In my wonderful English class (wonderful and English class are words I never thought I would use together, but I'm a-changing from my old self), Books We Read Too Early, we are reading my favorite book of all time, Harry Potter! I had to write a little response towards the book, and I had so much fun with it I decided to share it with all of you. Enjoy!
There are not many places you can go in the world where the name Harry Potter is not recognized. The boy wizard has literally captivated the entire world with his epic life and magical world that he calls home. But why? What makes Harry so different than Alice? Than Tom Sawyer? Than even Frodo? While some may say it was sheer luck, I think it was a combination of masterful writing, the foundation of old classics, and a mass media age, that allowed Harry Potter to become the most successful book series of all time.
As a HUGE Harry Potter fan, I have always been a diehard supporter of J.K. Rowling and think she is one wise lady. To come up with a world as elaborate and wonderfully cohesive as she did, you must be intelligent, borderline genius, and possibly a little crazy. What separates J.K. (I use her first name because Rowling is much too serious for a person I grew up with) from other creative geniuses though is that the woman can write. She was seamlessly able to write to an audience that contains elementary-aged schoolchildren, college students, and retired grandmothers, while captivating the imaginations of them all. She completely takes away the hindrance of written words and allows readers to step into a story that is so unrealistically real. And while trying to keep up with a plotline that involves horcruxes, hippogriffs, and Puking Pastilles, J.K. seamlessly intertwines it all together with few, if any, loopholes and nuances that the most esteemed readers applaud. J.K. may be a critically acclaimed children’s author, but her writing is no child’s play.
While she is surely a literary genius, J.K. did get some help from earlier writers. Perhaps the most closely related story and series is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which preceded Potter by 4o years. Like the vast world of Middle Earth, the magical world of Harry Potter is indeed apart from reality (although I still secretly like to think that I am just a poor Muggle blinded to the very real wizarding world), but vast enough for it to seem real. The magical world Harry lives in involves humans that have the same bodily needs and frailties that we do, characters that feel the same emotions and deal with the same problems, and even the same broader issues of racism, bureaucracy, and corruption. Although J.K. adds wonderful creatures and enhanced abilities to the characters, readers can very much relate to the characters in the novel and buy into this fictional world. By creating a world that is more exciting and colorful than reality but still rooted in fundamental reality like Tolkien did, J.K. captured readers’ attentions and paved the way to success.
What J.K. has that Tolkien did not however, is the vast, mind blazingly fast, and global tool of the Internet. This is what separated J.K.’s series from the other amazing books that came before. While the others had excellent writing and wonderful fictional worlds, they did not have the ability to reach across the globe almost instantly with translated copies of their book for anyone who wanted to read. Not only that, they did not have the social networking available through the Internet. In the 1950s, Lord of the Ring junkies would have to call each other up to sit down and discuss the book. In today’s world, a fan can connect online instantly with fans from all over the world to discuss hidden meanings, learn new information, and share their passion for the story. There are entire fan sites, Facebook groups, blogs, and chat rooms dedicated exclusively to Harry Potter. Just now I even found a Harry Potter Wiki that helped me spell ‘puking pastille’ and contained everything you would ever want to know about the Harry Potter world.
By connecting readers and helping them to truly immerse themselves entirely in a wonderful written story, J.K. was able to find greater success than ever before seen. With the multibillion dollar movies, recent opening of a theme park, and a generation of Potter-maniacs that will surely read the series to their children, it does not look like Harry Potter is going away any time soon. The world really is bewitched by the wonderful world of Harry Potter.
