I lie lazily flat on my back and stare blankly at the inanimate ceiling, waiting for my “creative juices” to sink in. It’s already a week after my liberation from four months (give or take a few days) of academic imprisonment, at last free from pesky homeworks, annoying alarm clocks, and ugly instructors, and I haven’t even started my resolve to extol Rowling’s engaging read. I have promised myself to finish this over-delayed ”glorification” of Harry Potter’s merits once and for all the moment I plunge into the comforts of that much-awaited semestral break. So now I’m trying to shake my skull, spilling the remaining neurons in my brain to begin this essay with a creative punch lead. But after lying flat on my back for minutes, I feel moronic and sort of… hollow.
I give out a sigh and reach for the box of my Harry Potter collection, neatly stuck up along with rows of equally interesting paperbacks and engaging (in a different way) college textbooks. I pull out the Sorcerer’s Stone, the thinnest of the five, and examine its colorful cover. A young, bespectacled with a curiously shaped scar in the forehead is flying in a broomstick, trying to catch a small, golden ball with wings under a backdrop of things magical – a castle full of towering turrets, a feisty three-headed dog, a galloping white unicorn, a flying owl clutching an envelope and an old, long-bearded wizard who seems to be in haste.
I meant to peruse only a few pages but after reading some chapters, I ended up being lured by its enchantment, reading the magical adventure of The Boy Who Lived all over again. As with my previous journeys, I have found myself reliving the magic in Rowling’s fascinating world. Waiting for the Hogwarts Express in Platform 9 ¾ with Harry. Learning magic and spells at Hogwarts under the teaching tutelage of eccentric witches and wizards. Facing He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who insists to lord over the magical world despite several failed attempts.
There was Harry, always having close encounters with danger but always displaying admirable courage while struggling more burdens than any other Hogwarts student. Hermione, the brightest witch in her class despite her Muggle lineage, helping Harry overcome the obstacles and hindrances that come their way. Ron, Harry’s sidekick, he who bears insecurity over his brothers’ achievements, always giving support to his best mate. There was Hogwarts Big Boss Albus Dumbledore, the bastion of all things good, watching over young Harry as he grows up. And of course, Lord Voldemort, vowing to spread enmity and discord to achieve his ends.
It is interesting to note how Rowling’s characters have come to live a life of their own and how one can’t do anything but love them as they are. Harry is famous in his school but he’s not perfect. He always stammers for an answer in Snape’s threatening interrogatives, he’s capable of jealousy and he breaks rules almost too often. But despite these flaws, readers still admire him for his braveness and for what he is. Hermione may be too concerned with her academics, an “insufferable know-it-all” according to Snape, but she still manages to have time for her two friends, Harry and Ron. For his part, Ron can be friendly and loyal but he has the tendency to be insecure sometimes. They’re not all perfect but still, it is because of them that I have significantly fancied the books.
She may not have the adorned and majestic prose of Tolkien or the quirky and charming narrative of Dahl, but the fact that she has provided real pleasure and introduced a high quality of entertainment to an enormous number of readers – both young and old – makes Rowling a brilliant writer indeed. This appeal she manages to pull off through her interesting characters and fascinating, never-before-seen things and places.
The books ingeniously penned by J.K. Rowling are like life, but definitely better. She mixes life’s usual struggles with her own touch of magic and fantasy. Harry catches the Snitch almost effortlessly, talks to snakes, breathes underwater like other schools of fish, but the inescapable sadness he feels whenever he remembers his dead parents makes him so vulnerable. Ron’s family is all wizards and witches but they cannot escape poverty in just a flick of a wand and make money out of thin air. Hermione can be always at the top pf the class but the fact that her parents are Muggles makes her tormented by Draco’s sharp tongue as he mercilessly calls her a “mudblood.”
Somebody wise once said that childhood and maturity are all endless and all one. You don’t know where the former begins and the latter ends. At 19, I have to admit that I have to grow up sooner or later, whether I like it or don’t. It is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean I have to leave Harry behind. For something that has unconsciously taught me a lot of things, doing this would be like making me French kiss Mad-Eye Moody’s disgusting large, round, electric blue eye. Lessons and values about friendship, family, and life; about fear, courage, death and bereavement. Harry Potter has taught me to be strong, to just go for it and stand up to my fears.
I figured out that there would certainly come a time when giving up and letting things be would seem the best choice to do but if you have that one purpose in life and you are determined to achieve it, then you’d trash that feeling off, stand up again, go back to the battle field and fight like hell. Everybody of us can do just that. Like Harry Potter, I think I have a bit of that flaming courage within me, an air of stubbornness and a refusal to yield without a fight. As I grow wiser each day, as I seriously think about my own future, as I continue to find my true identity, the things I have learned from Harry will always be with me.
Once in a while, I slip into that magical world where I could be just me, built on my own rules and constraints. I drift in to the fascinating realm of Harry Potter, learning new spells at Hogwarts, strolling around Hogsmeade, wandering leisurely at the diagonally laid Diagon Alley. I couldn’t help it. It’s times like this when I know my dreams become reality. Oh well, no use thinking about it right now. I have to beat the deadline. I rub my face, raise my arms vigorously and let out a satisfying yawn. Then I start this essay with a line like… I lie lazily flat on my back and stare blankly at the inanimate ceiling.
*Credit goes to an old friend, Casey, Sylvia Plath reincarnate, for her essay that inspired me to write this book review. I intentionally wrote this as an entry for a major broadsheet’s nationwide favorite-book contest when I was in college. Eventually though, I submitted something else after concluding that this book review was too juvenile to catch the editors’ attention. Unexpectedly, my review on the “Angela’s Ashes” paperback was picked as a weekly winner. Got 5000 grand GC for winning. Ha!
