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When I was eight, I got my first pair of glasses. Far from
being made fun of at school, the only struggle I got was endless requests to
try on my new glasses. Hearing about what happened at school, my father once
looked at me and asked whether I had pretended to be the blindness just to look
like Harry Potter?
With my strange hair and glasses, I did nothing to avoid it,
either. The Harry Potter books were
the great pop cultural event of my generation, who began reading again. My
school librarian, both confused and annoyed by us Potter fans, dealt with
fights over the schools few old copies by setting a new rule: Harry Potter could be borrowed for only
three days, instead of the whole week of borrowing period every other title was
allowed.
In the 20 years since the first book arrived on shelves,
publishers and parents have been asking what has made J.K. Rowling's books so
loved. It is better to look at the influence they have had on their readers.
Yes, the books were about a boy taking on a dark and powerful enemy in the
magical world, but they were also about love defeating hate, determination and
choosing" between what is easy and what is right". Rowling's entire
magical characters were all people we want to be.
I grew up with Harry and together we became children with
our own opinions, teens easy to get angry and young adults thinking of
everything as normal. When the final book came out in 2007.I read it for 12
hours without a break and cried as I finished it. I felt something sad: the end
of Harry's story signaled the end of my childhood. I was suddenly
aimless. Meanwhile, my now Potter-mad father walked impatiently nearby, waiting
for the proper moment to take the book away from his daughter.
Harry Potter did shape my generation. As a girl who
grew up mostly in peacetime, many of the ideas I found in these books were ones
we had never come across before. The magical world's terrible treatment of
non-human beings was the first description of slavery I knew. The treatment of
Harry's teacher Remus Lupin, who hides his condition at work, is a metaphor(比喻) for the shame
surrounding those who suffer from AIDS. And all settings like this may have
real-world reflections .A study found that teenage Harry Potter readers showed
more tolerance (包容) towards those who were suffering.
Is it possible that Jeremy Corbyn's popularity among the young had anything to
do with their literary education? Is it possible that Harry Potter, in the 20 years he has been with us, has inspired a
generation to be more empathetic (感同身受), welcoming and
socially open-minded than those before it? We will see,
if not, at least my glasses are still cool.