End of an Era, Part 1
Note: What started as a short entry on how much I like Harry Potter, turned into a friggin' essay, so I split it into 4 parts. Be warned: Thar be spoilers ahead!
So Harry Potter has finally come to an end. It's be a long and incredible journey since that first book found it's way to our shores. I don't think any series in the history of literature has had such a following, had so many admirers, or so many enemies. Like all great stories, this one can be told again and again, and sometimes the second or third reading can be even more moving and meaningful than the first. I just finished a straight through, non-stop Harry Potter binge starting from book one all the way to book seven, which I just finished last night. This was probably the third or fouth reading of the first four books, and at least the second for the rest. It was a strange mix of emotions as I closed book seven, and thus closed the story of Harry Potter and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Never again will I journey down the magical corridors of Hogwarts for the first time. Never will I feel that original tension and fear as Harry and his friends are forced to battle the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. Never will I feel the shock and sadness I felt as I sat,dumbfounded, having just read the pages where Sirius and Dumbledore meet their untimely deaths. And never again will I feel the burning joy and aching sadness I felt when first I read the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as Ron and Hermione finally fall for each other, Neville Longbottom finally revealing himself as the bad ass he truly is by cutting off the head of Voldemort's snake, or Harry dueling Voldemort for the last time. I think that, as I sat there in the dark, contemplating the story and what it has meant to me over nearly the last decade of my life, I decided I needed to write something about how I felt about the story. About how I grew to love the story, it's characters, and their world as it unfolded on the pages before my eyes.
It was books like Harry Potter that etched into my soul this obsession, this passion, that I have for books and literature. Ever since I was a child I've loved to read and as an adult, that has not changed. I take immense pride in my love of the written word. And in today's society where "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" takes precedence over letting one's imagination run wild in the hills of Middle Earth, amongst the stars with Rama, or even just trying to remember that "the enemy's gate is down" I have found that this is an all to rare gift indeed. I recently read that only 40-50% of adult Americans plan to read at least one novel this year, and about half of those will not read anything. It is a sad thing to witness, yet the one glimmer that has given me hope is that despite this dismal out look on the American populace's reading habits, at least Harry Potter has remained as popular and enchanting as ever.
It is a rare thing indeed to witness any book take hold of the public's imagination the way Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone did when it was first published in 1997. It did not make it to the United States until 1998, but by that time you could tell something extraordinary was happening. I don't think anyone at the time realized that they were making literary history, but the success of Harry Potter was nothing short of phenomenal. The book was simply flying off the shelves. I know that is a tired cliche and it's tossed about by marketing departments for anything that sells more than 2 copies in an hour, but this is one of the rare cases where I think the term can accurately be applied. Everyone I knew at the time was reading Harry Potter. And Rowling did not sit idly back and watch the money roll in, but she came out with a rapid-fire barrage of sequels, each one more popular and better than the previous. That last statement might offend a few purists who say the first book is their favorite and I admit, I still have a soft spot for the original. But as she wrote more, her voice got stronger, her language more mature, and her magical world richer, and deeper.
There was something magical (no pun intended) about the first book. It filled me with a sense of wonder and amazement that I had not felt reading a book in a long time. In fact, I think no other book has caught my imagination in quite the same way as Harry Potter did. Harry's discovering that he is a wizard, his arrival at Hogwarts, his forging of his lifelong friendship with Ron and Hermione after the fight with the troll, his battle for the Sorcerer's stone, and the mystery surrounding his past and his nemesis, Voldemort, were all so mesmerizing that I had to read it though several times to catch all the details of the rich world that J.K.R had created. Despite the fact that the book was very much a children's tale, I could see tremendous potential in the work Rowling had created.
One of the best facets of the Harry Potter approach to magic was to separate the different types of magic in the same way we separate different studies at school. She was able to create an entire curriculum of magical studies, each as different and distinct as the fascinating characters that each each discipline. Mix in a normal set of school-kid complaints, homework, exams, detention, study, and the one thought that every child has had at least once in their school careers: "When am I ever going to use this in real life", and you get such an amazing world that it would be a crime to limit it to only one book! Then, of course, came the second: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Many people have said the second book is much like the first, to it's detriment. And I would agree with this statement, up to a point. The story lines are very similar, the same basic formula is followed, and even the twist at the end revealing the true culprit is done in an almost identical fashion. But this book was when I first started to see that there was something a bit more to this series than the standard "take set of characters X and put in situation Y" formula that so many books of this type tended to follow. Maybe it was finding out about Voldemort's past, his real name, and connection to both Harry and the school. Maybe it was the fact that each book did not tie up the story in a neat little package. Whatever it was, there was something that told me that the story of Harry Potter was far from over, and it would be far different from anything you might imagine. This book also introduced the delightful character of Dobby the house-elf, who attempts to save Harry Potter by repeatedly trying to get him injured or expelled. Dobby could have easily tread into Jar-Jar Bink territory, but the brilliant way he was portrayed as this small but extremely powerful character who desired to do good yet was bound by the laws of his kind so that he had to constantly punish himself for the things he did was just awesome. It seemed that there was more to this than simply good guys vs. bad guys. And I was even more intrigued by this one than the first. But it was not until the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that I truly became a hardcore Harry Potter fan.
This book had the same tone of all the others: mystery, shadowy figures from the past, fights against overwhelming odds, yet this time it was different. While in the other books events were a bit predictable and sometimes seemed contrived, in this book we begin to see the deeper underlying themes of the Harry Potter series. Death, as always, plays a major role. It is fitting that we meet the dementors for the first time in this book as they are almost Death incarnate. They go unseen (except by wizards), wear hooded cloaks and have a skeletal, dead-like appearance. Yet despite the obvious allusions to the classic image of death the dementors do not actually kill their victims. The "dementor's kiss", we learn, is quite possibly the most horrible fate that can befall anyone as the act does not kill the person, but rather "sucks out their soul" leaving behind nothing but a shell. The book also continues with the idea that nothing is as it seems and the truth is always more fantastic than you think, but this is the first book to take that idea in such an original way. One of the most interesting things about this story us that Voldemort, while always a looming shadow in the background, never actually appears in the book. This is part of why it is so different: It is the only book in which the primary antagonist never makes a personal appearance. The entire time, you are focused on Sirius Black, whom everyone thinks is trying to kill Harry. But when I found out that not only is he innocent, but Harry's godfather, my whole view of the Harry Potter universe changed right then and there. Of course, that was until we learned that Scabbers, Ron's useless, sickly, and slightly used pet rat is none other than Peter Pettigrew (whom staged his death and framed Sirius in the process). That sent my head spinning.
This was also where I realized something: I had actually begun to care about the characters. I cared about what happened to Harry, Ron, Hermione, the other Weasley's, even Voldemort (though for him I was simply trying to think of the best way for him to get his comeuppance). This does not happen often for me, and I think this is one of the things that makes Harry Potter such a meaningful series. Most of the time, I read a story with a sort of detached interest. It is amusing to see the adventures of someone unfold and sometimes I'm surprised by where the author takes me, but it is almost never the case that in the process I find myself caring about people who do not exists anywhere but in my and the author's imagination. And it was at this point I was hooked. I would be one of those people who stand around at midnight, waiting for the next book to be released. Which is exactly what I did, though not for the next book. You see, when I started Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was already out, so I wasted no time continuing the journey with my imaginary friends from Hogwarts. And no one could see what was coming next.
Note: Part 2 will be posted shortly.
