Hi,
everybody! Well… I was thinking last week about a topic that it would be
interesting to talk about here in my blog. I thought that it would be nice to
talk about Halloween, a celebration that is very common in the United States,
but then I decided to change that topic for the next week ;) Today I’m going to
talk about… Harry Potter! One of the most famous book series in our times and even
it is a great example of fantastic literature in which wizardry and magic is
involved but first of all I’m going to talk a little bit about Joanne Rowling (known
as “J.K. Rowling”), the author of this magical story.
J.K. Rowling is a British author who
was born in 1965, she started to be interested in literature when she wrote “Rabbit”,
her first short story that was about a rabbit that got the measles and some of
his friends went to visit him. The shocking thing of this is that she wrote
this story when she was five or six years old so she showed her interest of writing
since she was very little. Rowling came up with the idea for Harry Potter when
she was twenty-five years old while delayed on a train that was going from
Manchester to London, she didn’t had anything to write but she tried to remember
the idea and finally, five years ago, she started to write all the ideas that
she wanted to show in each of her books (Bloomsbury Publishing, harrypotter.bloomsbury.com).
Probably everyone perfectly knows what
Harry Potter series are about but I’m going to give a quickly review about it:
Harry is a boy who lived with his terrible uncles and his cousin Dudley, aunt
Petunia and uncle Vernon told him that his parents died on a car accident but,
when Harry turns eleven, he receives a letter from Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry. Since that moment, Harry met Hagrid who tells him that
he is a wizard, that his parents were wizards too but that they were killed by a
dark wizard called “Lord Voldemort”. Harry goes to Hogwarts, meets Dumbledore
and his best friends (Ron and Hermione), learns how to be a wizard, and he gets
in charge of defeating Voldemort (Barnes & Noble, barnesandnoble.com) through
all the seven books.
In my opinion, the most amazing
thing of all this story is that J.K. Rowling created a whole new world based on
that myths and knowledge that she knew about wizards, witches, and magic. She
created new characters with magical abilities and even adopted some characters
that were already known on history (for example: Nicolas Flamel); she created a
huge list of spells and fantastic creatures; Rowling also created a new sport
for her story and it’s called “Quiddich”. All that facts can be considered as
important because they give value to Rowling’s work, that’s why I think she has
a huge amount of followers: her creativity involved several human minds. I really
recommend you to read them if you are a lover of fantastic literature. In my
opinion and with my personal experiences, I can say that this kind of books are
really good to develop our imagination (:
Thank you for reading my blog! Next
week I’m going to talk about how wizardry and magic had had an influence in
cultural aspects…
Works Cited
Barnes & Noble. "Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone ." 2011. Barnes
& Noble.com. 14 september 2011
<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-j-k-rowling/1100036321>.
Bloomsbury Publishing. "Biography." 2011. Harry Potter: J.K. Rowling. 14
september 2011 <http://harrypotter.bloomsbury.com/author>.
Hey Karen! First of all, thanks for checking out my blog :) I like yours as well!! It’s really interesting to read all these things about magic.
ResponderEliminarAnd, well, I haven’t read the Harry Potter series (nor I’m planning to), but I’ve seen the movies and I think that their impact in our society is huge. Mainly, I believe, as you said, it’s because of J.K. Rowling’s ability to create a whole world based on the myths and knowledge about wizards.
Also, she didn’t limit herself to that, but tried making a story to which everyone could relate (not to the magical aspects, but the stories and lives of the people).
I remember watching a video in which a professor from a university (in psychology, I think) was talking about why Harry Potter was such a success, and why many people reacted so well to this. It was pretty interesting. I might search again for the link and send it to you :) you should watch it.
Something else I find nice about the HP story is the fact that J.K. Rowling created all those spells and enchantments, something classical about magic, but really cool. And the creatures that appear (giants, fenix, owls, elfs, centaurs, dementors, etc.) help create the environment of an unusual and powerful place, different from our reality.
I hope you continue to write about the different ideas there are about wizard (since not every author or person thinks of them in the same way) and how they are linked with real life.
Keep up the good job!!
Hello Karen!!
ResponderEliminarHey, it is nice you want to talk about Halloween ... maybe you can tell us a lot of interesting facts and the history of it before we get into October.
Harry Potter, yeah every knows about it (cof cof world phenomenon). I started reading the Harry Potter books, but then I found the Chronicles of Narnia and I certainly preferred them. It is yet really interesting to learn about JK Rowling. She was literally in bankrupt until she came up with the idea.
How come she included real life characters? From where and who was the real Nicolas Flamel?
I really liked how Rowling created a whole new world full of new creatures, characters and even a sport. Can you explain me what exactly pottermore is?
cheers
Danyel
Hello Karen : D haha wow! It is so cool that you talked about Harry Potter! (: I love it too. Like you say, it is so amazing how JK Rowling could create all the world of the story, out of her imagination combined with all those myths about magic. The magic creatures, some characters and even their names are related with myths or words in Latin, for example the spells are made out of latin, I think. There is a book that talks about a lot of things behind the plot of Harry Potter, the antique origins of many magic creatures and ideas that the author used, it is called “Los mundos mágicos de Harry Potter” from David Colbert, that book is so cool, have you read it? It is kind of old, because it was made before the book 5 was made, but still it talks about a lot of interesting things, for example how Harry relates with the archetype of universal hero. Another amazing thing is how JK Rowling became very famous when she started writing Harry Potter, when first she was not; I think she was unemployed or something like that. All the books are amazing, which one do you like most? I like the book 3,4,6 and 7 most hehe. Your blog is really good(: I can see that you like your topic and you write very well about it. I will continue following your blog :D
ResponderEliminar