Thoughts on Harry Potter

I went up to the mall today to check out a sale at Penney's. As I was meandering that cornucopia of modern consumerism, I passed by the bookstore, and very nearly dropped twenty bucks on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Um...why?

It's not, let me state, due to any sort of lack of reading material on my part. Firstly, I have more than enough books to begin with, had just gotten a few more out of the library this morning, and had just recieved an already-fascinating book as a birthday gift from my father this morning. Secondly, I don't remember ever not having something to read, as that simply doesn't happen to me. Thirdly, I don't really need a reason to buy a book, because I really really like books.

But why Harry Potter? Why was I tempted to pay full price at a chain bookstore for a clothbound book? Why, for that matter, have I been able to like Harry Potter, which has become increasingly more commercialized and has always been mainstream pop-culture?

Well. For one, and this I have no hesitation in admitting: JK Rowling is a hell of a writer. She's brilliant, because I've yet to talk to someone who's read the books and hasn't felt that they could could, in some way, relate to at least one of main characters. Harry himself is the lovable underdog, a normal boy in his eyes who was thrown not entirely willingly into a decidedly abnormal situation. Hogwarts may have magic and moving stairways, but who wasn't there in middle and high school? Is there anyone in the world who didn't know a Draco Malfoy, who didn't have a Hermione or Ron to fall back on?

There are times in every book, from the very first time Harry sets foot in Hogwarts, that he feels overexposed. Everyone already thinks they know him, becuase he's The Boy Who Lived. He's not just Harry, he's Harry Potter, and you can hear the emphasis there, can't you? Once again: Is there anyone who didn't feel this way in their early teen years? That everyone thought they knew you even when they didn't, that there was something setting you apart, making you different? I'm absolutely certain that every single person, at least in their teen years and most people throughout their lives, has felt that feeling that, somehow, everyone is watching you, holding you up to a standard you don't know you can meet. That, that unsettling scrutiny, is a universal theme, and Rowling has done it extremely well thus far.

Then, there's the actual plot of the series, the story arc that runs through all the books. Now, I've yet to read the most recent addition, but I'm willing to put money on it following the same arc, which is: (ready for it?) Good versus evil.

Well, yeah. Look at practically any book ever written, any story ever told, any sort of fiction and the vast majority of non-fiction, and it's summed up in those words. They may not be all clean-cut black-and-white, but telling a story requires taking a point of view, which means you're going to end up presenting someone as the good guy and someone as the not-as-good-guy. In Harry Potter thus far, it's fairly clear that Harry is the good guy and Voldemort is the bad guy, and, really, that's the soul of the story right there. In every book, Voldemort is the menacing bad guy, and Harry fights him. Right there is the most universal theme imaginable. Of course people like her books.

I'm certain I'll have much more to say on the topic once I actually, y'know, read the new book.