What's the thing with Harry Potter?

Ron Obvious

Ron Obvious

Son
What's the thing with Harry Potter? There are many better quality books, but this is on the frontpage of CNN, guardian etc. Could someone enlighten me?

No, I haven't read them, but they are not high on my to-read list.
 
Ron Obvious said:
What's the thing with Harry Potter?
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It's a book about a Boy Wizard. Everybody loves it. Unless he takes it up in book 7, he doesn't do any salsa in it.

There are many better quality books, but this is on the frontpage of CNN, guardian etc. Could someone enlighten me?
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The author is richer than the Queen of England, presumably that can get you some favours with the news people.
 
Ron Obvious said:
What's the thing with Harry Potter? There are many better quality books, but this is on the frontpage of CNN, guardian etc. Could someone enlighten me?

No, I haven't read them, but they are not high on my to-read list.
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I think that as children's fantasy literature, they are of the highest quality, maybe comparable to E. Nesbit's books. The notion of a school where the classes are all in magic, as opposed to the usual (for kids) boring subjects, really seems to resonate with children.
 
I have to say I am a big fan, and as far the genre goes I cant think of many better quality books. You really need to read one to understand why they are so well-loved b/c their really are several elements. I am actually really proud that society has made trendy something that is actually brilliant. Dont judge it by the movies though, the movies are hollywood and dont contain any of the richness that J.K. Rowling has in her writing.
 
Yes, I know the basic idea, I've semi-seen one of the movies. While I'm certain the books are better (isn't that always the case) I don't find them groundbreaking, and that's why I don't get the hype with the newsfeed. On a similar note I'm also opposing that so much has to be written about Paris Hilton, but that's another issue.

I'm sure the books are great, but they are not high on my list because there are so many classic novels that I haven't read have therefore priority.
 
All right, here are some reasons. The thing is, if you're not a fan now, it's unlikely you'll change just because everyone else is...

1) Again, the momentum thing. It's like getting addicted to your favorite TV program after 4-5 seasons. They series started off as a pretty good read for pre-teens, and have slowly evolved over the years. My nieces were the first ones to introduce me to the series. And the books are intriguing enough to get the adults as well as the kids to read them. So basically, the target demographic goes across a large age range.

2) Two, the books are "modern", in that they're relatively easy to read, they're fun, and paced well. The interplay between characters, their growth and development, their personalities, are complex and therefore interesting. By the end of the series, I wouldn't say the target reader is a young kid any more. But the series does a good job of reminding everyone that reading can be fun.

3) Themes - while JK Rowling has her weaknesses, one of her strengths is how she touches upon the human condition. Her common themes are Love, Death, Friends, Family, Sacrifice, and more, and she's quite good in not being preachy about these themes.

4) Character development - She has several times given the 'lesser characters' their chances to shine. It's probably one of my favorite things about the series.

5) She borrows gratuitously from other modern works, everything from Tolkien to Stan Lee (creator of Spiderman). So sure, it's derivative. But in a good way. She manipulates the drama in (often) obvious ways that have already been done, but she usually copies the better examples.

6) Details. Little, little details. Who would've thunk that a small meaningless little detail in the second book plays a large role in the finale? Well, obviously, now that I've mentioned it, she did. But it's an Easter Egg, for those of us who were paying attention.
 
Ron Obvious said:
What's the thing with Harry Potter? There are many better quality books, but this is on the frontpage of CNN, guardian etc. Could someone enlighten me?

No, I haven't read them, but they are not high on my to-read list.
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Don't know. Haven't read it. Haven't seen the film. Don't intend to.
 
The one thing I appreciate about the HP series is that is has given kids a taste for reading. They are like brain candy, a good bait for getting kids to read better writen, more original books.

On the minus side... if I may paraphrase tj
...She borrows massively from other modern works, everything from Tolkien to Stan Lee (creator of Spiderman). So sure, it's derivative. But in a good way. She manipulates the drama in (often) obvious and predictable ways that have already been done, but she usually copies much better examples.
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I do not think it's derivative in a good way. It borders on outright plagiarism, which is not a very good example for kids.

The other think that bothers me is that, after you strip away the veneer of love, friendship, sacrifice, committment, etc, the outcome of most of these adventures boils down to magic. So the message most young, impressionable minds get, is that the best thing to have is, in one word: power. Everything else will not matter if you do not have that special magic. And that is enough to disqualify the whole concept as wholesome.
 
Jones said:
The one thing I appreciate about the HP series is that is has given kids a taste for reading. They are like brain candy, a good bait for getting kids to read better writen, more original books.
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can someone name the works that it is derived from? So far I've only heard "the worst witch" and for myself I've noticed dementors ~= nazgul, and elements of Star Wars in Dumbledore vs Voldemort ~= Obi Wan vs Darth Vader.

Things I think she can take credit for:

Platform 9 3/4
Every-flavor beans
The Marauders' Map
Snape - the ambiguity of his role
Mr. Weasly's fascination for muggle technology
The way that good and evil still get along in a civilized way in the first few books
The unflinching treatment of death and its consequences
The Knight bus
The cosmopolitan cast of tertiary characters - irish, chinese, african, indian... all just mentioned with no big thing being made of it

Have these been stolen? Is she a plagiarist, or is she simply resonating well with images in fantasy and fiction? In the way that a good pop song makes you feel like you heard it before?
 
She's never claimed ownership for her themes as being unique creations of her own, so I don't see how you can denounce her as a plagiarist. If she's a borderline plagiarist, then so are just about anyone who's written a book or a movie in the past 50 years.

Derivative is still the proper term, IMHO.

And I also disagree about power being the overarching theme. Have you actually read the final book (or most of the books for that matter)? It sure doesn't sound like it. I could see how you might get that idea if you only watched the movies, perhaps. Harry certainly isn't searching for more power. If anything, he complains that he never has enough power, but miraculously keeps being saved due to one of the true themes.

sweavo said:
Have these been stolen? Is she a plagiarist, or is she simply resonating well with images in fantasy and fiction? In the way that a good pop song makes you feel like you heard it before?
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In other words, derivative in a good way. :) Even 'stolen' is a pretty harsh word to use. Just about anything popular nowadays can be traced back to some other earlier work from someone else.
 
tj said:
........ Harry certainly isn't searching for more power. If anything, he complains that he never has enough power, but miraculously keeps being saved due to one of the true themes.....
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I haven't read the books but love the movies. Yeah, Harry seems even reluctant in a general sense for power, it's the forces around him.
 
Somebody sent me this in an e-mail way back when the first HP books came out and everyone was ranting and raving about how original they were:
Ever Wondered if Rowling read Tolkien?
Are all these similarities between the Harry Potter stories and The Lord Of The Ring epic mere coincidences?

Evil sorceror referred to as "Dark Lord" who desires to regain physical shape
Rowling’s Voldemort
Tolkien’s Sauron

Wise old mentor with a long gray beard and a wizard hat
Rowling’s Dumbledore
Tolkien’s Gandalf

A birthday sets off events
Rowling’s Harry's 11th
Tolkien’s Frodo's 33rd and Bilbo's 111th

Inherited invisibility device
Rowling’s Cloak
Tolkien’s Ring

Dog named Fang
Rowling’s Owned by Hagrid
Tolkien’s Owned by Farmer Maggot

Evil, creepy hooded creatures
Rowling’s Dementors
Tolkien’s Nazgul

Deceased parents
Rowling’s Harry's parents were murdered
Tolkien’s Frodo's parents drowned

Taken to live with uncle
Rowling’s Harry lives with Uncle Vernon
Tolkien’s Frodo lives with Uncle Bilbo

Giant Spider
Rowling’s Aragog
Tolkien’s Shelob

Bad guy with a "wormy" name
Rowling’s Peter Pettigrew (Wormtail)
Tolkien’s Grima (Wormtongue)

Longbottom
Rowling’s Neville Longbottom who excels at Herbology
Tolkien’s Todd Hornblower from Longbottom who knows much about herbs

Fight with a troll
Rowling’s Harry and Hermione fight a troll
Tolkien’s Peregrin Took fights a troll

Dark forest
Rowling’s Forbidden Forest
Tolkien’s Old forest just outside of the Shire / Mirkwood forest

Elves
Rowling’s House elves act as servants
Tolkien’s A race from Middle Earth

Small, pitiable creature who talks in third person
Rowling’s Dobby
Tolkien’s Gollum

Goblins
Rowling’s Run wizarding bank Gringotts
Tolkien’s One of the races of middle earth

Holder of the keys
Rowling’s Hagrid (Keeper of the Keys)
Tolkien’s Hurin (Warden of the Keys)

Mischievous pair
Rowling’s Fred & George Weasley
Tolkien’a Merry and Pippin

Forbidden language
Rowling’s Saying "Voldemort"
Tolkien’s Black Speech of Mordor

Dangerous willow tree
Rowling’s Whomping Willow
Tolkien’s Old Man Willow

Basin of seeing
Rowling’s Pensieve
Tolkien’s Galadriel's Mirror

Powerful, life-saving swords
Rowling’s Godric Gryffindor's sword
Tolkien’s Aragorn’s Anduril, Elendil’s Narsil, Frodo’s Sting and Gandalf’s Glamdring

Scar on forehead
Rowling’s Harry
Tolkien’s Samwise

Do not disturb water because of...
Rowling’s The giant squid
Tolkien’s Watcher in the Water

Longed for safe-haven
Rowling’s Harry wishes he was back at Hogwarts
Tolkien’s The hobbits long to be back in the Shire.

Have a scar from an enemy
Rowling’s Harry has a scar on his forehead from Voldemort
Tolkien’s Frodo has a scar near his shoulder from the Morgul blade.

It almost makes you sick, doesn't it? Tolkien finished L.o.t.R. in 1955 and Rowling was born in 1965. Let’s think about that for a second. I have come the conclusion that maybe; just maybe, our little wizard-boy has inherited a few things from our beloved Frodo Baggins. You be the judge. Plagiarism?
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What do you think?
 
You could also make a similar list involving references to Star Wars and other sources. She's quite good at using a lot of ideas from modern works, and has said so in her interviews.

So... if a chef were to take common items that were already well known, and then whip them together to make a totally new dish, by your definition, that's plagiarism.
 
Jones said:
Somebody sent me this in an e-mail way back when the first HP books came out and everyone was ranting and raving about how original they were:
Ever Wondered if Rowling read Tolkien?
...
Plagiarism?
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What do you think?
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Ah right. I think that says less about Rowling than the accuser. I think it says the accuser read Tolkien a number of times and not much else in the way of fantasy, fairy tales or mythology. Giant spiders, dark lords, grey-bearded wizards, wraiths, things lurking underwater, magic swords and the like are in my opinion simply archetypes. There's a couple of interesting parallels in there and a few extremely tenuous ones. potter's scar vs frodo's nazgul blade? The only parallel there is that they are both scars.

Shall we lambast Tolkien for including dragons, which had already been done...? For drawing heavily on norse mythology and the Welsh language? For the obvious influence of the industrialised west midlands of britain on Isengard? For using dwarfs, elves, and goblins which had been around in folk mythology for aeons?

In LOTR is there a Knight bus? A patronus charm? A sorting hat? Filch the caretaker? A professor Trelawney? A half-giant with a soft-spot for hippogriffs? Quiddich? Giving an item of clothing to a house elf sets it free? Parceltongue? The love of parents being a vital part of the armory against evil? The politics of the media and of government ministries? A clear resonance with the day to day realities of the lives of modern children? An epic battle of good and evil framed entirely within school terms?

Hmm. I'm not saying she didn't lift ideas from the world's best-known genre-setting work of fantasy, or possibly from the many thousands of worse imitations that have sprouted in the subsequent 50 years, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss the woman as a plagiarist, just because out of the many hundreds of ideas in the 7 books, a dozen resonate with LOTR.
 
A lot of works of fiction use the dead parents/ordinary boy/hidden powers angle, as do some religions. There must be dozens of novels which deal with orphans making it good.

I read an article about it only recently and this 'hero myth' resonates strongly with most people. The article contends that as children a lot of us will have imagined that (if only briefly) we were adopted and our real parents were powerful, rich, successful, famous, royalty etc.

Stories like Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Man in the Iron Mask, Cinderella etc. all tap into this basic fantasy and on some level often make people think 'That could be me...I could be special too".

My problem with her later books is that she doesn't half waffle on and dramatic impetus is often lost. There are cliff hangers, but it can take ages to resolve the issue – better than Dan Brown though :)
 
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