Unlikely Heros In Harry Potter, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and The Lord of The Rings

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Gandalf. Hobbits have not even been awarded one of the great rings in the division of power that in Middle Earth. Yet it is a Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who ultimately gains control over the ring that shall rule them all.
These three characters from these three disparate sagas and quests all bear a key resemblance to one another. They are all unlikely heroes. They all possess extraordinary qualities within rather than qualities that are immediately obvious to the world without. Fantasy is often thought of as an escapist medium. By calling fantasy escapist, it is often meant that the characters and stories depicted are heightened versions of reality, or bear no resemblance to reality at all. Yet the relationship between fantasy and reality is more complex, and this is illustrated best by examining the character of the 'unlikely hero.' Rather than simply being greater than the average individual, the unlikely hero has a greatness that cannot be read properly in the terms of the ...

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to live in a black-and-white world even more dire than can be imagined by the clever media moguls of MGM. Dorothy is also an orphan, like Harry. She lives with elderly relatives who have little conception of how to make a child happy. She is transported away from her plight by a terrible thing for farmers, a tornado. Strangely enough, that same tornado makes it possible for Dorothy to unwittingly kill the Wicked Witch of the East. The storm that took away the nutrients for the crops in flat Kansas becomes a boon to Oz. The ordinary young girl, friendless except for her dog, is read, or rather mis-read by the Munchinfolk as possessing magical powers of liberation. Oddly enough, by ...

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