Harry Potter, the orphan
As people talk about what part of The Deathly Hallows made them cry, I haven’t been able to do that. You see, the part that made me cry probably did not affect most people.
First, let me say that when I’ve been in the towns that my girls spent their first months/years of life that I’ve looked around and imagined them growing up there. If their original family had been in a position to be able to raise them they may have gone to that school, played in that park, gone to that market for food. I don’t know this for a fact, there is no way to know if their birthfamily lived nearby or if they took a train so they could put some distance between themselves and the abandoning spot. But still, those thoughts were there, and I had to fight back tears on more than one occasion.
The following is an excerpt from Deathly Hallows:
He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had a family. It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house… he might even have had brothers and sisters… it would have been his mother who had made his seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment, when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken from him.
That part had me crying my eyes out. If it affected me that way and both of my parents are still around, how might it affect a child who lost their original family?
Children’s literature is full of orphans: Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Little Orphan Annie, Anne of Green Gables, Snow White, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, Heidi, Tarzan, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Mary in The Secret Garden.
And if they aren’t an orphan then they’ve probably lost at least one parent: Bambi, Cinderella, Nemo, Ariel, Belle. I could go on.
The thing is, my girls were once orphans, but they aren’t anymore. They were adopted and now they have a family. Being an orphan is part of their history, but it no longer describes them. An orphan is someone with no parents to look out for their best interest - I think that’s why it’s so much easier to write books about orphans. It’s harder to write a book where all of this bad stuff happens to kids with parents around to protect them.
I don’t really think I can tie this one up into a nice neat point. I guess it’s just a bunch of observations of stuff I need to watch out for. And, I need to make sure I read some of this stuff to her instead of letting her read it on her own, so I can be sure to watch for signs that we need to stop and talk about some of it.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I understand, completely. Your second paragraph mirrors my thoughts when I’ve traveled to China.
My daughter and I attend classes at a Chinese Culture Association, where I am one of a handful of caucasians. Surrounded by Chinese families, I often visualize her with them and not with me. How would she be different, had she been raised in China, or with a Chinese family. Does she think about that too? Does she feel that loss, that I feel for her? I often wonder, and it brings tears.
Reminds me of the moment the wheels of the jet left the ground at the Guangzhou airport, upon take-off. My daughter was so tiny, but pulled herself up to the window to look out at the Chinese countryside. My heart broke for her - what was I doing, taking her away from her country, her culture, the traditions we was born into… Other adoptive families on-board where cheering, and I could stop grieving for my little girl.
July 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Yeah, I cried when the plane took off, too. Both when we left the province and then again when we left the country.
One door closes, another door opens. I was sad for the door that was closing when we left Guangzhou and then happy for the door that opened when we arrived on U.S. soil.