Harry Potter Makes Good

On the cover of this week's Time magazine is a wide-eyed boy with touseled hair, broken glasses, a sweet grin and a lighting-bolt-shaped mark on his forehead. While recent issues of the magazine have featured politicians like Bill Clinton and businessmen like Bill Gates, the cartoon face on this week's cover belongs to a fictional character. He is Harry Potter, the young wizard protagonist of J.K. Rowling's series of phenomenally popular children's books.

It is no surprise that kids love Harry Potter. Following in the footsteps of countless children's heroes, Harry Potter travels to a strange and magical place and finds adventure in a world with little adult supervision. As one father remarked, the freedom from parents in this story excites young readers, who identify with Harry as he makes his own decisions.

Harry's parentless adventures are not unique in the world of children's literature. Instead of falling through a rabbit-hole or walking through a wardrobe, Harry journeys to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on a secret wizard train leaving from downtown London. Though the setting is modern, the basics of Harry's story ring familiar. Rowling's style and sense of humor resemble Roald Dahl's, and her storyline, full of clever twists and characters who are not quite what they seem to be, is at heart a simple tale of good versus evil.

Whatever the source of Rowling's magic, her books clearly captivate children. Alice Rose Henry, aged seven and a half, talks enthusiastically about Harry and his pals Ron and Hermione. As far as she is concerned, Harry Potter is "really great," and she often imagines herself as a student at Hogwarts, sharing in Harry's adventures.

And six-year-old Michaela Bosch, daughter of Dunster House writing tutor Daniel Bosch, will carefully recount the exact details of her favorite scenes from Harry's exploits, complete with complicated place and character names like Slytherin, Gryffindor, and Draco Malfoy.

But Harry's appeal goes beyond the children's audience. When asked whether she or her parents enjoy the books more, Alice responds with a devilish smirk and a giggle: "My parents like it more!...My mom always says, 'Don't you want to read Harry Potter?'" Indeed, in the Henry household, Rowling's books have created so much excitment that Alice's mother reports one family argument caused when Dad read ahead and finished the book before everyone else.

Michaela's father Daniel says that he, too, has enjoyed the first two books in the series, "but I'm a little skeptical that I'll still be interested by books five, six and seven." Bosch notes that Harry Potter brings with him a host of commercial opportunites. "Halloween will be Harry Potter, Christmas will be Harry Potter and then the movie in the summer . . ."

It seems that J.K. Rowling has tapped into the '90s world of hype. Posters in bookstore windows around the world proudly proclaim "Harry Potter sold here," and proprieters are more than willing to take advance orders for new books in the series.

But the question remains: why is Harry Potter such a hit with adults? The series is so popular that two of the books now occupy top slots on the New York Times Bestseller list. Nissara Horayangura, a senior in Eliot House, agrees that the hype caused her to buy the first book in the series. But as soon as she started reading, she was hooked. "It's a fantasy book, but it's suspenseful--it's a compulsive read. And it's not obvious, even to adults."

Horayangura believes that the series appeals to an older audience because Rowling uses adult vocabulary and weaves a complicated plot full of suprising twists which fall neatly into place at the close of each book. And as the series progresses, each book becomes more sophisticated.

"The first book had lots of magic and crazy creatures, but by the third book...an adult could really read into it; there were deeper themes and social commentary. The Prisoner of Azkaban gets away from the 'fluffy fluffy' cool magical stuff, and becomes more like literature. There's a lot of allegory underneath."

Although the major action of the novels takes place in a magical land of wizards, the real world is never far away. In contrast to older children's novels which featured white-bread boys' schools, Rowling's Hogwarts School is co-ed, and its pupils come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. And like so many of today's movies and TV programs, Rowling's story is straightforward about the tragedies and violence in its characters' lives. Harry has painful memories of his mother screaming as she is brutally murdered, and each book contains descriptions of suffering and tragedy.

In her attitude towards violence, Rowling has departed from the dark humor of children's writers like Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein. Like these authors, Rowling imbues humorous situations with a sinister edge--but Rowling's tragedies are vividly and frighteningly real. Her stories provoke serious thought about the dangers of hatred, prejudice and injustice. In turn, the reality and unpredictability of the violent moments in the Harry Potter series help these novels to maintain their powerful suspense.

Doubtless, the current economic boom and the culture of manic advertising helped to bring Harry Potter to such a widespread readership. Yet in this case--although Harry's fame may be out of proportion to children's book heroes of the past--the hype was born out of a genuinely worthwhile subject.