An Understanding of Why We Seek Comfort in Fantasy Worlds
If you're keen on keeping up on current TikTok trends, this app along with others, have erupted into a form of point of view videos depicting life at Hogwarts, the mythical school associated with the Harry Potter novels, beyond its primary storyline. Books such as Harry Potter that display dystopian worlds never fail to captivate its continual teenage and young adult audience. For example, many of these people are claiming that they are “homesick” from Hogwarts, a place they have never actually been. We as readers of these novels, certainly find ourselves being comforted by the inherently violent but underlyingly magic worlds. I have personally seen several accounts of young people becoming very emotional over the fact that these fantasy worlds, most commonly Harry Potter, are not a reality. Why has this homesick feeling for a place that does exist seem to be growing increasingly common among people between the ages of around adolescence through early adulthood?
We seek out these different books, I believe, to help distract us from our realities. For most of us, our life seems to be a constant repetition of writing, reading, and desperately trying to understand concepts such as mathematical equations and even greek philosopher ideologies. When these books first came to us we were merely students being told how to work and what to do during every instance of our lives. Regarding this reality, some of us find innate comfort in being a young student, some are indifferent and others are completely opposed to it. Each of these feelings towards not only school but for life as a young person, child, teenager, or young adult, lacks a certain magic that these novelistic worlds provide us. This can additionally be seen during the young adult dystopian novel boom during 2012 and so forth. The idea of these young characters being challenged by an unknown world enticed readers. It was an opportunity to escape, which is ironically a common theme among the novels themself.
Since we also grew up reading these fantastical novels, the implication of violence was additionally imported as a normality within our lives. The dramatic duel between Harry Potter and Voldemort, the public execution of President Snow by Katniss in the Hunger Games, and the dramatic war in Divergent are several examples of violent occurrences that shaped our perspective of war and relationships while growing up. I have personally seen image comparisons of today’s political climate and dystopian fantasies such as the hunger games. This comparison was then followed by a statement along the line of “because we grew up reading these novels we are thus prepared for anything.” In another sense, because of the major shifts that the world has undertaken within the last several months, including COVID-19, political disputes as well as human rights issues, we are using these books as a coping mechanism to distract from the stressful and unexplained.
However, I argue that the main reason why these novels are so enticing is that for once, we were able to relate with characters and see ourselves interacting in such a world. Reading a series where the characters grow up in front of our eyes provides us with a sense of comfort. It is a very convenient way to throw our own troubles away and focus on another person’s life and their struggles. The implication is truly a coping mechanism. I can truly personally relate to this feat throughout my entire life. When I read Harry Potter for the first time when I was around ten, I was enchanted by the world and used it as a way to cope with, at the time, very immature elementary and middle school drama that I am sure we have all been through and can relate too. Even to this day, as a high schooler, I go back to these novels and books as a way to escape my ever-growing piles of responsibilities. And I believe that many other young people are in the same situation as I am in. Thus, the trend of “shifting” can be seen sweeping the internet, especially social media platforms such as TikTok.
Shifting realities is the physical and mental transportation to another universe (reality) in which the shifter scripts. Yes, thousands of teens claim that they are able to transport themselves to mainly The Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. There are several accounts of these people experiencing six months in this fantasy world within a single night on earth. They describe it as a full-body experience and claim that it is very different from lucid dreaming. Whether this experience is truly real or not, and on the very slim chance that it actually is true, the implication that young people are taking almost hours out of their day in the hopes that they will be able to enter a different universe proves that we are constantly looking for an escape from our realities. We are always searching for comfort in fantasy worlds. These worlds will never truly die within us, they defined our childhood and allowed us an outlet to escape our own struggles, and for some, even pain.