Harry Potter as an Alternate Possibility - Essay Example

Harry Potter as an Alternate Possibility Fantasy literature has been a part of our lives since the beginning of time whether we choose to believe it or not. One of the oldest known English texts in the world, Beowulf, comprises elements of fantasy in the telling of an ancient hero who overcame the demon world and defeated dragons to leave the world a safer and more enlightened place. With all our sophistication in the years that have elapsed since the original telling of Beowulf and today’s world, we continue to look to fantasy literature for hope of a different world, a new outcome or a challenge to the status quo. That this is the case can be shown by looking into any piece of fantasy literature produced in recent times. Because of its widespread popularity among children as well as adults, the Harry Potter series, written by J.K. Rowling proves an excellent example. From her first book in the series, Rowling awakened readers to the possibilities that might exist in the next heartbeat, half a step to the right or behind the seemingly solid brick wall. In opening up these possibilities, she also introduces a world in which common perceptions of things such as ‘normal’, ‘strange’ or ‘weak’ may need to be redefined. To illustrate how fantasy literature continues to provide readers with an alternate mode of reality and tends to challenge the status quo, the first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, will be discussed as an example. Fantasy Literature opens up other possibilities to realism The hidden world of the wizards introduced in J.K. Rowling’s book exists side by side with the world of reality we have all been brought up to know. While the very familiar world of the ‘muggles’, the average, everyday, non-magical variety of human, rely upon technology and science to accomplish their daily activities, the wizards and witches, carefully concealing their actions, manage to bring magical powers to bear on these same issues using different tools, such as magic wands, ‘floo’ powder or magical devices like broomsticks and special motorcycles. The worlds coincide to such an extent that it requires active participation by all of the members of the wizarding world to keep their existence a secret from the non-magical variety. Although the reason for this is not fully explained, that it is the case is revealed in the many secret locations found throughout the book which are themselves corroborated by the ‘accidental occurrences’ within the novel that all of us have felt at one time or another. The idea that another world might exist right alongside the one we’re all sure we know is introduced as Hagrid finally catches up with Harry and Harry begins to experience the points of connection. The pre-school shopping trip, for instance, takes Harry down “an ordinary street full of ordinary people” until they reach “a tiny, grubby-looking pub” that only Harry and Hagrid seemed to notice. “The people hurrying by didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn’t see the Leaky Cauldron at all” (68). Even within this hidden nook in the busy muggle street, the entrance into Diagon Alley, the principle shopping district for all things magical, remains hidden behind a special brick wall in the alley behind the pub. The actual location of Hogwarts is never disclosed as the students are merely instructed to board the Hogwarts Express, a special train that apparently has no competition for tracks and travels for long hours at a time to reach its location, yet even the launch point for this special train remains hidden behind a brick pillar at platform nine and three quarters. In both of these examples, the fantastic world of magic that could never exist is made possible through its double removal from the mundane world of the muggles – one must first ‘see’ the pub before one can have a chance at opening the magic pathway; one must find the path to the right platform if one is to catch the only train to a magical school. The idea that the ‘normal’ world can and might be infiltrated by special events and characters is made possible almost immediately in Rowling’s book as well. Although she starts the book describing the Dursley family and their typical, mundane lifestyle, she quickly introduces an element of the unreal and fantastic as Mr. Dursley makes his way to work. “It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn’t realize what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight” (2-3). This incident alludes to the childhood suspicion many of us have had in which it is believed that the moment our backs are turned, the lights are off or the door is shut, the toys in the room will come into life of their own. Just like McGonagall’s uncatlike behaviors, Hagrid the giant stands out in a crowd full of ‘normal’ muggles wherever he goes. Although he is obviously a magical creature, his difference is shrugged away as merely strange, something to gawk at, to hold against and to ostracize, but not recognized for its truth. Finally, although Harry is barely known outside of the wizarding world and, when he is, is known as a juvenile delinquent attending a reformatory school, within his ‘proper’ world, he has a hidden identity as an all-powerful celebrity who somehow managed to summon enough power as an uneducated infant to defeat the most powerful wizard their world had ever known. This hidden identity crosses into the muggle world as well in the form of wizards and witches recognizing the boy and wanting to express their thanks or admiration. Fantasy’s tendency to challenge established ‘norms’ or expectations In presenting the possibility that an alternate world may exist right alongside the one we have come to accept as ‘reality’, fantasy also provides ample opportunity for storytellers to challenge the status quo or the social expectations normally given a particular situation. For example, it seems common modern knowledge that a young boy, raised in abuse and neglect throughout his early childhood, would naturally become some sort of criminal element by the time he reached his teenage years. Rowling, however, saves her character by introducing an element of change at a crucial moment in his life in the form of Rubeus Hagrid and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Throughout her depiction of Harry and his ‘muggle’ family the Dursleys, Rowling demonstrates how modern assumptions are not necessarily always right. In challenging the norms, one of the first concepts Rowling attacks in her book is the difference between appearance and actuality. The Dursleys appear to be normal, but they aren’t because they are related to a wizarding family. They also aren’t normal by muggle standards. The Dursleys as a group are horrid people, petty, selfish and completely absorbed in making themselves appear ‘normal.’ However, this obsession with appearances has caused them to move well beyond normal into mere caricature of a family. No one in it is, or can be, healthy because they are too busy concerning themselves with what is right for them. This is established from the first page of the book in which the three-person household is described. Mr. Dursley is the puffed up and important executive, despite the fact that he isn’t really all that important as the director of a firm that merely sells drills. Mrs. Dursley is so obsessed with appearing the middle-class housewife that she has lost all color and personality of her own and now spends her time doting unhealthily upon her son and her home. She “had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors” (1). Dudley, understanding on some intuitive level that his mother’s doting is not the same thing as real love and care, stuffs himself with food to try to compensate for what he feels he’s missing and spends the rest of his time acquiring the material accoutrements of a ‘normal’ middle class child even as he gains his sense of importance through his bullying of his smaller, weaker and downtrodden cousin. Another cultural fallacy that Rowling reveals in her book is the idea that strange or different is somehow related to bad. Harry is presented as a very strange child in that he is able to take on all of the abuse of the three Dursleys without allowing it to fundamentally warp his character. He sees through their petty ways and realizes that he, in his isolation and poverty, actually has a more ‘real’ base to his character. His ‘strangeness’ is demonstrated in the muggle world as small manifestations of his magic work their way out. From a completely muggle perspective, events such as Harry’s hair growing back in a single night, quickly shrinking sweaters or finding oneself suddenly on the roof of a building are not magical or wonderful; they are merely strange. When his recognizably normal empathy with the snake turns into an actual conversation, Harry is involved in activity that might engage a child with a slightly more active imagination coupled with coincidence until it slithers past him. In addition, Harry’s anonymity extends only to the muggle world, even before he knows his true identity. “Sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too … A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word” (30). Although he is strange and becomes involved in many strange things, as things turn out, Harry is the ultimate ‘cool’ kid because of his ability to enter a world the entire modern world, at one point, seemed to want to join – evidenced by the long lines of people fully dressed in character as they waited for the next book in the series to be released. Finally, there continues to be a perception in modern society that small and unordered necessarily equates with weak and powerless. Through her depiction of Harry, Rowling directly addresses the concept that weak can be powerful in a number of ways. Compared to his cousin, Harry is tiny in stature, weak in musculature and ‘bookish’ in appearance. In the second chapter, it is mentioned that Dudley’s favorite exercise, and possibly only exercise, was “punching somebody. Dudley’s favorite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn’t often catch him. Harry didn’t look it, but he was very fast” (20). By modern society’s standards, Harry’s smaller stature, unruly appearance and slighter frame automatically brand him a weakling and thus of little or no consequence or value. This is brought further into focus as Harry’s appearance is described. “Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley’s, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose” (20). However, as the book and the series moves on, it is shown that Harry has a great deal more strength to him than first meets the eye, both in terms of character and in terms of physical abilities. Although it is acknowledged that the world created by J.K. Rowling is a world of fiction and fantasy, with few attempts to place itself within the ‘real’ world of the modern day, it is also true that through her fiction, Rowling is able to challenge commonly held beliefs and open up the possibilities of perspective. By beginning the story from a perspective that most of her readers would readily understand in the modern suburbanized world of the twentieth century, Rowling teases out a few cracks in our grasp of reality as she prods memories of half-seen or half-understood unusual sights, people seeming to literally disappear in the blink of an eye and coincidences of events to thoughts that can seem uncanny. Through these cracks, she widens the door enough to allow a little fantasy in by providing a halfway point – a bar that is usually ‘overlooked’ or a ‘bridge’ between this world and that such as the platform that exists between two ‘real’ platforms in the muggle world. Once the halfway point has been found, the wondrous world beyond the gate remains a further step away by faithfully boarding a mysterious train to an unknown destination or knowing the proper combination of bricks to tap to open the next door. Once this world has been reached, the changed perspective Rowling has introduced allows the reader to see many common conceptions of our present world from a different and enlightening perspective. New understandings begin to arise regarding common conceptions of appearance vs. reality, strange vs. normal and weak vs. strong that perhaps hadn’t been considered previously. Works Cited Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Books, 1997. Read More