Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, or, Harry Potter, the Monsters and the Critics
Yes, it was a clumsy title. Suck it up. I was trying (and failing) to come up with a clever tie-in for JK Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien. What would have been better? Harry Potter or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Hobbit? Anyhow.
I recently re-read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for what must be the zillionth time. I did not get around to reading Harry Potter until the end of my senior year in high school. My mom and my youngest sister kept harassing me about it, but I refused to even start Harry Potter because I was in the IB program and did not have TIME for reading, unless it was for school. Reading that last sentence in the most hysterical voice possible will give you some indication as to the level of stress I experienced at that time. So I'm not one of those kids who "grew up" with Harry Potter. I was seventeen - the age Harry is when he defeats Voldemort (I trust that was not a spoiler) - when I finally cracked it open. But there isn't such a thing as being "too old" for Harry Potter. I ended up so fully immersed and obsessed that my sisters and I had launch parties when the later books were published. Our friends dressed up and gathered at my house, where we ate Bertie Botts Russian roulette-style, watched the movies, and went to Borders for their release party.
Every now and then, I like to check back in with Harry. I can't do it all at once, though, because my grasp on reality is not quite good enough that I can immerse myself too fully. It gets too hard to figure out what's real and what isn't, because Harry Potter's world is so much more vibrant and interesting than the real world. I can literally remember sprawling on my bed with the first book and being interrupted for dinner, and being disappointed that it wasn't burgers because when Harry goes to Diagon Alley he has a burger, and JK Rowling somehow made Diagon Alley so real that I really wanted to be eating that burger with Harry and Hagrid. I've been working a lot of very stressful hours (I feel uniquely prepared to face this kind of stress because of my IB days), and my mind needed a break, so I turned to my old friend, Harry, for a chance to be somewhere else for a few hours. Chamber of Secrets has never been my favorite of the Harry Potter books, though I found the movie version to be vastly preferable to Sorcerer's Stone, or, as I like to call it, Harry Potter's Greatest Hits. I'm sure the obvious superiority of the movie version of Chamber of Secrets to Sorcerer's Stone has nothing to do with the fact that Tom Riddle is unnecessarily good-looking, either. I don't really feel like I need to summarize the plot, because it's Harry Potter and I feel fairly confident that you must have some familiarity with the story even if you've tried to avoid the movies and the books. Mostly, I'm just interested in some of the similarities between Harry Potter and Tolkien's universe.
JK Rowling insists that she did not draw on Middle-Earth for inspiration, and maybe that's true. While she admits to reading The Lord of the Rings, she is documented as having said that she didn't read The Hobbit until after finishing Harry Potter (not sure if she means the whole series, or just a couple books). I am inclined to believe her, as she doesn't strike me as being someone who lies a lot, not that I have any particular knowledge of her as a person beyond Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy. As it stands, however, there are a lot of very interesting parallels/themes/whatevers running between the two worlds. One common feature, of course, would be the Dumbledore/Gandalf personage (would we call this an archetype? I really hate Jungian analysis, so I'm hesitant to use the word "archetype", but maybe it's most appropriate here). Maybe, without trying, Rowling based Dumbledore on Gandalf. They are, after all, super powerful, elderly wizards, with pointy hats, robes, and long white beards and hair. They both perform the role of guides and teachers, without, themselves, being the one to throw the Horcrux into Mount Doom (yes, the One Ring is a Horcrux).
It is, of course, possible that Rowling didn't base Dumbledore on Gandalf, but rather that the elderly wizard guide has so permeated Western culture that she couldn't help but make Dumbledore who he is, because, in most minds, that is what we think of when we think of a wizard. This, of course, begs the question of whether this view of wizards became so widespread after the publication of The Hobbit, and, later, The Lord of the Rings, or if it already existed and was merely strengthened when Tolkien decided to write an English mythology in the tradition of the Kalevala. Do we view wizards the way we do because of Tolkien, or maybe because of Merlin? In Western culture, Merlin seems to be the most powerful example of a wizard prior to the publication of LotR. Tolkien drew a lot on Norse mythology, and there are some similarities to Odin (cloaked old dude with a beard wandering around Midgard/Middangeard/Middle Earth). Maybe the real truth is Tolkien distilled a lot of existing myths and combined them into one cultural force so powerful that, even if Rowling had never read The Lord of the Rings, she would still have been influenced by it.
I recently re-read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for what must be the zillionth time. I did not get around to reading Harry Potter until the end of my senior year in high school. My mom and my youngest sister kept harassing me about it, but I refused to even start Harry Potter because I was in the IB program and did not have TIME for reading, unless it was for school. Reading that last sentence in the most hysterical voice possible will give you some indication as to the level of stress I experienced at that time. So I'm not one of those kids who "grew up" with Harry Potter. I was seventeen - the age Harry is when he defeats Voldemort (I trust that was not a spoiler) - when I finally cracked it open. But there isn't such a thing as being "too old" for Harry Potter. I ended up so fully immersed and obsessed that my sisters and I had launch parties when the later books were published. Our friends dressed up and gathered at my house, where we ate Bertie Botts Russian roulette-style, watched the movies, and went to Borders for their release party.
Every now and then, I like to check back in with Harry. I can't do it all at once, though, because my grasp on reality is not quite good enough that I can immerse myself too fully. It gets too hard to figure out what's real and what isn't, because Harry Potter's world is so much more vibrant and interesting than the real world. I can literally remember sprawling on my bed with the first book and being interrupted for dinner, and being disappointed that it wasn't burgers because when Harry goes to Diagon Alley he has a burger, and JK Rowling somehow made Diagon Alley so real that I really wanted to be eating that burger with Harry and Hagrid. I've been working a lot of very stressful hours (I feel uniquely prepared to face this kind of stress because of my IB days), and my mind needed a break, so I turned to my old friend, Harry, for a chance to be somewhere else for a few hours. Chamber of Secrets has never been my favorite of the Harry Potter books, though I found the movie version to be vastly preferable to Sorcerer's Stone, or, as I like to call it, Harry Potter's Greatest Hits. I'm sure the obvious superiority of the movie version of Chamber of Secrets to Sorcerer's Stone has nothing to do with the fact that Tom Riddle is unnecessarily good-looking, either. I don't really feel like I need to summarize the plot, because it's Harry Potter and I feel fairly confident that you must have some familiarity with the story even if you've tried to avoid the movies and the books. Mostly, I'm just interested in some of the similarities between Harry Potter and Tolkien's universe.
JK Rowling insists that she did not draw on Middle-Earth for inspiration, and maybe that's true. While she admits to reading The Lord of the Rings, she is documented as having said that she didn't read The Hobbit until after finishing Harry Potter (not sure if she means the whole series, or just a couple books). I am inclined to believe her, as she doesn't strike me as being someone who lies a lot, not that I have any particular knowledge of her as a person beyond Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy. As it stands, however, there are a lot of very interesting parallels/themes/whatevers running between the two worlds. One common feature, of course, would be the Dumbledore/Gandalf personage (would we call this an archetype? I really hate Jungian analysis, so I'm hesitant to use the word "archetype", but maybe it's most appropriate here). Maybe, without trying, Rowling based Dumbledore on Gandalf. They are, after all, super powerful, elderly wizards, with pointy hats, robes, and long white beards and hair. They both perform the role of guides and teachers, without, themselves, being the one to throw the Horcrux into Mount Doom (yes, the One Ring is a Horcrux).
It is, of course, possible that Rowling didn't base Dumbledore on Gandalf, but rather that the elderly wizard guide has so permeated Western culture that she couldn't help but make Dumbledore who he is, because, in most minds, that is what we think of when we think of a wizard. This, of course, begs the question of whether this view of wizards became so widespread after the publication of The Hobbit, and, later, The Lord of the Rings, or if it already existed and was merely strengthened when Tolkien decided to write an English mythology in the tradition of the Kalevala. Do we view wizards the way we do because of Tolkien, or maybe because of Merlin? In Western culture, Merlin seems to be the most powerful example of a wizard prior to the publication of LotR. Tolkien drew a lot on Norse mythology, and there are some similarities to Odin (cloaked old dude with a beard wandering around Midgard/Middangeard/Middle Earth). Maybe the real truth is Tolkien distilled a lot of existing myths and combined them into one cultural force so powerful that, even if Rowling had never read The Lord of the Rings, she would still have been influenced by it.
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