why harry potter matters

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the culmination of the entire Potter series. Book seven in a series of seven. (Isn’t it interesting to note that the number seven is a number of mythological power? It can even be interpreted to mean a sheva which means a fullness of things.)

And Rowling certainly gives us a fullness of things.

This book is actually hard to write a review for because all of the spoilers have been released. We all know that Dumbledore really is dead. We know who the eye in the broken shard of mirror was. We know what a Horcrux is and what the final Horcrux was. We know what Voldemort’s fatal flaw was. And we might even understand the intricacies of wand lore.

But with the film quickly approaching (as I write this, it’s come and gone) I picked up my final tome in the Harry Potter series (the only book I ever pre-ordered, though I came very close with Clare’s Clockwork Angel), and read it again.

Why did I, a grown up start to read a children’s book? That’s who the audience was originally when Rowling wrote these books. Children. Honestly, I have no idea what made me pick it up. I couldn’t tell you, except that on long car rides with my parents I was more interested in Harry and his friends than what’s her name form Clan of the Cave Bear. By the time I actually read a book (I had heard the first two on tape) it was the Prisoner of Azkaban that I held in my hands and read in my college dorm room.

And I was hooked. Like a good number of people around the world. The language and wizarding culture of Harry Potter has infiltrated our own Muggle world. There’s even a theme park in Universal Studios devoted strictly to the Wizarding World. You can go have a cup of butter beer (non alcoholic, fyi), get a wan from Ollivanders, or fill your pockets with Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

Why is that? Why has this series of children’s books become so huge, not just with children but with the adults? Aside from just being really well written stories (Rowling definitely learns her chops as she goes on), and aside form creating a mythical world that is so tangible that there can be a theme park built to it (not to mention the Wizard Rock movement or college level quidditch matches that are taking storm across the country) there is an element that darkens with age. As her readers get older, so do her themes. These are complex stories full of fear, danger, tragedy, triumph, love, lies, betrayal, redemption. There is political unrest to the point of complete and utter political infiltration by the bad guys (aka Death Eaters). There are tiny slivers of hope in a hopeless world.

Good literature should help us find an escape. But if it was all about escape than the bodice ripper romance novels would be on the same level as Shakespeare. Additionally, it should help us deal with the world at hand. There should be lessons we learn, things we can take away from the stories that teach us, that guide us, that provide us some sort of augmentation of spirit, and soul.

With close reading, we see the books grow more and more dark and volatile, beginning with book 4 where Voldemort kills a muggle within the very first pages of the book, and then ends the book with the murder or Cedrick Diggory (played by Robert Pattinson, who later went on to become a very glittery vampire). It also begins to sow the seeds of disbelief, and government suppression of information, all to protect the common person from being frightened.

The tone and dangers within the books escalates from there, until we get to the seventh where it’s all or nothing, Voldemort or Harry, good or evil, one will live, one will die, and for a long time, it’s touch and go. Those who were saints are revealed, those who were despised and loathed show their true colors, and friendships, and humanity are put to a test.

Harry Potter helps us see our own world in context. Perhaps we aren’t being
rounded up to prove our heritage and why we should be allowed to live in a certain neighborhood, but we live in a world where things like that do happen, where there are things like ethnic cleansings, hate crimes, political refugees. If you look through our own world history and compare it with some things we come across in Rowling’s books, we will find some very striking similarities.

And while people for a little time argued against the books on a moral issue (the objection that they were WITCHES and WIZARDS and wouldn’t that contaminate our children?), the whole basis of the series is love, and doing what is right. You have characters who could easily act out, who have the right to be angry, despondent and vengeful, but never give in to those emotions. Even in the darkest times, they still try to hold on to what is good, what is right. There are examples of family love, of the love of friends, and eventually as the characters progress in age and maturity, even a little bit of romantic love. There is nothing here to create little witches and wizards of your own, unless you want to raise good, morally wholesome children. But that’s up to you.

I think that is why I have grown to love the Harry Potter series. They prove that here, there is no such thing as a simple children’s tale.