The first book of the series about Harry Potter begins a story about the Dursley’s family. This is a typical British family, consisting of three people: Vernon, director of the company on manufacture of drills, his wife Petunia and their one year old son Dudley. On November 1, 1981, they had a normal day, not counting the various oddities around them, and this family is not terribly fond of strange things. On the same day, at night, the director of the school of magic Hogwarts professor Albus Dumbledore and the Hogwarts professor Minerva McGonagall meet in the night in their house, at the house number 4 on Yew Street. They are discussing the recent events of the wizarding world. Lord Voldemort, the most powerful and ominous dark magician of all time, finally defeated. Unfortunately, he had killed before it disappeared, two wizards – spouses of Lily and James Potter. Potters had a small son, Harry. And Harry has somehow managed to survive. And, apparently, Voldemort was defeated it was then, when he wanted to kill-year-old Harry. On the memory from the meeting with the Flounce-de-Mort he remained only a scar in the form of lightning on his forehead. Harry’s destiny is concluded to become a legend of the magic world, the Boy-Who-Lived.
Hagrid, the forester Hogwarts and a close friend of Dumbledore’s, brings the two professors of the child the potters.
Harry has been given to the care of the family Dursley, because Petunia Dursley was the sister of Harry Potter’s mother. But Dursleys hated family Potter, almost not seen them, and hated wizards.
Harry’s Aunt and Uncle had never told him about the world of wizards, but they deceived him, saying that his parents died in a car crash. They did not love him, almost nothing to him, not given, and he dwelt in the cupboard under the stairs. Once in a zoo Dudley was teasing boa, sitting in the terrarium behind thick glass. Harry suddenly found out that can talk to a boa; he sympathized with huge snake, and suddenly the glass dissolved in the air. Boa crawled out of the terrarium, thanked Harry and crawled off at will. When Dudley said uncle Vernon, what happened in the terrarium, got angry and punished Harry.
But we will not consider the whole story of the book, and go to the disclosure sense of the topic. So, magical Realism. What is it? Magic realism or magical realism is a kind of artistic genre. In magical realism magical elements or illogical behavioral scenarios come out in alternative realistic or even “normal” setting. Magic realism often combines external factors human existence with their internal world. We can also say that magical realism is a fusion between the psychological human reality and the scientific physical reality. It includes aspects of human existence such as emotions, thoughts, cultural mythology, dreams and imagination. With help of this amalgamation, magical realism can be more exact in showing human reality. Nevertheless, someone’s perception of reality may differ from the perception of anyone else. I mean not everyone can feel and understand the magical realism.
And now let’s consider “Harry Potter and the sorcerers stone” in this context. All this is why it not meaningless and for adult readers, as it should be in a good children’s book. Somehow runaway fantasy sometimes manage to stay in the human dimension, magical realism – it is something like the genre of heresy, where the main reception building of characters – energy – generates manlike creatures, living in the border between reality and fantasy area, where you can get to the platform number nine and three-quarters of the London’s station “Kings Cross”, where for the Muggles there is only platform number nine and ten.
Why not leave the borders of the human even the dogs with three heads, unicorns with the silver blood and centaurs? Is it because in a magical world adopted a law banning the cultivation of the dragons, most have outstanding wizards are not magicians; so that even with a meeting of the latter with the dragons, which in England is, we have to impose on them beating memory spells? Is it not because the fairy-tale conventions collapse themselves, when the boy-wizard, who has lived in the ordinary world until became eleven years old, and in the day of birth, despite the obstacles of Muggles-guardians, received an invitation to school of wizards, and at the same time suddenly learnt, as he is world famous and nice (familiar fabulous canon, isn’t it?), on the way to the magic shops for school accessories comes with his guide, a magician and a drunkard, naive, sensitive, and a giant-the supply manager of a, in some cafe, where the tables drink or smoke older single women; and know who they are? Maybe they are enchantress. The wizards have their own government (the Ministry of Magic), schools (English school of Hogwarts etc.), newspapers and magazines, “radio”, money, banks, etc. They have their own hospitals and its magical medicine. Wizards have their penitentiary system (referred to prison Azkaban). They have railway station. There is even own the game, spit-stones, magical chess and others. Wizards use their own shops, restaurants; they have their own interests, their own fashion. The wizards live, as a rule, in the same locations, as not wizards. They form small communities of the magicians, supporting each other. It is thus underlined, that there are some villages, inhabited only wizards, in the other settlements wizards have to live next to not wizards. It seems that the technical progress of muggles carefully limited in the magical world. Ron’s father works in the department on struggle against illegal use of the inventions of muggles that already says a lot. Or wizards carefully preserve their way of life, or simply can’t cope with the rapidly becoming complicated technique. Mention of the locomotive, leading the Hogwarts express and three-storey bus “Night knight” – this is perhaps, and all the technical things from the world of muggles, which are used magic world. For travel around London you can use the ministerial cars, although the wizards prefer to travel through fireplaces, using the volatile powder. Instead of ball pens are pens and ink, the letters are not written on paper, and on the parchment, instead of mail, telephone and telegraph messages deliver an owl, although it is possible to communicate and with the help of the fireplaces. In addition, a message can be communicated, asking about this ghost. Another way is through the portraits of one man, which are located in different places. It is possible to speak about a kind of “conservatism” in the world of magicians.
Used books:
J. K. Rowling. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (1997).