Harry Potter and Us!
I recently saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I absolutely loved it though I enjoyed the book more. There is so much imagination in Rowling’s writings. Yet the wizard world is, according to me, an allegory of the real world around us. Almost everything mentioned in the books has as analogy in the real world. The scene gets darker and bleaker with each new book, just as in our world with the piling up of WMDs (or simply the fear of non-existent WMDs!!!).
The Dementors in Harry Potter paralyze us with our own fears. They are something that ‘dements’ our power of rationalization. So do the increasing forces of fundamentalists. They simply exploit our own fears and brainwash the youth into anti social and anti human activities. And the only way to fight them is to heighten our awareness.
The Death Eaters in a way are the counter parts of the power hungry politicians who would do anything to rule the world on their own whims and fancies. Rowling also subtly hints at the existence of prejudice and bias, when she speaks of how Dumbledore is accused of being friends with Hagrid who is a giant and hence unreliable. This is so true of our own world. Though we are in the twenty first century some people still hold bigoted views on the issue of caste, creed, colour, gender, religion etc. They fail to see the other person as human.
Lord Voldemort is alive only because of his foolish and selfish faithful followers. So is the case today when we help evil to survive by making wrong choices in our lives. Whether it is about saying no to drugs or standing up for your beliefs, like Harry Potter we have to make some tough decisions in our life. Though it helps to have good friends like Hermione and Ron, there comes a moment in our lives when we have to fight our own battle and the only thing that would help us then is the knowledge and experience that we gained.
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