Well I’m not sure if Iser’s assertion is true of all text but it is
most certainly indicative of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The best part
of studying these books has not been that I get to discuss books I love or grew
up with. It’s much simpler than that. Every single time I read a page, I revert
back to my younger self who would stay up late to read or hold the book at a
distance to avoid the barber getting hair on the pages during a haircut. The
magic strikes me again. I disagree with Iser on one point though; the text does
not take place in me, I am drawn deeply into it. As a child who lived in a
pretty boring suburb of Cincinnati, the fact that a boy on a street like mine
could be whisked into a world of magic was such a great tale. Looking back, I
think I wanted to be whisked away too. Where was my letter?! My copies of the
books are scribbled with drawings of wands and spells written in my fanciest
script. I wanted to be a male incarnate of Hermione with my high educational
values and love for the supernatural. She was always calm and the necessary “brains
behind the operation”. But I’m forced to wonder, did I like her because my
family was so big on intelligence? Could a more blue-collar raised child feel
my same level of respect but for Ron or even for Harry? I think when we delve
into the novels with our whole selves and allow the stories to overtake us, we
see things as we would like to if we were there. Rowling gives us a place but
we take in only what we need at the time. Eight year old Akeem and twenty year
old Akeem are reading the same pages but with a different extraction from the
text. My question to anyone who reads this is this: do you identify with a
certain character and why? We didn’t get our Hogwarts letters but let’s imagine
we did!
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