Harry Potter Grows Up

May 19, 2003

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

Books

In today’s Guardian, Natasha Walter takes a look at the issue of aging and the Harry Potter series. She points oit, and rightly so, that Harry is about to turn 15 and at the end of the series, he’ll be 18. He has to grow up sometime.

Many children’s writers skip over the issue altogether, leaving their protagonists in a sort of limbo, neither quite child nor quite adult. Tolkien is the great exemplar of that style, in which his heroes fall in love, marry and have children but never actually lay a finger on one another. Rowling could do something similar, allowing Harry to focus on his heroic tasks until the very end, when he could, say, slip into everlasting union with Cho Chang, and Ron into perfect harmony with Hermione, with the happy-ever-after purity of old fairy tales.





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.