. But the younger two have only heard the first Potter story. Perhaps, next summer, we can start reading together more from Rowling. I have a good friend with children in similar age ranges and his poor son had nightmares as they read through Potter together. Fortunately, this is not the case with Gregor. But i look forward to reading them Potter and pointing to the contrast in how both boys interact with fate.