Parents, please read Harry Potter before your children do (2000)

*Mug­gle Note: I recent­ly stum­bled upon this old arti­cle while study­ing Har­ry Pot­ter with a group of fel­low enthu­si­asts. It was writ­ten before Octo­ber 4, 2000, just before the Chi­nese edi­tion of Har­ry Pot­ter was released. Since I had­n’t read the Chi­nese edi­tion yet, the titles in this arti­cle are based on the Eng­lish edi­tion, like­ly ref­er­enc­ing the titles on a fan web­site at the time. I remem­ber a news­pa­per edi­tor friend bump­ing into me. I hap­pened to be read­ing the Eng­lish edi­tion, which a friend had sent from Hong Kong. I was almost fin­ished with the sec­ond book, and hav­ing final­ly found a fel­low enthu­si­ast, he asked me to write an arti­cle about it. At the time, I had mixed feel­ings about the book. I loved it, but I was hes­i­tant about rec­om­mend­ing it to chil­dren. My child was only one year old at the time, so nat­u­ral­ly, I would­n’t have thought about it. How­ev­er, Har­ry Pot­ter has since been a book I enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly rec­om­mend to both chil­dren and adults. Reread­ing this arti­cle brings back that ini­tial thrill and unfor­get­table feel­ing. Now, I almost agree with my opin­ion from over a decade ago, which is quite remark­able. O(∩_∩)O Haha~
(Added in March 2013)

Par­ents, please read Har­ry Pot­ter before your chil­dren do.

Har­ry Pot­ter is already so famous that I need no fur­ther intro­duc­tion. This chil­dren’s nov­el series, which has sold over 35 mil­lion copies world­wide (four vol­umes have already been released), is becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with Chi­nese chil­dren. As an adult work­ing for chil­dren, I feel it is my duty to join in the fun.

How close is Har­ry Pot­ter to us?

It’s almost here. Regard­ing the legit­i­mate ver­sion, Peo­ple’s Lit­er­a­ture Pub­lish­ing House released the Chi­nese trans­la­tion to the pub­lic on Sep­tem­ber 20th, and the first three vol­umes will be offi­cial­ly pub­lished around Octo­ber 10th. How­ev­er, the pirat­ed mar­ket is react­ing even faster, with two pirat­ed edi­tions already on the mar­ket. One, labeled “Tibet Peo­ple’s Pub­lish­ing House,” boasts all four vol­umes. It’s said that the first vol­ume is a pla­gia­rism from the Tai­wanese edi­tion, while the next three are sim­ply their own trans­la­tions. Both the legit­i­mate and pirat­ed ver­sions are priced around 60 yuan. In oth­er words, chil­dren can now access this series.

Par­ents eager to expose their chil­dren to inter­na­tion­al cul­ture will undoubt­ed­ly be eager to pur­chase this set. How­ev­er, Ajia advis­es that par­ents exer­cise cau­tion and read the series them­selves before decid­ing whether to allow their chil­dren to read it. For­tu­nate­ly, although this series is labeled chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, it is also suit­able for adults. Fur­ther­more, adults with heart prob­lems should seek med­ical approval if they wish to read it.

What’s wrong with Har­ry Pot­ter?

From a nov­el per­spec­tive, there’s noth­ing wrong with it. How­ev­er, as a nov­el for chil­dren, it does have some issues.

Har­ry Pot­ter is a chil­dren’s hero cre­at­ed by British female writer J.K. Rowl­ing, but not all British peo­ple wel­come it. Some pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools have banned the series. Amer­i­cans have always been con­sid­ered to have the strongest abil­i­ty to accept cul­ture, but the author­i­ta­tive Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion has list­ed it among the most con­tro­ver­sial books. Many Amer­i­can adults have strong­ly called for the series to be removed from library shelves. India Knight, a famous female colum­nist for the Sun­day Times, recent­ly cried out, “Har­ry Pot­ter is not suit­able for chil­dren!”

How­ev­er, among for­eign­ers, it’s almost impos­si­ble to find any­thing uncon­tro­ver­sial, and the rea­sons for their con­tro­ver­sy can seem some­what bizarre to us. For exam­ple, among the British and Amer­i­cans, many oppo­nents of Har­ry Pot­ter are pri­mar­i­ly based on reli­gious views. Har­ry Pot­ter is tru­ly unique: a mag­i­cal prodi­gy, gift­ed with aston­ish­ing mag­i­cal pow­ers, and attend­ing a wiz­ard­ing school. Rowl­ing’s cap­ti­vat­ing imag­i­na­tion can eas­i­ly trick read­ers into believ­ing that mag­ic and witch­craft actu­al­ly exist. For reli­gious believ­ers, this is unde­ni­ably objec­tion­able. Fur­ther­more, among Amer­i­cans, the “most con­tro­ver­sial” things are often quite bizarre. For exam­ple, a nov­el as humor­ous, down-to-earth, and can­did as “The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn” was once con­sid­ered the “most con­tro­ver­sial.” It’s no won­der that Har­ry Pot­ter is no excep­tion.

But we can’t ignore colum­nist Knight’s out­cry. Why? Because she’s at least read Har­ry Pot­ter and is the moth­er of a child under nine. These days, most news and reviews about books aren’t about the books them­selves, and often the review­ers haven’t read them, or have oth­er motives. So, I think a moth­er’s com­ments on a book intend­ed for her chil­dren, writ­ten after read­ing it, are tru­ly wor­thy of atten­tion.

For work pur­pos­es, and dri­ven by an irre­press­ible curios­i­ty, I’ve been read­ing the nov­els in order, start­ing with the first one, and am almost fin­ished with the sec­ond. I strong­ly feel that we should­n’t jump to con­clu­sions about this series, but if par­ents want their chil­dren to read it, it’s best to read it them­selves first. Har­ry Pot­ter is cer­tain­ly prob­lem­at­ic, but what’s prob­lem­at­ic for some fam­i­lies may not be so for oth­ers. Whether it’s prob­lem­at­ic or not is some­thing that par­ents should make their own deci­sions about.

Har­ry Pot­ter with a grip­ping plot

Just based on the plot, both adults and chil­dren should be deeply cap­ti­vat­ed.

First, it is an ordi­nary world, every­thing is very ordi­nary. One day, every­thing becomes very mys­te­ri­ous. Har­ry Pot­ter, still in his infan­cy, enters the ordi­nary world in a very mys­te­ri­ous way, and it seems that good luck is not wait­ing for him. What hap­pened on this day is a mys­tery to the read­ers.

Ten years passed, and in the ordi­nary world, every­thing was still bor­ing and tedious. Har­ry Pot­ter had been abused in his aun­t’s house for ten years, for no one knew why. Sud­den­ly one day, a let­ter arrived, and then a flood of let­ters came. Har­ry’s uncle tried every means to stop it but failed. Har­ry Pot­ter was admit­ted to a wiz­ard­ing school from a mys­te­ri­ous world.

And so we enter a mys­te­ri­ous world, one in which Har­ry Pot­ter is famous and hap­py, yet the mys­tery of his past remains unsolved, and a dark force con­stant­ly oppress­es Har­ry and the school. Dan­ger, fear, and even blood­shed ensue… After a series of mag­nif­i­cent strug­gles that could be described as imag­i­na­tive, Har­ry Pot­ter tri­umphs once again for the bright world. The truth is revealed, leav­ing read­ers in a cold sweat and awestruck.

Then sum­mer vaca­tion came, and Har­ry returned to the ordi­nary world. He tem­porar­i­ly entan­gled with his extreme­ly hate­ful aunt and her fam­i­ly. Every­thing became bor­ing and tedious again. Then new strange things sent him back to the mys­te­ri­ous world and began a new hor­ror adven­ture.

Then Har­ry Pot­ter tri­umphs again, anoth­er bor­ing sum­mer vaca­tion comes, and then it’s back again… and so on and so forth.

Although every­one knows that the next cycle will be sim­i­lar to the same rou­tine, Pot­ter fans around the world are still eager­ly wait­ing for Rowl­ing to tell anoth­er Pot­ter hor­ror sto­ry, so that every­one can be scared to death again…

It is real­ly not easy to write such a sto­ry.

A mys­te­ri­ous world that is both real and illu­so­ry

Rowl­ing’s imag­i­na­tion is tru­ly remark­able. In her writ­ing, the mys­te­ri­ous wiz­ard­ing world coex­ists peace­ful­ly with the ordi­nary world, obliv­i­ous to ordi­nary peo­ple. Wiz­ards can inhab­it both realms simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Social struc­tures and inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships are vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal, and eth­i­cal sys­tems are large­ly inter­change­able. The only dif­fer­ence is that one thrives on witch­craft, while the oth­er relies on sci­ence. The wiz­ard­ing world mar­vels at the sci­ence of the ordi­nary world. Har­ry, from the sci­en­tif­ic world, is fas­ci­nat­ed by the wiz­ard­ing world, and so am I. Read­ers might won­der why wiz­ards don’t prac­tice their mag­ic in the ordi­nary world. Rowl­ing’s answer is that the wiz­ard­ing world has its own laws, and prac­tic­ing mag­ic in the ordi­nary world is pro­hib­it­ed and car­ries severe penal­ties. How­ev­er, to make Har­ry Pot­ter more inter­est­ing, Rowl­ing’s laws also pro­vide for their appro­pri­ate use in emer­gen­cies. Rowl­ing has the final say on the laws of the wiz­ard­ing world.

Har­ry Pot­ter, a typ­i­cal British child

Har­ry Pot­ter has all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a British child. Although he attends a wiz­ard­ing school, it is a British school at heart.

Har­ry Pot­ter’s adven­tures are quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British, their fla­vor unfor­get­table, the gloomy wilder­ness beyond Wuther­ing Heights. The woods are mys­te­ri­ous and gloomy, the cas­tle is mys­te­ri­ous and gloomy, the lake is mys­te­ri­ous and gloomy, the Cham­ber of Secrets is ter­ri­fy­ing and gloomy—everything is gloomy, even the humor is dark. Even life at wiz­ard­ing school is gen­er­al­ly gloomy. While seem­ing­ly more imag­i­na­tive than the world of ordi­nary peo­ple, it remains rigid and dull, with ambigu­ous stan­dards of behav­ior. The plot unfolds in a per­pet­u­al­ly oppres­sive atmos­phere, with every detail hint­ing, lead­ing the read­er to await some des­tined, who-knows-what event. When the truth is revealed, it’s always a sur­prise, because 99.91% of read­ers will be wrong. How­ev­er, the rea­sons for this mis­judg­ment are often unfair, often due to insuf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion or delib­er­ate mis­di­rec­tion by the author, a mis­di­rec­tion that rarely jus­ti­fies itself. This reminds me of Christie’s detec­tive nov­els.

I don’t know if it’s because West­ern chil­dren tend to enjoy things that appeal to their instinc­tive desires for vio­lence and adven­ture, but I sim­ply can’t imag­ine a child whose body and soul are bathed in warmth and light tru­ly lik­ing Har­ry Pot­ter. There’s a huge­ly pop­u­lar chil­dren’s web­site (http://www.ajkids.com) with a chil­dren’s Pot­ter fan club, and it’s clear that many West­ern chil­dren tru­ly love Har­ry Pot­ter, some as young as eight or nine. Go check it out if you don’t believe me.

If I were to put aside the halo of “best­sellers” and rec­om­mend books to chil­dren, I’d rec­om­mend “Kachia the Two-Han­dled Saucepan,” “Karls­son the Fly­ing Man,” “Pip­pi Long­stock­ing,” and, recent­ly, “The Lit­tle Girl at the Win­dow” by Tet­suko Kuroy­ana­gi. Read­ing them is like bathing in sun­light, while read­ing Har­ry Pot­ter and the Suf­fo­cat­ing, vis­cer­al fear I felt. Late at night, sit­ting on the wood­en floor, read­ing about Har­ry Pot­ter’s duel with the Lord of the Dark World, I felt chills…

Per­haps chil­dren tor­ment­ed by home­work, or adults and chil­dren weighed down by the dull, unimag­i­na­tive lives of “ordi­nary peo­ple,” will love this book; it will elic­it a scream from the heart. A tru­ly exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence? Per­haps.

Ambigu­ous and com­plex eth­i­cal struc­ture

From a human­is­tic per­spec­tive, a domes­tic pub­lish­er prepar­ing to intro­duce Har­ry Pot­ter com­ment­ed: “The pop­u­lar­i­ty of Har­ry Pot­ter is large­ly due to the human emo­tions it pro­motes, such as truth, good­ness, and beau­ty.” Indeed, Har­ry Pot­ter is a child hero endowed with truth, good­ness, and beau­ty. Take his friend Hermione’s assess­ment of him:You are a great magi­cian! All I get from books is wis­dom, but there is some­thing more impor­tant, that is great friend­ship and courage!

Final­ly, the head­mas­ter told Har­ry Pot­ter that the rea­son he was able to defeat the seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble Dark Lord was not because of his mag­ic (in fact, his aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in the mag­ic school was very aver­age), but because of his inner “love”. The love of his father and espe­cial­ly his moth­er was a more pow­er­ful force than dark mag­ic, and it was this mag­i­cal pow­er that enabled him to defeat the Dark Lord.

To be hon­est, such state­ments are typ­i­cal preach­ing in West­ern eth­i­cal laws. Obvi­ous­ly, Rowl­ing is too lazy to put too much effort in this regard. Read­ers are attract­ed by her plot and can­not extri­cate them­selves. Of course, not many peo­ple will pay atten­tion to these eth­i­cal details, and such preach­ing may not be very con­vinc­ing.

In con­trast, the eth­i­cal struc­ture per­me­at­ing the nov­el is quite ambigu­ous and com­plex: in real life, good peo­ple are good and bad peo­ple are bad for almost no rea­son; in the school sys­tem, achiev­ing high grades and hon­or for the col­lec­tive is the most impor­tant eth­i­cal stan­dard, but there are always vil­lains who try to take advan­tage of oth­ers. Tru­ly good deeds are not nec­es­sar­i­ly praised, and bad deeds are rarely pun­ished. In par­tic­u­lar, the behav­iors of chil­dren, which are based on human nature and dif­fi­cult to judge as good or bad, are often han­dled unfair­ly. This may reflect Rowl­ing’s skep­ti­cism about school order and eth­i­cal val­ues. In short, after read­ing this nov­el, I felt very depressed. Any behav­ior of chil­dren that fol­lows their nat­ur­al instincts is usu­al­ly pun­ished. This makes me feel very hor­ri­fied about school, even wiz­ard­ing schools. If this con­tin­ues, how much of a child’s nature will be left? 

How­ev­er, at the end of the nov­el, the prin­ci­pal still makes a come­back, sum­ma­riz­ing and prais­ing the good stu­dents, mak­ing every­one feel that this school still has some hope. How­ev­er, I did­n’t find this kind-heart­ed prin­ci­pal very busy in the sto­ry. Why did­n’t he come out to uphold jus­tice at oth­er times, but only at the end to show his appre­ci­a­tion?

Per­haps Rowl­ing was too reluc­tant, or per­haps out of com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions, she allowed pos­i­tive eth­i­cal val­ues to shine through, return­ing from real­ism to ide­al­ism. In fact, even if Rowl­ing did­n’t write it this way, Hol­ly­wood would have done the same when it was adapt­ed into a movie script.

Hon­est­ly, I still love Har­ry Pot­ter, but my feel­ings for the lit­tle boy are more sym­pa­thet­ic. I think he’s a pure-heart­ed child who deserves more sun­shine and should­n’t be so tired. As for the prin­ci­pal, who’s often tout­ed as a benev­o­lent per­son, he’s a hyp­ocrite. I strong­ly sug­gest he read “The Lit­tle Girl at the Win­dow” and learn from Prin­ci­pal Kobayashi to tru­ly love the chil­dren.

Mug­gle A (Bei­jing, Octo­ber 2000)