I have never been one for trends. Even when I caught on to this “trend,” it was late, and it was in my own way. So there I was, midnight June 21, 2003, standing among three thousand people waiting to get a 900-page book. Two years later, I was there again, getting its sequel, a mere 780 or so pages. There was no escaping the title then – I was, in fact, a Potterhead.
My fascination with the ink-and-paper children of J.K. Rowling started on somewhat of a whim. The daughter of a good friend was re-reading Goblet of Fire for the fifth or sixth time, and I asked her what the appeal was. “Every word of it,” was her reply. I gave it a whirl; there have been few tomes that have enchanted me as much, word by word. Some of my favorite novelists are L.M Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens if he had a better editor. I had no expectations that Rowling would be in their league. She isn’t – she invented her own. Within this sphere is a treat for wordsmiths akin to her Honeydukes Sweet Shop – despite a few literary pitfalls and yucks (blood-flavored lollipops, perchance) she has invented hundreds of new words, dusted a “children’s book” with legend, myth, allegory and allusion, infused it with semantic and etymological quests and clues, and started a phenomenon I like to call “the inevitable lightness of reading.”
Like the vampire suckers and vomit-flavored jelly beans, there are a few things Rowling does with language in the Harry Potter (hereinafter “HP”) series that I cock an eyebrow at. First among these are her many clichés and tired metaphors. Harold Bloom of Yale University was in particular frustrated by her overuse of the expression “stretched [their] legs” rather than walk. In fact, he hash marked nearly thirty-six occasions in Philosopher’s Stone alone before giving up. (Bloom, 2003) Also, characters never just get up and get dressed, they always “get dressed at top speed.” (King, 2003) This first installment in the HP series took me the longest to read – two weeks, compared to no more than two days for the others, including the 900-pager – and I think it is not representative of the quality of writing in the rest of the series. In her defense, she had to set up a whole world, way of life, school, and a load of characters in this book, and still write it in such a way as to make the reader want to check out the sequels. Then there is an issue that plagues all her writing – the fault first brought to my attention by Stephen King. Rowling definitely has a fondness for adverbs. In fact, he mentions it in his review of the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
“The part of speech that indicates insecurity... is the adverb, and Ms. Rowling seems to have never met one she didn’t like, especially when it comes to dialogue attribution. Harry’s godfather, Sirius, speaks “exasperatedly”; Mrs. Weasley speaks “sharply”; Tonks (a clumsy witch with punked-up particolor hair) speaks “earnestly”; As for Harry himself, he speaks quietly, automatically, nervously, slowly, and often – given his current case of raving adolescence – ANGRILY… And if by the end of chapter three we don’t know that Harry Potter is one utterly, completely, and pervasively angry young man, we haven’t been paying attention.” (King, 2003)
My own investigations concur – she does average about eight to ten adverbs per page. On page 133 of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the sixth book, there are nine, and only the last three are necessary for semantic or mood/plot/characterization purposes: inquiringly, briefly, irritably, directly, slightly, carefully, firstly, secondly, and only. Does this take away from her overall ability as a writer? I don’t think so, and King agrees with me:
“These minor flaws are endearing rather than annoying; they are the logical side-effect of a natural storyteller who is obviously bursting with crazily vivid ideas and having the time of her life.” (King, ibid.)
One of the most magical things (pun intended) about these “crazily vivid ideas” in Rowling’s work are the made-up words, and there are scads of them – the Fizzing Whizzbees of her literary sweet shop. Many are derivations of other words or compounds created from other languages, and/or have taken on new and unique meanings in her books. Words like Quidditch, Gobstones, and Exploding Snap describe games popular in the wizarding world. Then there are the spells: Wingardium Leviosa (levitation of objects), accio (summoning charm), nox (lights out), lumos (lights on), sectum sempra (an evil slashing spell), and my new favorite from Half-Blood Prince, levicorpus (which hangs its victim upside down by the ankle.) Most of these spells are based on Latin terms:
“Wingardium Leviosa "wing" + "arduus" L. high, steep + "levo" L. to raise up, levitate
Accio "accio" L. send for, summon
Nox "nox" L. night
Lumos "lumen" L. light
Levicorpus "levo" L. to lift up, raise + "corpus" L. body
Sectum sempra "sectus" L. past participle of "seco", to cut "sempra" L. always”
(www.hp-lexicon.org, Encyclopedia of Spells)
In addition to the spells, there are the places. They are a hair’s-breadth from reality, hidden behind ordinary objects and overlooked places like dumpsters, out-of-order phone booths (hiding the Ministry of Magic, of all things) and behind run-down pubs, like Diagon Alley, the wizard marketplace. If you pronounce it like a London native, you’ll hear its origin: it runs diagonally. Then there is the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, Hogwarts, whose gates are flanked by winged pigs (suggesting, perhaps, that if magic occurs when pigs fly, well… there you have it.) The motto of the school employs Latin again: Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, or Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon.
More than the words are some of the new and meaningful ways Rowling manipulates them; like the chocolate frogs, you enjoy the candy, but really want the famous wizard trading cards beneath it. In the years between installments, thousands avidly re-read each volume for clues to what will befall the characters next – and the books are packed with these clues, if you know where to look. Galadriel Waters wrote a series of books to help readers find these clues. Mugglenet, the most popular HP fan website, features forums, chats, editorials (recognized as brilliant by Rowling herself) and lists and lists of clues submitted by readers that point toward either things that eventually happen in the books or that they suspect will happen in the books to come. For example, Rowling’s use of onomatopoeia and words that evoke sound – clanging bells, sing-song voices – signal the vital clue needed to get past Fluffy, the enormous three-headed dog that is guarding the entrance to the Philosopher’s Stone. (Rowling, Philosopher’s Stone 1997) Order of the Phoenix (OotP) is peppered with “death clues,” that when considered together point to the eventual betrayal and demise of major character Sirius Black:
* On page 60 of the American edition of OotP just as they enter number twelve Grimmauld Place, it says "The other's hushed voices were giving Harry an odd feeling of foreboding; it was as though they had just entered the house of a dying man."
* On Harry's first night at Grimmauld Place, the entire house sits down to dinner. In total, thirteen of them eat together. According to Trelawney in PoA (Prisoner of Azkaban), when thirteen people dine together, the first one to rise is the first to die. No prizes for guessing who rises first here: "Sirius started to rise from his chair.
* In St. Mungo’s, when they are going to visit Mr. Weasley- 'They climbed a flight of stairs and entered the "Creature-Induced Injuries" corridor, where the second door on the right bore the words 'DANGEROUS' DAI LLEWELLYN WARD: SERIOUS BITES.' If you put these words on a sign, they would read:
Creature-Induced Injuries
Dangerous
Dai Llewellyn Ward
Serious Bites
Take the first word of each of these and what do you get? Creature Dangerous Dai Serious? No - Kreacher dangerous, Die Sirius...
* A lot of people say that Sirius' Animagus form (big, black, shaggy dog) is uncannily similar to the Grim and so his death was coming from when we first met him in PoA.
(www.mugglenet.com/books/deathclues5.shtml)
Rowling also borrows language from myth and legend, infusing her words and her clues with them. Dave Kopel, in his article “Deconstructing Rowling,” outlines these allegories and allusions, comparing their invention and use to that of Oxford’s famous Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, among others. Many of these appear in the proper names she invents: Draco (dragon) Malfoy (bad magic, or bad fairy); Hermione, (“well-born”, which many in the wizard world think she actually isn’t, coming from non- magic parents, and Hermione in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale turns to stone, as does this one in Chamber of Secrets); Albus (white) Dumbledore (bumblebee in Old English); Weasley (allusion to weasel, an animal considered as unlucky as the so-named character’s red hair); Rita Skeeter (the annoying reporter who is buzzing around and can turn into a beetle); and my favorite, Fawkes, the phoenix, who is set ablaze and rises from his own ashes like the Chinese legend. (Whether this is a direct reference to the link between Guy Fawkes Day and its modern incarnation, Bonfire Night, I can’t be certain, but Dumbledore, Fawkes’ owner, is often at odds with the government, and is betrayed utterly at the end of Half-Blood Prince.)
On a purely ordinary level, the language of Ms. Rowling serves to bridge the gap between British and American English, though arguably without intending to do so. The first book was called Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States, and much of the “Briticisms” were changed by the editors at Scholastic for the benefit of the American reader. Subsequent volumes have gone to no such trouble – my theory is that the popularity of the British editions bought by Americans on the internet who wanted “the real deal” swayed publishers to change little in volumes two through six. (I myself own a copy of Philosopher’s Stone for this very reason, and to thumb my nose at the British notion of the ignorant American reader.) The fan fiction website, www.fictionalley.org features a “tutorial” for non-Brits to make their English souns more “canon,” or in tune with how Rowling originally wrote. There are leagues of Americans who now understand words like “trolley” (cart), telly (television); loo (bathroom); hosepipe (garden hose); garden (yard, including the lawn, not just the special plantings parts); boot (trunk of a car) and they can use expressions like “bloody awful,” “git,” “blimey,” “mum” for mom, and my favorite, “nutters” for crazy.
So how does this magical, adverb-laden, clue-filled allegorical jaunt through six and eventually seven “children’s” books challenge this college-educated reader? On the surface, they do not. If I were to compare my experiences with Harry Potter to another book on my list, considered more of a classic – say, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities -- I could never whip through and absorb the essence of Carton, Darnay and Manette with the speed I did that of Potter, Weasley and Granger. But, as I have often admitted to students wading through Dickens, I had to read A Tale of Two Cities four times before I loved it, because the fourth time, I knew what to skip. Dickens was quite popular in his day, too, but he was paid by the word. Rowling is a very rich woman, but not for this reason – although you might guess that, given the size of the last three volumes published. What challenges me personally about her books, and makes me want to read them over and over, is simply this: I want to know her secrets, how she hid them, how she crafted the tale, and drink in every word, every allusion, every obscure reference. It is the first set of books I have re-read and not wanted to skip a single word. J.K Rowling writes a new kind of classic, one that teaches, inspires and illuminates the language without bogging it down. (In fact, her myriad descriptions of food alone beats most of Dickens, where frankly people are always wanting more.) This is what I deemed “the inevitable lightness of reading” – the plain and simple fact that these books, as “easy” as they seem to some to read compared to other books considered classics, are actually read voluntarily, over and over again by millions of people, child and adult alike. Whether we like it or not, Rowling’s language will be a part of our philological legacy.
So will I be standing in line when volume seven is released? Like as not. I would stand in line for another work of Dickens, too, however, and not simply because he has been dead for a hundred years or so. All commercial success aside, Rowling’s Harry will undoubtedly take his place beside Alice, Dorothy, Frodo, and Aslan someday, when some new author rankles the literary chains of Yale intellectuals. And someone, somewhere will write a paper which claims, “So-and-so is good, but he’s no J.K Rowling.”
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, “Dumbing Down American Readers,” Boston Globe Online 24 September 2003. 28 Nov. 2005 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/
King, Stephen “King Takes a Shining to J.K. Rowling’s Delightfully Dark Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” Entertainment Weekly, 11 July 2003. 1 Dec. 2005 http://www.hpana.com/news.16002.html
Kopel, David “Deconstructing Rowling” National Review Online, 20 June 2003. 3 Dec. 2005 http://www.davekopel.com/NRO/2003/Deconstructing-Rowling.htm
Mugglenet:The ULTIMATE Harry Potter site, Emerson et al. 1999-2005. 30 Nov. 2005 www.mugglenet.com
The Harry Potter Lexicon, c. 2000-2005 2 Dec. 2005 http://www.hp-lexicon.org/
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic/Arthur Levine Press, 1998
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic/Arthur Levine Press, 1999
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic/Arthur Levine Press, 2000
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic/Arthur Levine Press, 2003
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic/Arthur Levine Press, 2005
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