Why Can’t I Go to Hogwarts?

As I read through Harry Potter once again I am struck by its realism. I remember reading somewhere that J.K. Rowling daily recieved letters from children who were writing very distraught about why they had never been sent their letters of acceptance into Hogwarts School of Witch Craft and Wizardry. This point only goes to show how effectively she created her separate wizarding society.

It amazes me how Rowling so flawlessly incorporates he alternate universe into our own. Unlike almost all other works of fantasy where a whole new world is created, Rowling writes her world living silently amongst ours, and it is so believable. Readers are drawn to new worlds like Middle Earth, but when this new world is living with us one is even more drawn. In many ways I think this is one of the reasons that the stories are so successful because it took a new kind of genius to think of the idea that we can relate such a new idea of a world amongst our own society hiding but still thriving. There world may be just around the corner but no one will never know.

I tell people that ever since the fourth grade, when I first started reading Rowling’s series, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger have been my friends. I think that this is a natural feeling when one reads so many stories involving the same protagonists, but it is true that these characters have a special place in my literary memory, and this only contributes more to the realism that one feels when reading Rowling’s stories.