#hpthoughts

You know in the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban? I began thinking..

☞the medievalism of the wizarding world is not without a cause, the magical society simply did not need the innovations that the industrial revolution had to offer, for they can achieve the same effect with a flick of a wand and of course the sufficient education. when mr. weasly asks harry about the postal services and the telephone, we see quite clearly that at least the few traditional, pureblood families are still living in a kind of pre-industrial realm.

☞lucius malfoy and arthur weasly as the aristocratic and bureaucratic reactions to a changing social order. this conflict is a real one and that’s why the word mudblood has so much weight when it’s put into draco malfoy’s mouth. he’s talking from a position of long-established authority.

☞not attributing a single word of dialogue to hermione’s parents is entirely purposeful, it helps the reader see the good parents/bad parents conflict seen in young harry’s life, the weaslys role as the loving family stays almost unchallenged during the series, so is the dursleys’ as the abusing, cold, bad family, though the memory of the blacks echoes something similar

☞gilderoy lockhart is the wizarding version of mr. collins

☞most readers considered it odd, that contrary to the author’s statement about hogwarts housing a student body of about 1000, readers see much less of them. as it happens, one can catch glimpses of unused classrooms and corridors, suggesting a rapid decrease of wizarding children caused by the wizarding wars of the 40′s and voldemort’s first reign. this also proposes a much darker storyline running along with and casting somber shadows on the unfolding plot. the castle might also adapt itself to the changing number and needs of students. deceiving, fluid spaces are not uncommon in Faerie.

☞descending through the trapdoor takes the trio to another narrative, from that moment on they’re not within the established rules of the  british boarding school adventure, they’re in a larger, much more adult storyline, it is no coincidence, that harry gets the philosopher’s stone by sheer luck, and he is rescued by sheer luck, he has no power yet in that narrative.

☞dumbledore, mcgonagall and hagrid beautifully present the ethos, logos, pathos power balance, just as harry, hermione and ron do, pathos being the least stable of these kind of heroes, this foreshadows ron leaving in the deathly hallows, and makes dumbledore predicting it much less impressive. he just understood their dynamic.

☞the second half of the book is unnecessarily long, for example, it takes two weeks for mcgonagall to get the detention notes to the trio. all of this kind of delay is written only to position surprisingly short finale at the end of the term, thus providing a safe landing to the trio coming back to the boarding school adventure narrative. following book’s account of the passing of time, this really stands out.

☞I have issues with professor quirell not being able to get the philosopher’s stone from the mirror of erised. he didn’t want to use it, he wanted to pass it to his master, which is not so much different from harry wanting to pass the stone to dumbledore. the whole concept of the mirror is in a space, where it represents the professor who equipped it as a mean of protection, so the sly and obscure mirror tells a lot about dumbledore. I would think he’s not telling the truth about the mirror in the hospital wing.

☞thresholds. all those barriers, ritual passages first-year students have to go through upon arriving at the castle, the lake, the harbor, the door etc. all of this is being taken really seriously. also liminality! the hogwarts express, where students are being suspended between the two worlds or the simple fact, that this series is about teenage people, suspended between childhood and adulthood, as I have said, it’s quite obvious they are still pretty much children in the first book, they just wander into the larger narrative, dumbledore’s and voldemort’s narrative is you please.

"I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could have all been killed - or worse, expelled. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

-Hermione Granger,Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's StonePg 162