Every couple of years or so it happens: A new Harry Potter book comes out and I lose many hours of otherwise productive time immersed in an imaginary world of fantasy and magic. I admit it - the books have a geas over me or something because once I crack the pages I can't stop reading until I'm done. I stay up late, I put off chores, I read at any possible moment - just to get to the end of the book. Typically, I read books at a more leisurely pace and balance my reading with various other activities. Even other very good books don't grab me as wholly and thoroughly as this series does. In other words, I highly recommend them.
By now you've realized that I count myself among the millions of Harry Potter fans and the evil referred to in the title is that of the obsession reading one of these books causes. For me, I think, the biggest allure of the series is that it brings me back to my childhood when I would find a book and read it cover to cover, non-stop if I was physically able. I would find myself in forests and strange lands, I would be on adventures or in outer space - reading was a way to experience the impossible in a way much more real and visceral than other media I experienced.
Don't get me wrong, I loved movies and enjoyed television, but as fun as those things were, nothing transported me away and placed me in an alternate reality like a book. Obviously, some books are better than others and succeed in greater or lesser degree in captivating my imagination and that brings me back to Rowling's work. While much can be said of the world she has created: the places, the logic, the mechanics; what she has done more masterfully than all else is create great characters.
The reason any work of fiction works, in my opinion, is not because a writer is particularly talented in any technical sense, but because they create people the readers care about and want to follow from one chapter to the next. If I don't care what happens to Joe the character, I'll stop reading, even if the world in which he lives is lush and fantastic and interesting. If I wanted to explore interesting worlds, I'd read National Geographic (which I enjoy.)
I read fiction because interesting people are doing interesting things and I really care about what they're doing. I've been following the adventures of Harry, Hermione and Ron (and a cast of others) now since the first printing of book one. The characters and relationships have grown, the trials and tribulations have been realistic (despite the fantasy world), and we are able to see reflections of ourselves as they interact with each other and their world. Without this relational aspect, this would simply be another comic book: hero fights bad guy and wins in the end - again.
Of course we want the hero to win, but the main plot has become secondary to the sub-plots. We only care about Voldemort because it is this central battle that moves the other circumstances along. It is only because evil threatens those characters that we care about that we even care at all. I think that this is the metanarrative that is really important and applicable to our lives.
In the end, when we tell the story of our lives, it will not be about the things we did and the places that we went - though those will be the window dressings - it will be about the people we knew and our relationships with them. Our triumphs and failures will be relational - was I a good husband or father? Was I a good friend? These are eternal questions, because like it or not eternity is in who we are and how we impact others. Mt. Everest will erode, fortunes will fade, buildings will be reduced to dust but our souls have an eternal destiny. And that's why I like Harry Potter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment