Icon Analysis

The icons I selected are all literature. While people are my main source of inspiration, literature is both a way to ‘exercise’ my imagination and form friendships with other bookworms. The 3 literature collections I chose are – the Harry Potter Series, the Hunger Games Triology, and the Twilight Saga. J.K. Rowling (2007), author of the Harry Potter series, views “words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”

The Harry Potter series is what really turned me into the avid reader I am today. I read the first book in my mid-20’s, at the urging of one of my co-workers. I sat down to read a few chapters on a cold winter afternoon and ended up finishing it at 1 am. I was hooked! Every year we would fly out to Washington state to go backpacking for 10 days. I was sitting there reading one of the Harry Potter books, when the kid next to noticed the book. The child, his mother, and I ended up talking the entire 4-hour plane trip.

 

http://images.popmatters.com/features_art/p/potter-composite.jpg

 

In Hunger Games, Panem is a representation of the US in the distant future. There are no longer states, but districts; and the costal areas of today are underwater.  Although the Hunger Games is completely fictional, it made me stop and think. Could, at least, part of this fictional tale come to fruition? Global warming is threatening our ice caps, glaciers, and polar snow pack. If these melt, there is very real chance that the same underwater states/areas of Panem will be submerged in the near future. This book series was a fast read, very entertaining, and planted little seeds of possibility of what the future may hold.

http://popculturegalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/the-hunger-games-poster1.jpg

The last icon I chose, is the Twilight Saga. For any of you who do not know, Twilight is set in Washington State on the Olympic peninsula and is about vampires and werewolves. Obviously this is a fictional creation. However, the way the characters are described, they seem real. The books made you almost believe that maybe they are real and you never noticed. This series was a great escape for me and continued to feed my voracious appetite for books. The unfortunate part, in my boyfriend’s opinion, is it opened eyes to another genre of literature for me to explore and many more books to buy!

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/97/4e/1349384499_6501_0a.jpg?itok=_Z5k_sQ0

 

Reference:

Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic.