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It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times:Harry Potter and HistoryApr 20 '01 (Updated Apr 22 '01) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Harry Potter occupies a significant role in children'e fiction for rekindling the joys of reading in a generation hooked on technology.
Late 20th Century Fiction 101 Prof. F. Froggy By the last decade of the 20th Century the technology explosion had permeated every aspect of daily life. A generation that had been raised by the light of the TV screen were raising children by the light of the monitor, Nintendo, and Playstation. Childhood obesity reached such a high that "adult onset" diabetes was seen in children as young as 10. Some desperate parents connected electronic equipment to stationary-bike powered generators, or made children barter physical activity for CPU time. A jaded generation expected entertainment to be full-color multimedia, and old-fashioned books were about as popular as button-top shoes.Advances in consumer electronic connected us beyond belief, but almost no one was reading books. Most damning of all, reading wasn't cool. Then a phenomenon began in Great Britain and rapidly spread through the planet's nurseries, classrooms and playgrounds. It centered around a rather nerdish boy in England named Harry Potter. He was to become more "real" than the Velveteen Rabbit could ever have dreamed. Orphaned as a toddler, Harry was reared by basically unwilling relatives in a frankly hostile and abusive environment. He was distinctly an outsider, with an unruly bush of hair and a zig-zag scar on his forehead from the "accident" that killed his parents. On his eleventh birthday, Harry found out just how much of an outsider he was: Harry was a wizard. Sent away to Hogwarts School of Wizardy from the 'muggle" (unmagic) world, gawky Harry found unexpected fame, opposition, and an ongoing struggle with good and evil. He made friends, learned why "strange events" happened around him. He also learned the actual events of his parent's demise, and the role he was expected to play in the wizard world. Each year at Hogwarts was chronicled in another book, and Harry's struggles with survival and acceptance captured the interest of the young world. Even more remarkably, as many adults as children followed the adventures, some reading surreptiously after their offspring went to bed, others buying their own copies. Children and parents alike camped out for midnight releases of new volumes and stayed up all night to read them. Reading was very, very cool. Children who resisted reading 20 page homework literature assignments devoured three,four, and five hundred-plus page books and clamored for more. Neither the nerdish nature of the hero, nor the challenging vocabulary for the younger readers daunted the interest. Harry Potter was printed in English, Spanish, German, Chinese, and a myriad of languages. But why? While interesting and carefully plotted, the works had not the greatness of C.S. Lewis, the warmth of Madeleine L'Engel, or the history of a Mark Twain. The books were very good, not great by the usual critical standards. Some critics panned them, and some religious groups decried them as the tools of Satan. I would submit the Harry Potter works were in fact great. Almost on their own, they rescued the book from techno-oblivion. Not only did kids read Potter and make author J K Rowling the best-selling novelist in the world, they also began to read many other books during the "waits"for the next volume's release. Harry Potter had opened the treasure chest of reading, and like Pandora's, once opened could not be confined. The Harry Potter saga deals with the great universals- the meaning of one's life, acceptance by one's peers, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. Whether David and Goliath, Moses and the Egyptians, Beowulf and Grendel, Arthur and Mordred, or Harry and the One Who Must Not Be Named, good versus evil is the heart of all great fiction. There are always "muggles" whose ability to understand and to respond is limited, who cannot accept miracles and who limit the possible to only the highly probable. The Harry's are able to see beyond the obvious, to dream dreams and to live life at a higher level. There always has been and always will be magic in accomplishing the very difficult. Reading Harry Potter, a generation began to dream their own dreams rather than living the vicarious ones of technology. Computer science and electronics revolutionized life, but the world of literature grounds us in the past while leading us into the realms we now imagine, and tomorrow make real. Because of Harry Potter, you sit in a class with a human teacher with a paper and board book in your hands. For all your electronic libraries, there's still a satisfaction in a familiar dog-eared volume. Harry freed us from pre-programmed scenarios and liberated the pure imagination. Books were never the enemy of technology-they were its complement and its source of nourishment. Look what marvels we enjoy because we shared Harry's fictionalized life, dreams and magic. The quiz originally scheduled for tomorrow will be rescheduled for next Monday. I want all of you to be able to enjoy the Quidditch match- how could we possibly lose to the Chuddley Cannons? Class dismissed.  |
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