The Harry Potter series is a world filled with magic, adventures, and memorable quirky characters. All seven books by J.K. Rowling featuring Harry Potter the young boy wizard with a unique lightening scar and even more remarkable destiny continues to influence and inspire children and adults around the world. Rowling manages to balance humor and darker themes in the children’s books that allows for a wider range of audience to connect with the story. Themes such as death, love, sacrifice, prejudice, and good versus evil are major themes that occur throughout Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Death is one of the major themes throughout the books and is introduced in the very first installment, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in which Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of the wizardry boarding school called Hogwarts, discusses the death of Potter’s parents with Professor Minerva McGonagall “The rumor is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – dead’ “(Rowling 14). Dumbledore decides to leave Harry with his last remaining ...
Two weekends ago, I found myself accidentally proving the old theory that Harry Potter is a gateway drug to the wider world of serious literature. Standing in the very back of a gigantic horde at my local bookstore at midnight, wedged into a knot of adolescents reading People magazine through oversize black plastic glasses, I picked up and nearly finished a great American superclassic that I’d somehow managed to avoid for my entire life: Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Under normal circumstances I would have been perfectly happy to go on ignoring it—the paperback had an unmistakable high-school-syllabus stench about it—but I was bored to death and the aisles were clogged with potbellied wizards and it was the only readable book within arm’s reach. A few pages in, I found myself hooked. By the time I got to the register, I was three-quarters of the way through (just after—spoiler alert!—Lennie the man-child mangles the bully Curley’s hand) and all I really wanted to do was finish it. But the employees were all clapping because I was the last customer, so I closed Steinbeck right on the brink of what felt like an impending tragic climax, took my Potter, and left. Ironically, this meant that Of Mice and Men was now suspended at roughly the same point in its dramatic arc as Rowling had suspended the Potter series before Deathly Hallows. So I went home and conducted a curious experiment in parallel reading: a two-day blitz of 860 pages, with a pair of nested climaxes—one hot off the presses, one 70 years old.
In The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, start off telling the story in the past. As Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The past for some reason always seems to influence the character’s lives. Harry’s scar and the hole in the Narrator’s heart both represent not only the connection to their worst nightmares (Voldemort and Ursula), it’s also a connection to their past. Where these connections help them take on a quest and face many challenges along the way.
cultural vocabulary. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, is a big fan of Mary Poppins. Travers was an author for adults, but she spoke to a youthful part in everyone. Her work combines fantasy and reality, showing that fantasy and imagination are major pieces of the real world (Brody 67).
Harry Potter is now a global brand worth of an estimated $15 billion dollars, and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages, ("Seventh Harry Potter Expected to Succeed”). Imagine a school in a castle filled with moving staircases, a sport played on flying broomsticks, an evil wizard intent on domination, an ordinary boy who’s the hero of a whole world he doesn’t know, (About the Series). This is the story that comes to life in the marvelous Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. Voldemort, the dark wizard, attempts to kill baby Harry in order to prevent a prophecy. He fails and ends
Just to quickly run through the two previous books; Harry Potter is a wizard, who’s parents were killed by the worst dark wizard ever known. The reason why Harry Potter is still around, is because Lord Voldemort failed to kill Harry. His spell hit Harry, but then backfired on Voldemort taking all of his powers with him. Harry is so famous for two things. Withstanding the powers of Lord Voldemort, and, taking him back in to the underworld in hiding. In the first book, Harry receives a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He’s eventually allowed to go, and spends the next six months there learning magic, getting into trouble, and trying to solve mysteries of his past, and the school. In the second book, Harry goes back to his second year at Hogwarts, and gets into more trouble, figures out many astonishing mysteries and learns loads more magic. His best friends in the two books consist of Ron and Hermione (two of his fellow wizard students) and Hagrid the gamekeeper who was expelled from Hogwarts but allowed a job as the gamekeeper.
Since the first segment of the series was released in 1997, Harry Potter has been challenged by churches and parents due to the practicing of magic by children found within the books. The books have been removed from school shelves, discouraged by churches, and censored by parents. It is claimed that Harry Potter is devilish, satanic, and encourages children to practice the occult, damaging their religious views (LaFond). Therefore, many parents keep their children from reading the book series. Yet, Harry Potter has been such a positive influence on my so many lives. Evident through the movies, theme parks, stores, and much more, J.K. Rowling’s series has been an overwhelming success for many reasons (“Because it’s his…”). In order to encourage
Ever since J.K. Rowling first introduced Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 1997, children and adults have read and loved the series. It has gained such popularity that all of the books have been made into major motion pictures, and a Harry Potter attraction has been opened in Universal Studios, Florida. Though the readers love Rowling’s intricate and exciting story lines, many controversies have arisen from these stories, not only in the United States, but also in various countries around the world. Perhaps the biggest controversy is the religious implications perceived by some critics. Although these critics believe that the series promotes paganism and encourages evil actions, these theories should not be taken so seriously.
In J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone”, different philosophical themes are incorporated in the book as Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, explore Hogwarts and attempt to protect the sorcerer’s stone. One philosophical theme in particular, truth, plays an important role throughout various chapters in the story.
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.
Harry Potter is a fascinating tale of sorcerers, wands, broomsticks, dragons, and magic. The story begins with a young boy named Harry Potter who lives at number four Privit Drive, Surray, England. His journey begins after the death of his parents at the hands of the evil Lord Voldemort. Harry learns of his past and his future as a wizard from Hagrid, the keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He travels to Hogwarts where he learns spells and enchantments, makes new friends, finds enemies, and discovers fantastic secretes. J.K. Rowling weaves a web of impeccable storytelling with this critically acclaimed novel. In the tale of Harry Potter imagery, symbolism, and motif take central focus.
One of the most read series in all literature is Harry Potter. The seven-book succession has sold over 400 million copies and has been translated into over sixty languages. What is it that makes this series so wildly famous? What is it about the boy who lived that makes frenzied readers flock to their local bookstore at midnight on the day of the release to buy the latest installment? How is a story set in a world that doesn’t exist about wizards, witches, magic, and mystical creatures so popular? The series has been able to earn its spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and has granted author J.K. Rowling multiple awards because it is relatable. It is not the setting or the events in the plot of the story that we relate to. We relate to what Harry, his friends, mentors, teachers, caretakers, and even enemies feel. Harry is in a lot of ways exactly like us. He represents some of the good characteristics that all of us have as well as the bad. The series as a whole, is about one thing that is stressed over and over again in the novels, love. The Harry Potter series is one of the most read sequences of novels because the central theme is love and self-sacrifice, and readers are looking for a novel that shows them just that.
A Literary Analysis of the Themes of Identity and Self-Realization in the Fantasy World of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Rowling’s writing sparks controversy with readers. Rowling has dealt with criticism about how her books teach children about witchcraft and evil powers (Kirk 103). To shield children from these teachings, schools and libraries across the world banned the books and occasionally, a book burning. “It conflicts with the values I’m trying to teach my children,” reports Ken McCormick, a father (qtd in Cannon and Cataldo). Evidently, the series’ plot teaches children revenge, and parents and teachers across the globe agree that banning the books will protect them from harmful lessons. However, her works have encouraged children read more. Today, fewer children and teens read for pleasure, causing a great drop in test scores, vocabulary, and imagination (Hallet). According to U.K.-based Federation of Children’s Book Groups, fifty nine percent of kids believe that Harry Potter enhanced their reading skills, and forty eight percent say that the books turned them in to bookworms (Hallet). In other words, Rowling’s books became children’s, in this day of age, video games. She published Harry Potter at a time where children, teens, and young adults were starting to consume their time with technology instead of reading. Without these books, generations across the spectrum would diminish in terms of reading skill. Rowling not only helps children improve their skills, she gives back to them through her
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was written by J. K. Rowling and is the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. The book is about a seventeen-year-old wizard, named Harry Potter, who has to travel all over England to find things that will help him defeat the evil wizard, Lord Voldomort. The main theme/moral of the entire series is good will always triumphs over evil. In every book, even when it looks like evil is going to win, good always triumphs in the end.
The novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, is a story about an orphan named Harry Potter who is sent to live with his relatives, the Dursleys. For the first ten years of his life, Harry is hated and ignored by his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. Harry has never experienced a friendship with anyone until the day he is sent to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Throughout the school year, Harry develops a balance of friendship between Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Neville Longbottom. Each of them, has a need to belong somewhere. Together, they form a balance that make them each feel wanted in way that they have never known until they meet each other.