On Saturday I received my copy of the new Harry Potter book. Over the weekend, I started the book and have finished the first few chapters. As suggested by reviewers, the mood of the book is more somber and darker, befitting the difficult times that Harry is traversing. This morning, a colleague, who does not have any children and hasn't read any of the books, asked me what it is about Harry Potter that has caused him to become such a sensation. As someone who has read the first 5 books aloud to my youngest, and has worked closely with youngsters in therapy, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the phenomenon. My post encompasses some similarities I see between Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings, both of which share some features that lend them mythological qualities and render them timeless classics. I suspect neither Rowling nor Tolkien are treasured because of the elegance of their prose; it is all about the story.
Freud described a nearly universal fantasy, which he named "the Family Romance". An unhappy or conflicted child develops the wishful fantasy that his parents are not actually his "real" parents, but adoptive parents. Secretly, at a young age, he was given up, often for his own good or for some complex reason that the child invents, and his true parents are, in fact, royalty of one kind or another. This fantasy appears in the psychoanalysis of many adults and children, and has been played out in various myths for thousands of years.
I am most familiar with Greek, Roman, and Celtic mythology, but I would be surprised if this motif was absent in other culture's early myths. In Greek mythology, everyone from Theseus to Heracles (Hercules to the Romans), Perseus to Oedipus, were abandoned by their parents and raised by more plebeian step-parents. Typically, the future hero would find out in his adolescence that he was actually the child of royalty or a Deity (Zeus was particularly prone to infidelity to Hera) and go off to do great deeds.
This is a powerful, reparative, fantasy. When angry or unhappy with his parents and his life, the child can construct a more idealized family that augments his wounded feelings, sadness, and low self esteem. Even with the best of parenting, no one escapes childhood without suffering periods of unhappiness and anger; after all, difficulties inherent in separation and individuation from the parents are universal. These fantasies are often conflated with various rescue fantasies (especially for boys, the white Knight who saves the damsel in distress) and fantasies of being rescued (Cinderella, for girls). The origin of the "Family Romance " tends to be in the Oedipal Period (4-6,7 years); later in life, a child can ease the painful recognition of their own and other's mortality, with all the attendant meanings of the word, by evoking their old familiar fantasy of transcendent greatness. In this fantasy we are never merely the children of ordinary people, but secretly, we are Princes and Princesses.
Harry Potter actualizes these fantasies; he is stuck in a terribly abusive family who treat him abysmally and, especially, unfairly. Only at the age of 11 does Harry find out he is in fact, not only the child of royalty (wizards) but unbeknown to him, is famous. What child cannot picture himself in such a position? It would not escape many that the other great, "everyman" hero of recent times, Frodo, has also been an orphan; Frodo is orphaned early and adopted by his avuncular uncle [take a look at Charlie's comment for some elucidation of this descriptor-SW] , Bilbo, who (like the hidden, idealized parent) bequeaths him great power. Both Frodo and Harry have surrogate fathers, wise and loving, who protect and guide them (Gandalf and Dumbledore). After preparing them for their travails, Frodo has to face the evil without his paternal protector, and just with his devoted friend, another "everyman", Sam. In the same way, Harry will eventually have to face his nemesis, Voldemort, without Dumbledore and just with his faithful, loving friends, Ron and Hermione. (I am not offering a "spoiler" here; Harry has ended up facing Voldemort alone in almost every book so far, and the climax likely will come in the 7th book, whenever Ms. Rowling is able to finish her tale.)
One interesting change in our culture that is reflected in Harry Potter and is relatively absent in LOTR, reflects the changing place of women in western culture. It is a sign of how the Women's movement has already won (would someone please tell the feminists they can stop fighting now; the battle is over) that Hermione is, by far, the smartest student at Hogwarts. She has no less courage than the boys and her life is on the line and she faces danger in exactly the same manner as Harry and Ron, who embodies goodness and fairness, while being, like Sam, an everyman with no special powers beyond his inner nobility. There is nothing surprising to anyone about Hermione; her brains are as necessary to the fight against evil as Harry's. One of the West's great advantages in the current war is that we no longer keep half (perhaps more than half) of our brain power on the sidelines. As Eowyn puts it in LOTR, "one does not have to live by the sword to die by it." By the time of Harry Potter, women have become deeply enmeshed in every aspect of our society and as involved in its defence as any man (and, with an enemy like Islamic fascism, perhaps with even higher motivation.)
On another level, Harry Potter comes along at a time when the world is changing for our children. (The analogy to Frodo holds, since Tolkien was germinating LOTR while the winds of war were rising in Europe.) The 1990's have been called a vacation from reality; since 9/11, reality has been only too present. Harry Potter is heroic in direct proportion to his lack of awareness of his own heroism (though he slowly has been growing up and into his heroism.) Harry is facing a great evil, a monster who forces innocents to submit or be tortured and killed. Despite the efforts of the MSM, et al, children, not being blinded by the Emperor's new clothes of Political Correctness, are quite able to recognize who resorts to torture and murder of innocents. Harry is powerful, but is a reluctant power. He does not seek the position of hero, but like Frodo, and like so many of our young men and women in harm's way, has heroism thrust upon him. Who else but Frodo could carry the ring to Mount Doom and destroy the dark Lord Sauron? Who else but Harry can confront the dark Lord Voldemort?
There are many other levels of complexity to these coming of age stories, but in both, we see the heroism implicit in everyman and are moved by their drama. Frodo, Sam, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, are universal, quintessentially Western heroes.
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