Week Seven: The Novel of Spiritual Education

I'll admit it, I'm one of those people who has probably reread the entire Harry Potter series about five or six times. It was really big for me throughout my childhood and the timing of the book releases were well placed for my generation, as I felt that I grew up with the characters in HP as the books were released chronologically through their teen years.

This week, I revisited the Harry Potter series and it brought me back to the values it presented to me as a teen (I haven't re-read the series in a long while). One of the impacts that I remember most about this series is the theme of growing complexity as a child becomes an adult, and their growing awareness of the complications of the world around them.

In the first book, the world of Harry starts out very whimsical, magical, full of wonder. Harry is introduced to the Wizarding World for the first time, as is the reader. In a way I feel like this reflects the wonders of the world exposed to someone who has finally grown old enough to have the capacity to learn and understand the world on a larger scale than ever before. This, of course, is a trend that continues throughout one's teen years in general. As you age and grow, your capacity to understand also grows, and you start to experience more of the negative sides of the world as well as the positive. You become disenchanted, a bit, and start to feel wronged and attacked by all the unjust things that are being done to you in the world. The poorer sides of life feel like a personal attack when you are a teen, and being so young, you have no idea how to cope with this yet.

I feel that this trend is mirrored in the HP series. As Harry and his friends grow and learn, and as the series progresses, the books get darker and darker and the characters start to learn more and more how twisted the world is, but more importantly, they learn how to cope with it. I think the Harry Potter series is an effective series for teenagers dealing with various difficulties for the first time in their lives-- learning how to cope is an important part of growing up, and not necessarily something that is focused on, or that everyone talks about. I know it helped me in a way, and that still stands out today as one of the best things I learned from this series.