What makes Harry Potter so good? 1 of 3

Mary GrandPre'

It's the 20th anniversary of the publication of the 1st Harry Potter book! And in celebration, I am writing 3 blogposts devoted to Harry Potter.

To be sure, there is no one thing which makes Harry Potter what it is. Just take a look at this Quora article that lists ten or more elements which, they say, contribute to Harry Potter's unbelievable success. But I'm not going to focus just on the success of Harry Potter.

On this blog, it's about the story...

So, first up, we have the basic elements of near any story:

1. Plot
2. Character
3. Setting/World
4. Subject Matter(?)
5. Themes/Symbols

But let's skip all those and look directly at reader engagement (or resonance with the audience—doesn't this tie directly to the success-part I just said I wasn't going to talk about? Pish posh!).


I could look at pacing and book length and a hundred other elements of Harry Potter, but resonance is perhaps the most important element to address . Simply because how the audience feels or resonates with Harry Potter gets at that emotional core of the story—the crux, the heart, the connection, the essential whatever you call it, that keeps people going back again and again—that makes them want to pass on this story to their children.

So—just what is that resonance?

Here's some feedback from a Reddit post asking just that:

• "We grew up with it. Every year, they got older, and so did we."
• "J.K. Rowling did the best job of world building I've ever seen."
• "...one of the few books where even minor characters have their own story..."
• "...it was all the mystery that kept me wanting more."

 And from the comments of this website:

• "I learned from this books that you never give up and believe in yourself and your friends:)"
• "And one of the best things in Harry Potter is Hogwart ,Wow!! What a place !!!!!"

 This Vogue article said:

• Magic aside, the values taught are 100 per cent human
• We know so much but there's still so much more to find out

And this article writes several paragraphs on how the books "tackle loss" and "talk about sacrifice," which is very true when you start to count all of the losses and sacrifices of all of the many characters in their ordeal to defeat Voldemort—starting with Harry's very own parents.

So, there's a lot here. It is no one thing, is it? There are many elements which resonate with audiences. For some readers, such as: "...it was all the mystery that kept me wanting more," it is the plot element. For others, like the one ecstatic about Hogwarts, it is the setting. For others, it is the characters, their values, and those values expressed through their actions.


But somewhere in the sum of these many parts, there is something more. A heart. A resonance that speaks across boundaries. I should know better than to try naming it, but here goes: It's a sense of place, of family, of belonging, of home. The truly magical thing is this home exists, for so many readers, in a book, in their imagination, in their hearts.


It's a home not merely fictional. Rather, it's a home Rowling has built for us—a home of the heart and the mind and the imagination. A home that does exist because the reader—the really smitten fans—believe in it even beyond reason, beyond logic. Because people so want a home. A place where we belong.


Isn't that what Harry, too, wants most, after all...?


Tune in next week for my 2nd post on Harry Potter...Thanks!