Harry Potter's appeal

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 144294

bboyminn wrote:
<snip>
> However, mere mystery doesn't explain how these books can cross so
> many cultural boundaries. <snip> The demographic spread of the
appeal of the books seems far out of proportion with any other book
ever published. Why?
> 
> I think it is because there are some universal aspects of JKR's
story that touch us beyond basic entertainment, much like myths and
legends that have endured for many centuries, and in some cases,
millennia. <snip>
> 
> So, while JKR draws her story from many ancient myths and legends, I
think she also tape into the essense of those myths and legends. Many
books have Centaurs, elves, and dragons, but they don't have the
appeal of Harry Potter. <snip> In a sense, JKR is telling The
Universal Story. She is telling the story of all people for all time.
This isn't just the story of Harry's hero's journey, but the story of
every hero's journey. <snip>
> 
> Next, JKR has a very terse compact writing style. Where else do you
find books with short to-the-point three and four word sentences. More
over, part of JKR's talent is to use this terse writing style to
stimualte our imaginations. Instead of detail word-picture
descriptions of the world you are in, she gives us just enough to
stimulate our imaginations to fill in the blanks. <snip> In a sense,
she doesn't create the world for me, my mind and my imagination,
stimuatled by her, have created this world. In this world, I am not
just a passive viewer, I am an active participant.
> 
> Another aspect of the compact writing style is that the books move
> fast. Tremendous amounts of story are told in so very few pages.
> Because it moves so fast, there isn't time to get bored. <snip>
> 
> One last point, unlike much modern entertainment, the underlying
nature of the characters isn't clearly draw. Harry is not the perfect
virtuous hero, we really can't tell at this stage which side Snape is
on, Sirius was both good and bad. In otherwords, the fact that no one
in these books is perfect, that even the most evil has elements of
sympathy, and the most virtuous has his degree of darkness, adds a
deep reality to the books that is appealing and captivating to readers. 
> 
> In these books all the characters are drawn in agonizing,
frustrating, disconcerting shades of grey; just like real-life. <snip>
Further, Harry doesn't always get it right; we can certainly
identify with that. People have died as an indirect result of Harry's
choices. You can be certain that even the happiest ending for this
series will still be very bittersweet. <snip>
>

Carol responds:
I agree that the imperfections of the hero and his friends and the
ambiguity of Snape, in particular, are central to the book's
near-universal appeal, but I think that "mythos" has little to do with
it. JKR borrows widely from a number of traditions, bringing together
the cauldron-stirring witches of "Macbeth" and wizards of the Merlin
tradition; centaurs, unicorns, and werewolves; magic wands and flying
carpets--but these elements, which she has managed to cobble together
into a fairly coherent Wizarding World (if we aren't too picky about
consistency in what can and can't be conjured out of thin air) are
less important, IMO, than the idea of a boy encountering an alien
world in which he's destined to be a hero combined, perhaps uniquely,
with a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age story) with a boarding school
backdrop. These combined elements enable JKR to produce some
compelling characters other than the hero and his best friends,
particularly Snape, Dumbledore, Snape, Lupin, Snape, Crouch!Moody, and
did I say Snape?

Steve mentions JKR's "compact" writing style. I would call her style
"concise" (at least most of the time)--getting to the point without a
lot of extra words (a la Melville) and relying primarily on narrative
strategies (action and dialogue, with touches of description sprinkled
throughout the story rather than lumped together in whole paragraphs)
and very little exposition (explanation). The early sequels (CoS and
PoA) are weakest in this respect, slowed down in the early chapters
when JKR is trying to provide background information for readers
who've missed the earlier books ("Harry Potter was a very unusual
boy," "Quidditch was played with four balls," etc. Ho hum. . . .). The
later books attempt to present the back-story using more sophisticated
strategies (notes and letters, Daily Prophet articles, dreams,
dialogue, and even scenes in which Harry isn't present).

Fortunately, most of the story in all six books consists of vividly
depicted scenes in a chronological sequence, with occasional
flashbacks presented *as if they occurred in the present* via Riddle's
diary or the Pensieve or Lily's screams as Harry confronts the
Dementors--no past perfect tense ("he had done such and such") or
summarized action to slow down the flashback and remove its immediacy.
In other words, JKR knows how to keep the reader's attention even in
flashbacks through an effective, action-oriented style consisting
chiefly of concrete nouns and strong verbs (and some well-chosen
adjectives), along with natural, realistic dialogue (with many
characters given distinctive and recognizable "voices"). She knows
where to end a chapter to keep the reader hooked, and she combines
suspense with humor, occasional violence with humanity. (Cedric's
death, for example, is balanced by Dumbledore's tribute to "a boy who
was good and kind and brave," quoted from memory) The few long
speeches (usually from Dumbledore) are interrupted by natural actions
and reactions from the listener (usually if not always Harry). There
are tidbits of wisdom that we can interpret as lessons for Harry (and
the reader), but no sermons or lectures (unless we count Umbridge's
all too realistic speech, which Hermione interprets for the unwary,
and which is not representative of JKR's own philosophy).

For me, at least, the point of view is also intriguing. The narrator,
who usually sees from Harry's perspective, can't always be trusted.
And JKR, like Melville (of all people), occasionally needs to shift to
a different narrative strategy, e.g., a minor character's POV in the
first chapters of GoF and HBP or the objective third-person narrator
of "Spinner's End." A child might not notice these strategies, though
he would certainly notice Harry's absence from those chapters. But for
analytically minded adult readers like me, they add an element of
sophistication to the later books that is absent from the first three,
part of JKR's strategy of having the books "grow" along with the
protagonist and her imagined child readers.

That said, the supreme achievement of the books, IMO, and the reason I
keep returning to them, is the enigmatic and ever-fascinating
character of Severus Snape. I only hope that Snape's actions in "The
Lightning-Struck Tower" are in some way deceptive, like the
characterization of Sirius Black as a homicidal maniac throughout PoA,
even though Harry witnesses Dumbledore's death on the tower. (That
such a seemingly straightforward event can be interpreted in so many
different ways by different readers, all using canonical evidence, is
a testimony to JKR's gifts as a writer.) Otherwise, a "gift of a
character" capable of arousing a wide range of emotions in readers and
subject to a wide variety of interpretations will have been simply
wasted, and while the books will still appeal to some readers, they
will lose their fascination for those of us who see them as more than
children's books or an extended mystery story which will lose more
than half its appeal when the mystery is solved. The series as a whole
has the potential of becoming a classic, read and reread by
generations of children and parents and grandparents and teachers, but
everything depends on Book 7 maintaining the strengths of the previous
books--humor and surprise and vividly depicted action and memorable
characterization--along with the satisfactory resolution so
conspicuously absent from Books 5 and 6.

Carol, speaking in part as an editor and in part as a Snapefan and
trusting that gebroni2, who asked the original question, will know
which points fit which category