I finally made a big Harry Potter investment that I’ve been meaning to for some years. I bought all the books on CD and even pre-ordered the seventh and final one. I listened to the books before I read them just because it’s my preferential way to ingest a book. I love taking the time I commute in the car and turning it into profitable reading time; it’s such a plus plus.

Anyway, I’ve been rereading the entire series and I’m currently on the third book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I don’t fancy myself a literary critic by any means. In fact, the whole literary criticism portion of my BFA Undergraduate degree was my least favorite part. But I did notice something about the series that I never did before and I make it a point not to solicit opinion from literary jackasses about what they think the series is or will become in the final novel. So, let me step into my literary jackass shoes for a moment.

One thing that differentiates the Harry Potter series from other popular multi-volume epics like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings or Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is the importance of back story. Backs story is important in all of these stories but it is 97% of the Harry Potter series. Every single novel in the young wizard’s story is about the revelation of back story. It starts with revelation–Harry is an orphaned wizard whose parents were killed by the most evil, Hitler-like wizard who also died while trying to kill Harry. That one event is the fulcrum around which the entire story revolves and each novel gives another vein of backstory which sheds light on that moment as well as on the current happenings in the present now of the novel. There is very little forward momentum in Harry Potter and the young wizard spends most of the story reacting to strange situations which are thrust upon him and his band of fellow wizards in training.

But compare that to Star Wars which follows the Hero’s Journey more closely. Luke must react to a situation thrust upon him but from that point forward there is momentum which carries him to the finale of a confrontation with his father. In the Lord of the Rings, the quest begins when Frodo takes the first steps outside of Hobbiton and doesn’t stop until he gets back–forward momentum with a lot of active decisions being made. The Gunslinger’s story is the very definition of the active quest and it takes him from thousands of years in the future of another reality to Stephen King’s kitchen in the 1970s and to 1990s Maine just prior to Stephen King being hit by the van to the room at the top of the Dark Tower itself. Tons of active decision making going on in that epic.

But Harry Potter is all about the reveal of the back story and it works where other adventure stories would fail. The Harry Potter series is such an strange phenomena that as popular as it is, most people don’t appreciate that people will be reading these books hundreds of years from now and I believe that they will be considered amongst the most precious gifts the mind of one human being ever bestowed upon their fellow and future species.

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