I am a huge fan of Harry Potter and I have read and reread all the volumes and even seen all the movies again and again. Hence I have tried to think why Harry Potter is such a charming force !!
If I start thinking,the Ist thing that comes to my mind is that I should analyze the way I feel about it. And that feeling is a feeling of joy, interest, enjoyment and warmth. Its a story you can relate to, feel as if its a story of your own real cool school life !!
Now let's come to the strength of Harry Potter character !! He's courageous and the greatest quality which is amazingly visible through his actions is his modesty, humility and concern for all living beings. Some of the credit for inculcating modesty in Harry Potter will have to be given to Dumbledore for keeping Harry unaware of his famous status in Wizarding world by keeping him away from it in his early childhood. The kindness in his nature has been attributed to his mother Lily too as told by Dumbledore to Snape.
Whatever might be the reason, there's a natural empathy in Harry Potter for all living beings especially if they belong to some disadavantaged place in social hierarchy and thus he shows a polite demeanour to everybody.There might be some influence of Dumbledore too as he famously belived in giving second chances to people and his basic trust in goodness of all.
There might be one exception where Harry failed to understand true nature of a person, i.e. Snape and Snape's own attitude didnt help the situation as well. Actually Snape and Harry both had their prejudices because of an ancient conflict between Harry's father James and Snape.
The next most endearing character is ofcourse Hermione and her intelligence. She's almost perfect with no major flaws that I can think of. She provides a major part of thinking and analysis going on, though Harry pitches in more as he starts understanding Voldemort more than anybody else in later books.
Harry's willingness to believe in fables, old tales and old magic helps too, whereas Hermione is more analytical and rational and hence fails to have faith in things like Hallows and thus is unable to understand them.
The above qualites are in direct contrast to the Voldemort who's cruel, proud, arrogant, selfish, without friends and doesnt care for any form of life like elves. He has no respect for life and has no regrets for killing any human being or breaking his own soul in parts to try to attain immortality. He doesnt care for anybody's emotions and doesnt try to understand them. He has an incomplete knowledge and doesnt find it worthwhile to understand something which doesnt seem as a means to attaining more power. He has a few devout followers like Bellatrix or Crouch's son, rest all seem to follow either for gaining power or for survival or they are just plainly scared.
The last and seventh episode is a very intelligent one as it ties all loose ends and provides backdrop stories to understand the nuances of charactersitics of people. Voldemort's cruelty is attributed to his genes, or rather his ancestory which was full of violence. The other idea might be that he was raised in an orphanage and didnt receive any loving homely environment, but genetic factors have been given more weightage by author, atleast I think so. Even the story of why Harry is good at flying on broom is also explained, Sirius gifted Harry his ist toy broom when he turned 1 year old, thus Harry already had good flight hours behind him when he came to school :)
Dumbledore though the greatest wizard ever is shown to have an inability too i.e. at a certain time of his life he became far too ambitious for his own good. And if he thinks he's in a powerful position he will be inclined to attain more power, and thus because of his slightly selfish aim wont be able to utilize that power effectively or for greater good. Here Dumbledore concedes that Harry is better than him at handling greatness or power.
Thus one of the greatest capabilites of author might be to avoid painting all characters in black and white and providing multidimensional characters. Background stories help in understanding current behavior of characters too.
Moreover the story is such a long one, so you can keep on reading ang being able to understand more and more as you reread something and understand more from subplots.
As if you read sixth part after reading seventh part, then you might notice Marvolo shouting that the family inherited ring had a coat of peverell brothers on it which becomes important in context of Hallows.
The words created specific to the world of magic are wonderful too. Each word has such an interesting ring to it like "Hallows, Horcruxes". If you notice then, the character H has great importance in Harry's life. The main words which you can observe are :- Harry, Hogwartz, Hermione, Hagrid, Hallows, Horcruxes.
The mantras or spells sound fascinating too - "Avada Kedavra", "Alohmora and etc...
My mom has just said that "Avada Kedavra" sounds like "Abra Ka Dabra".
The telepathic connection between Harry and Voldemort's minds is a great way of story telling too and keeps everybody updated about Voldy's thoughts and actions.
The devotion and love of people like Hagrid, Lupin, Sirius, Weasely family, Hermione and Dumbledore for harry feels wonderful too. Love and friendship are something of importance too which Harry has in plenty and Voldemort lacks badly. There are numerous instances about power of love like Harry's mother giving away her life for saving his son's life, Snape saving Harry just because he's Lily's daughter and Hagrid's unconditional love for Harry.
The story is a magical one and thus might be deriving magical creatures from old magical historical fictions like Tolkien's elves, goblins and all, but I am not sure about all the inspirations.
The story of Prophecies and predictions reminds of Bhagwan Krishna's story, where Harry just like Krishna lives without the parents who gave birth to him and is destined to kill almost unbeatable villain.
Moreover the story has its own lot of funny instances. Harry doesnt have a smooth sailing life as such. He's surviving through all the struggles which might be as big as facing Voldemort or as insubstantial as loads of homework. So it becomes the story of everyone of us who are struggling with something or anything and worrying about it in our own lives.
Essentially the story is about goodness winning over evil and upholding all moral values like honesty,courage, kindness, friendship and love.
Its my understanding as of today and I will keep on trying to learn more,actually read more and hone my opinions, ideas, understanding and Interpretation :)
Hail Harry Potter !!
