The Magic Behind Rowling In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, author J.K. Rowling displays the themes of feminism, love, and death because she personally experienced the importance of each. Throughout her lifetime Rowling experienced many difficult and wonderful times with her family, friends, and fans. These experiences and the effects that they had on the author’s life are clearly demonstrated in her written work. Through her characters in this novel Rowling created an outlet that she may solve her problems and relive the wonders of her life not only for herself but for her readers as well.
Rowling was born in July of 1965 under the full name of Joanne Rowling. The author spent her childhood growing up in Chepstow and attending Wyedean
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As a young girl, J.K.Rowling was always closest with her mother whom she dearly loved. When her mother later died the author was heartbroken ad stricken with grief. The death of Anne Rowling had a huge impact on the themes of the Harry Potter series and most evidently Deathly Hallows. Due to her mother’s death and her own depression, Rowling needed to find an outlet to accept the death of loved ones. She created an outlet through her written work. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, many beloved characters meet their end. The real magic of these deaths was not the death itself but the way the characters who loved the dead dealt with the loss. Each went on to learn to accept the loss and live a happy life without the ones who they had once loved. This is clearly shown in the way Harry learns to live with himself. The scene in which Harry is charging forth to confront his own death and prevent the death of his loved ones displays this well. He extracts the resurrection stone and is greeted by his family and friends who are already dead. Readers at this point in the novel are clearly shown exactly how many people Harry has lost and that he has accepted this and is ready to confront his own fate because of his love for them. Just like Rowling, Harry later finds happiness in life, and even provides comfort for Teddy Lupin who was orphaned early in life just as Harry
He discusses demise in the primary sentence, saying, “The marvelous thing is that it’s painless” (Hemingway 826). As the story creates, Harry as often as possible specifies his desire to pass on or the way he feels that passing is close now. “You can shoot me.” (Hemingway 826) and “I don’t want to move” (Hemingway 827), and “There is no sense in moving now except to make it easier for you” (Hemingway 827) and “Can’t you let a man die as comfortably as he can without calling him names? “ (Hemingway 827). It sounds as though Harry is surrendering, not so much, since he is a weakling, despite the fact that his wife calls him that, yet more since he feels that, it is more agreeable for him right now to set down and pass on as opposed to sitting tight for a truck or plane that will most likely never arrive. During the rest of the story, Harry has several moments when he feels the proximity of
Throughout history, women have struggled with, and fought against oppression. They have been held back and weighed down by the sexist ideas of a male dominated society which has controlled cultural, economic and political ideas and structure. During the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s women became more vocal and rebuked sexism and the role that had been defined for them. Fighting with the powerful written word, women sought a voice, equality amongst men and an identity outside of their family. In many literary writings, especially by women, during the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s, we see symbols of oppression and the search for gender equality in society. Writing based on their own experiences, had it not been for the works of Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, and similar feminist authors of their time, we may not have seen a reform movement to improve gender roles in a culture in which women had been overshadowed by men.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind; Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon first glance, these classics of literary legend appear to have nothing in common. However, looking closer, one concept unites these three works of art. At the center of each story stands a woman--an authentically portrayed woman. A woman with strengths, flaws, desires, memories, hopes, and dreams. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara, and Williams’ Blanche DuBois are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated women: strong yet fragile, brazen yet subtle, carnal yet pure. Surviving literature that depicts women in such a realistic and moving fashion is still very rare today, and each piece of that unique genre must be treasured. But unlike those singular works, there lived one man who built a career of writing novels that explored the complex psyches of women. Somehow, with each novel, this author’s mind and heart act as a telescope gazing into an unforgettable portrait of a lady. Through the central female characters in his novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence illuminates dimensions of a woman’s soul not often explored in literature.
Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
While there is no shortage of male opinions concerning the role of females, which usually approve of male dominance, there is a lack of women expressing views on their forced subservience to men. This past subordination is the very reason there were so few females who plainly spoke out against their position, and the search for females expressing the desire for independence necessarily extends to the few historical works by women that do exist. Jane Austen is a well-known female author, and it is natural that her novels would be studied in an attempt to find a covert feminist voice. However, though certain feminist elements may exist, one common theme found throughout the novels Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma, makes it impossible to label these works as completely supporting feminism. The idea that women should not be allowed to have power, should be controlled by men, and that males should use their power to the fullest extent is inescapable. This idea is raised repeatedly throughout these novels.
...t to feel regret, denial, anger, and depressed about dying because Harry realizes death is coming. Harry wants to feel happiness during his last moments alive.
The classic trolley problem is a thought experiment where participants have the option to save five people by purposely and deliberately killing another person. Although putting one’s ethics on the line already, the question to be extended is to ask the participant if they would send their son, aware, to his death in order to save the world. This question is one of many moral decisions made by the characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh book in the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. Experienced by the readers first hand, this leaves the audience in a moral debate within of whether or not support or condemn each character’s, who the readers have grown attached too, decisions. By creating this emotional attachment to the characters and then revealing another side of the characters, J.K. Rowling effectively helps readers further feel empathy and human understanding.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
However, as time has progressed literature has finally come to terms with the feminism theory within literature and its ideologies. In this specific story, we are able to identify the traits of feminism theory with ease; Hurston allowed the world to finally accept the new dominant roles of women, while also allowing the female character to simultaneously possess every innate feminine trait along with those usually associated with the male
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
Myra, who is dying of illness, escapes the confinement of her stuffy, dark apartment. She refuses to succumb to death in an insubordinate manner. By leaving the apartment and embracing open space, Myra rejects the societal pressure to be a kept woman. Myra did not want to die “like this, alone with [her] mortal enemy” (Cather, 85). Myra wanted to recapture the independence she sacrificed when eloping with Oswald. In leaving the apartment, Myra simultaneously conveys her disapproval for the meager lifestyle that her husband provides for her and the impetus that a woman needs a man to provide for her at all. Myra chose to die alone in an open space – away from the confinement of the hotel walls that served as reminders of her poverty and the marriage that stripped her of wealth and status. She wished to be “cremated and her ashes buried ‘in some lonely unfrequented place in the mountains, or in the sea” (Cather, 83). She wished to be alone once she died, she wanted freedom from quarantining walls and the institution of marriage that had deprived her of affluence and happiness. Myra died “wrapped in her blankets, leaning against the cedar trunk, facing the sea…the ebony crucifix in her hands” (Cather, 82). She died on her own terms, unconstrained by a male, and unbounded by space that symbolized her socioeconomic standing. The setting she died in was the complete opposite of the space she had lived in with Oswald: It was free space amid open air. She reverted back to the religious views of her youth, symbolizing her desire to recant her ‘sin’ of leaving her uncle for Oswald, and thus abandoning her wealth. “In religion , desire was fulfillment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded”( Cather, 77), it was not the “object of the quest that brought satisfaction” (Cather, 77). Therefore, Myra ends back where she began; she dies holding onto
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been hardly recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman of society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women character in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a
Amidst war, censorship, and persecution, D.H. Lawrence channeled his resulting emotions into his writing and emerged a visionary author. Wholly misplaced with regards to the century in which it was constructed and gifted to the populace, Lawrence’s Women in Love was met with criticism for its sexual implications. However, with proper deconstruction of the novel and psychoanalysis of the principal characters, it is apparent that Lawrence’s genuine intention in his creation of Women in Love was to set concepts of new complex philosophies concerning the rituals of marriage, definitions of love, rapidly increasing modernization, and the negative effects of excessive industrialization within the minds of his audiences.
In 1813 one of Jane Austen’s best works was published called Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice takes place in England during the early nineteenth century. Austen’s main purpose, while writing Pride and Prejudice was to convey the idea that marriage was not a business but marriage was about love. There are many prominent romance novelists out there but the one difference between them and Jane Austen is their style of writing. "Various critics have consistently noted that the plot development of Pride and Prejudice is determined by character — coincidence exerts a major influence, but turns of action are precipitated by character. Although human weakness is a prominent element, ranging from Miss Bingley's jealousy to Elizabeth's blind