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There are probably not many children out there,
or for that matter adults, who have not yet read the four books (so
far) of Harry Potter's adventures. What explains the success of
these children's books worldwide? Simply the fact that the adventures
of Harry Potter are truly captivating... Not mistaking children for
an easy-to-please public, Rowling has crafted a fantasy world so
thoughtfully and thoroughly that it
appeals not only to children, but also to the child in everyone of
us.
Let's introduce the background for the rare
persons who are not acquainted with Harry yet: Harry Potter is a
young orphan whose parents have been slain by evil sorcerer Voldemort. Trying to kill baby Harry with a spell, Voldemort
has
mysteriously lost all his powers and hasn't been heard of since...
As a reminder of his encounter with "he-who-cannot-be-named", Harry
has a scar on his forehead. Brought up by the Dursley, his uncaring
aunt and uncle, bullied by his cousin Dudley, Harry lives a wretched
life... Until one day, for his eleventh birthday, he receives a letter brought by an owl,
letter informing him that he has been accepted to Hogwarts school of
witchcraft and wizardry. At this point, Harry gladly leaves his
everyday misery to enter a world of magic and adventure...
From that point on, the neophyte reader will
discover with a sense of wonder Diagon alley, the Hogwarts express,
platform 9 and 3/4, Bertie Bott's every flavor beans, the
invisibility cloak and all the other elements that makes Harry
Potter's world unique. For the reader who is already familiar with
Harry Potter, these evocations are already part of the mythology
built by Rowling's fertile imagination.
But more than the fantasy world, sometimes
reminiscent of Alice's wonderland, what makes the Harry Potter
series so attractive is its characters. Rowling avoid the
two-dimensionalism found in many children books. The characters from
Harry Potter are "real" and therefore endearing: they display the
same complexities and flaws than real people. Thus, we've
all met a patronizing nerd like Hermione or a loyal but insecure
boy like Ron. Harry himself is not a
wizard genius. He is instead a regular boy who prefers play than
school. He just happens to be a wizard and to have defeated
Voldemort. More anti-hero at times than hero, he succeeds rather
thanks to the help of his friends and to his courage than because of
his powers.
The Harry Potter series conveys values like
friendship and loyalty, but without the ingenuousness often met in tales
addressed to children. As in real life, there are no simple
relationships and no one is all black or white. Rather, characters
are different shades of gray, and the struggle of good vs. evil is
rendered even more interesting by this ambiguity.
As for the polemic raised by bigoted people
that Harry Potter is unsuitable for children because it lures them
towards witchcraft, the argument is simply ridiculous and
ill-founded: it would be like stating that Alice in Wonderland
entices them to consume hallucinogen mushrooms... So don't deprive
your children from the sheer joy of reading Harry Potter!
Watching the
movie adapted from Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone
is worthwhile but it should not prevent anyone from reading the
book, as so much is left out from it. If Columbus has managed to
recreate the atmosphere in some sequences (Diagon alley is exactly
as I pictured it, Horgarts Great Hall too...), he has missed an
important component of the book: if Harry Potter is about magic and
wonder, it is also about darkness and evil. Some parts of the book,
dealing with Voldemort, the ultimately evil wizard, are pretty scary
(as are truly scary some fairy tales), and this side of the story is
almost completely absent from the film, which is a shame... (To a
certain extent, children like to be scared!). I think Tim Burton
would have been a far better director for the film and would
have managed to convey the uncanny in a subtler
way...
Because Harry Potter is a lucrative business,
a PC game has been adapted from the film, and my advice is: don't
play it unless you're a child or you have the
dexterity-with-the-mouse and the patience of a child... You can't go
to the next quest until you've finished the current and you're able to
save only at some points in the game (therefore, if you fail, you
have to go through the dialog parts once again, and there's no way
you can skip them!). The game is mainly based on your ability to
drag and click... One word to describe it: frustrating...
Book rating:
© Discussing Books, 07/19/2002 |
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