J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" Scholastic Press: 1997

I read this book on a dare from a friend in 1997. He put a copy of the book on my desk where we both worked at the time and said: "I dare you to read it! You will love this book. Trust me on this."

My heart sank. I don't like the fantasy genre. I looked at the cover. It still did not interest me. I read that it was about a boy who went to a school for wizards and again it seemed dull. However, I really liked the man who put the book in front of me and wanted to keep his friendship. He was one of the few people in the workplace that did not carry a concealed knife and plunge it into his fellow workers' back. He was a decent man and still is. I took the book home on the weekend and finished it the next day. Ed was right. I did not regret it and introduced Harry Potter to my son and friends who became fans too.

Since then I have read all of the Harry Potter books and some of them more than once. I have bought all of the DVD's of the movies that were made of the books.

I now find myself living in a foreign country and was feeling frustrated in a culture that I didn't always understand and I found myself in a contract that seemed to be shifting beneath my feet. I reached out for some comfort and found it in the first volumn of the Harry Potter series that I found in the university library.

Reading it again did not disappoint me. I experienced the same feelings I had when I first read it. It is the story of a boy who was dealt a severe blow with the murder of his parents, was given to unfeeling and selfish relatives and finds his own place, acceptance and love among others. Reading it the second time was like the first, the putting on of a very comfortable cloak, not unlike Harry's invisability cloak in that others don't see it but its there all the same. In the end, Potter finds justice for himself and for others around him. What could be better than that?

I had to ask myself why this boy and this story attracted me in the way it did. Certainly there are plenty of fairy-tales in which Cinderellas find their Prince Charmings but we all know those stories rarely work out. We have to find our success ourselves as J.K. Rowling did for herself with her novels of Harry Potter. Maybe it is this combination of success and justice both real and fiction all of us crave in our lives.

Again, I remember the first time I read "Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone". I was working in a job that was enjoyable in that I helped people find employment and or training. It paid a decent wage and was protected by a strong and fair union. At the time we had medical insurance and Social Security although the medical benefits grew more and more expensive and more cumbersome to use. The difficulty I was experiencing then were a desperately unhappy supervisory staff.

During the time I was there, the supervisory staff were shouting, screaming at the regular staff and sometimes even the customers.The staff responded by yelling at each other. The union was in the office trying to understand what the problem was and especially with the ineffective stewards. Most of the problems were coming from the one manager who had serious problmes not unlike Lord Voltermort. Luckily, enough people filed job actions and won that forced the agency to forceably retire the manager. Unfortunately, he was replaced with someone who could not handle the huge ground-swell of problems that he left behind.

Some fortunate set of circumstances occured and I was able to go somewhere else as well as my friend. It took a long time to recover from that awful experience. I thought I did recover until I came here. It is not the same situation for I teach at a fine university without the same set of problems. However, one person who is not employed but in the mix of things has problems and is causing some difficulties with one special student. It has echoes of that past time.

When we read books, we sometimes incorporate what we are reading into our lives and what is going on with us. I have another "He who must not be named" in my life. I think each of us always have such people. In the book, Headmaster Dumbledore says Voltermort who is not alive cannot die. In latter books, Voltermort is spelled out, filled out as a boy who was not loved or wanted by his parents. I remember how awful my father was because he was unloved by his parents. Who knows how the Voltermort in my life got that way. I do know she is older than her husband or looks that way. Maybe in Korea, this is a serious problem.

Harry is not loved or at least he is told he is not by the Dursleys, but he finds out he is loved by others. His parents gave their lives for him. He finds mentors along the way. He finds secret talents and strengths. He finds friends. He discovers that he is not a bad person afterall but a good person. He builds strength within. This is something that Lord Voltermort never can do nor can his followers. They see doing evil as a short cut to feeling stronger and feeling better about themselves. It is a short cut but a short cut to prison.

Too often people don't win against adversity at least not during their lives. Murderers are not always caught, but karma is the cause and affect of our actions. There is justice but not on human terms. We just don't always see it. There were many times in my life that people were mean to me and I never knew what happened to them. In Harry Potter, we see it, experience it and feel his victories. No one can bring back those who suffer and die in real life but it is good to hear about the Harry Potters of this world. Harry Potter is only fiction, but it is fiction that makes us all feel good about our lives.