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Thursday, December 29, 2005

About books and imagination

What is it with books that is not there with movies or any other form of visual entertainment?
I believe books allow us to imagine without trapping our mental world with an image like a movie does. While reading a book, when one comes across any dialogue, it gives us the opportunity to see a deeper meaning, unlike in movies, where we(or atleast most certainly me) are too involved in the visual imagery, to notice that there could be other interpretations.

I am reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” ( Book 3).
There are two places, I totally fell in love with J.K.Rowling’s writing:

(i) There is a particular book called the “Monster book of Monsters”. This is a magical book that bites. The students are prescribed this book for their syllabus, but they are unable to open the book, as the book bites and they have all sealed the book in one way or the other (using spellotape, cello tape + imagination = spellotape!)
Hagrid, the teacher for that subject, shows the students how to open the book.”Stroke it..”, he says and the book gently opens…

My Interpretation: even the most vicious can be won over by love…It was beautiful, the way this point was subtly made…and since I am reading, I feel I have the freedom to imagine. What say?

(ii) The next scene is where the defense against the dark arts teacher is telling the Students about this thing called “boggart”. The boggart is able to assume the shape of anything one fears. For example, you fear a dead-body and face a boggart, it assumes the shape of the dead-body.

The teacher is teaching them on ways to face a boggart. He says,
“The boggart wants to scare you , so when you laugh at it. It gets confused!!”
He tells the students of a charm, that can change the form of your fear into something funny…”Ridikulus!”


My interpretation: The best way to overcome any fear is to face it, and better still, to laugh at it!

I love it when books are not preachy about virtue but scatter the stories with situations and dialogues where we can assume our own meanings!!!!

4 comments:

jack said...

Nice post.
Yes books do give us the freedom to have various perspectives on the same thing.As far as movies are concerned they also do that.But most of us have been so well trained by the main stream commercial movies, that we dont think about a movies after it is finished.The same movie when thought in loneliness about the various characters and the narration it is the same as thinking over a book.But not many do that.

monu said...

@sen
welcome to my blog
guess ur right!
:)
i have never got past what the screen shoes explicitly in the movies...
:)

jac said...

You are damn correct.
Laugh at it... just short of ridiculing and you can't go wrong.

monu said...

@jac
that was from the book
i like the idea too!
:)