Monday, November 8, 2010

The Tales Of Beedle The Bard - By J.K Rowling

    
              Truth - “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
             - Professor Albus Dumbledore

            
  

 

 The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of short stories by J K Rowling which are meant to be ancient wizard world tales for the young wizards written originally in Runes and translated by Hermione Granger with additional notes from Prof. Albus Dumbledore which he left in his will to The Hogwarts Archives.


         I would definitely say I thoroughly enjoyed reading the ancient tales of the wizarding world, because when you read our simple fairy tales, which of course when involves no magic at all, always leaves the main character helpless initially, then with some help and courage, the character reaches to the stage of maximum satisfaction and lives happily ever after.

              



 But here in the wizarding world where every character is capable of conjuring before themselves anything they might want to make life easier for them it really seems hard to imagine them getting into trouble and getting out of it. And this is what these stories were mainly focused on, that - “Magic is not everything”. There are many limitations to magic which little children (wizards of course) learn through these stories, a lesson which of course can be helpful to a lot of elders and other muggles too.




   

 
    At the end of each story there are notes from Prof. Albus Dumbledore himself which include observations on wizarding history, personal reminiscences and enlightening information on key elements of each story, which was personally the most interesting and entertaining part of the whole book for me. Because obviously they are Dumbledore's view and no matter how twisted they might be at times to understand they are still absolutely enlightening and amazing. Another fact that might add value to it is that Dumbledore is always potrayed with an air of mystery in the Harry Potter series and to know his views with absolute clarity on the basic issues of the wizarding world in his own words would be a privilege for anyone.






               Certain stories also describe a bond between the wizarding world and the muggle world which of course is a good thing but as later described by Dumbledore has been criticized by certain so-called “pure-blood” wizards, who have made efforts to either modify or remove such stories from the book, my point in bringing this up is the “ battle” phase that we see constantly between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy is the effect of the history that follows due to the thinking of certain narrow minded wizards which has been transferred in their heritage and due to that the war is still on.....