Adults vs. Children

As I am nearing the end of the 5th book of Harry Potter, I am finding myself wondering a lot about the certain themes that run through the narrative. One thing I have noticed is how children and adults are separated into their own groups with the occasional exception. The reader sees through the children and the reader usually understands their motivations entirely (which gives credence to that old saying about being able to “read someone like a book”), while all the adults in the book are intentionally made hard to understand for the most part and set up most the mysteries and conspiracies that the children then have to solve. Children are honest, almost to a fault, while adults serve as secretive and at times, untrustworthy.

This is not unique to Harry Potter, in fact, most fiction made for children or even up to young adult that feature young people as protagonists feature that sort of “children vs. adults” conflict. I sometimes wonder as I am reading whether this is just for the convenience of the narrative or does it actually reflect on real life somehow? It is impossible to say definitively, but I do remember from personal experience that when I was a child, adults did seem like people I could never understand. The weird problem that begins to form as an adult reading a book for younger people is trying to parse what the author intends the book to actually say, and what the author is phrasing for the sake of the younger readers.

Not that those are mutually exclusive, but often I find that seeing through a child’s point of view can be a bit problematic for me at times. It is not just about immaturity, but often they end up in situations due to their inexperience and naivety that, while aren’t contradictory to the story, they sometimes feel like contrivances the author takes in order to fit the narrative. It is impossible by just reading the book why certain elements of immaturity are genuine or not, and it is almost pointless to really try and figure it out. In the end, the reader just has to trust in the author and decide by themselves whether or not it is a good story or not.

I guess the problem lies more in the fact that adults are typically the ones writing about children, and I can’t help but think they focus on their ideas of children instead of the reality. Though I am sure many children will agree that Harry Potter is pretty much what kids are like (or at least what they would be like with magic), I just think that sometimes people give thoughts and feelings to children the same way that people like to give thoughts and feelings to their pets. Obviously children and pets have emotions, but the worry is that adults perceive children's thoughts from what their minds want them to feel, not how the children are actually feeling. Even worse, what if kids read books like Harry Potter and feel like they aren’t living up to the childhood they should be having? Fiction can be a dangerous thing when we confuse it with reality.

Luckily, Harry Potter avoids many of the perception problems by taking place in a fantasy world, and also just being a compelling narrative to go through. The books go in great length to fill out the rest of the world, which helps a lot in trying to provide context for the reader. As with most things I find, the better it is written, the less problems with narrative seem to pop up. I can’t rate whether Harry Potter is a great series yet (not until I read all the books) but it is at least a book series that makes me think, and that is why I read books in the first place.