Harry Potter, hero myth

I'm back in Manchester, living next to the Nico Ditch, ready to start work again tomorrow after the longest break from working routine I have had since I went to India for a fortnight in 2005. It has been a lovely Christmas, back in Bakewell with family and friends. We sat about and watched lots of stuff on television, fire roaring in the grate, cosy and grateful that it was only wind and rain outside, not the -15 temperatures of a few years ago. The phone got fixed in time for Christmas and the fan on the central heating boiler turned out to need WD40 rather than a replacement.I even managed a couple of walks. We watched the Harry Potter films, including the last two, the end of the series. When the books were first published I had an ambivalent relationship with them. My older children grew up with them, aging as Harry and his friends did. Because of my own feelings about boarding school education and absent parents, I didn't feel comfortable with the Enid Blyton depiction of boarding school life. I discovered Philip Pullman's Northern Lights at the same time and found there was no comparison. With hindsight, I guess there was never meant to be. I had the same feeling about Star Wars and Close Encounters of a Third Kind back in 1977. I stopped reading the Harry Potter books with the Half Blood Prince. My friend Joyce had been a huge fan. She died of a brain tumour just as it was published and we put a copy in her coffin, her grave goods. I never had the heart to read it. A few years later I was studying for a masters in folklore. Harry Potter's story was being interpreted as a hero myth in folklore circles. I suspect there are a few theses out there exploring this. It was intriguing to see how J K Rowling had made use of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. In fact her own story had mythic qualities in her rags to riches success. In 2005 I was working in my local library. Young children were entranced by the early Harry Potter stories and films and couldn't understand why the later much darker books and films weren't suitable for them. It was an aspect of the success of the books that no-one seemed to have anticipated. J K Rowling wanted her characters to grow into adulthood, but she had developed a new audience who hadn't aged with them. I found the Deathly Hallows films uncomfortable viewing. All that danger, darkness, death and destruction. A real sense of evil and deception. I couldn't help thinking of recent news items of death and destruction, whether from wars or natural disasters, affecting the lives of so many, but especially children and teenagers. I didn't want to wallow in a fictionalised account, masquerading as entertainment. But then I wondered if this fictional version could actually help those experiencing the reality to accept and cope with the death and destruction around them. Love and friendships help those characters survive and win the day. There is a future. We see them sending their own young children off to Hogwarts. I know the books and films were translated into many languages and became a global phenomenon. Perhaps that recognition of the terrible times they went through and survived might just help. I have always believed in the redemptive power of literature. I just hadn't connected it with Harry Potter until now.