This week I chose to read the first novel in the epic Harry Potter series because I have never read a single Harry Potter book before.
A slightly different take on children's fantasy literature as it evolves to something more adult based, J.K. Rowling's, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is the first novel in the epic tale about the boy who survived. Much like Time Bandits and most classic children's literature, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone begins with a young boy stuck in a dark, cruel, pedantic world and crushing for a way to get out. By the end of the novel he finds himself in a magical world of adventure.
Unlike Time Bandits the magical world is not a dream. Instead, it is a very real world and the main character's destiny. Like a peasant Arthur pulling the Excalibur out of the stone or a young farm boy, Luke Skywalker, realizing he is to be a Jedi Knight, Harry Potter is the story of a young person finding their chosen path.
Orphaned Harry Potter is placed in the care of his non-wizard (or Muggle) Aunt and Uncle while still a baby to hide him from the evil wizard Voldemort after his parents are murdered. The aunt and uncle are cruel and abusive and Harry, like most child characters in fantasy stories, feels like he doesn't belong. When Harry is 10, however, he discovers that he is actually a wizard and is sent to the Hogwarts school for wizards. This plays on the fantasy that most children have at some point, that maybe they are adopted and they are meant to be someplace magical and wonderful far away from their real lives. Wizards, and spells and flying broomsticks are Harry's new reality and this world is not treated as something of a dream or an absurdity like Wonderland or Oz. We are meant to accept that this is the reality and not something Harry Potter will wake up from at the end.
Like Time Bandits and the works that influenced both, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone deals with some dark subject matter. Playing Quidditch and learning spells is light and an avenue of fun for the student when their is a constant looming shadow of darkness. However Harry was predestined to avenge his parents and was pinned a target from birth as "the boy who survived." Similar to the idea that children are meant to go to school in the "real world"and do deal with, teachers, bullies, crushes and puberty without the possible looming darkness of evil and death. The threat of Voldemort is heavy price Harry must pay for his destiny of being a great wizard who lived. Starting with The Sorcerer's Stone and continuing through the books and films in the series, Harry is becoming an adult and learning to face his fears. Unlike Time Bandits though, Harry does not have to face the world and the future alone. Therefore, it has a distinctively more positive message than Terry Gilliam's bleak view of the adulthood through the eyes of a child.
No comments:
Post a Comment