Harry Potter - A fiction stranger than Fact!

Harry Potter, a series of seven fantasy stories written by British author J.K Rowling, is in the height of its publicity. The books chronicle the adventures of an adolescent guy wizard ‘Harry Potter’, together with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, his best friends. The story is mostly set at Hogwarts School of Witchcrafts and Wizardry- an academy for young wizards and witches. The central story concerns Harry’s struggle against the wizard Lord Voldemort’s attempt to conquer death.
The success of the novel has made Rowling the highest earning novelist in the history. Rowling’s publishers were able to capitalize on this buzz by rapid and successive releases of her book. It is amazing fact that ‘Harry Potter’ is the most influencing character created by a novelist. With the release of the seventh book, Harry Potter series have become so crazy even for the adults.
A good readable novel will ultimately have the power of bringing in the moral values and basic humanity among readers. But Harry Potter under critic examination is not exhibiting such qualities of a good novel. This is clear from the fact that, her first book, ‘Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone’ was finally published after eight rejections from various major publishers.
The author herself has quoted the theme of the novel as ‘theme of death’. She quoted “My books are largely about death”. Especially, when the book is aimed at children below the age of fifteen, it should have the theme of hope. Instead the book is presenting an over view of death, witchcraft, nightmares and other troubles.
When other fictitious stories create a world apart from ours, Harry Potter creates a link between virtual world and other world. Thus it makes the witchcraft to happen within the existing world of ours itself. In addition, the ‘wizard guy’ is an ordinary boy who is realizing his wizard character very late. The children think themselves to be a part of the witchcraft and are even trying to gain knowledge in it. The book has become such a craze that children started dressing like Potter and are living in such a hallucination.
If ‘Harry Potter’ were an imaginary character, beyond human powers, children would have ignored this, just as a story. But when Harry potter is presented as one among the ordinary, it forms a greater tendency for the children to turn towards wizardry. Instead of making children to understand the real life and its problems, Rowling is making children to think of gaining extra ordinary powers to over come troubles. This will lead readers to run away from reality. It seems that Rowling’s mind is governed by clichés and death metaphors and she knows only that kind of writing- thinks the majority of the parents.
The American religious groups and recently Vatican have claimed that the magic in the books promotes witchcrafts among children and make them far away from religious beliefs. Vatican City refers Harry Potter as ‘the wrong kind of hero’ and he poses a danger to children across the world. In addition, Vatican quotes the book as unsuitable for children.
It is a notable fact that, the book is not creating simply mere fans, but the followers of the hero. This can create a more situation than the present. Under the critical examination, it is clear that Harry Potter should not be given this much importance, but only a position of mere fiction or fantasy story.