Prompt 1: What Iser says about the line
between subject and object is generally always true for me. I remember reading Harry Potter for the first
time and just getting completely lost in the world of wizards and witches. I think that the loss of this line while reading
is the reason why certain books have become such a phenomenon. Harry Potter is no longer just a book series,
but is also games, movies, amusement parks… Because there is no line between
subject and object, we’ve created a multitude of things to further bring the
world of witches and wizards into the “real” world. The same is for other book series: Lord of the Rings, Twilight, The Hunger
Games, etc. These series have become
more than the books that was their original medium, and it’s because the books
become a part of the reader’s world, and we want it to stay that way for much
longer than the duration of the actual book.
However, I’ve found that in reading
the Harry Potter series over again for class, I’m not really immersing myself
as I have in the past. I’m reading on a
more surface level, looking for things that Rowling could be alluding to,
looking for the deeper meaning of a certain fact… I’m not just getting lost in
the books. I think that reading these
books for a class might be part of the reason – I’m not reading for just the
fun of it.
Because of this, I’m not really
empathizing as much with the characters.
Like when Ron and Harry decide to take Mr. Weasley’s car to Hogwarts
when they can’t enter the Platform 9 ¾ in The Chamber of Secrets. Upon reading it this time around, I found
myself thinking, “That was really dumb.
Wait for Ron’s parents to come back!
I wonder what this says about their characters, etc.” I wasn’t really “in the moment.”
Though this might not seem
completely ideal, to have gained back the line of subject vs. object, I
actually don’t mind. It offers a
different take on the books, one that I haven’t had before. Having a new way to read Harry Potter is not
really a bad thing, in my opinion.
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