Harry Potter is a wizard boy who suddenly came into our lives and changed all of our minds in just a moment of fraction. Every book and movie became successful and every person loved the characters unconditionally. Even the evil character of Voldemort has his fanbase. Every character mentioned in this series has some followers who love them unconditionally. It is incredible how Harry Potter changed the fantasy genre. In the beginning, people were convinced that the fantasy genre was made for children only. The fantasy genre has no complicated or life-changing method or inspiring works for adults that it was confined to child audiences only. But after Harry Potter this thought about the fantasy genre has changed drastically. People started to notice other writers’ fantasy works, such as the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, etc., and even the fantasy works that were released after Harry Potter was affected by the series. The whole view over the fantasy genre was changed by the revolutionary writing piece Harry Potter.
J.K. Rowling herself was amazed by the unstoppable popularity of Harry Potter as she was not a fan Of the fantasy genre. It was after the release of Harry Potter that she noticed she had contributed great literature to the fantasy genre. The books have been translated into more than 80 languages all over the world. More than 500 million copies have been sold which made it one of the best-selling series books of history. Its popularity reached the silver screen and earned over $7.7 billion with the 8 films. Every age loves the character and admires it from the bottom of their heart. Their admiration for this series is indescribable. They adopted its characters as real-life persons and protected its reputation at all costs.
Blending Modern and Magical Worlds:
The Harry Potter series has eclipsed other literary works of its origin and became an undeniable cultural phenomenon. Its impact can be seen in modern generation writers. J.K. Rowling has successfully merged the magical world with the real world, and every person who knew this creation became a die-hard fan. Rowling created her characters inspired by real-life persons or real-life human nature that connected with the real world perfectly. The characters have feelings like a human being; they go through the same problems a normal person faces. Audiences can feel the changes in the character as it grows older and travels through every phase of life.
Harry Potter, an 11-year-old boy, starts his journey in the magical boarding school named Hogwarts. The journey continues until he turns into an adult person the audience also experiences this journey throughout the series. This connection between the readers and the characters, helped the series to become a milestone in the fantasy genre history. As Rowling has included aspects of other genres like action, romance, and comedy while keeping the main focus on magic, it attracted many readers to it. For readers who do not like the fantasy genre, Harry Potter even turned those into muggles ( non-magical people).
Reimagining Classic Fantasy Tropes:
J.K. Rowling has used old tropes and some new unique ideas as well. This style of writing helped the series to gain the admiration of both fantasy readers and classic myth lovers. She uses wizard tropes throughout the whole journey of Harry Potter and helps the readers. Other mythical creatures Rowling used are dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, trolls, vampires, werewolves, elves, dwarfs, fairies, giant spiders, goblins, etc. Even though these creatures are from classical times, Rowling combined them with this timeline by using cars and phones, such technologies that do not fit with the classic tropes. But here J.K. Rowling did a great job at blending the modern and classical tropes and bringing out an amazingly beautiful wizard land where wizards and muggles live together.
The unique magical elements helped the Harry Potter series to make a permanent position in the fantasy genre. These magical elements, such as wands, spells, and Hogwarts houses, help the readers to visit the magical world by imagining themselves in it. These elements provoke the human mind to travel to the magical world and get lost within it.
Character-Driven & Plot-Driven Storytelling:
Older fantasy books were mainly focused on the main characters and how they would affect the readers. They had only one goal: to make the protagonist a hero and give them a mind-blowing positive ending. In these stories, the central focus remains only on the individual journey of the leading character, and the other characters are only supporting characters. This type of writing was mainly called childish as it didn’t have any vital plot twist or the ending was mostly predictable. At this rate, the interest in the fantasy genre was going down. Here is the entry of our savior, Harry Potter, who brought new life to the fantasy world. J.K. Rowling gave her focuses on both character-building and world-building. She created the magical world of Hogwart so sensibly that it almost feels real. While reading, people may think that this world does exist somewhere in the world that is hushed up from the muggle world.
J.K. Rowling gave her character some different arcs as well which makes them unique from pre Harry Potter fantasy books. The first noticeable change she made in her character was her main focus was not on making one main hero. Of course, she wrote the book named after Harry Potter, but she tried to give each character a significant role in building up the storyline. The three characters, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, each have 50/50 contributions to the series Harry Potter. Without one character the storyline would not develop and would have remained incomplete. In the series, whenever any negative situation occurs, it’s this trio who always stands against the evil power to protect their loved ones. They were even called troublemakers. In the series, Professor Minerva McGonagall, the head of Gryffindor’s house, once even mentioned,” Why is it when something happens, it’s always you three.” This single scene shows the bonding among the characters is very strong and reliable which takes place in many readers’ hearts. Later on, many series like Twilight followed the technique of character building.
Harry Potter is a series that has depth, modernization, and maturity. These elements play a great part in changing the fantasy world forever. This series has reformed the fantasy genre by coming in the scene out of the blue; it also changed the reader’s viewpoint of the fantasy genre. These tropes gave the readers something new to devour and enjoy. The maturity level and modern style combined with the classical writing, this series presented a different type of fantasy writing that captured many readers’ attention. Harry Potter is both a character-driven and a plot-driven storyline that managed to include all types of audiences. Later, other writers also followed this technique, and they got success in this, which eventually became a rule of writing fantasy stories. Before Harry Potter, fantasy was not taken very seriously, but in today’s day, views towards fantasy worlds have changed, and this change was possible because of the 11-year-old wizard boy and his trio.
