Young Wizards vs. Harry Potter, Part 3 (Themes)

Last week I talked about the basic stories of both series. Now we get to look at the fun stuff: themes, writing style, character analysis, the universes, and cover art (yes, I do think that covers are important). This week we'll look at themes.

Young Wizard Themes:

This installment has strong themes of redemption.

Diane Duane's wizard series is famous for dealing with difficult themes. Each book has its own particular themes, but recurring ones include death, friendship, responsibility, family, and the need for knowledge. I admire that Duane incorporates themes into her books that most people don't really like to talk about.

I thought about discussing themes from every single book, but do you know how long that would take? That's right, a long time. I decided to write about a small selection of my favorite books instead (1, 5, and 6). The first book deals particularly with good and evil. Through out Kit and Nita's entire Ordeal, they keep coming face-to-face with examples of how evil takes something mundane or beautiful and twists it. For example, in the world ruled by the Lone Power there's a carnivorous fire hydrant with a tongue like a chameleon. Then Duane places special emphasis one the difference between the feeling of the Book of Night With The Moon (created by the Powers that Be to describe everything perfectly in its entirety) and the Dark Book (the other Book's polar opposite, created by the Lone Power to twist everything). The Light Book feels like a well of goodness, but the Dark Book stings and sucks up all the light in the area.

In book 5, you may remember that the conflict is that Nita's mother is dying from a malignant brain tumor. The main themes of the book are grief, death of loved ones, and accepting what you really can't change. Each of the Callahans deal with their pain in different ways. Mr. and Mrs. Callhan suffer quietly and try to savor every moment. Dairine tries to help, but gets grounded by the Senior wizards in the area so she must suffer in silence. Nita gets approval to make a desperate attempt to eradicate the cancerous cells from her mother's body. For the next few days Nita throws herself into her work in order to cope. In the end, Nita is able to get rid of most of the cancer so that the doctors can remove the tumor with the least amount of trouble. However, Nita's mother still dies, because not all of the cancer has been destroyed. Her mother explains that it's better to have enough time to live out the rest of her life in love instead of trying to live forever. Nita finally accepts that she can't change the inevitable and decides to enjoy the six months she has left with her mother.


In book 6, Nita is trying to deal with the death of her mother and Kit is becoming distant from everyone. The basic themes include the importance of friends, you can't shut out the world forever, grief, and anger. Both Nita and Kit are hurting after the death of Nita's mother (Kit's hurting because Nita's shutting him out) and they're trying to help wizard-in-training Darryl (an autistic magical prodigy who can't seem to finish his Ordeal). Darryl shuts out the world because of his autism and because he sees the effects of the Lone Power in everyone. Nita and Kit must both accept that they still have responsibilities and need help before they can truly help Darryl with his problem, which is to accept the concept of "other" before he can be a wizard. Nita must also learn to control her anger at the injustice of losing her mother in order to truly be helpful instead of helpless. I think that book 6 is my favorite of the entire series because Duane so readily deals with themes like this while also bringing up the hopeful ideas, like love and friendship.




Harry Potter Themes

This one also deals with revenge and betrayal.

JK Rowling seems to deal exclusively with the themes friendship, love, fate versus choice, sacrifice, and death. The series also includes classic fantasy themes like black and white hero/villain relationships (think Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in A New Hope), quests, and magic. Each book in its own way has something to do do with every theme. Harry wouldn't be able to accomplish half the things that he does without friends and he wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for the power of love. Harry willingly sacrifices himself for his friends so that they don't have to suffer. He even goes to meet Voldemort in the end so that he himself would die and no more people would die. But I feel that one recurring theme is the difference between Harry and Voldemort. Voldemort lets fate make his decisions while Harry chooses his own path. Voldemort killed Harry's parents after hearing about a prophecy concerning him and an unnamed boy, that "neither can live while the other survives." Harry, on the other hand, is told by the Sorting Hat that he would do well in Slytherin but chooses not to go into Slytherin House.


I actually feel that there's not much to say about the themes in the Harry Potter books. Each book has the same themes, which isn't really surprising when you remember that it's a children's series. It invites jokes from just about everyone (like the part in A Very Potter Musical where Harry tells Ginny that his invisibility cloak "was left to me by my dad, my dad that's dead. My father is dead. I have a dead father."), but I think that it's good for a series like that to have the same themes in every book. However, it doesn't leave much room for talking about it.


Score:
Harry Potter: 2, Young Wizards: 3


Harry Potter is great for finding classic themes, but otherwise it kind of falls flat. Young Wizards has a huge scope of themes. I know that Harry Potter is a children's series and Young Wizards is young adult, but since Rowling turned the last two books in Harry Potter into young adult books I feel justified in my comparison.


Next week will be a character analysis.


Agree with my review? Disagree? Comment below!