FAQ -- The Universal Appeal of Harry Potter

[frantyck at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23566

hello all. my first post.

i think pippin has it. what hp does is fulfill a wish most people 
seem to have for a bit of magic in the world. a lot of fiction 
attempts to do the same thing, to create an alternate world in 
companionship with this one. tolkien does it, and so does roald dahl 
(imo, a greater author than rowling... sorry, sorry). tolkien's world 
is immense and complete, dauntingly so. it is also completely unlike 
our own world. dahl's books perch just within our own mundane world, 
making it magical in a heady, shortlived way. it's a world recreated 
inside the mind of the reader.

rowling, on the other hand, wrests control pretty thoroughly. the 
world she creates is here, around us, yet we are excluded from it. 
that exclusion is awfully painful, especially when one realises that 
growing up is a process of recognising limits, and separating the 
imaginary from the real.

her world is also dynamic, it is going somewhere, there is a mystery 
and a story. there is a single great conflict, two forces contending. 
how could any story fail to be attractive when it has adult conflict 
(second world war, the good war, etc.) waged within an intimate world?

intimate world: school. the place where excitement and boredom are 
rich and continuous, a hothouse world where you know the same few 
individuals in the same contexts. it's a simple world, with the lines 
clearly drawn. one often wishes for a reason to shine, a reason to 
rise above oneself; an all-or-nothing cause like that of dumbledore 
and all the good wizards and witches against the dark forces. in such 
a context, it is easy to choose sides, to accept a call to action. 
the "real" world is not often like that.

i wonder why *children* read these books which such avidity. why 
adults should find the hp world atractive is, to my mind, pretty 
clear!

oddly enough, rowling isn't, to my mind, a particularly brilliant 
writer. her plots are contrived and occasionally clumsy. her 
characterisation is often flat (but cleverly sufficient for her 
purposes). her villain isn't very scary. i mean, could one be as 
flippant about tolkien's sauron as we are about "voldie?" she leaves 
gaping holes -- which is also a strength.

but she hits all the right spots. what she does is take elements from 
everyone's childhood world, throwing in a little of the medieval (why 
is the european medieval world so fascinating to us?): dragons, 
spells, wands, broomsticks, etc. etc. and tie them all together 
seamlessly. she doesn't have to create, to make the reader strain to 
believe, he/she is already aware, deep down, of all these elements.

i don't know how relevant this is, but: when i was about 11 years 
old, i had a dream which involved my flying about, as a skill that i 
was born with -- quite normal. when i woke up, i was shattered, 
because i realised that i'd always believed somewhere deep down that 
i COULD fly. dreaming the dream had broken that illusion.

more than my 2 cents'

rrishi