«Back to things that won’t let you down»

“Looking at the circulation of the Harry Potter novels, it is interesting to understand: what is new about our world that an English teacher was able to tell readers? At first glance, the adventures of The Boy Who Lived are a typical parenting fantasy novel built around the struggle between good and evil. Evil looks quite traditional and recognizable. But with good things, everything is not so obvious: teachers one after another turn out to be puppets of Voldemort, the Ministry of Magic is corrupt, the press is corrupt … And even Dumbledore, the main mentor, from the first book not only deceives Harry, putting his life in danger, but also directly manipulates the hero, using him as a pawn in the game. For the sake of his victory, the director of Hogwarts is ready for anything. In the end, it becomes obvious: Dumbledore is the greatest evil for Harry, dangerous precisely because he hides behind the guise of care and love. Let’s agree: this is unusual for children’s literature. It seems to me that this is the secret of the popularity of Rowling’s books. Harry Potter is a little boy involved in a war between two forces that are initially alien to him. He knows that Voldemort is evil, and he so wants to believe that Dumbledore is good. Alas, by the end of the epic, even the most slow-witted reader is convinced that both warring parties have nothing to do with good. The only values ​​that remain with Harry are the memory of deceased parents and faith in friends.

This approach very accurately describes the position of a person in the modern world: political forces and international corporations have little interest in individual human life, and therefore we have to rely only on good old values ​​- love, friendship, family … There is no more Way of Good — there is only a personal way, to check the correctness of which everyone is forced to do on his own, relying on himself and his loved ones, and the choice between good and evil has to be made not once in a lifetime, but every day. However, there are considerable advantages in this: getting rid of the illusions of collective values, we again come to the fundamental principles, to the very roots of human existence, which will certainly not fail. Adult literature discussed the issue of personal choice throughout the XNUMXth century, but Rowling seems to have been the first to finally dare to tell children about it.