Deathly Hallows
The Magical Amish
04/12/08 19:27 Filed in: Harry Potter
I've recently become a frequent visitor to the "You
Tube" library of videos, wandering up and down its
many corridors, checking out the wide variety of
items it has to offer. The other day, on one of my
wanderings, I stumbled across a fascinating little
video in which a young woman (maybe 12 or 13)
recorded her immediate reaction (live and almost
unedited) upon completing her first reading of
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I was amazed at the level of raw emotion on display. The young woman was so overcome at times that she actually had to turn off her recorder and take a moment to compose herself before starting it up again. My first thought was to marvel, yet again, at the tremendous impact of the seven novels on their reading public. Then I wondered how Jo Rowling must feel if and when she comes across these kinds of tributes in cyberspace and sees, first hand and unedited, how strong an impact her books were having. Then I started to recall recent studies that have been done on how the young people of the 21st century are seeking and finding community in cyberspace to share and deal with even their most intimate personal issues: parents divorcing, family members dying, break ups with boyfriends or girlfriends, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.
After a while, however, the irony hit me. This young woman's video on You Tube captures her emotional reaction to the final novel about a group of 21st century kids who have, apparently, completed rejected the cyber age.
What does that say about the millions of people who love Harry Potter?
Especially the young fans?
I find it amazing that the most successful collection of children's novels in the 21st century involves a clear repudiation of science and technology. Children are putting aside their cell phones and iPods, their XBoxes and Wiis, turning off their TVs and their internet connections, to read these books. And the children in the books — even though they apparently live in the same time and place as their fans — never (and I mean never) access the many technological wonders of the modern world. I don't think that the words "internet" or "e-mail" appear even once in the seven books.
I have long compared the Harry Potter series to the Star Wars series of the 1970s and I think the comparisons are valid (see other posts on this website) both with regard to the internal world of the two series and with regard to the fan phenomenon they have created. But the original Star Wars series was all about technology — even the good guys, who embraced magic (sorry, the "force"), had space ships and blaster guns and androids and light sabres. Harry Potter carries in it a distinct, unchallenged distrust of technology.
There is, in fact, little or no science in the books. The closest course to Science at Hogwarts is Potions, which seems a little like chemistry but really isn't. These people trust magic but never seek to explain how it works. Even when we are privy to the lessons the students are taught, we find very little interest in explaining why things work, why a potion is effective, how an effect is created.
Harry's cousin, Dudley, loves his technology. He has TVs in every room and a computer upon which he plays. It's no surprise, then, that Dudley is portrayed as the worst kind of child, spoiled rotten and a bully to the core.
The only person from the wizarding world who shows any interest at all in scientific questions is Arthur Weasley. He takes Muggle cars apart and marvels at their trains that run underground. He states in book six that his greatest ambition is to figure out how airplanes stay up, yet he shows absolutely no interest in understanding how broomsticks stay up.
Let's face it, the wizarding world in the books of J.K. Rowling is practically Amish in its rejection of technology. If it weren't for the Hogwarts Express — an actual train — we would find absolutely no remotely modern technology among the witches and wizards.
What do we make of this? In an era where we find it impossible to get young people to put their technology aside even for a minute, why is this Amish world of magic so insanely popular?
It's possible, just possible, that the children of the 70s still hoped that technology could be trusted to save us from ourselves, from the damage we've done to the planet, from the damage we threaten to do to each other, and that the children of today no longer share that trust. And J.K. Rowling has tapped into that in creating an alternate world that is free of the nastiness that technology threatens to bring.
(An interesting side-note to this issue is the fact that the second trilogy in the Star Wars series, released at about the same time as the Potter books, continued to cling to technology and was, at least from what I can see, significantly less popular than either the original trilogy or the Rowling books).
Interesting. And yet the same kids who are loving the books are also streaming their immediate emotional reactions to those books through You Tube in cyberspace. Hmmmm...
And of course I wonder at the relationship between the wizarding world and the Muggle world in Rowling's creation. We learn that witch burning in the 14th century was a waste of time because the witches just cast a spell that caused the flames to tickle rather than burn but what about pollution and nuclear weapons? What about disease and starvation?
An interesting future story (and one that has been featured numerous times on Star Trek) might be what happens when the wizarding world decides that it MUST intervene to stop the Muggles from destroying the planet we all share. Interesting.
I was amazed at the level of raw emotion on display. The young woman was so overcome at times that she actually had to turn off her recorder and take a moment to compose herself before starting it up again. My first thought was to marvel, yet again, at the tremendous impact of the seven novels on their reading public. Then I wondered how Jo Rowling must feel if and when she comes across these kinds of tributes in cyberspace and sees, first hand and unedited, how strong an impact her books were having. Then I started to recall recent studies that have been done on how the young people of the 21st century are seeking and finding community in cyberspace to share and deal with even their most intimate personal issues: parents divorcing, family members dying, break ups with boyfriends or girlfriends, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.
After a while, however, the irony hit me. This young woman's video on You Tube captures her emotional reaction to the final novel about a group of 21st century kids who have, apparently, completed rejected the cyber age.
What does that say about the millions of people who love Harry Potter?
Especially the young fans?
I find it amazing that the most successful collection of children's novels in the 21st century involves a clear repudiation of science and technology. Children are putting aside their cell phones and iPods, their XBoxes and Wiis, turning off their TVs and their internet connections, to read these books. And the children in the books — even though they apparently live in the same time and place as their fans — never (and I mean never) access the many technological wonders of the modern world. I don't think that the words "internet" or "e-mail" appear even once in the seven books.
I have long compared the Harry Potter series to the Star Wars series of the 1970s and I think the comparisons are valid (see other posts on this website) both with regard to the internal world of the two series and with regard to the fan phenomenon they have created. But the original Star Wars series was all about technology — even the good guys, who embraced magic (sorry, the "force"), had space ships and blaster guns and androids and light sabres. Harry Potter carries in it a distinct, unchallenged distrust of technology.
There is, in fact, little or no science in the books. The closest course to Science at Hogwarts is Potions, which seems a little like chemistry but really isn't. These people trust magic but never seek to explain how it works. Even when we are privy to the lessons the students are taught, we find very little interest in explaining why things work, why a potion is effective, how an effect is created.
Harry's cousin, Dudley, loves his technology. He has TVs in every room and a computer upon which he plays. It's no surprise, then, that Dudley is portrayed as the worst kind of child, spoiled rotten and a bully to the core.
The only person from the wizarding world who shows any interest at all in scientific questions is Arthur Weasley. He takes Muggle cars apart and marvels at their trains that run underground. He states in book six that his greatest ambition is to figure out how airplanes stay up, yet he shows absolutely no interest in understanding how broomsticks stay up.
Let's face it, the wizarding world in the books of J.K. Rowling is practically Amish in its rejection of technology. If it weren't for the Hogwarts Express — an actual train — we would find absolutely no remotely modern technology among the witches and wizards.
What do we make of this? In an era where we find it impossible to get young people to put their technology aside even for a minute, why is this Amish world of magic so insanely popular?
It's possible, just possible, that the children of the 70s still hoped that technology could be trusted to save us from ourselves, from the damage we've done to the planet, from the damage we threaten to do to each other, and that the children of today no longer share that trust. And J.K. Rowling has tapped into that in creating an alternate world that is free of the nastiness that technology threatens to bring.
(An interesting side-note to this issue is the fact that the second trilogy in the Star Wars series, released at about the same time as the Potter books, continued to cling to technology and was, at least from what I can see, significantly less popular than either the original trilogy or the Rowling books).
Interesting. And yet the same kids who are loving the books are also streaming their immediate emotional reactions to those books through You Tube in cyberspace. Hmmmm...
And of course I wonder at the relationship between the wizarding world and the Muggle world in Rowling's creation. We learn that witch burning in the 14th century was a waste of time because the witches just cast a spell that caused the flames to tickle rather than burn but what about pollution and nuclear weapons? What about disease and starvation?
An interesting future story (and one that has been featured numerous times on Star Trek) might be what happens when the wizarding world decides that it MUST intervene to stop the Muggles from destroying the planet we all share. Interesting.
Full Circle
17/11/08 15:55 Filed in: Harry Potter
Interesting reading this past weekend. As part of our
evening ritual, I have taken up reading Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to my partner
as she sits working on her first knitting project. I
even try to inject some of the voices into the
reading, mimicking as best I can the voices of the
characters from the movie versions. It's not easy,
let me tell you, and Hagrid just about kills me.
Still, we're having a lot of fun and Patti is a
fantastic audience. She laughs a lot at the first
book and reminds me what it was like when it was
still fairly new to me too.
It's a nice bit of reminiscing for me and some good together time for us. And it brings us back to the year we met — 1997, when JK had just released The Philosopher's Stone — because I started reading the book aloud to Patti then too. Of course, she was in England then so we didn't get all the way through it. Now, no doubt we will. And then on to The Chamber of Secrets!
Reading the first book, however, also sparked in me the inclination to read the seventh volume — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — once again. I have to admit, I didn't read every word of it. I skipped over the bits about Harry coming to doubt Dumbledore and part of the section where they are on the run (from the day Ron leaves to the day he returns). That's not to say that those aren't important, well-written parts: I just didn't feel like subjecting myself again to the unhappiness Harry experiences in his own soul as his image of his old school master is tarnished and with Hermione as they flail about, without Ron, trying to trace Horcruxes on their own.
Anyway, it was quite interesting to read the first and last of the books at the same time. Certain things stood out, like the impressive consistency of Ms. Rowling's vision and of her presentation of the world of magical characters. Or the incredible amount of detail that she included in book one that still resonates in book seven. The seeds she plants in The Philosopher's Stone are still growing, with amazing results, in The Deathly Hallows.
Not surprisingly, a few inconsistencies did come to light. For example, Dumbledore's light-stealing device is called a "Put-Outer" in the first book and a "Deluminator" in the seventh (sorry if there are spelling errors there — I've got a dog sleeping on my feet and I don't want to disturb her to go check). It's also interesting that Hagrid tells Harry that he had flown to the rock in the middle of the sea to deliver Harry's Hogwarts letter early in the first book and yet, when they leave, the narrator makes no mention of the presence of a broomstick, a Thestral, a Hippogriff or any of the other methods of flying that develop in later books. In the final volume, however, it is commented on several times that Voldemort has developed the ability to fly without such aids, something that is, apparently, unusual even in the world of wizards and witches. So how did Hagrid get to the rock?
Perhaps the most interesting issue I've noticed (or been reminded of) through this little exercise in reading is the impressive change in the level and sophistication of JK's writing from the first book to the last. As Patti has helped me to remember, The Philosopher's Stone is a delightful, witty children's book with all kinds of charming turns of phrase and silly incidents. By contrast, The Deathly Hallows is clearly an intelligent, intense novel suitable for adults, with a much more complicated plot, a great deal more violence and much more mature themes.
It's a credit to Ms. Rowling that both are, in my opinion at least, excellent examples of their genres. They are consistent with each other and yet very different in their style and sophistication.
The exercise has also got me considering taking on two new projects: first, preparing my own Harry Potter Concordance (I've actually already started one), not so much for public consumption but simple to give myself a reason to continue to dwell in that magical world and to enjoy and learn from Ms. Rowling's skills as a writer; and second, writing a sequel of my own, using secondary characters from the original books, to tell the story of what I think would have happened next. Once again, it wouldn't be for any reason other than my own enjoyment but it could be a lot of fun!
And either or both could find their way onto this website.
It's a nice bit of reminiscing for me and some good together time for us. And it brings us back to the year we met — 1997, when JK had just released The Philosopher's Stone — because I started reading the book aloud to Patti then too. Of course, she was in England then so we didn't get all the way through it. Now, no doubt we will. And then on to The Chamber of Secrets!
Reading the first book, however, also sparked in me the inclination to read the seventh volume — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — once again. I have to admit, I didn't read every word of it. I skipped over the bits about Harry coming to doubt Dumbledore and part of the section where they are on the run (from the day Ron leaves to the day he returns). That's not to say that those aren't important, well-written parts: I just didn't feel like subjecting myself again to the unhappiness Harry experiences in his own soul as his image of his old school master is tarnished and with Hermione as they flail about, without Ron, trying to trace Horcruxes on their own.
Anyway, it was quite interesting to read the first and last of the books at the same time. Certain things stood out, like the impressive consistency of Ms. Rowling's vision and of her presentation of the world of magical characters. Or the incredible amount of detail that she included in book one that still resonates in book seven. The seeds she plants in The Philosopher's Stone are still growing, with amazing results, in The Deathly Hallows.
Not surprisingly, a few inconsistencies did come to light. For example, Dumbledore's light-stealing device is called a "Put-Outer" in the first book and a "Deluminator" in the seventh (sorry if there are spelling errors there — I've got a dog sleeping on my feet and I don't want to disturb her to go check). It's also interesting that Hagrid tells Harry that he had flown to the rock in the middle of the sea to deliver Harry's Hogwarts letter early in the first book and yet, when they leave, the narrator makes no mention of the presence of a broomstick, a Thestral, a Hippogriff or any of the other methods of flying that develop in later books. In the final volume, however, it is commented on several times that Voldemort has developed the ability to fly without such aids, something that is, apparently, unusual even in the world of wizards and witches. So how did Hagrid get to the rock?
Perhaps the most interesting issue I've noticed (or been reminded of) through this little exercise in reading is the impressive change in the level and sophistication of JK's writing from the first book to the last. As Patti has helped me to remember, The Philosopher's Stone is a delightful, witty children's book with all kinds of charming turns of phrase and silly incidents. By contrast, The Deathly Hallows is clearly an intelligent, intense novel suitable for adults, with a much more complicated plot, a great deal more violence and much more mature themes.
It's a credit to Ms. Rowling that both are, in my opinion at least, excellent examples of their genres. They are consistent with each other and yet very different in their style and sophistication.
The exercise has also got me considering taking on two new projects: first, preparing my own Harry Potter Concordance (I've actually already started one), not so much for public consumption but simple to give myself a reason to continue to dwell in that magical world and to enjoy and learn from Ms. Rowling's skills as a writer; and second, writing a sequel of my own, using secondary characters from the original books, to tell the story of what I think would have happened next. Once again, it wouldn't be for any reason other than my own enjoyment but it could be a lot of fun!
And either or both could find their way onto this website.