I have spent half of my school life convincing people that Harry Potter is not a children's story.Just because it had a boy fighting the evil,it doesn't necessarily mean it's the typical David and Goliath story or the prince defeating the witch for his princess.Harry Potter captured our imagination and it made us think of the virtues that matter,the relations that last forever and the moments that we cherish.It's based on reality,it is the reality with a veil of magic.
I started digging deeper to find out links between Harry Potter and the real world,I followed Rowling's website and started researching on the character backgrounds.The most popular story that we have heard till today is that Harry Potter and his magical world just happened to Rowling in 1990 on a train journey from Manchester to London.But the thing about fiction is even though it is fiction,it always has a connection with this world,where fiction is a necessity to escape from the wilderness of sorrow and struggle,into a place where we can get what we want,we see what our eyes want to see.
Fiction in the form of fantasy has given us the best books and though fantasy is often underestimated in literature for not having the exact essence of literature,the verbosity,the wittiness,the unpredictability,fantasy is the route to a child's heart and that's why it remains forever unblemished in memory.
Harry Potter's background lies in the forlorn life of it's very own creator,J.K Rowling.
Rowling was born on 31st July in the UK,the same day her brainchild,Harry is born.She was brought up on the suburban British streets like the one the Durlseys live on ,and she along with her sister,Di endured the similar childhood traumas and massive disappointments as the novel's protagonist.
Her strained relationship with her own father inspired idealized father figures,like Hagrid,Dumbledore and Sirius Black in the series.
Her mother had been suffering from multiple sclerosis since 1980,and she was never really there to protect her children-this made her create a strong woman character,Lily who sacrificed her life for her son.
Rowling had already started sketching Harry Potter in her mind before her mother's death,and after she died,it influenced the storyline much more deeply and the plot only darkened with time.
She says the absence of any meaningful relationship with her father and the loss of her mother have been the two of the most important influences on her writing.
After her mother's death, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. There, she married television journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had daughter, Jessica. But the marriage failed after two years and Rowling succumbed to depression.
Her deep depression inspired the creation of dementors, "the foulest creatures that walk this earth," who prey on people's happiness and suck out their souls in the Harry Potter series.
From her own words:
"I was definitely clinically depressed. And that's just characterized for me by, a numbness, just a sort of coldness and an inability to believe that you will feel happy again or that you could feel light-hearted again," she said. "It's just all the color drained out of life really."
Now if you look at the characters,apart from Voldemort who was completely evil and who killed for pleasure,the other characters are not entirely good or bad.They carry shades of gray.
Severus Snape was one of the most complicated characters ever created.Everyone considered him evil for his flagrant actions in his past life.and no one other than Dumbledore had actually believed that he had stopped serving Voldemort.Everyone believed that he was incapable of love because of the stone-cold appearance,but deep inside he was a man who had always loved someone and without any kind of fear for life,he continued to evade Voldemort.
Inspite of his deep hatred towards James,he had protected Harry out of love for his mother.How true is that in our world?That often we judge someone for what we see,but very few have that insight to look beyond that face and see a person who has lost everything in life,and who clings onto the last ray of hope he can find.
Everyone considered James to be brave,but he was a person not meant to be idolized but detested,for misbehaving with Snape.He may have been a reformed person after marriage,a great friend and a loving father,but he wasn't perfect,and after the last Occlumency lesson,Harry stopped feeling proud of his resemblance with James.
Dumbledore who was once viewed as a saint,also had immense craving for immortality and power above all,he befriended one of the darkest wizards,Grindelwald and along with him he started searching for the Deathly Hallows,while his own family slowly fell apart.The obsession for power drove him mad,but not evil,unlike Voldemort.And only after the death of Lily and James,did he started believing what his true purpose in life was,he stood beside Harry,because in his heart,he had felt guilty for not being with his family and in the end he died saving Harry.
There is a time in everyone's lives,when we start realizing that the world isn't that simple,we have to protect ourselves from the people around us,that we start feeling vulnerable to emotions and we stop believing in everything we hear-and I learned that from Harry Potter,and after finishing the entire series,it seemed less imaginary,and more real,breathtakingly real!
Rowling's own life has been her biggest disappointment,prior Harry Potter, and it sort of opened her eyes to the evil that surrounds us,and hence,she created characters like Ron and Hermione,who has been the most transparent of all,who had sticked with Harry till the end.
I don't know about others,but for me,Harry Potter is one of the greatest gifts to literature.And anyone who denies that,has never really understood it.
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