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Thursday, February 18, 2010

To Fantastical Journeys


Flying broomsticks, conversing animals, magical lands, is it just me or are fanatasy worlds taking over bookshelves across the globe with a bang. Never before has the world been gripped by a stronger fascination for any one kind of storytelling. How did this mania begin? Where and when did it start? It is very difficult to pin-point one exact moment when this rage started, but we can easily say that it was J.K. Rowling who took everyone on a journey to the worlds unexplored. And now, the earth seems to be streaming with so many hidden secrets to lands unknown that if all of them were actually true, there would be a very tiny population of people who were ‘muggles’(people with no magical powers). Vampires, werewolves, witches, wizards, hobbits, elves, dwarfs, greek gods, their children with human beings, and sometimes even human beings themselves all make up the star cast of this genre.

All these tales seem to have the same storyline albeit with a twist. The hero is the good little kid who is always bullied by his peers but has a golden heart that beats for everyone. He is more often than not is in shadow of what his parents were or is supposed to pay for something they did or did not do. Journeys ensue, battles are fought, lives are lost and in the end the good triumphs once again. The same story, but in a different cover, with different names, and they are picked up faster than hot cakes on a rainy afternoon. Why does this happen? The new age generation is supposed to be the most grounded in reality; science has never explained things as clearly as it does today and yet we are drawn to legends, conjure up stories, live in our imaginations, wishing it all to be true, hoping for someone to appear out thin air and tell us we are different too. Bella Swan of the Twilight Saga is the eye – sore of every girl on the planet this day. She got what everyone else dreams of. The perfect guy, actually two perfect guys fighting over her, and immorality (what men have craved for since the beginning of time).

But my question is still left unanswered…What is the draw of these novels. Does the answer lie in the common human nature? To want something that eludes you. As Ankur Maheshwari notes, “It gives them a chance to be whatever they want to be. It gives them a freedom not possible in their everyday life.” So here comes my next question, where is this leading, this never ending dissatisfaction for what we have and the craving for something more? Are these novels doing more harm than good? They may have been written with a purpose to just entertain but can they in retrospect cause depression and unhappiness in the lives of millions who learn to hope and believe in things they shouldn’t by reading them.

It’s a known fact that delusional disorders are growing at an ever increasing rate and the demand for psychiatrists at its highest ever. Is it just a freaky coincedence or have we got so lost in our own minds that reality and fantasy have molded together become one?

1 comments:

Emotional Atyachar said...

hey hi
its really nice... keep it up...

 
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