When I was 10, my family and I went to Pakistan so we could attend my uncle’s wedding. This trip would be my first time back there since I was five. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this trip but my mom tried her best to make me excited by telling me stories of her childhood in Pakistan. Hearing these stories made me happy and I became less and less reluctant on going.
Saying that Pakistan was a culture shock to me would be an understatement. I began noticing the drastic differences immediately as I stepped off the plane. Although it was mid November, it was still sweltering hot outside. There were people screaming, cars honking, and garbage everywhere. The man at the currency exchange tried to scam us by lying about the exchange rate and the taxi driver dropped us off three blocks away from our intended destination. For me, this trip was nothing how my mom said it would be.
One day, we were getting ready to take a train to Islamabad, which would take six hours. We stopped at a bookstore to look around before our train left. It was there that I saw a battered copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I never enjoyed any of the Harry Potter movies and I was discouraged from reading the books by my teachers. However, it was the only book in the store that was in English, so I picked it up and reluctantly began to read it. Little did I know that this book would soon change my life.
Before this assignment, I would have probably said that Harry Potter didn’t change my life. I already loved to read when I found Harry Potter in fifth grade. I had loving parents and friends so there really wasn’t a gaping hole that J.K. Rowling’s words could rush in and fill.
However, after finishing the whole series, I realized that I had...
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... earnings for at the end of the day” (Lanich).
Works Cited
Alton, Anne Hiebert. “Generic Fusion and the Mosaic of Harry Potter,” in Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives. Ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman. New York: Routledge, 2003, 141-162.
Elliott, Jane. “Stepping on the Harry Potter Buzz.” Bitch Magazine: Feminist Perspectives to Pop Culture (2001) http://www.bitchmagazine.com.
Lanich, Michael. "The Legacy of Harry Potter: Charting His Global Rise and What It All means." Thespotlightreview. The Spotlight Review, 4 July 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2014
Schoefer, Christine. “Harry Potter’s Girl Trouble.” 13 January 2000, http://www.salon.com.
Zipes, Jack. “The Phenomenon of Harry Potter, or Why All the Talk?” in Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2002.
"Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem: An Interview with J.K. Rowling." Interview by Amazon.co.uk. Amazon.com Message. Amazon.com, Inc. or Its Affiliates, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
The Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies and has been translated into almost every language on the face of the earth (“Harry Potter”). Millions have faithfully followed the story about this magical world and have fallen in love with the many enchanting characters. What most readers do not recognize is the prominence that classical Greek/Roman mythological allusions play in the beloved Harry Potter roles through their names and personality attributes. The importance of names is extremely significant to a person’s identity, especially in literature where words are meant to bring stories to life. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, continues this concept through her characters by linking their names to classical
Haberkorn, Gideon. "Cultural palimpsests: Terry Pratchett's new fantasy heroes." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 19.3 (2008): 319+. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
The work of C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling is of grave vital on the grounds that their work portrays actuality as well as adds to it. Yes, their work is not just a portrayal of actuality; it is somewhat a quality expansion. Their meeting expectations are depictions of the reasoning examples and social standards pervasive commonly. They are a delineation of the diverse features of regular man's existence. Their works serves as a something worth mulling over and a tonic for creative energy and innovativeness. Lying open a single person to great artistic lives up to expectations, is proportional to giving him/her the finest of instructive chances.
Two of the best things in the world, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Harry Potter,” have a good deal in common. Other than the vast amount of space reserved in my brain for storing quotes and random facts from these two stories, both tales share many similar objects, plot devices, character attributes, and themes. Even though Python's “Holy Grail” is an exact historical representation of the Arthurian Grail legend, some might argue that the “Harry Potter” story is more reflective of the actual ancient texts than the 1974 film.
Morgan, Tina. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.” Fiction Factor. n.p. n.d.Web. 3 November 2011.
Rowling. The main character Harry Potter, discovers that he not an ordinary boy, he is in
Neumann, Iver, and Daniel Nexon, ed. Harry Potter and International Relations. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &Littlefield Publishers, Inc. , 2006. Print.
Rowling’s writing sparks controversy with readers. Rowling has dealt with criticism about how her books teach children about witchcraft and evil powers (Kirk 103). To shield children from these teachings, schools and libraries across the world banned the books and occasionally, a book burning. “It conflicts with the values I’m trying to teach my children,” reports Ken McCormick, a father (qtd in Cannon and Cataldo). Evidently, the series’ plot teaches children revenge, and parents and teachers across the globe agree that banning the books will protect them from harmful lessons. However, her works have encouraged children read more. Today, fewer children and teens read for pleasure, causing a great drop in test scores, vocabulary, and imagination (Hallet). According to U.K.-based Federation of Children’s Book Groups, fifty nine percent of kids believe that Harry Potter enhanced their reading skills, and forty eight percent say that the books turned them in to bookworms (Hallet). In other words, Rowling’s books became children’s, in this day of age, video games. She published Harry Potter at a time where children, teens, and young adults were starting to consume their time with technology instead of reading. Without these books, generations across the spectrum would diminish in terms of reading skill. Rowling not only helps children improve their skills, she gives back to them through her
The Harry Potter series, written by J. K. Rowling, is about a young boy who finds out he is a wizard and uses his magic powers to vanquish evil. The series is currently the target of many protestors, as they scrutinize and penalize the books for their creative and imaginative topics. Ranging from education to religion, protestors' reasoning's behind theses attacks have sparked nationwide debates. Everything from censorship to book burning, protesting and pulling theses books from school shelves, have been done to outlaw the Potter series. Elizabeth D. Schafer, author of "Harry and History", summarizes how these controversies stem forth and how she disagrees with the protests against the Potter series. Censorship of the Harry Potter books is a vain attempt to maintain control and power over citizens as their rights and freedom of choice is being severely violated by forbidding the viewing of certain sources of entertainment.
The portrayal of female characters in British literature has most often reflected the larger perception of women by society during the time of a work’s publication. In this regard, the immensely popular Harry Potter series written by author J.K. Rowling is certainly no exception. The circumstances for women in late 20th century Britain have improved and in many ways are nearing equality with men, yet a notable upper barrier to success still remains. Rowling captures this gender dynamic throughout the Harry Potter series by including a diverse cast of resilient female characters who are not allowed to take on the same leadership roles dominated by the men at Hogwarts, at the Ministry of Magic, in quidditch, and during the Triwizard tournament. The novels also center on an important theme of motherly love that Rowling uses to explore the sacrifices women must make in order to raise their children well. Such issues have been present in British literature for well over a century, with each generation seeing steps toward equality, both for the fictitious characters and the women of a given time period. The Harry Potter series, therefore, constitutes a reflection of female status in modern Britain that has advanced, but remains perpetually flawed.
The Harry Potter phenomenon had its humble beginning all the way back in the 1990s, when the first book, written by J. K. Rowling, came out in the shops. The main protagonist, a scrawny, young child wizard, who wore round glasses, had an immediate appeal to the readers, but no one at that time knew that the young boy would turn out to be the literary icon of the last decade. The popularity of the book resulted in it being translated into various language...
One of the most read series in all literature is Harry Potter. The seven-book succession has sold over 400 million copies and has been translated into over sixty languages. What is it that makes this series so wildly famous? What is it about the boy who lived that makes frenzied readers flock to their local bookstore at midnight on the day of the release to buy the latest installment? How is a story set in a world that doesn’t exist about wizards, witches, magic, and mystical creatures so popular? The series has been able to earn its spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and has granted author J.K. Rowling multiple awards because it is relatable. It is not the setting or the events in the plot of the story that we relate to. We relate to what Harry, his friends, mentors, teachers, caretakers, and even enemies feel. Harry is in a lot of ways exactly like us. He represents some of the good characteristics that all of us have as well as the bad. The series as a whole, is about one thing that is stressed over and over again in the novels, love. The Harry Potter series is one of the most read sequences of novels because the central theme is love and self-sacrifice, and readers are looking for a novel that shows them just that.
In the summer of 1997, the world became captivated by a young wizard named Harry Potter (About JK, 2007). The series of Harry Potter books that follows Harry Potter’s evolution from an awkward and shy child to a confident and talented wizard. This series has been printed in over 65 languages and sold around 375 million copies. In total seven Harry Potter books were printed and each one takes its readers deeper into the magical world that Harry Potter has created. One of the reasons that the Potter books have been so successful is because they are able to captivate both child and adult readers alike (Garner, 2008). Both audiences are able to relate to the books because Harry Potter has deals with real world issues such as those concerning family problems, friendship, romance, and more. These problems are present for Potter when he living in the abusive home of his relatives, The Dursleys and even into his time at Hogwarts, a boarding school for witches and wizards
Creator of the most famous and best loved character in contemporary fiction, J.K Rowling is also the author of her own escape from a depressing existence on the verge of destitution. On the one hand, there is J.K Rowling who wrote the ‘Harry Potter’ novels, ‘The Casual Vacancy’ and ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’; the literary phenomenon of the nineties and present day. On the other, there is Joanne Rowling (the ‘J.K’ was her agent’s marketing notch), a dreamy, rather shy, but passionate woman whose brilliance in translating her dreams into prose changed her life. In January 1994, she was broke and jobless, struggling to bring up a young child in a small rented flat in Edinburgh. Just six years later, with her first book transformed into a major Hollywood film, she was reportedly worth £65 million (Smith 2001).