Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
You may have heard of this one.
Hi all, we’re doing a heavy hitter this week. Normally I take on a series at a time, but this one has enough to just tackle the first book (and that’s all I’ve read to Leo).
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Please forward to all your friends and acquaintances who do or want to have opinions on the seminal children’s series of the last generation. Yes, we’re taking on:
The book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the British version)
The author: J.K. Rowling
The illustrator: Depends on the edition
Length/Picture density: 309, small pictures at the start of each chapter
There are things to quibble with here (and more than quibble when it comes to the author herself), but there’s a reason why this book launched a franchise that exploded into a media empire. Aspiring storytellers take note: this book gets so much right.
I first read this one, the first in the series, when I was 19 and found it enchanting. I reread it a few years later and it was fun, but had lost its luster. Then Leo and I picked it up after his sixth birthday, and seeing him experience it, I understood once again how well executed this is.
A lot of books are packed with jokes and whimsy. A fair number have the right touch with mystery and suspense, so that new information comes steadily but always leaves more questions you are hungry to answer. Many do a good job of world-building to the point that you feel you could close your eyes and mentally walk through its environments. Some have well-developed and realized characters who stay true to themselves as you learn more about them.
This book, and if memory serves, this series, does all of the above, and often feels effortless in the telling. This book had the lowest picture-density of any I’d read with Leo, and he was asking for extra reading sessions until we’d finished.
That said, for someone his age, it really helps to chat about what’s happening as you read, because there is a lot to keep track of. I was still getting “Who’s Dumbledore” on page 200, though at a certain point I think he was partly asking out of habit.
The books do reward you for having a grasp on the names and places because they frequently reference previous elements, both for one-liners (“he looked like he had just been hit with the trapezoidius spell” — okay I just made that up) and plot points. The same is true across books, once you get deeper into the series.
So there’s the gushing praise, how about some petty needling?
For one, these stories are as derivative as it gets when it comes to basic fantasy building blocks. At points it reads like “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction. Trolls, wizards, dragons, ghosts, unicorns, goblins, etc.
For many of these, I actually prefer that writers just use the existing archetype than attempt to disguise it. I don’t need your “drogons” that are just dragons with an extra set of eyes or something.
Then there are the narrative tropes: the boy of destiny, the evilest bad guy, the red herring, the nemesis, the best friend, the rule that every trio of good guys must be two guys and one girl.
There are mistakes and overly convenient plot points that one makes when building a large detailed world such as this one.
I can mostly forgive all of that. The next one still bugs me:
Quidditch makes no sense as a game, because it’s nearly impossible to win without catching the snitch, and only one player out of seven is trying to catch the snitch, so the rest are mostly just there to hang out on broomsticks. It would be so easy to fix too: just make the snitch worth a lot of points OR make the game end but not both.
The headmaster, whimsical Gandalf — I mean Dumbledore — apparently thinks of challenging the worst wizard in the world in a death match as a powerful learning experience. Just part of growing up, really.
Oh and the points system — the whole “ten points for Gryffindor” thing — is hilariously arbitrary. No consistent standards, just whatever the teacher who caught you feels like at the moment. It’s more expedient than another set of rules to learn, but also not a well thought out justice system.
Last point here, Rowling does very little with two of the four houses. I like the set up of four houses representing four ways of being, of getting things done, but then it just reduces to Gryffindor = good guys, Slytherin = bad guys, Other two houses = occasional side characters. I know these books are already doing a lot very artfully, but this feels like a real miss. There is a lot of exploration over what it means that Harry is in Gryffindor, but we don’t really see the house values in action beyond Gryffindor: good, Slytherin: bad. We never see why it’s good to be a Hufflepuff, who are the accepting and forgiving ones — supposedly anyway — there aren’t any significant Hufflepuff characters to test that theory on.
Then there are the non-trivial complaints: the goblins and the author.
The goblins are mean, swarthy beings who look after the money in the wizarding world. It’s either anti-semitic or a very poor job of not appearing anti-semitic, and that level of benefit of the doubt feels a bit generous. Here’s Jon Stewart talking about it. It’s more blatant in the movie, but still kinda ugly in the book.
And finally, Rowling herself. Since the books were published, it’s come out that she is openly transphobic. She has made repeated statements that amplify and normalize transphobia, and she may be that particular sentiment’s most visible supporter. That sucks and I won’t fault you for not reading her work on those grounds. I honestly don’t know what to do with great artists who have certain abhorrent beliefs. How many of us watched Game of Thrones down to the dregs despite the author’s well known homophobia? Rowling is neither the first nor the worst offender in that category (we should be glad Roald Dahl lived before Twitter), but it’s at least worth thinking about.
I didn’t notice any transphobia in the books themselves (though so far I have only revisited the first one since her beliefs became public), but let me know if you do.