The birth of the ruling Rowling

Nabila Habib

Ruling the pages JK Rowling is credited with the noble task of reviving the dying habit of reading. She created Harry Potter, the little wizard; and with the eleven-year old wizard, she also created a reader out of millions from the fresh as well as the more mature generations. The seven books of Harry Potter series not only created Rowling’s personal rags-to-riches story, but also changed contemporary literary world to a more magical, whimsical and children-friendly one than it had been before the Potter series.The journey from obscurity to glitterati JK Rowling adopted this pen name so that young boys would not be disillusioned into disinterest with a book about an eleven-year-old kid, written by a young woman. She was born Joanne ‘Jo’ Rowling to a young London couple, who met on a subway and fell in love. When her mother was pregnant with Joanne, the couple moved to Bristol where the young storyteller would climb upon and pin her little sister to make her hear her stories to the end. By her school age, the family had moved to countryside Tutshill, a small village just outside Chepstow, in Wales. There she met Sean Harris, to whom her second book is dedicated to, on whom Ron’s character is loosely based, and who actually had a Ford Anglia (like Ron). While in London working as a bilingual secretary, she got the idea of writing a book about a wizard school. Soon she started writing the first draft of her novel. Her mother died of multiple sclerosis soon after and left Jo devastated, but stronger to go on with her book. Jo left for Portugal to get away from the crushing memories. Working as a French teacher, she met and married a Portuguese. The marriage was short lived, but she returned with her first baby girl. By then the book was in better form, and Jo even more determined to get over with a good copy to support her infant baby. After a few refusals, when Bloomsbery accepted the book, it became an instant hit, and the rest is the clichéd history (albeit with a lot of special effects!) Literature becomes fashionable After a previous era of social realism in children`s books, Rowling has brought escapist fantasy back into limelight. She has also made reading “fashionable”, with much comment in the media on the `Potter Effect` stimulating children to rediscover its pleasures. The effect is so strong that the on-screen Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) features as a regular in national literacy campaigns. Digging deeper to discover Tolkien And what else has Rowling revived? Some say Tolkienism, and the said words fit like a glove to her books’ description. After all, JRR Tolkien stressed on four major points: Myth: The magical world of Hogwarts, and the complete set of jargon that Rowling has invented is the outcome of a very vivid and active imagination. She shares striking similarities with Tolkiens’ unusual giftedness with language – not in just understanding and inventing new words, but inventing a whole new language to give tongue to his characters. He believed that myths portrayed truth to us in a way that everyday events could not. Hogwarts stands for such revelations. And with myths come tagging along the dark superstitions and stories of death. Rowling has made her inclination clear when she said, “Well, I think it was Tolkien who said that all the important books are about death. And there’s some truth in that because death is our destiny and we should face up to it. All that we have done in life had the intention of avoiding death.” Friendship: Tolkien saw that the value of friends was not just that they stand with you, but that they stand with you and see the same things as you. The strongest bonds in Rowling’s book are that of friendship and love – among families, among classmates and between teachers and students. Rowling even goes on to state in her own unique way that love and sacrifice are the qualities that make Harry Potter, her protagonist, the winner in his fight against the ‘dark powers’. Hearth: For Tolkien, all the wars, heroism, and great acts of bravery are not nearly as valuable and praiseworthy as what goes on in the simple day-to-day events of our lives. We fight exciting wars so that we can lead boring lives. Jo’s creation of the Weasley household suffices for this belief, and the very conspicuous absence of the same cozy hearth in Harry’s life stresses its importance. Religion, morals: Tolkien had said once, “We were born in a dark age out of due time for us. But there is this comfort: otherwise we should not know, or so much love, what we do love. I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water.” All the adult readers and parents of Potter-crazy kids agree that Potter series is didactic without being preachy. It teaches and inspires one to be good - and to read on!