J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

I have finally read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. One can say that I am late to the party on this one. However, the fact that I rarely read very new books and that this book was written within the past 25 years means that this novel is practically a new release for me. Like many others, I found this book entertaining, enjoyable and well worth the read. 

If anyone is unfamiliar with the plot, infant Harry Potter is left orphaned when his wizard parents are killed by the evil Lord Voldemort. Harry is raised by ignorant and repressive family members until his eleventh birthday. At that time, he is taken to Hogwarts, a boarding school for wizards. Here he meets a host of new characters, both friendly and no so friendly. Fellow students include his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley as well as the nasty, bullying Draco Malfoy. The professors include Albus Dumbledore, a great wizard and headmaster of the school, the large, imposing but friendly gamekeeper Hagrid and the dark and seemingly hostile professor Severus Snape. Harry encounters all sorts of wonderous and magical objects, creatures and adventures at Hogwarts and eventually confronts Lord Voldemort.  Rowling has created a wonderfully imaginative world and written a novel that is very, very fun and pleasant to read. 

There has been so much said about this book that it seems redundant to write a conventional review or analysis.  Instead, I want to share a few thoughts on one the things that I believe make this book so popular.  Harry Potter has generated enormous fame. In addition to the books, the phenomenon has expanded to films, amusement parks, plays and more. Tens of millions of people love this series. People have told me that the only books that they have read in the past ten years are the Harry Potter books. I should mention that I have a kind of instinctual suspicion of things that are this popular and this commercialized. However, I can say that in my opinion, at least the first book is excellent and the films are very good. The story also manages to avoid many of the clichés that characterize modern trends that I have come to dislike such as snarky and cynical young people. There are also corporations that are making a lot of money from all this, but there are many cultural trends that are a lot worse than Harry Potter that people are making a lot of money off of. 

It all started with this book. There are many reasons for its popularity. The world that Rowling has created is magical and would be a fun place to visit or even live in. I could list a lot of other reasons why people love the series and this book in particular. There is one interesting reason that struck me that exhibits itself in this first book. It gets to Harry Potter’s childhood. For the first ten years of his life Harry is raised by the Dursleys. Though at times they are portrayed comically, this is a family of bullies and abusers. They constantly put Harry down and heap excoriation upon him. Their son, Dudley, meters out physical abuse upon Harry as the Mr. and Mrs. Dursley all but egg him on. What is more, the family is not just intellectually Harry’s inferior, but they have no imagination. In fact, they are hostile to the concepts of wonder and creativity. Dudley never touches the books that he is given as gifts. The entire family hates the magical world that Harry and his parents are a part of. When Harry shows some glimmers of magic, they react with hostility and use this as an excuse to further bully him.

Early in the book, it is observed that the Dursleys are ashamed of their magical relatives, The Potters, 

The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the
Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

Later Mrs. Dursley comments about her deceased sister, 

"my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school-and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was -- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!" 

Thus, Harry is special. But he is a special person raised by people who are unable to understand his specialness and are in fact hostile to it. I believe this is a feeling that many bright and gifted young people have. I think that such people often fantasize about other special people showing up and whisking them away to another world where their gifts are appreciated or are at least useful, just like what happens to Harry.  Often such feelings last until adulthood. Obviously, all this represents a desire to escape from the real world. I think that having occasional thoughts of this sort are as normal as they are common. I also think these that fantasies touch a lot of people, both young and old, in a special way. 

The Dursleys have no redeeming qualities. They are purely driven by ignorant viciousness.  Sadly, at least outwardly, some people like this exist in the real world. Thus, I will not say that this family is entirely unrealistic. Furthermore, there surely have been folks who have experienced such abuse, and worse, who relate to Harry Potter’s predicament. However, for many fans, though they were not raised by people like the Dursleys, this family represents everything in the world that is mean, nasty and hostile to people who are imaginative and creative.  With that, I think that if the Dursleys were portrayed with more nuance, this part of the book might have been stronger. If they had shown some humanity, along with their bad traits, I think that Harry’s plight might have been more interesting. 

I have praised this book and I have talked about the popularity of it and the cultural trends that have grown up around it. I should note however, that not everyone loves Harry Potter. Several literary critics, including Harold Bloom, have criticized Rowling for being an unskilled writer and being derivative of other authors. Not everyone that I know loves the books or the films. With that, the great popularity of these stories is undeniable and no matter how ones feels about it, it is worth asking why so many people love it. 

Like so many others, I enjoyed this book immensely. I will likely go ahead and read the entire series. My memory of the films leads me to believe that there are a lot of threads between the books that can get confusing if the novels are read with too much time in between. Thus, I might try to read them straight through. I am not sure if I will need a break between them, however. Either way, I will update my progress here.