I did not receive a letter from
Hogwarts when I was 11 years old; sadly, I ended up in the normal Muggle 5th-grade
class of Sister Bernice, a nun who in her youth may have been a Golden Gloves
boxing champ and who could certainly have given Voldemort a run for his money.
I also didn’t read Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone as a preteen, having turned 30 the year before it was
published. But I have read all of the books multiple times now, and want to
share some thoughts about Harry and his creator today on their shared birthday.
The good versus evil storyline has
existed since the beginning of time; in fact, it is ultimately the basis of
most of the world's religions. Stories of magic have existed almost as long,
and the story of the orphan who overcomes great odds was popularized by Charles
Dickens more than 150 years ago. Yet J.K. Rowling took these very well-known
elements and produced something both familiar and new at the same time.
Harry Potter himself could have easily been a one-dimensional character, the
lone hero forced to confront the greatest evil the world has ever known. Frodo
in The Lord of the Rings trilogy is
such a character, never really growing or maturing during the journey, simply
putting one foot in front of the other. But Rowling did something with Harry
and the rest of the young characters that hadn't been done before in children's
literature: she let them grow up. Harry is 11 years old when we meet him,
downtrodden by the Dursely's and unaware of his magical abilities. Over the next
seven years he grows in the same way any child does, through trial and error,
having goods days and bad (sometimes very, very bad), and discovering who he is
as a person, a friend, and a reluctant hero.
Harry is the ultimate underdog, and
people love an underdog. He is an orphan whose destiny will have him battle the
most powerful dark wizard ever, which is daunting enough, but Rowling goes a
step further and throws in enough obstacles to deter Hercules. Having most of
the drama take place as Harry is going through puberty helps us relate even
more; none of us have ever fought a mountain troll, but we've have fretted over
asking someone to a high school dance. We love Harry and his friends first and
foremost because they are us.
The other characters, particularly Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, also
develop and grow throughout the series, and the romantic tension between them
in the later books was yet another twist on "typical" children's
literature. Rowling also makes the stories and characters real by having them
deal with death in virtually every book. Death is a subject that rarely
receives thoughtful consideration even in adult fiction, yet Rowling tackles it
from the first chapter of Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone.
The way Rowling portrays the adults in the Harry Potter series is yet another
surprise. In most children's books, adults are either not present at all or are
little more than bumbling idiots for the kids to outwit. The adults in the
Harry Potter books are fully formed characters whose stories could stand
alone if you removed the kids entirely. Rowling shows us the adults' strengths
and flaws, glories and failures, and she does it from the perspective of the
students in most cases; what they (and we) learn about Dumbledore, Sirius
Black, Lupin, Snape, and others comes out in bits over the course of the
narrative. And as in life, sometimes the kids seem more grown up than the
adults and sometimes it's the other way around.
As adults, we love Harry Potter
because the books (much more so than the films) have enabled many of us to both
share a rare bond with our children and briefly relive childhood ourselves.
Countless parents around the globe have either read the books to their children
or waited patiently for the kids to finish so we could read them. Harry Potter
has given us something in common with our children at a time when we might
otherwise think they were from a different planet. And the books have
transported many of us back to the days of our own childhood when we actually read
during our free time rather than sitting in front of a computer or smart phone.
They allow us to escape, however briefly, to a time when we had far fewer
worries and responsibilities.
None of these things, however,
would make the Potter books the best-selling series of all time (400 million
copies in over 30 languages and still growing) if Rowling hadn't also written
an amazingly compelling page-turner of a series. That it is both a great beach
read and truly literature at the same time is all the more remarkable. She has
woven the best parts of the hero-quest, magical fantasy, romance, Gothic
suspense, social commentary, and even detective fiction into a tapestry that
looks like nothing we'd ever seen before.
Furthermore, Rowling and her boy wizard did something many thought
impossible: they made reading cool again, for adults as well as children. Prior
to 1997, who would have imagined that millions of children would attempt to
read an 800-page book in one sitting, or that their parents would be anxiously
waiting for them to finish reading so they could start?
With the
Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling opened up a world of imagination to a
generation of kids who thought for anything to be entertaining it had to have a
plug, a screen, or an Internet connection. And these kids (and hopefully their
parents as well) will keep reading, if only in the hope of finding another book
or series that grabs them the way Harry Potter did. Even if Rowling had never
written another word, people everywhere who love books would owe her a debt of
gratitude for making reading a novel something we, and more importantly our
children, look forward to again.
In the end, each person who has read the books loves Harry Potter for their own
individual reasons, which is as it should be. But the reasons discussed above
are the communal reasons, the things that draw us together as fans of the
series. That shared experience in a disconnected and fractured world may be the
best magic of all.
Happy Birthday Harry, and Happy
Birthday Jo Rowling.
